A Tale of Two Old Karmann Ghias
Unless you are a “car guy” like me, most folks reading this post on HillFaith likely will not have a clue about what a Karmann Ghia might be. The truth is that the Karmann Ghia was a Volkswagen Bug chassis with a body designed by an Italian designer, Carrozerria Ghia. The Karmann Ghia was sold in Europe and the U.S. for two decades, ending in 1974.
Screenshot from YouTube.
Now, what on Earth does an old VW have to do with HillFaith? Well, Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace once owned a red one, while his neighbor had a blue one. Wallace’s Ghia was in great shape, the neighbor’s not so much.
Wallace posits that something curious happened to the two Ghias and uses the transformation that resulted to illustrate a key reason why you and I, as live, sentient human beings aren’t like Karmann Ghias in at least one very important respect. You gotta watch this, it’s only five minutes long, but makes a point that could change how you see yourself and the world:
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Cars and their ownership are identified by their VIN numbers, their engine serial numbesr, their frame serial numbers. Those numbers often detail the correct, factory-installed, OEM parts that should be found initially installed with the “fundamental” frame, engine, and body of the car. But in reverse, cars are not identified, legally, solely by their individual body panels, their doors, their color, or any other minor attribute/part. So when your neighbor swaps out parts with your Karmann, you can call the cops and say, here is my title to my car, with the VIN, which says it is a red Karmann. He took my red quarter panel and left me his rusty blue one.
Your child is identified from the moment of birth as your child, using everything from a smudgy footprint on a birth certificate, a formal document identifying you & your spouse as his parents, the name you gave him, to your possession of his tiny person. This can be further proven via genetics if, for example, there is a question about who took the correct baby home from the hospital. While normal growth processes cause changes, divisions, replacements of just about every single cell in the baby’s body as he grows to an adult, those identifiers remain constant. His footprint remains the same, just bigger, compared with the one on his hospital record. He is documented as the same person as when he weighed less than 10 pounds. His genetics have not changed. You could test his DNA as a baby and it would match his adult DNA, specifically identifying him as the exact same person you met when he was born.
Humans aren’t all that different from Karmanns. They rust less, sure, but parts is parts.
Great analysis, Mikee, but one huge difference: Cars don’t have DNA. People do, but they can’t do their own DNA, it has to be done for them by somebody who is far smarter and totally separate.
This video is just [playing] games with semantics. Obviously anything dealing with ‘identity’ has a non physical component because identity is a mental construct not a physical one.
How about this example: I have a car. Over ten years I end up replacing every single part in the car. Is it still my car? Of course it is. That doesn’t prove that the car has a soul, it just shows that the the concept ‘my car’ is based on how we think of things.
Conversely of course who ‘I’ am definitely changes over time. Some things remain similar of course, but a lot of fundamental things, how I think, what I want, how I view the world are different from years ago. I have changed who I am. In many ways my identity is vastly different. This doesn’t mean I don’t have a soul.
With all the changes you mention, the DNA that makes David Justus David Justus remains the same.
Yes and no. The pattern remain mostly the same (although some damage can accumulate in some places) but the individual molecules have been changed out.
If I cloned myself, the resulting person would be a whole lot like me but the wouldn’t be ‘me’ even if we had the same DNA. I don’t think identical twins don’t share a single soul regardless of sharing the same DNA.
Now that is an interesting observation, about cloning and identical twins. Some thoughts: On the cloning, I believe that would be a purely physical duplication and thus would not duplicate either your soul or your mind, both being immaterial, thus your clone would indeed not be another you. Ditto the twins. Thanks.