Would a cloned human being have a soul?
It's good because to answer it you really have to identify a whole raft of related issues about what is a clone, what is a soul, why the two might be thought to be mutually exclusive.
C. Ben Mitchell, director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, says, "The answer is in the question itself. A cloned human being would in fact be a person and would therefore be ensouled. To be human is to be a person is to be a soul." This is neither an argument in favor of human cloning nor the final answer to various theological questions about the existence or nature of a human soul, topics best left to mouthbreathing Pentecostals, infallible men in funny hats, and Mitch Albom. It is simply to say, as Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania does, "If humans have souls, then clones will have them, too."
So far so good. Add to the mix the insight about identical wins being co-clones and you have a trail of extra questions about what is a human being, how does that all relate to God anyway, what do various religious positions say? And so on ...
I have my own approach to this but I think that posing the big questions is good for learning, so over to you!
WIRED Blogs: Bodyhack: Filed in: learning, souls, RE, questions, teaching
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