At 08:54 PM 8/12/01 -0700, Ken wrote:
>When I was a child I asked my religion class teacher, "Who gets the
>original immortal soul when identical twins split into two separate people?"
And as I've posted several times, an even more delicious question is what
happens to the spare soul/s when a post-fertilization genetic mosaic or
chimera occurs in utero by accident or in vitro by design, two or more
embryos fusing into one that later goes to term? This happens less absurdly
often than one might imagine. (Old Father Ryan would have assured me, if
he'd had a clue, that this was okay because the creation and gluing in
souls is God's business, and He would see to it, don't you worry about
that. For those with a less essentialist view of souls, it poses an almost
insuperable metaphysical problem.)
>By the way, this new respect the Right has found for those thousands of
frozen
>embryos makes me wonder why they consider frozen embryos to have more
right to
>life than ordinary people in cryo. I say "Stand up for equal Dewer Rights!"
No! No! Please don't, Ken, even in irony or whimsy! They're *utterly*
separate issues; I don't want to see cryonics win out at the expense of
vicious abortion bans.
Damien Broderick
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