Cloning Jesus

[LT.Hit-Man]

[quote="innerbrat

nope - you missed by point. Not having a human father, the original Jesus would be a genetic copy of his virgin mother, Mary, but was miraculously born a seeming male (ahh, miracles) despite not having a Y chromosome.

(Kurgan, yes I saw your post, but this is too much fun)[/quote]

Well that depends if God put it to mary in a noncaporal from but I see you point after all the God of the christans is almighty and can do anything.
Like you said Ahh miracles will wonders never cease.
All in all it's all insane to me.

[Oddity]

Old Article, but still amusing.
http://www.mcjonline.com/news/00b/20001013b.htm

I can't help but think of that Futurama episode that mentioned the 'second coming' and 'world war three' in the same sentence...

[Kurgan]

Please choose one and adopt it as your doctrine, Christians, instead of flailing about stupidly. There is a solution here, but it means either accepting cloning, or excommunicating random halves of pairs of identical twins from your churches. I do not mean this insultingly, but I'm just saying that doctrine has to keep up with science or else you'll be rendered irrelevant.

There is a difference, in that in the one case, a clone comes about "naturally" so a person contending that cloning is "against the will of God" could still say that the act of 'artificial' cloning is wrong, etc.

This goes along with the red herring argument in regards to abortion (trust me, I've heard people use this argument tactic!):

"You're opposed to abortion, but did you know that thousands of natural abortions occur all the time in nature? Abortion is therefore moral. Gotcha!"

(when the difference is, one is a 'natural phenomena' or an accident, and the other is an intentional act by human beings with free will. one could argue that disease is also natural, but most people don't think that means they should just roll over and die when they get sick)

Most Christians (and others who believe in souls I think I can safely say) interpret the soul as being a mystical (ie: immaterial) "thing" thus it needn't be confined to a person's genetic code or body or whatnot.

Sort of like how the Force is in Star Wars... maybe its "created by all living things" (programmed into life, but not itself physical). Thus clones having souls isn't a problem. It isn't scientific (since we have no proof), but it makes sense given their presence is assumed.

The part about God granting approval to cloning by giving them souls is an interesting point (I don't see why that can't be ruled out). But in a way its a lot like arguing that God approves of suffering and evil by allowing handicapped or evil people to live, rather than preventing them from being born, or killing them off through natural means before they can cause harm/suffer pain.


Frankly, I always considered the idea of cloning a no-brainer. That's why I was really infuriated by Star Trek: Nemesis... it bored me to tears with all the "You and I are the same person Picard!!" embrace genetic determinism, etc etc. crap. It felt hollow and pointless.

I don't see a human clone produced in a laboratory as any less "human" or deserving of a right to life than a person who is a twin (and they of course are perfectly human and a person).

Cloning could have some positive effects, such as being able to clone replacement organs (without having to kill a clone in order to canabalize him for parts of course, this makes utterly no sense, killing one person to save the life of another when neither is threatening the other's survival). Wishing to preserve genetic diversity and not wishing to contribute too much to overpopulation, though, are also factors against wholesale human cloning.

Thus for me the issue of human cloning isn't so much that cloning itself is immoral, but that it has great potential for abuse IF the clones are not treated as human persons, but as lab rats, a "superior race," or spare parts factories, slaves, or "property" to be patented and sold (insert Sci Fi story that explores these ethical quandries).

You could call it an "irrational fear of science" but while I may trust science, I don't always trust people. Call me a cynic...

[InnerBrat]

There is a difference, in that in the one case, a clone comes about "naturally" so a person contending that cloning is "against the will of God" could still say that the act of 'artificial' cloning is wrong, etc.

You've completely ignored her point there - which was either all clones have souls, or they all don't.

This goes along with the red herring argument in regards to abortion (trust me, I've heard people use this argument tactic!):

"You're opposed to abortion, but did you know that thousands of natural abortions occur all the time in nature? Abortion is therefore moral. Gotcha!"

Again - this argument is used against prolifers who claim that all zygotes have souls. If they all have souls, than God must be very busy going around all sexually active women every month creating a soul inside her than more often than not killing it within the week.

Oh - and it's much easier to grow "spare parts" out of stem cells harvested from the person at birth than to create a clone of that person to use as a farm - so don't worry about that.