{"id":453,"date":"2009-02-07T21:05:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/02\/god-unsure-as-to-when-human-life-begins.html"},"modified":"2009-02-07T21:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T21:05:00","slug":"god-unsure-as-to-when-human-life-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/02\/god-unsure-as-to-when-human-life-begins.html","title":{"rendered":"God unsure as to when human life begins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The purpose of religion, we are often told, is not to give us factual information about the world but rather to give us moral guidance. So, for example, science can tell you about the development of the human embryo, but we need religion to tell us when an embryo becomes human.<\/p>\n

Of course, religion can\u2019t actually tell us any such thing, and this was painfully obvious in a conference last November (Is the Embryo Sacrosanct? Multi-Faith Perspectives<\/span>) organized by Progress Educational Trust<\/a>, a UK charity. The January issue of Nature Medicine<\/span> carries a report of the conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Turns out that believers agree that human life begins when the soul gets attached to the body. That, of course, is the easy bit. The difficult bit is judging when this happens. Here\u2019s Nature<\/span>:<\/p>\n

Most of the religions represented at the conference don\u2019t automatically grant an embryo the same rights as a person. Instead, they generally deem its transformation to personhood to occur at some point during pregnancy, often when the embryo is thought to attain a soul (known as ensoulment). This precise point not only differs between different religions but also between different denominations of the same religion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, for Muslims ensoulment occurs sometime between 40 and 120 days (depending on the religious expert you talk to). For the Church of England, it\u2019s either at conception or at Day 14. Catholics simply hold their hand up and admit their god hasn\u2019t told them this rather crucial piece of information (although every sperm is sacred<\/a>, of course).<\/p>\n

Now, a cynic might say that the reason this is difficult is because A) religious books were written before the advent of modern embryology, and B) the soul doesn\u2019t actually exist. It\u2019s a pre-modern attempt to crystallise an abstract concept.<\/p>\n

In fact, we now know aspects of the mind that comprise the old-fashioned concept of soul \u2013 character, consciousness and self-awareness, for example \u2013 develop in a gradual process that starts as the nervous system begins to form, and carries on into early adulthood. There is no such thing as \u2018ensoulment\u2019.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the idea of embryos having souls is laughable since most embryos don\u2019t make it to term \u2013 as John Harris, professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester, pointed out:<\/p>\n

John Harris \u2026 counters that during natural reproduction embryos are also lost: \u201cthe willful creation and sacrifice of embryos is an inescapable and inevitable part of all reproduction.\u201d At the meeting Harris said that \u201cEverybody sitting in this room is here over the dead bodies of between three and five siblings that had to die in order that we could be born.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If all these embryos have souls, then heaven is full of the souls of unborn foetuses!<\/p>\n

What this conference really shows is quite how useless religions are when discussing modern ethical dilemmas. They start from the wrong premise, and so get side-tracked into muddle-headed and pointless debates. We should not pay them any attention, since they have so little of value to contribute.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The purpose of religion, we are often told, is not to give us factual information about the world but rather to give us moral guidance. So, for example, science can tell you about the development of the human embryo, but we need religion to tell us when an embryo becomes human. Of course, religion can\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGod unsure as to when human life begins<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The purpose of religion, we are often told, is not to give us factual information about the world but rather to give us moral guidance. 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