Possibly with different features like eye color but still the same "self", "consciousness," "soul" or whatever you want to call it. Or did you need that exact sperm/egg combination to ever exist?

Seems like how you and others would answer this question has become relevant nowadays. Would more religious people than atheists answer "yes"? Would more Republicans than Democrats?

It's super rare, but every once in a while you get twins from the same egg but two different sperm cells. Needless to say, they are not the same person.

BRB currently going through rebirth

Go boldly. And hopefully you remember your former self, so you can compare/contrast

I don't understand the OP. Are you asking whether people believe the Chamber of Guf is real? I do not.

Why would you think this might be the case?

Religious people are more or less delusional psychotics so of course they will more often believe things that have no basis in reality

Republicans are even more delusional that religious people, so take that as you will.

Without going over my Grade 6 Health Class notes, a different sperm makes a different person:

(1) A lot of random combinations takes place in the first few seconds of conception.
(2) A sperm that is even 1 millisecond later to the party will result in infinite different combinations within the context of your family DNA pool.
(3) This is not limited to physical features, but personality and intelligence features as well.

Religious people would tend to say that God made you exactly the way you are because God has total power over stuff like conception.

If you change the DNA, it's not the same person

Have you met anyone has actually said yes to this?

No.

The cosmic/divine random number generator is seeded in part by the contents of the cell. Trust me bro.

Hell, you can't even generate the same "you" if you could somehow put two identical human beings through the life process in families across the street from one another. Nurture goes HARD in determining outcomes.

I cannot think of anyone who would say yes to this question. If you do somehow find one, I'm sure you could change their mind in about 60 seconds with a basic discussion of how twins work.

Yeah I don't know why religion would play a part here.

Maybe this is a male vs female question. Personally I always saw the millions of other sperm cells as miserable failures. Mine alone was victorious in glorious combat. If one of those other jokers had won, he'd be the one wasting his time arguing on the internet and I'd be cast off into the void. The egg was merely the vessel to receive my gift to the world.

Maybe women who have this shower thought think about how lucky it was that their specific egg was present during the creampie as opposed to that hussy Cassandra who shoved her way through the door a month prior when it was clearly not her turn? In either event, they're just happy that some Chad won the race and kept the genetic errors to a minimum during the donation process as the sperm cell was swallowed whole?


See, I'm a bit of a scientist myself.

You can put me in the yes camp. I think this is impossible if the male is a pure virgin but once he’s like 27 or 28 and has had sex with three or more women he has a used up penis and his seed and penis become damaged. At that point I think all the sperm basically lead to the same “you”.

I can't decide if that is satire or if you really think that. I put it at 50/50.

Go home, Bryce, you're drunk.

Erm... the answer to the question is 'No', because each spermatozoon carries a different recombination of DNA, which is why siblings aren't all identical. You wouldn't be you, you'd be someone else. Not sure why this needs to be said, or what religious belief or US party affiliation has to do with it.

Anyone wo believes in reincarnation should say "yes". More generally anyone believes in dualism should say yes. If you believe in heaven you should also. I don't understand why that isn't clear.

Expecting most people to see what I was getting at, my follow up post would be about the fact that the people who argue about abortion are both on the opposite sides of what might be expected. Because if God can put a particular "soul" inside of any fetus, it's no big deal if one is discarded before it even knew it exists. But if every precise sperm egg combination is correlated with a specific human consciousness than such a destruction of that impending consciousness is almost homicide.

I had no clue what you were getting at. It doesn't appear anyone else did either. Maybe your expectations for the rest of us are just too high and you need to recalibrate.

Am i even the same person I was when I started this post

On the other hand, am i am then same player at monopoly if I play with the car piece instead of the iron

because it's not?

consider your terms (self/soul/consciousness), how those disparate groups think about these terms, and the assumptions you're making asserting they should all say yes to your odd hypothetical

"God said unto Moses, 'I put souls into any fetus. If you discard it before it knoweths its own existence, NBD.'"

Exodus 3:12

christians generally believe life starts (or "god puts a particular soul inside of a fetus") at conception. at that point it's a big deal to them if god's will is discarded, regardless of whether the embryo knows it exists.

but if any sperm/egg combo results in the same human consciousness (whatever that means), then destroying that impending consciousness is a different story, resulting in pro-choicers taking the opposite moral position? why?

you're trying to play logical gotcha using highly subjective terms, making weird assumptions about other peoples' beliefs, and introducing sperm/egg combo counterfactuals that none of those belief systems would ever care to contemplate.

There are only two types of Monopoly players:

Battleship master race
Everyone else

if you choose car over iron you're a POS who should be discarded

I think I did not make it clear that if the embryo with the soul is discarded it is "no big deal" because the soul still exists and can be put in another embryo if there is actually a god that implants souls into embryos. At least up to the point where the embryo doesn't know it exists.

One scientific fact (if I am not mistaken) coincides with this theory. It is, I'm told, that a recently fertilized egg can be made by human surgeons (rather than via nature) to split and to turn into twins. Thus, a god would have to find a second soul because of those surgeons actions. (Obviously these thoughts are irrelevant if you believe that everything is predestined and God knows the future.)

Christians usually don't believe in reincarnation, you get one shot at life at that's it in their worldview

I don't think the bolded is the problem.