Do Fetuses Have Souls?

Life does not denote the existence of a soul. I am very much alive, yet because I am not religious, I don't believe we posses souls, per se. Are fetuses life? Sure, just as much as the food you eat, materials you wear, shelters you build all were once life. If you place human life above any other life you argument is ridiculous at best, and if you don't (and I'm assuming you have all these things) then it doesn't matter. A fetus has just as much right to live...and to die as anything else. The morality of the act comes into play when deciding the reasons why.

 

I apologize. I can't get by the words 'lack', 'faith' and 'disturbing' in the same sentence without needing to stop and have a Star Wars moment..



I find your lack of faith distuuuurrrrrrbing.

 

It's not supposed to be nuanced or even make sense. It's in the black/white +/- us/them all or nothing language that simple lazy minds can grasp and retain, which is why it works so well for them. By the way, your meme is far too deep for Coin or any of the other RW freaks here, although a reasonably intelligent not-yet-brainwashed kid would have little trouble with it.

 

Do fetuses have souls, good question. Are fetuses alive, absolutely. We are under the misconception that life is created at conception. Life is continued at conception. A living sperm meets a living egg, mixes a DNA cocktail and takes the first step towards independence with a series expanding cell divisions. I had a friend do an experiment. He was in the habit of tapping his wife on the belly during her pregnancy in a certain rhythmic pattern and talking to this soulless fetus. After the kid was born, I asked him to tap his 2 month olds tummy in the same manner as before. That kid lit up and smiled like no tomorrow. All I can say is that fetus has soul.

 

What do sensory perceptions have to do with souls? I can't quite figure out the leap from A to B here. Would you mind clarifying.

 

I used a play on words. The original question takes the assumption that we do have souls. That we can debate to the end of time. The point being made was that the child was capable of recognizing and remembering certain sensory patterns in a natal state. In other words, the line isn't as clear as we make it to be. As to the larger question, do any of us have souls, I will have to address after work, I'm late, thank you for your response.

 

Sheesh, Joe! c jay's saying the kid's got rhythm!

Music, especially "the beat", is something humans are really attuned to. What c jay's saying is that it's apparently even true even for fetuses.

 

Any one care to tell me what a soul is? and is it possible to prove the existence of a soul?

Now I am not saying that we have or do not have one simply asking what you lot think it is

 

Ah! Sorry I guess I missed that in initially but it makes sense to me now and it's funny.

 

The bottom of your foot.

WARNING: Don't show your soul to people in other countries, as some consider it an insult.

Oh, you meant the "other" soul. Can't say for sure, but people do have bio-chemically induced electric fields around 'em, called "auras". And some people dance really well, or "groovy" as in: "That cat's got sooooul!"

They made a TV show about it way back ...involving a train, I believe.

 

I think a soul by definition would have to have a consciousness. The fields surrounding a living body could be nothing more than a life force that dissipates when we die. I think that one day we will be able to meter and define scientifically the nature of a life force. That may lead to the discovery of a soul. An experiment was done in the early 1900's weighing a person at the time of death in which a 21 grams loss occurred at the time of death. This has been widely debated but to my knowledge no one has repeated the experiment to determine the validity of that test. There have been other anomalies especially in the areas of near death experiences and reincarnation. Unfortunately serious scientist have stayed far way from doing any real research in these areas do mostly to the "giggle factor". I think it would make a fascinating field of study.

 

Yeah, I posted a thread here about that:

http://www.partisanlines.com/threads/the-weight-of-a-soul.4343/

As for auras being comparable to souls....I was just funnin' lol

The answer to what a soul is depends on the person. It's usually defined as a spiritual thing, a religious belief. As such, it doesn't require anything more than the belief that it exists.

That doesn't cut it in science though, and it's there that Takiji's question gets complicated. Is it the nature of being good and bad? Is it an ability to think? Is it ethereal? Is it tangible?

I can't answer the question scientifically, and that's Takiji's point: It's a belief that it exists, but there is no scientific evidence that concludes it to be true.

 

In many ancient beliefs, people have fasted, sweated, and literally beaten themselves in order to have a spiritual experience. The really cool thing about PTSD is the disassociation. You are living in the third person, in every memory you see yourself from the outside, looking on, hovering 10 feet out and 6 feet up. In extreme examples, you are watching yourself react to a threat or danger. Most of the time, you are living a second behind, processing time to analyze what has been said or done to you. Having had an interesting early childhood, I was diagnosed with PTSD much later in life. The perceptions I have had were and to some extent are the foundation for my belief in a soul. I thought it was self evident and thought that everyone saw the world the way I did. I had developed the belief that the corporeal body or "animal" had a more symbiotic relationship with the soul, which encompasses the cognitive self. To put it simply, we're all here to "ride the beast", or experience the physical realm as it were. Could what I experience be the basis of what we call a soul.

 

I'm familiar with PTSD, and also out-of-body experiences. You're linking the two together, and there's nothing inherently wrong about it as I see it, and I've heard other people relate their similar experiences. For me though, it comes down to personal belief, rather than something that can be experimented on.

For me personally, religion is also a matter of personal belief, and not group belief, as I personally believe everyone has their own unique beliefs, their own "free will" to decide what is real and what is imaginary.

It should be noted that I'm not discounting your beliefs here, that PTSD has given you experiences that have indicated the body is the base for a soul. My experiences vary with such things, and I can't say mine is correct and other people's interpretations are incorrect, as it goes against my beliefs to do so. What I'm saying is I believe you are free to believe whatever you choose to believe is real, and that everyone has a unique belief that differs in one way or another with another's belief. In other words: Everyone's life is unique, and as such, is a wonderful thing to experience.

That said, it's impossible for scientists to say a soul exists or not, other than in partial, clinical terms, such as the body's nerve systems, or as exampled in the loss of weight upon the instant of death.

That said, spiritual manifestations (ghosts, apparitions, etc.) are a common thing in the World , and science isn't very good at explaining spiritual matters.

So does a fetus have a soul? According to my beliefs, it's up to the fetus to decide, and not anyone else. Eventually it'll have the ability to make a choice between what is right and wrong itself, to be good or bad. Sometimes it wants to be good, sometimes it doesn't care either way (indifference), sometimes it wants to be bad.

Does that affect it's soul, either as a pre-condition or later in life? Religions say it does, but others say it doesn't. Who is right and who is wrong? IMO, it all comes down to free will, and the soul itself, if it is a real thing, may only be affected if it believes it will be affected by the choices it makes in life. In other words: It's a matter of belief, rather than a physical property or condition that can be easily clarified by science. Then again, it could be a precondition, and the nature of the soul is a set-thing.