What is a Human Person?

1. 86

   rdlang05posted 10 years ago

   What is a Human Person?
   
   How do you define a human person? Is there anyone alive who is not a person? When does one begin to be a person? Can personhood be lost? Is personhood distinct from Animal-hood?

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2. 64

   Tusitala Tomposted 10 years ago

   You've certainly asked a question which is difficult to answer with any definition, and a detailed explanation would probably take a life's work written across several volumes, plus years of introspection to get anywhere close.  But then, that's why you asked it, didn't you?   So lets have a brief think about this.
   
   A person is a centre of awareness of him or herself manifesting through the senses and super-senses inherent in their physical and mental bodies.  They are the observer, the witness, the experiencer of their lives.  They are aware of the 'I am,' i.e. I am me, if you were to put it into words.   
   
   They are not the body, or the thoughts.  These are the tools of mind.  But these tools appear, at times, to have wills of their own and quite often the 'I am' identifies with the thought and there, albeit temporarily, it is - in the Biblical term - 'cut off from the vine.'
   
   The Human Person is the spark of life within.   It is the everlasting part of all of us.   The spark is within all things, animate and inanimate, I suspect.  But in human beings it is aware at the deepest levels of its being that it IS this spark.  At the more conscious, superficial level, of course, it asks questions such as:
   What is a Human Person? so it can link up with more of itself through others.  For it is a part of The Whole...and we all desire to be more of The Whole.

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3. 50

   icvposted 10 years ago

   In my view....   Humanbeings are mortal / ability to think. So, we can find what is good or what is bad, since we are rational being.   so first ask ourselfs and do what is good for you and the society

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4. 71

   lone77starposted 10 years ago

   Human personhood begins at conception. Everything that the fetus feels is recorded and can be recalled later by a Dianetic practitioner, when the child grows up.
   
   A human is a composite being:
   * Homo sapiens body
   * Ego
   * Immortal spirit
   * Mind
   
   Without the immortal spirit, the human is merely an animal body. Intelligent, perhaps, but still only an animal.
   
   The immortal spirit is the true self that sleeps within.
   
   Ego is the false self which is physical (not spiritual) and thus remains vulnerable. It hungers to be right and to win, even in suicide.
   
   Christ taught us that we need to give up that which wants to be first (ego), because it will only end up being last. We need to hunger for that which is last (humble).

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