The 'relevance' refers to your earlier reply.
"You rule this out in principle. (And then will not allow anyone to question you closely about this.)"
Actually, no. I did make it a point to mention that I am not ruling out any "spiritual reality" in principle - only your (and other believed) versions of it, for the reason that they have flaws in them.
Talking about the earlier referenced flaws, you said:
"Yes we know mammalian cloning is "a reality." We have Dolly the Sheep as proof. The problem I have with your question is: Dolly the Sheep does not have a soul to worry about. I sense you are "kludging" the distinction between man "as animal" (i.e., biological being) and man "as man" (i.e., noetic being, an imago Dei). Dolly doesn't have a soul to worry about; she can pose to her own mind no such question of this kind, for the simple reason that she is not a self-conscious being. Self-aware, probably. But not self-conscious."
This has little to do with what I asked. Are you outright stating that it is impossible to clone a human being (a mammal)? I am asking you to consider a cloned human being - your clone. Now answer what was asked, please.
"The Lord blames no one for "innocent ignorance."
So, would it be fair to assume that a tribal born in a faraway island, or for that matter, a feral child, is assured salvation? Would it then also be fair to say that it is better to be still-born and dead, or born to be a feral human being and suffer momentarily, for an easy, assured salvation?
Thanks for the reply, dearest Betty Boop!
Just because you can clone a sheep doesn't necessarily mean you can clone a human being — especially if the latter is a different order of being than the former.
Not to mention that, IIRC, the sheep Dolly didn't exactly measure up to indices of vitality and longevity, in comparison with natural-born sheep.
There is no conceivable clone of me. So why trouble me with such nonsense as the state of the soul of my clone?
Protoplasm may be clonable. But how to "clone" the information that makes an existent being uniquely what it is?
Spare me your "feral child." It is a complete strawman. Are you going all "Rousseau" on us, with the sudden production of a "feral" (human) child? The putative "noble savage" who is 100% mammal?
Such a being would be unsuitable for any human society ordered on liberty, truth, justice under equal laws. Such a "feral child" couldn't even be considered fully human in such a society....
Neither is "assured" -- we just don't know the details, we do know that the Lord blames no one for "innocent ignorance". If they are moved by God's grace even if they don't know Him, we think they will be on the right path, but we cannot definitely say they're going one way or the other. Note: as I said above, for those who DO hear Christ's message and reject it, that's a different case
James Would it then also be fair to say that it is better to be still-born and dead, or born to be a feral human being and suffer momentarily, for an easy, assured salvation? -- Hypothetically, yes, you could arrive at that conclusion, but in reality, you have no choice over where you are born