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?
But cloning is within the realms of possibility, isn't it? After all, wasn't an embryo that was a clone placed in a woman's womb, but failed to implant, some years ago? Wouldn't such an embryo still be human? Leaving this aside, assume the clone exists, as I asked earlier. This is a thought experiment, and it is important that you answer because it investigates the modes of salvation that your adopted dogma can address.
That said, what happens to this Betty Boop clone, dearest Betty Boop?
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?
Irrelevant, dearest Betty Boop! I am, as I made it abundantly clear quite early on, investigating the modes of salvation your dogma allows, and how they apply to possible situations. Are you claiming that human ferals don't exist? Address them, dear Betty Boop! Why shy away?
Such a "feral child" couldn't even be considered fully human in such a society...
So, feral children aren't human, dear Betty Boop?
Thanks for the replies, as usual!
Dear James, I do not have "an adopted dogma." Rather, I have been adopted into the Great Hierarchy of Being, of which God, Man, World, and Society are the dynamic, mutually engaged partners....
If a cloned embryo placed into a woman's womb "fails to implant," then maybe it wasn't human to begin with. I say this from first-hand experience of a "false pregnancy" attributable to a zygote. It was a very sorry time in my life. But the fact remained, at no time was that "zygote" a human child. It was just a tissue mass run amok.... And Nature "took care of it." There was nothing that I could do about it.
Anyhoot, the zygote and its fate had nothing to do with the issue of salvation of souls, neither its nor mine. It never had one. But I still have one.
James, if one of us sees through the filter of "dogma," I'd say that person would be you, not me. I gather you really do see a clear path from the cloning of Dolly, to the cloning of humans....
But I do not see it. For reasons already indicated.
Thanks for writing, dear James!