Re: [asa] Worthy of response?

Carol or John Burgeson wrote:
>
> 3. and the real ethical question of the moral standing of the embryos
> destroyed in the process.
>
> Here seems to be the real issue. Do these entities (I use this neutral
> term rather than "embryos) possess a moral status? This is a difficult
> question to argue, but I think that it is the only real argument at
> issue.
>
> Part of the argument may be tied to the issue of "ensoulment," although
> ensoulment is not necessarily necessary to an argument. But as a
> Christian I subscribe to the concept, so I'll make the assumption that
> "ensoulment" refers to a real action on God's part. Whether it is a
> "event" (i.e. takes place at a definite point of time) or a "process
> (i.e. takes place over a time period) does not seem to make a
> difference,"
>
> It would seem, based on various medical findings, that ensoulment does
> not take place at conception and, indeed, does not take place until after
> implantation has taken place. It is my understanding that the entities
> used in stem research are harvested prior to that time. Therefore, since
> ensoulment has not taken place, no "person" is destroyed and the process
> must be (on this argument at least) morally neutral, akin to
> contraception. I assume, contra the pope, that contraception is morally
> neutral.
>
On what medical findings would you base your "It would seem..."
assertion in the last paragraph? *IF* a soul is a non-physical entity,
then how could any medical findings have any bearing?

Regarding exactly when 'ensoulment' takes place: Is it a peculiarly
western tendency to see things in terms of "Dedekindian" cuts? William
Charlton discusses this predilection in his book "Being Reasonable about
Religion", and applies it to the proposed evolutionary history of some
species. He uses the example of any of us trying to identify the day
that we learned to read. I will probably find that there was no single
day of my childhood that I could identify as his first day of "full
readerhood", yet no reading ability on the day before. It was a long
process. Is it a Christian (or anti-Christian) way of thinking to think
of such things as possibly not being black & white only? What if
'ensoulment' is a process? Given that we won't even be able to agree on
what evidence for the event is, this won't be resolved. But we should
consider that the debate could be about something considerably messier
that our current constructs allow for.

--Merv

p.s. Charlton's discussion wasn't about the 'ensoulment event' per se,
but more about evolutionary process. E.g. when did the first horse
appear? An evolutionary answer to that might currently say there were
no horses 200 mya, so the "event" would then be after that. However,
if (via time machines) we found that a modern horse could interbreed
with a horse from 10 mya, and that horse could interbreed with one from
20 mya, it would not necessarily follow that the modern one could
interbreed with the 20 my old one. So the evolution of a "species"
becomes a process resisting a Dedekindian cut. And the Linnean system
of distinct species becomes outmoded in favor of the Cladistic one.
Perhaps much of the debate can be postured as "event vs. process". Am
I saved by Christ? or am I not? ...and on what day did it happen?
One sees where the Christian proclivity for "event" (as temporally
defined by us) comes from.

Overheard at church: "There are two kinds of people in the world:
those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don't."

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Received on Sat Sep 1 13:40:07 2007