Esquire, of all magazines, tackles a question that's going to rattle my brain for a while:
Would a cloned human being have a soul?
The "Answer Fella" tries to make a funny or two (comedy is not the Answer Fella's forte) and then pulls in a few experts:
C. Ben Mitchell, director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, says, "The answer is in the question itself. A cloned human being would in fact be a person and would therefore be ensouled. To be human is to be a person is to be a soul." This is neither an argument in favor of human cloning nor the final answer to various theological questions about the existence or nature of a human soul, topics best left to mouthbreathing Pentecostals, infallible men in funny hats, and Mitch Albom. It is simply to say, as Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania does, "If humans have souls, then clones will have them, too."
OK, I'm about as shallow as a dried-up kiddie pool when it comes to The Big Questions. But even this makes me wonder: in any kind of religous world-view, how could you have identical souls running around?
I think my brain just exploded.
Answer fella [Esquire]
