7

In proof of this, consider the situation of identical twins, who grew from the same zygote, have exactly the same DNA, and developed in the same maternal environment ... and yet it is a well-known fact that they are born with different and unique fingerprints. As Gardner puts it, "even the distinct pattern of ridges and swirls that make up a fingerprint is not preset in the fertilized egg. ... If something so relatively simple and superficial as a fingerprint arises out of chance events, then what of an organ as complex as the human brain?" ¹¹

Take a further example:

If a fertilized mouse egg from two white-furred parents goes through four cell divisions, the embryo will have reached the sixteen-cell stage. If this embryo is then brought together with a sixteen-cell embryo from two black-furred parents, a ball of thirty-two cells is formed. This ball of cells will go on to make a single individual with mixed black and white fur: one mouse with four parents, two white and two black. Any particular cell of its body has come from either the one set of parents or the other. A similar event sometimes occurs naturally in humans when two sibling embryos combine into one. The resultant person may be completely normal. If the two original embryos were determined to become particular individuals, such a thing could not happen. ¹¹

To return for a moment to the question of "ensoulment": if it were to occur at conception, in such cases we then have the dilemma of one human being carrying around two souls for the rest of his or her life. A similar problem exists in reverse with regard to identical twins. The process of twinning involves one fertilized egg splitting completely apart so that two separate but genetically identical individuals begin to form. The actual division may take place at any time from eight to sixteen days after fertilization ... and yet "the soul being unique is indivisible." ² If ensoulment takes place at conception, then one of every pair of identical twins must lack a soul.

At the very least, then, we can assume that ensoulment could not possibly occur before the developmental process becomes, as one embryologist puts it "committed to the production of a single person." This does not happen at conception, "but about two weeks later, during the course of implantation." Until then, "any one [cell], if separated from the others, could conceivably produce a total individual." ¹³

In short, "the fertilized egg is clearly not a prepackaged human being. There is no body plan, no blueprint, no tiny being pre-formed and waiting to unfold. It is not complete" nor, as Dr. Willke would have it, "the totality" of a person. "The fertilized egg may follow many different paths; the route will be penned in only as the paths are taken; the particular person that it might become is not yet there." ¹¹

Furthermore, Randall Terry's position of genetic determinism completely ignores the effects of environment upon a developing human being, either in the womb or outside of it. If his mother had been sufficiently fond of vodka, he would have been born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome; if he hadn't gotten adequate nutrition as a young child, he would likely not be six feet, one inch tall.

next