Do you think human clones would have souls?

No I don’t think so as a soul is as individual to the person as a snowflake.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as an immaterial soul in the sense of something that survives the death of the body. This is not the only possible way of understanding the soul, however. The ancient Greeks, for instance, sometimes considered ψυχη (psyche: this is the word translated as “soul” in works such as the Bible) to be the mind and other times to be whatever differentiated living beings from inanimate objects. In that sense, it seems to me that human clones would have to possess souls or else have very little claim to being the result of any successful cloning process.

Of course. It would be the same as identical twins. They would be separate people.

yes I do. and here’s why: if you talk to or see the children the are born of ivf, they very much have souls. So many were killed in ww2, and subsequent wars, that they are rushed back. My mother, an empath, told me that. So, every life is vital, very much so.

If the clone was an identical copy then it would have a soul. There would be no way of telling the original from the clone.

I don’t believe in souls, but they would have the same biological emotions we do. They would feel as individuals with their own thoughts and such.

The word that “soul” comes from is nephesh. This word gets used inaccurately. People don’t have souls, they “are” souls. But I don’t see why a clone wouldn’t be considered a child of God. They would be 100% human being. It isn’t their fault that people gave them life in a non-traditional way.

Sure. Just as @JenniferP puts it. God invented science too. If he allows a human to come to be from science, I would think he/she would have all the stuff that comes along with being human.

@JenniferP “People don’t have souls, they “are” souls.” I like that.
People are souls and have bodies?

@dabbler You know what I mean. They don’t have souls inside of them.

@mazingerz88 I think the answer will become apparent once we know how many devils can simultaneously dance atop the point of a pin. </sarcasm>

A body is a vehicle for the awareness that resides within. At birth the awareness is a blank slate, and so even if the body would be cloned, the awareness within would be its own entity, gathering its own experiences and therefore would be a new person.

If someone were to be cloned with memories of that person they would still be a different person because from the moment they awoke their experiences would start to differ from those of the clonee (Btw., do you like the word clonee? I like the word clonee. Clonee has a nice ring to it).

Experiences aside – no one mind can occupy two bodies at a time (from what we know), therefore – separate body, separate person. No matter how identical their “vehicle” or their experiences thus far.

What is this soul you speak of?

Since there is no such thing as a “soul” then the answer is no. They would, however, have their own personality. And clones exist, by the way. They’re called “identical twins.”

Clones are effectively no different from identical twins, so if twins have their own souls then I would expect clones to have them as well.

@fremen_warrior Touche. : )

I think they would have souls, but I am not sure when the Quickening would occur.

Maybe just ar-souls.

If it were possible for a hermaphrodite to impregnate itself, would that be considered cloning?

No. Even if man makes a perfect copy of a person, including emotions and thoughts, it would not create a soul. A soul is something supernatural; it has no physical or biological makeup. Man can’t create it.

@RandomGirl Man wouldn’t be creating. It would be copying and growing. There is a big difference between growing a spore and creating life from nothing.

@filmfann: Good point. I worded it wrong – the idea I was trying to portray is that something we initiate will not be that same as when God initiates it.

Absolutely. However someone defines souls, whether God given or a term to define our thoughts, ourselves, if a human life is created it has a soul.

There were only a certain number of souls since time began. As there grew to be more bodies than souls, heaven was forced to divide the souls into the bodies that came to be. But heaven only knows when a new body comes into existence by it’s unique genetic signature. Twins must share a soul or a soul share. But this works out, because most identical twins are born at the same time, and they can both partake of the soul fragment delivered during their birth.

Clones, however, are not born at the same time as the original, nor do they have a unique genetic identity. So when they come into existence, usually from artificial wombs, heaven doesn’t notice, and they don’t get a soul fragment. Then end up with not even a fragment of a soul. Nothing at all.

Without souls, clones have no idea who they are. So they grow up depressed and unable to find meaning. They often become criminals. Indeed, most mass murderers are clones from the future who have been found by the MMIA and passed back through the time portal to an era where they do not have access to weapons of mass destruction.

They can’t just be killed, because a soulless clone can not die until it’s original dies. Even then, it does not necessarily die, although clones without a living dna donor are generally more listless than other clones. It can be hard to tell, since they tend to be so depressed, they seem listless anyway. But the depressed and angry one will become mass murderers.

In the future, though, they can not die or be put to death until their dna donor dies. In addition, when they say mass murder in the future, they mean it. Nuclear weapons are considered standard for household defense, due to the arms race that we see all around us even now.

So they pass the clones back through the time portal, to murder in a time when the weapons are laughably weak, and they can only kill twenty or thirty people instead of the millions that can be killed with nuclear weapons.

However, there was one clone who was passed back in time who wasn’t a murderer. He only wanted one thing—a soul of his own. And he had a good idea how to get one…. from you. This is his story….

@wundayatta We seek out the other half of our souls, that is our Bershert. The twin theory is wrong, they are still separate souls. The guf filled back up with souls, didn’t you see the movie the Seventh Sign? God knew souls would run out, and there was always a plan to refill the hall of souls. ~

I’m sorry, @JLeslie but you are too Jewish to be a proper atheist. What do you know from souls? Only an atheist born and bred (even if he is technically Jewish), has the capability of understanding the physics of soul. But it’s ok. I’ll trade you two twins for five clones and we’ll call it a day. ;-)

Bershert?

@wundayatta You did see my tilde right? I figured you arw too much of an atheist for your answer too. Beshert, might be spelled bashert, not sure, is a Jewish thing about how one soul seels to find the perfect soul to compliment them, their soulmate. Although, I think once married that person automatically become your beshert. I did once hear in Jewish mysticism God can split a soul though. I kind of took liberty in what I wrote just to be contrary to you.

Yes. I saw the tilde. You saw my smiley face. We’re even!

Although, I like the concept of soul as being the gestalt of the essence of a person. It’s a metaphor, not something real. But if it were real, then I think we would hand out souls parsimoniously. And clones would not have them, unless donated by the original. Of course, being metaphorical, it is hard to say whether such a donation is possible.

But I did enjoy developing a world on the topic of this question. If I were a writer, I might write a story about it. Thank God I can’t write!