Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Who Is A Person?
I think a person is someone who is someone who can think and feel. Humans. Touching on what talked about in class, in think someone who is brain dead is not longer a person. My girlfriend's cousin was in a gun accident. He was shot through the head and took out his ability to think as well as his command center. His body would no longer operate without life support making him breathe etc. He was no longer a person, just a body. Now the Terry Schiver (sp?) case isn't my reference. So I won't go into a discussion about that. But on that end, past the point of not being able to make yourself life, you are only a body. A cadaver pretty much. As for immigrants etc, an immigrant is a person. By governmental laws they may have little to no rights. But they are still a person in their own right. They live, breathe, care (maybe not for other people than themselves). Terrorists are people but they are bad people. The government can set the law but they can't decide who is or is not a person. I think the word itself has been used lightly. It's been adapted to mean "legal with rights". My family is going to move to Switzerland, we're still people, we aren't citizens there, but we're people. So in my opinion a person is anyone. Some people, like terrorists don't DESERVE to be people. Constant plotting to kill for the sake of their betterment is no better than an animal. So they don't deserve it. But aside, humans are people. Mentally handicapped are people. They live, breathe and think. That is my opinion of who is a human.
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I believe that the classification of a person is a being that contains a soul. A soul enters a body at the moment of conception and leaves when all brain activities, heart activities, and breathing stops- with or without the assistance of life support. Until this time, a body still contains a soul and therefore is still a person.
ReplyDeleteCan you prove that a soul enters an embryo at the precise moment of conception though?
ReplyDelete"Can you prove that a soul enters an embryo at the precise moment of conception though?"
ReplyDeleteThe moment of conception and the moment of death are the only two definitive moments of change in a life. Everything else develops and occurs over a process of time. Both conception and death can be timed down to the second. Just curious to your opinion, when do you think a soul enters the body? Are we able to say that the soul enters at 1 hour, 14 minutes and 36 seconds after conception? What would make that any different than 1 hour, 14 minutes and 35 seconds? By my beliefs (and I will admit that they are just that, beliefs, nothing proven) the soul enters and exits a body at the only decisive moments in life. Conception and death.
Personally, I think a soul begins to exist when an embryo takes the form of a living, breathing and moving fetus and is also aware of its environment which is at about 11 wks. By aware, I mean when you put a glass of milk on your belly and the baby kicks at it. It's showing that it is aware of its environment and is curious about it.
ReplyDeleteAren't individual cells aware of their environment too? They 'eat' and produce waste. They fight off disease and control what parts of their surroundings enter and exit the cell. Cells are living, respire, move, and are aware of their surroundings. Can't the very first complete cell of the baby therefore contain a soul?
ReplyDeleteI don't think self awareness has relevance to whether one has a soul (yet) or not. Most scientists argue that many children under 3 aren't even aware that they're a separate entity from the rest of the world, or even that they can cause things to happen by their actions.
ReplyDeleteAs far as trying to predict when the soul is added, I don't think there is any time that makes more sense than right at conception.
I agree with bacard17 on the fact that individual cells are aware of their surroundings they move by chemotaxis they endocytose, exocytose, they even group together to do a common function.
ReplyDeleteSo if we base the fact that a soul enters a body on when the fetus is aware of its surrounding I think that we could say that it is right at conception, not because the heart is beating at this time, because it isn't, but based on the fact that the cells that make up this zygote are living cells that are aware of their environment.
What makes us human? The fact that we are made up of the same substance, cells that over a 10 mn period of time form into an entire physical and mental structure of a human organism. It takes more than cells to make us people though. Humans become unique because we use our minds, hearts, and souls to form societies, opinions, values, standards of living, preferences, and so on and so forth. Cells are automatically designed to function a certain way in our human bodies, helping us stay alive and fight off disease and such. That does not make a cell itself a full being. There are two interpretations to living. Cells help us live, keeping our hearts pumping and our minds controlling the use of our bodies. Souls help us actually live by experiencing life itself.
ReplyDeleteAs in my last post, these are all just my own thoughts and opinions which are based on my own experiences. I have two sons. My oldest son, Nicolae, is 5 yrs old. He claims to remember things when he was in my womb. He'll say things like "Mom, remember when I used to swim in your belly?". There are certain songs he absolutely loves to hear because he remembers hearing them in my womb. I dont know how he remembers these things, but they are all true. My younger son, Avrian is 3 yrs old. He never liked when I would play music on my belly. He always kicked like crazy. He only ever calmed down with Twinkle, twinkle little star. When I play other songs now that I used to play then, he'll yell at me to turn it off and say "I never like that song". Yet at bed time, he makes me sing him Twinkle Twinkle and he sings it all the time to himself when he is playing. I cant explain these things and I dont care to. The point is they remember and they developed their own likes and dislikes at that moment. They became more than a cluster of cells. They became people.
There is no right answer to the soul question. I doubt there ever will be. I believe it is beyond scientific evaluation and beyond human rationalization. I like knowing new facts but none has arisen as of yet. At this point, I can only go on with what I do know.
"What makes us human?"
ReplyDeleteI think of it like this:
An individuals parents are human, correct? I think it's beyond reasonable to doubt that two individuals old enough to consent to reproductive relations are both human.
At the moment of conception, reproductive genetics (that I believe we have established as human DNA) from both the mother and the father infuse in an instantaneous institution of hair color, eye color, gender, a complete and unique set of DNA, among other such details.
My conclusion is this: that which exists from the moment of conception is a human person, unique as anything; my reason, above.
I also believe our soul enters the body at conception and leaves at death. Why would it enter and leave at another time? It is there from start to finish.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'll go with the soul thing for sure. I think you're right.
ReplyDelete