I have strong sympathy with @beaglelady in this strange conversation. The suggestion that a human being can catch “personhood” the way they can catch Ebola is not just empirically ridiculous – it is potentially profoundly problematic morally. As I think @beaglelady has been trying to say throughout, this “idea” implies that there was once (and still could be) a large number of non-person human beings who were indistinguishable from persons in every way except contact with invisible and undetectable magic dust. In other words, there was once (and still could be) a world where some humans were intrinsically dehumanized. It should go without saying that this is a potent basis for racism and xenophobia, and more specifically it has historically been the basis of the systematic dehumanization of humans called “others.” In fact, I would say that @AntoineSuarez’s proposal is even more insidious than overt systematic racism/prejudice, which typically offers at least the pretense of identifying the characteristics that dehumanize a person (skin color, lineage, religion, sex). The unreasonable “idea” being discussed here makes the dehumanization invisible, presumably detectable only via supernatural means. The toxic potential here should be obvious.
I guess it could be different if the proposal had any empirical or explanatory merit at all. But it doesn’t. It can only do one thing: fill in a perceived gap in a religious narrative that itself has no empirical or explanatory merit.
This idea is toxic and without scholarly value. I invite Christians in this forum to reject it and to consider this small potential benefit of doing so: you will find common ground with humanists like me, who seek to affirm human dignity in the strongest possible terms.