When the soul?
 

Over on this thread there are several people who are both very religious and pro-choice:

<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53946">The relationship between Iraq and say....abortion.</a>

Personally I'm not religious, these people made me wonder about a few things. Many religions, and Christianity in particular, believe that human beings have some sort of a soul.

For people who believe in the soul, it seems that a possible definition of murder would be the willfull killing of another being which possesses a soul. My first question to you religious people out there is whether that is a reasonable definition.

My second question is: At what moment is a person endowed with a soul? Presumably there is no soul involved before fertilization, but there is one at birth. Sometime in between the soul must be introduced. When do you believe this happens? At fertilization? At viability? At birth?

Clearly this discussion is closely related to the abortion debate (at least it is for certain religious folk), but I'd prefer to keep the focus on the particular issues I mentioned. Please try to keep your posts on topic.

works for me

The way I see it, according to Occam's Razor, the soul would be introduced into the being at the same time as fertilization. Least number of steps to achieve a means.

Well, wouldn't that be an unnecessary step at that point? There are so many things that could go wrong during pregnancy, it seems more likely a soul would be allocated at the last moment before birth.

Seems like a lot of extra work to assign souls to every zygote, when many might never make it to being a baby.

NOTE: This is not to say I think abortion is ok up until birth, this is merely my take on the soul introduction issue.

Personally, I think the current laws regarding the limit to first-trimester abortions are fine. In my eyes, that is not a baby yet, not by a long shot. If it can't survive outside the mother by itself, then it is simply a mass of cells still growing, and not a person.

Some possible beliefs.

Soul shows up when brain waves do?

Souls are not discreet eintities: some religious people believe in vitae, or life-energy, which can be more or less in different things.

Murder is killing something with a soul while it is possibly in a state of damnation? (ie, you are removing the chance for them to save their soul)

Classically, as with Aquinas for example, it was believed that the soul entered the body at 'quickening'; that is, the point of the pregnancy where the fetus began to move. However, I think the church has changed its position on this since we've learned more about how pregnancy works.

Personally, I don't believe in souls, at least not in the traditional sense. So I don't think your definition of murder is correct. So what do we say? Well, let's start with "murder=unjustified killing". It's a good place to start, but it's not enough. It's at least possible that some killings of animals are unjust, but I don't want to say that any killing of an animal is murder. So we could say "murder=unjustified killing of a human being", but that doesn't seem adequate either.

Why not? Well, suppose we met an alien which had intelligence, i.e., an alien which was not merely an extra-terrestrial animal. It seems to me that the unjustified killing of such a creature would be murder. So, if we say preliminarily that "person"="creature with the relevant sort of intelligence" we can say "murder=the unjustified killing of a person".

Very wonderful thread, indeed.


I am not religious, although I accept & respect all.


Yes and no, because you are not killing off the soul. You are assisting the human form to cease living.

My spirituality consists of knowing that I am the Soul walking the earth in physical form. i.e. the saying: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." We are always the Soul. Existing eternally, but that we transorm into a physical being to experience Who We Are as Souls, as part of the Whole, but in a seperate experience in which we can experience anything and everything.

You are correct. I stay away from this subject, though.

I don't believe that souls are ever introduced into living beings, and should be left out of any kind of legal arguments (including but not limited to murder and abortion). So, IMO, souls should not be mentioned in a legal definition of murder, since it cannot be proved scientifically or used as evidence in a courtroom.

Well, some Buddhists have believed for centuries that a soul takes 49 (7 weeks) days to reincarnate into another body. The Book of the Dead or some such thing teaches this. Coincidentaly, the fetus at 49 days differentiates into a male or female by developing sex organs. The pineal gland is also formed and activated on the 49th day, wich is associated with perception and has alot to do with our state of conciousness. Draw your own conclusions as to what any of that means, if anything.

Re: When the soul?
 

Personally I dont really believe in a Soul. But the problem of your question is independent from that believe. The problem is, the human mind seems to have difficulties with the concept of "becoming", the human mind always searches for define point at which something happens. Be it "is human" or "has a soul". In both cases I think you cannot tell at some point now has a soul/ is a human and a second before that it hasn't/isn't.
The two cell merging togehter are not a human being, but the baby is of course human, somewhere between this two points in time these two cells became a human being. And I think this is also true for the soul

Agreed. That's why this was posted in Tilted Philosophy rather than Tilted Politics.

Yes, I don't think he was looking for a legal definition. Not to mention his question is directed specifically at people who believe in a soul. ;)

Regarding Occam's Razor, the way I see it, no it's not an unecessary step. Soul and fertilization as one (and the same) step, and birth as a second step. Two steps total. Fertilization, integration of soul immediately before birth, and birth are three steps. One more step than the other way.

I wouldn't base an argument for or against abortion based off of this logic, it's just food for thought.