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If one believes in an immortal soul then a new human life begins the first moment that an immortal soul exists within a human body. The Hebrews believed that the soul enters the body with its birth and first breath — thus the English word “inspiration” comes from roots meaning “intake of breath.” Christianity and modern Judaism often abandon the roots of their own religions and substitute the revisionist argument that the soul is present from the moment of conception — an absurd and actually horrible idea if you look at it from the point of view of an active conscious being imprisoned within a tiny cluster of cells.

Here's the single portion from the New Testament that trashes your "soul enters with first breath" hypothesis:

41And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."

As far as your rationalization about appearances goes, that's just a different degree of what's seen in ethnocentrism and picture thinking:

”It gets down to the question of whether being human is something you are or something that you have become. I suspect that something akin to ethnocentrism (ontogenocentrism?) is involved here--those folks running around with sticks through their noses aren’t like us and we’re civilized, so they probably aren’t, yet. Some have said the fetus is “much more actually human after the first 12 weeks of gestation” and that it “little resembles a human being” during the first few weeks of gestation, meaning that it does not look much like, well, a post-birth body. It doesn’t look like me and I’m human, so it probably isn’t, yet.

The Luke 1:41 passage is a great read.

From it we see how the body may be effected by the Holy Spirit, although perhaps through a series of intermediary causes.

We see that Elizabeth was imbued with the Holy Spirit, so her soul was influenced by the Holy Spirit. We also see how there is an association of an external person(Mary), the observation of that person (by the soul of Elizabeth), and the movement of the body of the infant in the womb of Elizabeth.

So we observe the physical body of the infant in the womb, responding at least to the thinking of his mother, and possibly other direct causations between soul and spirit, but not necessarily.

If the infants neither yet have souls, then the mothers might be performing or manifesting relationships between their souls and the infants’ bodies, perhaps by the mothers’ soul, or their bodies or both.

Additionally, as the second Adam, it might be possible from this verse independent of others, to consider the infant Christ Jesus has body, soul and spirit, but Elizabeth’s infant was still only body, reacting to his mother’s bodily stimuli, initially generated by her soul.

The verse might also manifest that bodily formation responds to the presence of the Son in body as well.

aruanan wrote:

“41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.”

So your argument to me is that the proximity of Jesus to Elizabeth’s fetus certainly and in no event could have produced anything extraordinary, divine, or miraculous? Or is the point of this passage precisely that?

JNS