Cloning and Politics

[Russell Turpin]

Sateesh Narahari:
>I am not familiar with all religions, but the religions I am familiar with 
>do not say human body is the most important of all. It is the soul, the 
>spirit which is free, not the body. Human body is just a vehicle for the 
>journey of the soul. ..

And I agree, providing we can understand the soul not as
some magical substance, something that the gods create to
ride along in the body, but as an epiphenomenon of neural
processes, something the grows and changes, something
that incluedes our memories, personalities, desires, etc.
In my opinion, one way to distinguish the supernatural
notion, as presented in religions such as Christianity,
from a more natural notion, is to ask whether animals
have souls. To the fundamentalist Christian, the soul is
a magical substance, and it is unique to humans. More
rational folks realize that human cognitive faculties
are continuous with those of other animals. We cannot
draw a perfectly sharp line between ourselves and
chimpanzees -- for example -- since we are, after all,
cousins.

Russell


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