Assumingly you're working on an underground research facility, slightly illegal but the people who tells u whats legal is also a part of letting the research run for some reasons. They just hide it from the world and i bet you know why. Now, they were able to succesfuly clone a human. It could talk, think, create, sing, work, and could do all the things that a normal human could do. It looks like you, it has eyes, ears, nose, and everything. It could also have the capability to multiply when mated with a human being like you. Its like a 100% clone. The clone doesnt know who his parents was but maybe saw them on the picture prepared for him by researchers and he doesnt have the idea that he's just a clone. He was educated and taught about the wonders of the world. So what if this cloned human approached you while you're working, then it asked you something, "If i'm going to be good for the rest of my life, and when i die, am i going to heaven with God together with the good ones?", So what are you going to tell him? He's a clone right? The first thing that will enter your mind is "damn what should i tell him, should i tell him that he's just a clone and doesnt have a soul?" Well the human's soul comes into play. Then now questions comes into your mind, "do i really have a soul? What is a soul anyway?" A soul is what human have spiritually based on whats written thousands of years ago by people claimed to be inspired by the holy spirit which none of us witnessed because we werent there. Probably if i created stories now and carve it on an undestructable metal, bury it very deep, 1million years from now, it will be a religion. Another source of where mankind really came from, and there will be debates about it that will create war on some. Till it will be serious, it will start destroying the world. It's because of what i wrote and their misunderstandings about it. We're like that clone, we dont know whats happening, and whatever we are taught are always the things that we believe, but if you start opening your mind, we always have the freedom to take off the chains thats strapped on our feet and break the rules...

Anyways, just curious people, if you're that worker on some research facility and he asked you that question, what would you tell him?

I'd tell him that being a clone doesn't keep him from being human in any way shape or form. Everything that applies to us applies to him.

haha, he'll probably go off to some war

As long as he doesn't wear that silly white stormtrooper thing...

Yeah but look at the other side, he's just like us, dont you think that we're just like him in the other way? How could u define something that has a soul and dont have a soul?

Before you try to define if something has a soul or not, you have to define what a soul is. To me, a soul is nothing more than a metaphorical compilation of a person's morality. In that sense, the only way in which the clone would not have a soul would be by having no moral compass, in the way serial killers are often portrayed. As it happens, though, this particular clone believes that a soul is some sort of distinct entity. I would have to explin to the clone that such a construct is derived from a faith-based system, and as such cannot really be quantified by anyone. Because of that, it is up to the individual, clone or otherwise, to decide what their soul is. Again, we return to the clone being no different than anyone else.

Even though he is a clone, he is still human.

He may have the same DNA as someone else, but he is an idavitual

and yes....he has a soul

If movies and comic books teach us anything is that cloning is bad because you end up with clone armies, clone spider-mans, or another Arnold Schwarzenegger

The dude should be fine unless the soul is in the belly button.

So you mean, even he's not physically human with a flesh, everyone with morality got its own soul... Same thing for the robots, like a perfect AI, could do stuffs better than humans, got infinite brain storage that last for millions of years, dont decay if not destroyed, and has the capability to multiply in its nature, its sex for us humans but it could be mechanical reproduction for them.. So they too have a soul... maybe thats really the definition of soul..

Maybe the soul is nothing more than electrical impulses that come together when a life is forming. In that case I don't think that it makes a difference how the life forms just that it proceeds in the way that life does. If you think of life, the world and even the universe as one big pool of energy, parts of it combine to make life and consciousness until that "vessel" is worn out. Then the "soul" goes back into that big pool of energy waiting for another vessel to form. That goes along with my belief in reincarnation and no one really being "gone".

Spot on. You have to know whether the clone has a faith of some sort before you can define exactly what he considers a soul to be.

In the immortal words of the great Metallica ''' YOU WILL DO,,WHAT I SAY,,WHEN I SAY,,BACK TO THE FRONT.

Thats the only plce a clone will ever go.

Yes if they did live then they would have a soul.

True he/she would be a clone but they would still be an individual and therefore have an individual's soul.

I wonder if there's a prophecy, that a new race of individuals will erase us humans, like how we did on neanderthals.. What life could be if that happens..

"Here's a mop, clean up your own ****."

Or something along those lines I'd gather.

I don't believe in the concept of a soul. I believe that I don't have a soul. I do have a conscience, though. Are they the same? Did I just contradict myself?

I don't know your idea of a 'soul'. To me its like you're saying a computer can run perfectly fine without a software or a program.

A conscience is different from a soul. A conscience is something that tells you what is "wrong" and not to do it. I've never heard of a conscience that tells you to bad things, although people call that the "devil" or something.

A soul itself has no limits on how it would turn out. Thats why, as someone said, we have consciences or moral compasses to guide us on how to act. Seems like each was created so the soul would not fall apart.

We are no different from the clones.
we ourselves have the same questions as the clone with unsuficient(sp)
answers. If clones where to reproduce and have children the "normal "way, that must mean that in a couple of hondred years the offspring of clones themselves never knew that their great great grandfather and mother where clones. ( if it was secret technology , like you said).

Any ways im pretty sure we havent seen nothing yet. ( or whatever that is suppose to mean)

Leaving all the religious mumbo jumbo about "what is a soul?" out of it for a second....

If humans do (hypothetically speaking here) have souls, WHY wouldn't a clone have one too?

Is the assumption that a soul is bestowed upon a child by it's parents? Would a clone have a half a soul instead of one whole soul?

If it is hollow than there is a spot where you could float 0 grav. or get ripped apart

Well in fact, thats what most of us humans do right? follow what they say or he say, im talking about the generated god or religion or the law or whatsoever... We are no different than the clones i was talking about...

WTF are you some kind of nazi or something. Your soul is your conscious. Any living thing with a conscious Has a soul.

I think clones will disrupt a balance

But humans did that already

All sentient life has a soul. Weather it be Human, Clone, Alien. Maybe oneday AI.

Depends what you mean by "soul". Unlike "consciousness", the idea of "soul" is invented by man, used in a traditionally religious setting.

Consciousness (or "mind") is your brain's tool for coping with world around us, and the "soul" is the set of morals we develop in this world.

Its a bit silly asking whether the clone would have a soul. A clone is still a human - he's not made in a factory, he just happens to have the same DNA as someone else.

Sorry, Your Soul is a feeling you have. Just like your concious. Man gave words for these feelings.

Yes, morals are feelings that you have that stem from beliefs and experience. Thats what a "soul" is.

sorry to dig up an old thread. but im doing an essay on this subject.
anyway, i dont think there's a balance to disrupt. just think of your clone as...your identical twin.

Personally Im against the whole playing God thing ..... But If lthe clone was 100% human clone ... with blood, a mind and conscience I suppose it would go to heaven ... if its good .... regardless of where it came from, it is basically human and alive, just wasnt born naturally.
Obviously it would have of the pure energy that is God .... otherwise if it didnt it would be a zombie - zombies have no souls or spirits, they are animated corpses, empty shells ..... in which case no it doesnt go to heaven.
But I have a funny way of thinking about things ..... this is a tricky one ....

~*~

i think he would go to heaven when he dies, if they havnt modified his ageing rate somehow, so he doenst age (it could be possible, who knows) but when he does die, wouldnt God let him into heaven, he has no reason to be punished, its not his fault he was created in some lab by some crazy scientist, if anything the people who created him should be punished for trying to play God and create life, but i guess thats alredy happening, those poor damn see monkeys