Thursday, May 29, 2014

the souls of clones

I posted this on Facebook's Ask About The Orthodox 
Faith and it was pulled, but it also landed in an email 
account so I was able to save this. 

Traducianism mentioned here, is the doctrine once held 
by early Fathers and Orthodox in general, later faded 
back to the influence of pagan philosophy dominated 
western thought (yes, it does infect Orthodox thought) 
that the soul is separately created and implanted by 
God at the moment of each conception. 

Traducianism I think it is from a word about roots or 
branches, holds that the soul/spirit stuff runs with the 
material flesh stuff, so to speak. So that the egg and 
sperm not only contain a fraction of the original owner's 
flesh stuff, but also a fraction of their soul stuff. The 
resulting conceptus then has both the flesh stuff of the 
parents, and the soul stuff of the parents.

This view is more biblically consistent, since The Epistle 
to The Hebrews, when explaining that the Melchizedec 
priesthood of Jesus Christ is superior to that of Aaron 
(Levitical priesthood), notes that Levi, still in Abraham's 
loins (not having yet been born of Abraham's descendant), 
paid tithes in Abraham to Melchizedec when Abraham 
did so.

This might also explain some generational curses, which 
however can be broken, since soul stuff is more fluid and 
flexible than flesh stuff and the growth of both seem 
interdependent. And it would explain some generational 
blessings. Epigenetics is an interesting new field of study 
which shows that the flesh stuff is more flexible than
we think. 

BEGIN ARTICLE.

A contentious thread disappeared and just as well, 
because it went off on a tangent of can something be 
done or not, but a point within it I want to discuss.

If a person who was cloned, or for that matter which I 
will discuss shortly conceived in vitro, or for that matter 
augmented with non human DNA, were to come 
looking for salvation, are you going to send them 
away as without a soul and unsavable? 

I hope not. But exactly this, and possibly even murder,
is clearly on the table when the humanity of such, 
when their being in the image and likeness of God, 
are denied on account of peculiarity of conception.

An OCA priest told someone that a clone would be 
made in the image of man not of God, therefore would 
have no soul. This is of course nonsense, because its 
origin is from human cells. 

(Glory to God, someone on that thread pointed out 
that Eve was cloned out of Adam, obviously I would 
add with a tweak done that made her female instead 
of his identical male twin.)

Traducianism once held as normative by Orthodox 
in earlier centuries, would support the clone being in 
the image of God. Special creation of each soul and 
spirit, now the dominant theory east and west, is not 
something you can argue to deny humanity of a clone 
because then you are claiming to know exactly what 
God can and can't, or will or won't do. 

Image and likeness of God are based on ancestry not 
mode of conception. 

Underlying this also is the western and Greek pagan 
philosophy and gnostic idea that we HAVE souls (and 
therefore someone might not have a soul). The 
phrasing in Genesis, both in the creation of Adam, 
and referencing animals who died in The Flood, is that 
both have "the breath of life" in them. 

"And God breathed the breath of life into the man, 
and he BECAME a living soul." If you have the breath 
of life you are a soul. A human soul, or an animal or 
other non human soul, but you ARE a soul.

Nephesh is a term in Hebrew that is flexible, can refer 
to the immortal interface between spirit and body, can 
refer to the life and wellbeing of a creature, can refer 
to the entire body-soul-spirit continuum. As in, "the 
soul that sins, it shall die."

1. A clone is essentially an identical twin. In the womb, 
a fertilized egg divides but does not stay as one group 
of cells but splits in two. They go on to become 
separate beings. At this point you can argue one twin 
came out of the other, and therefore one is made in 
the image of God and the other is in the image of man, 
one is soulless and one is savable. But you don't know 
which one. Next step, exactly what for somewhat 
different reasons is practiced by some primitives in 
Africa, is to kill one of the twins, since it doesn't 
matter anyway and shouldn't exist anyway, but which 
one? oh well, kill them both.

THIS IS THE KIND OF THINKING THIS CAN LEAD TO. 
It is unthinkable, and rightly so, at present. But an 
individual in secret with such notions who could get 
away unnoticed with doing this, might do it. 

If on the other hand, both the twin from the original 
cell that split, and the twin from the cell that split from 
it are made in the image of God, then SO IS A CLONE. 

2. In vitro fertilization has been characterized as also a 
case of being without a soul. This by the person having 
the Bayside false marian visions, denounced by the RC 
as false, and from our perspective as Orthodox false, 
besides which the content included remarks that are 
historically false such as I read and in one case 
chemically false (boil water to remove radioactivity) 
and therefore cannot be from God or The Virgin Mary 
who is close to Him and would know better. 

Given this demonic source for such a notion about 
in vitro fertilized people, it should give you pause 
about thinking anyone is without a soul.

Side note: the sense of someone being "soulless" is 
actually a sense of something being very lacking or 
otherwise twisted in someone, but they are still 
souls, albeit warped. 

Clones are still in the works, perhaps already secretly 
done. But in vitro fertilization, complete with genetic 
selection angles, has been going on for a long time. 
There are plenty of in vitros running around, egg 
and sperm join in a petri dish and after a little time 
of development maybe to the point of being embryos 
are flushed into the mother's or womb donor's womb, 
and most won't connect and will die. 

Artificial insemination, either by the husband or from 
another source, to ensure a concentration of semen 
collected from several auto erotic productions of 
them, and to ensure perfect timing, are also pretty 
common.

If you doubt this, go look up "fertility clinics." and 
except for those with a Roman Catholic bias, these 
measures are exactly what they do. 

3. Enhanced humans. Or modified humans. the US 
defence or energy dept. I forget which sub dept. 
DARPA or Defence Advanced Research Projects 
Agency, which when it was called just ARPA gave 
us the Internet in the 1960s when it was scientist 
and military access only, has been working on the 
production of super soldiers by two means. Techno 
chemical enhancement, and genetic manipulation. 

The latter splits into two forms, one is to breed the 
perfect soldier usually the plan involves adding in 
genes here and there clipped from an animal 
chromosome and tacked onto a human 
chromosome before fertilization. Obviously this 
takes a long time, and not amenable to mass 
production.

The fast track form, would be to take an adult, or 
a near adult, already trained perhaps, or not, and 
use gene therapy techniques to do the same. Goal, 
greater endurance, aggression, ability to see at 
night, tolerance of damage and keep going, ability 
to go for days without food or possibly even water, 
and possibly without sleep and still function as a 
top class warrior.

For sports reasons and maybe other reasons, the 
same lines of thought have been being worked on 
by other people, not just DARPA. In England a 
while back, 150 human animal hybrids were made, 
whether by somehow managing to insert the 
sperm into the egg or by genetic surgery is 
unclear, these were allowed to develop to I think 
embryo stage and were killed.

Laws allow the production of such for 
experimentation, so long as they are killed before 
developing very far. It is therefore unknown, 
officially at least, if any in fact could develop to 
delivery stage, or live to adulthood, or breed. 

some countries have NO laws prohibiting such 
experiments, and you can count on it that this 
is going on now.

Okay. Consider this scenario. some person turns 
up who is a product of any of the above inquiring 
about Jesus Christ. what do you do?

Well, if they aren't fully human they would still 
fit in the category of Romans 8:19 and Rev. 5:13 
which shows that the whole creation incl. animals 
worship God and are a part of the planned 
restoration of creation. (the new heavens and 
new earth.) So properly speaking, yeah, they're 
savable, and having enough human blood to walk 
down the street without animal control being called 
before they get to your church, they are inheritors 
of The Fall of Adam and Eve and need Jesus as 
Savior. Probably all creatures of flesh do, but 
that's another matter. They certainly need Him 
as Savior if they turned from Him and if never 
turned from Him then are saved and kept by HIm. 

But lets look closer. Just how non human are they? 

Much has been made of us sharing 98% of our 
genes with chimpanzees. This figure is wrong 
however, because the evolution worshipping 
scientists fudge the data, by not limiting 
themselves to the genes that ARE the same, 
but counting also those that merely perform 
the same functions but are NOT the same.

Reference has been made to us sharing genes 
with potatos. 

Genetic engineering is mostly done using 
viruses as carriers of the genes to be added. 
This was developed by observing the 
phenomenon in nature, that some genes 
spontaneously transfer between species and 
genera, without sexual activity of any kind, 
this is called "lateral inheritance," by exactly 
this viral means.

So you can be sure there is a non human genetic 
element in all of us however small. 

NOW BACK TO SQUARE ONE. If it becomes law 
that a clone can be made for spare parts (killed 
at will) and is owned by the person it came from 
or the company who grew it, and one escapes, 
are you going to shrug it off as not having a 
soul anyway, and turn it over to its "owners," 
or are you going to take a risk of prosecution 
for grand larceny, and help it to hide and escape?

The Holy Fathers and Elders have warned over 
the centuries that very evil times would come, 
and it looks like they are here now. 

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