Homework for everyone!
Does a quark have a soul?
What about a nucleon...
...an atom
...a molecule
...a biomolecule
...a complex of biomolecules
...a procaryote (bacteria and archs)
...an eucaryote (single-cell organisms like amebas and stuff)
...multi-cellular organisms
...fish
...amphibians (frogs'n salamanders'n stuff)
...reptiles (mother****ing snakes)
...birds and mammals, including (but not excluded to)
...Canis Lupus
...Pan Troglodytes
...Australopitcheus Afarensis
...Homo Habilis
...Homo Erectus
...Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis
...Homo Sapiens Sapiens
Now, I'd personally be very happy if someone could tell me which of these have this entity called "soul" and which do not have it. Surely a "soul", if it exists in some form, is not encoded into Homo Sapiens Sapiensis DNA? Though if it's not, who can make a distinction between "thing A has no soul" and "thing B has a soul"? And where will the line be drawn?
Now, on the other hand, if we abandon the concept of "soul" for purely definitional reasons and consider the concept of "consciousness" instead, things become very much easier. (Yes, I'm getting to my point, don't hurry me...
)
-I suppose we can agree that without sophisticated neural network there can be no consciousness existing in an organism. Therefore, an embryo doesn't have a consciousness.
-Now, I'm asking, if there is no conscious being but just a bunch of cells, what harm can there be for anything for not letting the embryo to develop into a fetus (something highly more sophisticated IMO)?
I mean, let us presume there is such thing as a "soul", be it whatever it is, attached to every embryo right from the fertilization. So, if this "soul" is what it's usually referred to as being immortal spirit, surely it would continue to exist even if the embryo to which it was "attached" was not let to develop?
If, on the other hand, you refer to "soul" as a value of a being and state that an embryo does have a similar value as your 30-year-old CEO because it COULD some day became a person contributing to society, my own opinion about this matter is this:
The present matters. What could be does not matter a slightest bit to what is now*. In other words, if an embryo is a bunch of cells that cannot have a conscience, I have no trouble expereimenting with stem cells. It doesn't matter if it "could" be a new Einstein, because it's not that now. I would, on the other hand, be very much more careful to test thingz on beings with a sophisticated neural network on their headz, in which case it would be possible that they suffered because of testing.
*This does not mean that we should not think about the future. What I mean is this:
If you inherit a house that you have no use to, is not in particularly good condition, is a couple decades old, and you could profit by letting the firefighters practice on it, burn it down and then sell the soil to someone who would like to build a new house, you wouldn't probably think "Oh, but hundred years from now this house will be a significant example of 1980's architecture and will be an important monument of ugliness".
It is true that the house
could be a monument of 1980's a hundred years from now. But it is also true that if you let the firefighters practice on it, theey might be able to bettle distinguish fires on other houses. Plus you'd get a good money of the soil. And we actually don't need more 1980's building as monuments.
In similar fashion, it is true that an embryo could develop into fetus and grow up to be a person. But it is also true that if scientist do their tests on embryo's cells, they might be able to cure and help people that already DO exist as conscient beings. Plus, the earth really doesn't need any more people than gets born even without letting embryos developing further on...
I hope someone can make some sense out of this babbling. It's not easy trying to explain complex philosophical opinions with some else language than your own...