Birds and mammals have souls; other animals (and organisms and matter) don't. There's a word for that in Hebrew, IIRC - nephesh; "soulish" creatures. Basically, any animal that can form a relationship has a soul.
Okay, passed that one (though by referring to religious authority, but whatever). Next level question:
Assuming that this is true and mammals and birds have souls, what makes human souls soo special above other groups of souls that makes you so eager to defend even human embryos while you apparently can accept (while perhaps reluctantly) the use of other mammals in tests that not only are aimed at mice embryos, ape embryos and such, but also in full-grown animals?
Yes, I think I know what you are about to answer - humans are "above others for our intelligence and ability to produce art and so on", or something that closely matches those lines of thought - correct me if I do thee injustice.
This is where it comes very difficult in my opinion to draw simple lines at some points. Technically, if we look at an embryo of, say, a chimpanzee and a human embryo, there's not that much difference in them. The DNA is about 90 % or more the same, the cells look very much the same. Only by powerful microscope you can (if you know what you're looking for) see that a chimp embryo has 24 pairs of chromosomes, whereas human embryo contains only 23 pairs. Yet you seem to claim that even at this stage a human embryo has a soul that is supposedly "worth more" than chimp embryo's soul.
So, it seems to me that along your line of thoughts human souls are better and worth more because of our
abilities? And you value the soul of human embryo above the chimp one because of its
potential to have those abilities, like intelligence, ability to make art and so on?
Well, what about the soul of an embryo that has some mistakes in its genetic code and will most likely be highly disabled? Like, say, a one that stays at a level of a three-year-old his/hers whole life? This embryo obviously doesn't have a soul as worthy as the one in a healthy embryo?
Or perhaps the souls of a disabled and healthy human embryo are identical in their value? Even if the disabled embryo hasn't got the same potential? In which case, of course, we must acknowledge the worth of a chimpanzee soul, because they too have about the same "potential" as a disabled human embryo. Of course then comes another problem; what about disabled chimpanzees? Do their soul have a worth below the one of a healthy chimpanzee? If the souls of a healthy and a disabled chimpanzee match in value, we can prove that every soul in it sel is actually identical in "value" with every other soul there is. This is a method that closely matches mathematical induction, we can now do a comparision between, say, a rabbit's soul and a disabled chimpanzee soul. Again we could say that the rabbit has the potential to have much the same intellect and artistical abilities as a disabled chimpanzee; therefore the must be of about same quality and same value, which ends us with the rabbit having a soul worth a healthy human's soul...
On the other hand, if we choose the line where a value of soul is defined by the abilities of the creature the soul possesses, we soon approach highly disturbing deductions, like the one where a soul of a disabled person would be worth less than the soul of a healthy person...?
Basically, if we aknowledge that disabled people have souls worth healthy, that is the same thing as when we say that appearance doesn't change the human value of a person, which is (in my ethic at least) much an intrinsic value non-dependant of his or her abilities.
So, we come do end result:
value of a soul cannot and shouldn't be deducted from the abilities of the creature it has attached itself into. This also applies to animals, which very much makes resisting research of stem cells meaningless moralization if you still accept animals being subject to such research.
Surely the difference is that you seek to inflict your beliefs upon me. Stem cell research must be banned because you believe it is evil. So instead of simply refusing to partake in research or the products of that research you instead choose to try to prevent anyone from doing so regardless of what they believe.
No, there's a difference (and I only just realized the difference today). Certain religious groups don't believe in medicine, so they don't use medicine - but they don't prevent anyone else from doing so. The reason is that it's a personal moral choice that affects nobody but the one making the choice. However, stem cell research affects a third party, the blastocyst/embryo, who hasn't given consent (and cannot) for it to be used in such a matter.
The primary moral concern here is protecting the embryo, not passing judgement on someone's use or abstention from a medical procedure.
Question: What proof do you have that it damages embryo's soul if the embryo dies before developing further? Of course you don't have a proof, but just tell me, please, what harm can come to the soul in this case?
Are you perhaps implying that the soul just dies? If so, you would perhaps brief us of your concept of a soul, because I always understood that when you talk about soul, you refer to those immortal spirits that leave our bodies in death to be judged at the Apocalypse or so on. Key word:
immortal spirit. I don't think material damage to embryo can harm the soul itself in any way, by definition of a soul.
Or would you say that these souls of those embryos are sent to limbo to wait for apocalypse (along with other unbabtized babies perhaps)?
...I don't think even God himself could be so stupid, assuming that He exists. Being all-mighty and all-knowing, he might just barely be able to understand the need to make research and thereby he might give those poor little souls another chance. It's even possible (what wouldn't for an almighty entity) that He foresaw that these embryos would better be used for research purposes and decided not to put souls into them at all!*
This attitude has no more validity than banning the use of beef because Hindus feel the cow is sacred. I'm going to continue to eat beef because I like the taste. If someone wants to tell my I shouldn't because cows are holy I'm going to ignore them because cows are not holy as far as I am concerned.
Why not simply decide that anyone working on embryos is going to hell and leave it up to God to sort out?
Again, there's a difference. You have to determine where the moral law is targeted. Here's how I would assume the Hindu sees it: If eating beef is wrong because it makes a person unclean, then you can live and let live because the person is going to be accountable to God (or Vishnu or whoever) because of his uncleanness. On the other hand, if eating beef is wrong because cows are holy and must be protected, then
nobody must be allowed to eat beef, regardless of his personal views on the matter.
That's the distinction. Stem cell research isn't wrong because a person shouldn't benefit from modern medicine; it's wrong because it harms an innocent third party.
As it might have became clear at the last paragraph, I don't think it damages the souls in any way if their embryo dies. If it did, there would be many poor damaged souls whose embryo just happened to die by itself without any help from researchers.
If I believed there was things like souls and God/gods, or hell, why not Xenu and his soul-brainwashing scheme, I think the same souls would just be given other tries until they finally get borne and get to live a life as people.
Plus, of course, it's not like those embryos were plucked from their mommies wombs accompanied with evil mad laughter, like someone already mentioned. The fertility clinics have *plenty* of embryos that never make it to anywhere near developing into babies. There is not enough mothers in world to give birth to all those embryos, so they were going to die anyway so why not just use them for some good? I don't think God would mind that. Or the souls in those embryos.
Of course you can say that fertility clinics are bad because they produce huge amounts of embryos as a by-product of their work...
By the way, how does a soul gather information of its surroundings? Does it need, for example, eyes to see and ears to hear? Or nerves to feel pain? If it does, then it doesn't feel pain, it doesn't see what happens to embryo. Actually it doesn't even know it was inside that embryo in the first place...
On the other hand, if a soul has some other means of gathering information, why bother putting them into organisms in the first place?
I am an agnostic. Without proof I won't be believing that there are some divine entities beyond this universe, nor will I believe in such things as souls. However, through this message I assumed that these things existed, for the sole purpose of showing that even in religious terms there might even be no harm of stem cell research at all.
*The point marked with star is an example that is supposed to show how ridiculous and pointless it is to bring religious authorities into any kind of conversation. Also it shows that appealing to "God's intention" in any matter is just as pointless, because things can turn out in any ways and it could still be seen as "God's intention". So, perhaps it is so that stem cell research is part of God's intentions if there was a God? Be it his way or not, it doesn't free us of moral responsibility of our actions in general. Thus we of course have to think the consequenses of our actions in this world, as we cannot know what happens in hereafter. And, in this world it's clearly visible that stem cell research has some very promising results, whereas any damage to souls cannot be proven (by definition) and embryos cannot comprehend any harm (or anything if it comes to that, also by definition).
Someone should stop me from writing these essays.
