Cloning

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I don't understand why religious people have such a problem with cloning.

They call it "playing God", but who are we to suggest that we hold in the power of science, the power of God? If God didn't want us to clone, why would he create within our cells the ability for us to manipulate it like that?

Perhaps it's just because your leaders tell you it's bad, and of course they know everything about what your God wants you to do, RIGHT?

Depending on how you look at it, humans have been "playing god" since they first worked out how to make and use stone tools. We're one of the few animals that manipulates it's surrounding environment for its own use. I don't have a moral problem with cloning any more than I do with using the computer on my desk. Both technologies can be abused - that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to take advantage of them imo.

They seem to have a problem with the fact that humans themselves are capabale of creating life artificially, when they believed that only 'God' was capable of such a thing.

And I don't see why it is illegal to clone humans in many countries. Religion and the law are two completely different things, some of the religious people seem to want their religion being integrated into the law and enforced by the law.

They're not in many countries. Religion often directly influences the law. It even happens in the U.S. where, constitutionally, church and state should be separate.

Well, technically, the US Constitution doesn't actually directly mandate the separation of church and state. It's plain from Thomas Jefferson's correspondence, and from the Treaty of Tripoli, that this was what had been intended, but the phrase itself doesn't actually appear in the Constitution. (The First Amendment does say that "Congress may make no law respecting an establishment of religion", but that's just vague enough to give the religious-law types a little wiggle room.)

On the other hand, nowhere in the Christian Bible is the practice of cloning even mentioned, much less forbidden - and I don't think it's mentioned in the Torah, either. (I don't know enough about the Qu'ran, the Book of Mormon, or other religious texts to comment on those.)

One of the reasons human cloning is illegal is that the process has not been perfected yet. To make one healthy human clone would require about one hundred attempts.
The failed attempts would result in embryos or fetuses that were malformed and would die or have to be destroyed.
I see no reason why human cloning should be legalized until the "kinks" have been worked out. I don't think it will be very much longer, anyway.

Very well said. I couldn't agree more.

You could say that the invention of aviation is "playing god" since humans do not possess wings and we're augmenting our locomotive capacities beyond what god gave us.

Via selective breeding we also alter an animal's DNA to our will, and yet somehow when we manipulate breeding at the molecular level it is "playing god." I think this is a subject where the public's fear stems primarily from scientific ignorance and religious reservations.



It's not quite a human, but scientists have already cloned human embryos. Check it out, it's very interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/ ... tworkfront

I would view it very unethical to clone a human. The reasons are obvious.

To add, the US is very much influenced by the Bible. Even with Jefferson and Adams, who held a deist belief, they knew the bible better than many people today.

The Qur'an is very explicit that you shouldn't strive no where near the level of the Creator. Even in the Bible, He punished Nimrod and his followers for building the Tower of Babel.

But cloning isn't creation - merely copying. The origination of the life still lies in the hands of the Creator, for those who believe in this. How is copying something anything like striving for the power of the Originator? I have a quote from Jhonen Vasquez as my tagline - that doesn't mean I'm claiming to be anywhere near as creative as Jhonen, nor that I'm trying to claim that by copying his work, I've created anything.

it depends on what you do with the clones...

Some people have suggested using them as spare-parts banks for real people - remember the movie the island?

alternatively, you could clone some great physical specimens and create a clone army - ok... probably less likely.

God gave us an ability to torture and murder people but that doesn't make it right.

This one website http://www.christianityoasis.com/EndTimes/Cloning.htm quotes Nostradamus as predicting "Cloning of armies, by manipulating the chromosomes to create murderers without morals." I couldn't verify the quote anywhere so I'm think they made it up. The site has some scary stuff about cloning if it's true. It talks about half human/half robots being in the police and army and all other kinds of crazy stuff. They even say a robot has already been promoted to a police chief in Japan. They could clone killers and use them against us.

I think we should clone livestock and vegetation to help feed the poor and hungry people in starving nations.

Torture is obviously wrong. Cloning has the ability to save and help many people.



Even if Nostradamus did say it, it's still BS, much like that entire site. Oh, and this is the robot "police chief" you are talking about: http://www.engadget.com/2004/08/30/the- ... curitybot/

Last edited by Phagocyte on 19 Jan 2008, 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I mean cloning can solve world hunger.

Think about this, we can clone an unlimited number of lets say, cattle, from one cow. Now you can do this with any animal, fruit, or vegetable. Food would no longer have to be a limited resource, everyone could eat, we could wipe out world hunger through cloning.