Re: Nature article on ID

On Mon, 2 May 2005 23:34:37 -0400 "Dick Fischer"
<dickfischer@earthlink.net> writes:
> Dave Siemens wrote:
>
> > There are also interventions that produce new natural patterns. If
> God
> > introduced a soul or spirit into a hominid or hominoid to produce
> the
> > first human, I hold that the gift was passed to the descendants
> by
> > mating.
>
> Like a lot of things it sounds good unless we think about it a
> little. If
> a "soul" came from the man, we would have to postulate little
> potential
> souls as an integral part of each one of countless billions of sperm
> cells
> which do not exist in any form until the human male reaches puberty.
> After
> that, these are produced throughout a man's entire life. Would
> human males
> manufacture souls continually to accompany tiny sperm cells? That
> looks
> dubious, so how about the woman?
>
> Women are supplied with hundreds of eggs at birth. After puberty, a
> woman
> releases an egg approximately every 28 days until she reaches
> menopause.
> Do those eggs come prepackaged with souls too? If so, far more end
> up in
> waste treatment plants than in choir lofts.
>
> Our DNA, and all that is associated with our life-producing
> capabilities,
> are simply physical processes for producing physical beings. It is
> hard to
> imagine any spirit entity intertwined with the potentials of life.
> When
> union takes place, that is a different story. But how spiritual
> souls
> match up with physical bodies is anybody's guess. Are souls
> allotted at
> conception; handed out at "viability"; assigned at birth; imparted
> at an
> arbitrary age of reason; bestowed at an arbitrary age of
> accountability;
> conferred at the acceptance of Christ; or none of the above?
>
> And don't look at me. I don't know the answer.
>
> Dick Fischer - Genesis Proclaimed Association
> Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
> www.genesisproclaimed.org
>
>
>
It sounds bad if one takes a silly physicalist position. If one is
Christian and the soul is not physical (unless you're a non-reductive
physicalist, when it is), then it does not have to be transferred
physically. Note that in my discussion, "natural" is not equated to
"physical" or to being studied by the scientific method. Also, the law
may decide that an American is an adult at age 18, but that kind of
arbitrary specification does not have to describe reality. Don't ascribe
nonsensical views to others when they reside only in your opinion.
Dave
Received on Tue May 3 00:54:28 2005