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tonyrey
Guest
Science cannot explain the origin of matter let alone the origin of the mind.
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Science cannot explain the origin of matter let alone the origin of the mind.
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Bahman
Guest
My question was not about temporary of self/soul. My question was about the origin of it and how simply human could intervene in it. I have a personal question from you: Doesn’t it bother you if someone else was born instead of you since there was another sperm that fertilize the egg?
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Bahman
Guest
There is no evidence whether it carries all these attributes at that moment. Maybe they emerge gradually.
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Bahman
Guest
The nobility of self has a lot to do with identity/conception as if there was no conception
there was no me or you.
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Your question is probably tautological.
You only ask the question because you exist to ask the question.
This question would prob be asked by any of the other million sperm if they won instead.
Its really a meaningless proposition.
Alternatively, sperm and egg may have nothing to do with our unique individuality.
God may have the very same unique soul ready to go for whatever sperm won.
Yes, you might have had different genetic code, but your “self” is deeper than what genes provide (“looks” are really superficial as is our emotional temperament) or how your brain organ is patterned. Ultimately our uniquesness is in our ability to choose. We look to construct our uniqueness and nobility through life by our choices.
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Alindawyl
Guest
Identity has to do with an existing person. If there is no conception then there is no person. If there is no person then there is no identity because there is nothing there. An identity without a person is as absurd as height without dimension.
Your earlier suppositions about a “potential” different person if things had gone differently at your conception are also absurd. Things didn’t go differently. A different person wasn’t conceived. That is self-evident because you, rather than someone else, are the person that exists. If someone else instead of you existed, you wouldn’t be around to even ask the question.
For a “thought experiment” to have any meaning, it must apply to reality. Applying it to the imagination doesn’t work because the imagination has no rules. We can imagine anything, even the illogical and the absurd. Playing the what if game does not tell us about reality. It may make for entertaining fiction, but fiction is not reality.
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Bahman
Guest
My question is simple and plain. Does different conceptions lead to different persons or not? If yes, as I can understand from your argument, then that means that God plays random since the result of conception was based on where that sperm dropped, what was acidity of the location, and many other parameters that apparently nor God neither our parents have any control on it. This means that the chance apparently plays an important role on which sperm succeed in fertilizing the egg. My second question from you is then whether God planed the life to be random? Do you believe on a God with a random plan?
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tonyrey
Guest
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Bahman
Guest
Why not? How much do you remember your childhood? More we go back in time less we remember. That means that our consciousness which was the result of experiencing ourselves and external world improved gradually.
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Credo_in_Deum
Guest
How could someone who does not exist have a problem with their non-existence?
We are fallen creatures; we have no nobility of self. What we have is the dignity of being made in the image of God; an image which is tarnished right off the bat by original sin. We finally get nobility when we are baptized, since this restores sanctifying grace to our souls which removes all muck and tarnish which is caused by original sin and actual sin. Yet the nobility we get is still not ours, it is the Holy Spirit; God, who supplies us with the grace we need to do good works and to practice true nobility which are the virtues aka His will.
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Bahman
Guest
First, I have a problem with why they shouldn’t exist instead of me.
Second, you are reverting my argument building a false question.
Third, I want to know whether chance is a part of law of nature which is what God is created.
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Alindawyl
Guest
To your first question, of course different conceptions lead to different persons. You and I are not the same person. My brother and I are not the same person. My mother and her sisters are not the same person.
To your second question, it seems like you’re setting up two apparent opposites and asking us to choose between them: either God determines how everything will turn out as if he were a puppeteer and us his puppets because he’s a control freak, or God determines how nothing will turn out similar to what deism teaches because he doesn’t care about us at all. Neither is true. The more you talk to Catholics, the more you will find that we tend to answer “either/or” constructs with “both/and”. Yes, God has determined what kind of reality we have because he created the universe and its laws with a plan in mind. Yes, God permits us to chart our own course within that plan by leaving many things up to what appears to us to be random chance. Both extremes are true at the same time, because it’s the only way God could create beings that will for their own sake rather than beings that are forced to will for his sake.
This “anti-dualism”, to make up a word, that lies at the heart of creation is made visible to us in the person of Jesus Christ. He is simultaneously true God and true man. He isn’t a mixture or blending of divine and human nature. He is fully divine and fully human, without losing anything from either nature or mixing anything together from either nature into a new nature. By being God, he is all the awesomeness that God is. By being man, he allows us to interact with that awesomeness on a level that we can understand. And by being both human and divine, he allows humans to have a type of relationship with the divine that would otherwise be impossible.
The only way for us as humans to understand God as much as possible is to build that relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. Otherwise we’re going to miss the mark and end up thinking of God according to whatever we personally want him to be or personally fear he might be: a cosmic accountant tallying good and evil acts, a blind watchmaker, a brutal tyrant, an amorphous blob of “love”, or something else entirely.
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Bahman
Guest
My problem was before and during the time of conception that there was no me or you. My question is that it seems that this process is quite random otherwise one sperm was enough during the time of ejaculation. The fact that there are many sperms seems to do with increment of chance of conception.
I don’t understand what do you mean with concept of either/or and both/and. A sperm is a simple engine carrying genetical codes following some chemical inside sexual organ of a woman. What God has to do with a sperm. Do you believe that God carries many sperm and eventually pick up the one which was chosen or you believe that the process is completely random.
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Credo_in_Deum
Guest
Your “self” did not exist while you were a sperm, and neither did the other sperm contain in them individual “selves”. You existed and became a “self” when you were concieved body and soul not before that. This means those sperm that did not make the swim were not people who were rejected, they were just sperm and that’s it.
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Alindawyl
Guest
You are presenting an either/or choice. Either God determines exactly what our identity as a person is, or God allows pure random chance to determine exactly what our identity as a person is. Either/or only works when you pit mutually exclusive things against each other, and the options you want to choose between both contain elements of truth. One cannot be chosen to the exclusion of the other.
God does not pick a particular sperm to fertilize an egg, determine that this is the month that someone’s mother will get pregnant, or anything along those lines. He does not determine what kind of body we have, what kind of strengths and weaknesses our body may have, or if our body will have any severe defects. He leaves that up to however the laws of nature apply in the particular circumstances surrounding our conception and development. If that’s what you mean by “the process is completely random” when it comes to our identity, then you are correct.
But we are not just a body. We are a body/soul unity. Our parents provide the material for our body, but God provides the immortal soul. Because of that, God is able to decide what special spiritual gifts we do or do not have. Knowing in advance our circumstances, God will give us whatever we need in order to make the choices necessary to become the person he wants us to be. So from that perspective, God does have a role to play in determining our identity.
But as the Church wrote at the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes, man is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake”. God may create our immoral soul but he does not force our identity on us. He allows us to forge our own destiny, to make our own choices, to control who we are, by giving us free will. He tells us what the natural results and the natural consequences will be for the moral actions we choose, but he always permits us to make our choices even if they go against his will. Whether we’re “random” or not when it comes to our conception is irrelevant. Who we are is, when you really get down to it, up to us. It’s not up to God or anyone else to make that decision for us, because he has delegated that authority to each of us.
It seems to me that the real question you’re asking has to do with whether or not God loves you. Considering that parents don’t get to pick their children out in advance but get whatever child they get, the answer should be obvious. Just as parents naturally love their children and accept them as the blessing that they are (or at least they should), even more so does God love you and accept you as the blessing that you are. It doesn’t matter whether you were crafted specifically by God or are the result of the natural interaction of the laws of nature. Whichever way it is, God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you.
God is not overly concerned about where you came from. What he cares about is where you are going, and he wants to walk along with you on that journey.
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tonyrey
Guest
The size of our brain doesn’t explain how we become wise!
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Bahman
Guest
Become? Where and when? Do you remember yourself at the time when you were a cell? If not when do you start to have a consciousness about yourself?
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fhansen
Guest
It doesn’t matter because He knows the beginning from the end- He knows who ends up “making it” to conception before they were even conceived.
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Bahman
Guest
So you mean that he doesn’t play random, things just look random from our perspective.
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fhansen
Guest
Yes, I’d say so. From His perspective everything has purpose and is controlled, so to speak. From our perspective God is “hidden” from us, as are His intentions, without our having recourse to revelation/grace at least.
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