Would it be possible for a human couple with a soul to conceive a child without a soul?

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JapaneseKappa said:
We’re drawing distinctions without differences here. It’d be whatever you get when you have a human body without a soul.
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I’d disagree that “non-person: human body, no human soul” isn’t different from “person with human body and human soul”. You yourself are noting that it’s something different than a human body + human soul !!
You’re calling it an animal is simply an appeal to emotion, not a substantive objection.
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No, really it isn’t. Using Aquinas’ approach, it has all that animals have (i.e., physical body, vegetative soul, sensitive soul) and nothing that distinguishes a person from an animal (i.e., rational soul). Very literally, it is only an animal, and not a person.
 
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JapaneseKappa said:
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goout:
Because you expect people with power to use it in an abusive way that limits freedom
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No one wills themselves or their soul into existence.
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Good Christian stuff! Very true and humble observation.
Existence is given us, from outside ourselves.
And it is good to exist. Awesome.

Love is fruitful, it pours itself out. God who is ( I Am Who Am), pours out God’s existence to others… because God is love. And that love always allows the freedom of the other. Because love is relationship, not an equation, and not force. If not a free existence, it can’t be love.
(for the same reason that locking a child in a room to prevent suffering is not love, because it enslaves a person).

The ultimate fruit of love would be for God to look at human beings in their wholeness, and participate in the whole of human existence, including suffering.
That is what Christ does. God looks on us who have abused freedom in so many ways, and enters into our human condition. That radical companionship redeems human suffering.
(just like a mother who remains at the bedside of a suffering child)
 
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vz71 said:
There are distinct differences between animals and humans.
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So explicitly say which differences you’re basing the objection on, and how they make it impossible for God to do this.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
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goout:
If not a free existence, it can’t be love.
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So does God create every logically possible being because otherwise he would be unloving?
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There is no “otherwise”. Creation is. It came from something (or someone in Christianity). If nothing else is self evident, it ought to be self evident that Christianity is not hypothetical. It has flesh on it, and Christianity asks us to be good observers of reality. What is real?
We exist.
We have a whole range of experiences from joy to suffering.
We are born and we die.
We are free to choose how to respond and act in the world. .
And we are all (including atheists) trying find meaning, purpose, destiny, identity, in all of this.
If the world was strictly deterministic, if God did not allow the freedom of human beings to choose and act with free will…I mean the thought is incomprehensible because again, hypotheticals are not very satisfying.

Christianity is incarnate, not theoretical (although speculations have their place for sure)
Out of all the times our parents had sex, that one time brought you and I forth. And you aren’t the same being as your brother. Each of us is unique in all of human history.
 
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No, if the soul is the essential form of the body, then every human being has a human soul. Since every human soul is a rational soul, every human child has a rational soul.
 
I would argue that it is not logically possible, because that would be God contradicting the order that he has created i.e. contradicting himself.
 
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Neithan said:
I would argue that it is not logically possible, because that would be God contradicting the order that he has created i.e. contradicting himself.
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If God made the natural order differently there would be no contradiction. It seems you’re arguing that “If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same, so that is a contradiction.”
 
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I’d argue that in this world it is impossible for God to do something contradictory to what he created. Fair point though: in a different logically possible world there could be animals like us that are not rational persons.

[On a tangential note, I think this is also why (or at least part of the reason why) God does not annihilate human beings who go to hell: that would be contradicting his decision to create them. If free will is real then God cannot logically know what their free will is before they exist; but this is complex and taken up in other discussions.]
 
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If God willed it, it could be, but everything we know and believe about God says it would never happen.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
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Neithan:
I would argue that it is not logically possible, because that would be God contradicting the order that he has created i.e. contradicting himself.
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If God made the natural order differently there would be no contradiction. It seems you’re arguing that “If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same, so that is a contradiction.”
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The concept of the “Logos” of God is pivotal in Christianity. Too big a topic for me to address in five minutes.
And again, the statement “If God made the natural order differently…” does not apply in any way other than as idle speculations.
Christianity is incarnational. We take revelation as it is revealed, not hypothetically.


Starting about paragraph 3
 
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vz71 said:
There are distinct differences between animals and humans.
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Yes… Take a walk with the smartest chimp in history
and attempt to tell it about the upcoming SuperBowl
and after years and years … at best … all you’ll be greeted with
…is a vacuous stare. And if very hungry it may eat you.
 
EndTimes said:
Yes… Take a walk with the smartest chimp in history
and attempt to tell it about the upcoming SuperBowl
and after years and years … at best … all you’ll be greeted with
…is a vacuous stare. And if very hungry it may eat you.
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Well, that kinda holds for many NFL fans, as well, so I’m not sure it demonstrates anything helpful… 🤣 😉
 
No. The human couple does not have a spare soul to share. The human sex act is only a procreative act if God participates. A procreated child is only a being with a rational soul.
 
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