Abortion and Chimerism

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YehoiakhinEx232

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I’m Evangelizing on a a secular sight and one Atheist tried to challenge my belief both in the existence of soul, as well as the right to life, and the Church’s teaching on contraception. (I’ll be posting another thread, regarding a question he posed about contraception later) One of the questions he posed was, if two zygotes merged and formed a genetical chimera, what would happen to the souls of those two zygotes, would they merge, or would one be discarded? He assumed that I held the Protestant notion that a soul is just some spirit that possesses a corpse and animates it, I told him that the soul is the life principle of a creature, the totality of the material body, and the immaterial mind and will. (I could be wording this wrong.

I responded to him:
This one is a bit difficult, but I’ll venture to say yes, the souls do merge, due to the fact that the two zygotes have merged and have become a human genetical chimera. This merged soul would differ only so much as to the fact that body has the genes of a chimera.
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Was that a good answer? The only thing I’m struggling with here, is the nature of the mind and will, I’m assuming that they could merge due to the fact it is such an early stage in developement, but how exactly does that work, and how do the mind and will work in general in an early human offspring? That’s what I’m unsure about.
 
Souls are distinct. They don’t merge.

When two zygotes form a chimera one is basically the surviving embryo and the other dies and its cells are absorbed into the surviving embryo. So, one soul survives. There are not two people. There is one person who lived and one person who died at a very early stage of gestation.

Note, that is a simplification of an explanation of complex biological processes, but the end result is one person.
 
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Would the same apply for twins? When an embryo splits in two, God will infuse a new soul into one of the embryos? The split a zygote into two identical twins wouldn’t be even correct? One zygote would be the original and the other would have the new soul, correct?
 
1ke said:
So, one soul survives.
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I think that you mean to say that both souls survive with one soul being with the surviving body and the other soul having been taken to the Throne of God. Once a soul is created by God, it remains forever. This from the CCC:

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

Blessings
 
fredystairs said:
I think that you mean to say that both souls survive with one soul being with the surviving body and the other soul having been taken to the Throne of God. Once a soul is created by God, it remains forever. This from the CCC:

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.
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Yes thank you
 
Cecilia_Dympna said:
But chimeras are very interesting, because one embryo does not die. They do merge.
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Yes and no.

One stops developing, one continues developing and retains some chromosomes or DNA of the other no longer distinct and developing zygote.

There aren’t two people. There is one person. However you want to explain it.

When there are two people, these are conjoined twins. Separate and distinct people who have fused tissue and may share some but not all organs.
 
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