When does one get a "soul", and where within us does a "soul" reside?

Hot Flash Report - Opinionated Liberal Views and News Blog by Ann Rose and Susan Hill

"There are two elements almost universally thought to separate human beings from all other forms of life. One of these is a chiefly religious concept, the other a conceit of a different order. The first is the widely believed religious notion that there resides within each of us a unique, and uniquely human, Soul that distinguishes homo sapiens from all other life forms. The second generally accepted hypothesis is that the self conscious human Mind makes us unique among all earth's creatures.

Certainly there seems little else in our anatomical or chemical makeup that might confer special consideration for our species on the part of nature or the Divine. As an example, all primates have limbs that end in structures much like our hands and feet, all have hearts, brains, and expressive faces. It is said that the opposable thumb is one of the unique features of human beings. But does any one believe that our human souls reside in our opposable thumbs? Or how about in the structure and the chemical composition of our "new, unique" DNA, might the soul reside there? The structure and chemistry of the DNA in all living species is simply a longer or shorter repetition of the same four chemical bases. In fact, the qualitative and quantitative differences between the DNA of a "normal" chimpanzee and a "normal" human being is a little more than one percent, while considerably more DNA variation than that is exhibited between "normal" human beings and some others of us born with certain chromosomal abnormalities.
If there truly is within every person a Soul, it must reside somewhere in the exceptional consciousness, of self and of abstractions, that emanates from the living human brain. The soul, therefore -- if indeed there is one -- must be found in what we call the Mind. If this is correct, then because of what we know of the finite time necessary for the structural and functional differentiation, growth, maturation and "hard wiring" of the cellular and organic features that make up the sensate human brain, it can be stated with almost 100% certainty that human consciousness does not begin to waken until sometime after the 24th week of intrauterine life...."