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BlackFriar
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That’s strange, here is what you said:BlackFriar:
No.
If that is how you interpret Aquinas and the DH teaching then I don’t think you yet have what it takes to engage in a rational discussion on this issue sorry.
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o_mlly
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Nor do I have “what it takes” to argue the “flat earth” theory. One does not maintain false arguments after they’re defeated. Well, rational people do not.
As you have no magisterial texts to cite in support your argument, we have only your opinion that we all began as vegetables.
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BlackFriar
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Please.
The Magisterial text that declares that the Church as yet takes no final position on the ensoulment issue has been repeatedly provided above ad nauseam.
The Magisterial text that declares that the Church as yet takes no final position on the ensoulment issue has been repeatedly provided above ad nauseam.
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o_mlly
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Good. Read the text. First, nowhere does it discuss a “vegetative” soul (as you say), second, it does say the infused soul can only be of the same nature as that of the parents’ – human soul (as I say).
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BlackFriar
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Then you must have missed this:BlackFriar:
Good. Read the text. …
DanielJohn2300:
Actually this is not JPII.
Its from Donum Vitae, 1987 (Card Ratzinger)
As the possibility of human zygote splitting was only confirmed in 1993 (initiating much debate) the discovery of this thorny problem of twinning and recombination was likely unknown to Cardinal Ratzinger when he made the above statement.
Nor do you seem to understand Aquinas’s mainstream and widely accepted teaching on Delayed Hominisation. it is still alive and well today though no longer mainnstream. This scholarly history of the tradition by a Jesuit theologian may better assist your comprehension:
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rc...1/31.1.3.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1062GsnTnU4DLxzmQWv-S1
So there’s nothing more to say other than provide the above references you requested.
Time to do your homework my friend instead of berating strawman arguments you don’t comprehend.
Over and out.
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o_mlly
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Apparently you do not see the obvious contradiction above. Read your citation again: there is no teaching on delayed hominization to accept or reject.
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o_mlly
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Interesting reading but hardly Magisterial.
This is the teaching:
This declaration expressly leaves aside the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused.
SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITHDECLARATION ON PROCURED ABORTION
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BlackFriar
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You still don’t get it.
I am not objecting to your stance that ensoulment occurs at conception.
I am simply defending the right of Catholics:
(a) to validly disagree with this recent new position and hold to the traditional one of delayed hominization. Like Limbo, the teaching has never been withdrawn.
(b) to validly disagree when contributors say it is formal Church teaching that the immortal human soul is infused immediately at conception. There is no final, formal dogmatic teaching as the Church has not yet committed to a position on this point as you now hopefully agree.
I don’t understand why some Catholics cannot comprehend that the Church is quite capable of mainstream teaching different and even mutually exclusive things at different times without yet asserting a final dogmatic answer…because it is undecided on the point.
Its the same with limbo, the death of Mary and many other “confused”/evolving popular teachings.
The question of ensoulment is another example.
May as well say the Church never taught geocentrism - that is an equally curious assertion.
Indeed there is. 1700 years of it in the West as my attached article demonstrates. You clearly haven’t read it yet. It was clearly held at Trent for example:
“Nobody can doubt that this was something new and an admirable work of the Holy Spirit, since, in the natural order, no body can be informed by a human soul except after the prescribed space of time.” (TRENT)
This gave rise to the church laws that described penalties for those who did not baptise spontaneous abortions after 40 days…while those earlier did not necessitate baptism.
You are quite mistaken on your assertions.
I am not objecting to your stance that ensoulment occurs at conception.
I am simply defending the right of Catholics:
(a) to validly disagree with this recent new position and hold to the traditional one of delayed hominization. Like Limbo, the teaching has never been withdrawn.
(b) to validly disagree when contributors say it is formal Church teaching that the immortal human soul is infused immediately at conception. There is no final, formal dogmatic teaching as the Church has not yet committed to a position on this point as you now hopefully agree.
I don’t understand why some Catholics cannot comprehend that the Church is quite capable of mainstream teaching different and even mutually exclusive things at different times without yet asserting a final dogmatic answer…because it is undecided on the point.
Its the same with limbo, the death of Mary and many other “confused”/evolving popular teachings.
The question of ensoulment is another example.
You seem to confuse “mainstream teaching” with "dogmatic teaching (ie doctrine) "
May as well say the Church never taught geocentrism - that is an equally curious assertion.
Indeed there is. 1700 years of it in the West as my attached article demonstrates. You clearly haven’t read it yet. It was clearly held at Trent for example:
“Nobody can doubt that this was something new and an admirable work of the Holy Spirit, since, in the natural order, no body can be informed by a human soul except after the prescribed space of time.” (TRENT)
This gave rise to the church laws that described penalties for those who did not baptise spontaneous abortions after 40 days…while those earlier did not necessitate baptism.
You are quite mistaken on your assertions.
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Ghosty1981
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The lancet is involved in the cloning as well. No magic necessary, just a suitable environment manipulated with the appropriate tools in both cases.
You keep requoting this out of context. I spoke of Faith and philosophy, and I did so in the context of a discussion about embryology.
So an adult is not “irreversibly individuated”, to use your terminology.
It’s a fact. That is what cloning is, the placement of an adult nucleus in an embryonic environment. The nucleus will then develop into a new individual, a belated twin of the adult from which the nucleus was drawn, based on its environment and the processes encoded in its DNA. This is rudimentary scientific understanding, taught in introductory cellular biology courses.
The technique is difficult, owing to the delicate nature of the primate ovum, but the principles are actually quite simple.
Furthermore, two adult individuals can become one and share their DNA. The recipient of a bone marrow transplant actually produces the cells of the donor. How is this different from the case of two zygotes merginging, the individual producing bodily cells from the genetic line of the zygote that merged with it?
How does the fact that two adults can merge into one body, sharing a hybrid bodily system, square with your assertion that this is a property of vegetative rather than rational souls? Your proposal doesn’t resolve any philosophical difficulties, it actually compounds them.
You are right to assert that the Church does not bind us to believing that the rational soul is present from conception, but you are wrong to assert that ancient notion of an ascending progression of ensoulment is a reasonable proposition given our current knowledge of the material world.
You might just as well assert that Catholics are free to believe in a flat Earth, or in heliocentrism. It isn’t a matter of heresy, it is a matter of natural reason.
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Ghosty1981
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This, I believe, is the key to resolving the apparent difficulties of twinning, cloning, chimerism, and pluripotency.
We know that humans old enough to communicate are rational beings, and that they demonstrate intellectual abilities like idea abstraction and analogy that are beyond the scope of any animal or even supercomputers. These abilities don’t appear to be a matter of speed of processing power, as if our brains are merely super-supercomputers, but rather appear to demonstrate that our intellects possess an immaterial nature.
We postulate that our rational, immaterial minds are indicative of an immaterial soul, and that this soul animates not just our rational thought but also the material of our bodies. We only know for certain that this immaterial soul is present when the mind can express itself in ways that indicate an immaterial process of reason and knowledge, but we have no reason to doubt its existence when the body is animated but the immaterial mind can not express itself, such as when a person is in a coma or even just sleeping.
Since we can accept the existence of the immaterial soul of the man in a coma, based on the animation of his body and the fact that we know that the animating principle of the mature human is immaterial, on what grounds can we deny the existence of an immaterial soul for the human zygote? It is equally human, equally alive, and equally inexpressive of rational thought.
If we argue, as BlackFriar seems to, that the ability of the zygote to split and for two individuals to arise from one original body is indicative of a material soul then we must answer how cloning or bone marrow transplants are not indicative of adults having material souls. On the other hand, if we suppose that a human individual is always animated by a rational soul then we have no difficulties in either case.
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Ghosty1981
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The adult human is an individual, and is animated by a rational soul, and the matter from their body can be removed and can enter into the composition of another being. If this matter enters into the composition of a being with a material soul, such as a rat, then it is animated by a material soul. If it enters into the composition of a being with an immaterial soul, such as a the bone marrow recipient, then it is animated by the immaterial soul of that being. The DNA doesn’t identify the soul, it merely identifies the matter that the soul is animating.
The kicker is that there is no reason to suppose that the same rule doesn’t hold true for the zygote. The zygotic cells are animated by a soul, and what type of soul they are animated by is obscure to our observation, but what is not obscure is their biological nature. Like the biological nature of the adult man in a coma they are human, possessing human life, living by human process. They could be animated by a material soul, sure, but like the adult in a coma they could just as likely be animated by a rational soul; the rational soul can perform the material life functions that we observe. What’s more, we can’t deny that there is an immaterial soul animating the zygote on biological grounds without denying an immaterial soul to the bone marrow or clonal donor, and as we’ve seen a clearly immaterial soul animates the adult body that is capable of such donation and growth into a new human body.
We are left with only probable answers, not certainties, but the probability falls heavily in favor of an immaterial soul animating the zygote. The zygote is human, it is alive, and it is on the same life trajectory that the adult human is on. That a zygote may lose cells, and those cells may grow into another human individual is an accidental matter, and carries no greater implication for the zygote then it does for the adult bone marrow donor. That the zygote may absorb another body and continue to grow carries no greater implication for the zygote than it does for the bone marrow recipient. Whether the original individual dies in such a split or combination is a mystery, hidden from our ability to observe, but this mystery doesn’t necessitate an answer, and it holds no implications for our treatment of this individual when they grow into a mature human being.
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The kicker is that there is no reason to suppose that the same rule doesn’t hold true for the zygote. The zygotic cells are animated by a soul, and what type of soul they are animated by is obscure to our observation, but what is not obscure is their biological nature. Like the biological nature of the adult man in a coma they are human, possessing human life, living by human process. They could be animated by a material soul, sure, but like the adult in a coma they could just as likely be animated by a rational soul; the rational soul can perform the material life functions that we observe. What’s more, we can’t deny that there is an immaterial soul animating the zygote on biological grounds without denying an immaterial soul to the bone marrow or clonal donor, and as we’ve seen a clearly immaterial soul animates the adult body that is capable of such donation and growth into a new human body.
We are left with only probable answers, not certainties, but the probability falls heavily in favor of an immaterial soul animating the zygote. The zygote is human, it is alive, and it is on the same life trajectory that the adult human is on. That a zygote may lose cells, and those cells may grow into another human individual is an accidental matter, and carries no greater implication for the zygote then it does for the adult bone marrow donor. That the zygote may absorb another body and continue to grow carries no greater implication for the zygote than it does for the bone marrow recipient. Whether the original individual dies in such a split or combination is a mystery, hidden from our ability to observe, but this mystery doesn’t necessitate an answer, and it holds no implications for our treatment of this individual when they grow into a mature human being.
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Ghosty1981
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In short, while it is possible to assert that human zygotes are animated by material souls, there is no reason to do so and several reasons not to. We know that the mature human is animated by an immaterial soul; we can observe this through their rational operations. We know that the rational soul can animate material processes. We know that the same material processes are present in the zygote as are present in the mature human. Since the rational soul can account for all of the activity of the zygote, and the rational soul is necessary to account for the activity of the mature human, and adding multiple layers of souls, or a hierarchy of sequential ensoulment, only creates further questions while explaining no critical mysteries, it is most reasonable to conclude that the zygote is animated by a rational soul from the moment of conception.
Reasonable answers are sometimes wrong, of course, but they have greater weight than unreasonable answers that create more problems then they solve.
Reasonable answers are sometimes wrong, of course, but they have greater weight than unreasonable answers that create more problems then they solve.
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BlackFriar
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Sorry, this has past its expiry date, there seem to be some basic principles of philosophy you don’t seem to get or agree with (eg inherent teleology/potentiality versus other types) and I really don’t think it useful enough to go on trying to tease that out with you.
Please read the article I provided above. It covers all the points I have made on this thread in more detail.
Nobody knows if a human would be successful and hopefully never will.
To consider the inherent “baby potentialities” involved re a zygote versus a skin cell as in any way essentially the same appears absurd.
Please read the article I provided above. It covers all the points I have made on this thread in more detail.
Please lets not treat readers as simpletons. There is a qualitative world of difference between mechanically separating cells in a 8 cell zygote (which happens naturally often enough to cause twins) and turning a skin cell into a baby. Like you forgot to mention a human ovum is also required, that’s kind of rare and hard to find blowing in the wind. And even then that simple lancet procedure you mention took around 500 fresh attempts for success in dolly the sheep.
Nobody knows if a human would be successful and hopefully never will.
To consider the inherent “baby potentialities” involved re a zygote versus a skin cell as in any way essentially the same appears absurd.
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o_mlly
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No, I rather think you, as your citations show, are confused. Opinio tolerato are not teachings.
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BlackFriar
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Funny how such “mainstream opinions” are used as the basis of Church canons and in support of declarations made at Trent then.
Everybody was coincidentally on the same page by direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit perhaps.
Why, because they were never taught such a mainstream “opinion”.
Because to do that would constitute “teaching”.
Me, I think the simpler answer is to call a teaching a “teaching.”
Then there are “doctrines.”
As a shepherd you may well like to count your sheep by their legs and divide by four.
I find it easier just to count the sheep.
Everybody was coincidentally on the same page by direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit perhaps.
Why, because they were never taught such a mainstream “opinion”.
Because to do that would constitute “teaching”.
Me, I think the simpler answer is to call a teaching a “teaching.”
Then there are “doctrines.”
As a shepherd you may well like to count your sheep by their legs and divide by four.
I find it easier just to count the sheep.
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o_mlly
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There is no new position on ensoulment. The Church Magisterium does not teach science, she teaches doctrine. Your citation from the Trent Catechism teaches about the Incarnation, not about ensoulment. To cite is not to teach. The reference to the then current philosophical understanding of delayed hominization does not teach but merely cites it to further that which the paragraph does teach, i.e.Christ’s ensoulment is on a supernatural plane.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/romancat.html
In The Incarnation Some Things Were Natural, Others Supernatural
That this was the astonishing and admirable work of the Holy Ghost cannot be doubted; for according to the order of nature the rational soul is united to the body only after a certain lapse of time.
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o_mlly
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Good advice. Do you see your own error in your admission that the zygote has “baby potentialities”?
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BlackFriar
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I don’t think you have the sharpness of comprehension needed to continue discussion but will make the following observations you perhaps need to reflect more deeply on.BlackFriar:
There is no new position on ensoulment.
You misunderstand, the position that ensoulment is at conception is now the mainstream one. That is a shift from 150 years ago. Just as there is now a new position on limbo. No big deal.
It is still valid for a Catholic to believe in the Limbo teaching. Just as it is to believe in the DH teaching.
She clearly always has taught science or philosophy and continues to do so…though she often doesn’t realise that until a later time and then back tracks when she realises it is not directly of faith afterall. This is exactly what happened with Galileo and Geocentrism and the once alleged historicity of certain Bible passages.
Was it you above who tried to say soul teaching was a matter of faith? In fact, like DH it is a matter of reason. You still seem to be confusing truths of science, of philosophy and those of faith.
That is, re Trent you are suggesting DH is “of the natural order” meaning science (or perhaps philosophy).
No, if it is not of faith then this teaching is of philosophy. While both science and philosophy are discplines of reason, they are not the same.
You might like to look through the Catechism and advise us if the Church teaches about human souls?
The concept is a philosophic one, of reason, of the natural order. Like other philosophic or scientific teachings of the past linked to faith it may be wrong. If so I expect the CCC to one day omit such concepts. Your ancestors will likely one day advise that the Church never had a soul teaching but just a tolerated opinion
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BlackFriar
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That you see an error or inconsistency in what I stated suggests the deep philosophic principle of potentiality versus actuality and extrinsic potentiality versus intrinsic potentiality I flagged for those who have read up on the topic (giving a nod to Aquinas) went past you unseen and unheard.BlackFriar:
Good advice. Do you see your own error in your admission that the zygote has “baby potentialities”?
Look o_milly, you are simply out of your depth philosophically on this one. I can see the shorthand boilerplate flags I assumed you are reading are not being read. Further discussion is not possible sorry, we are clearly on different planets and I really don’t have time to explain the philosophic shorthand I am using if you are not familiar with the traditional philosophic concepts referred to.
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JimG
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“Why did Aquinas believe ensoulment happened some time after conception? Because he accepted the science of his day, which taught the theory of the spontaneous generation of life (the idea that life spontaneously arises from non-living matter).
. . .
Modern biology has shown the conceptus does have distinctively human traits. It is living and possesses a human genetic code to guide its growth and development. If Aquinas had had the benefits of this knowledge, his principles would have led him to conclude ensoulment occurs at conception.”
Bad science led Aquinas into a wrong conclusion. Life can be vegetable, animal, or human, but once begun, it remains the same. One form of life does not gradually become another kind of life. Too bad Aquinas didn’t have a good embryology textbook, but that would not be possible given the knowledge of his day.
. . .
Modern biology has shown the conceptus does have distinctively human traits. It is living and possesses a human genetic code to guide its growth and development. If Aquinas had had the benefits of this knowledge, his principles would have led him to conclude ensoulment occurs at conception.”
Bad science led Aquinas into a wrong conclusion. Life can be vegetable, animal, or human, but once begun, it remains the same. One form of life does not gradually become another kind of life. Too bad Aquinas didn’t have a good embryology textbook, but that would not be possible given the knowledge of his day.
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