Last September, I was sitting on a bench on the University of Vermont’s campus green when the sprinklers suddenly turned on. No, I wasn’t soaked, but I sat and watched what looked like jets of water shooting out of the lawn. I thought of the Bible story of Moses and Aaron bringing forth water from a rock by striking it with a staff. I doubt the result was anything as gaudy as the show provided by the UVM sprinkler system.
Rolling into the 21st century, we’re not as easily impressed by miracles as earlier generations were. Certainly the Old Testament miracles are getting a bit shopworn. Plague of locusts, plague of frogs? Easily explained, more likely caused by humans interfering with nature than God interfering with humans. Parting the Red Sea? Happens several times a day on the Universal Studios tour. A bush that burns without being consumed? Low-grade special effect, probably wind up on the cutting room floor.
The New Testament is a bit tougher, but we’re gaining. We can’t walk on water, but we ski on it. Raising people from the dead happens on “ER” three or four times a season, not counting reruns. Our science is overtaking our theology, leading some of us to worship science and others of us to insist every word in the Bible is true, regardless of what empiricism and common sense tell us.
I got to thinking about all this after reading a transcript of a BBC news report on the successful cloning of a human embryo. According to the BBC, a company called American Cell Technology used a human cell and a cow’s egg to create the clone, then destroyed it after 12 days. Wonder what the right-to-life crowd would say about that? This is not some teenager getting knocked up in the back seat of the family sedan. A corporation clones a an embryo, perhaps creating life, declares the procedure a success, then chucks it in the trash and everyone goes for a beer. Was that an abortion? Is Operation Rescue heading for American Cell Technology’s lab right now? Who knows? Our science is not only getting ahead of our theology, it’s ahead of our bioethics and our law.
The folks at ACT – who, by the way, say an embryo is not a person until 14 days – declare their goal is not “reproductive cloning” but “therapeutic cloning.” They don’t want to clone people, only people’s parts. Feel better now? If you need a new heart or liver, ACT hopes to clone just that organ, which can be implanted into your body with no fear of rejection. With news like that, it may be time to buy stock in R.J. Reynolds and Seagram.
Other companies are working on “therapeutic cloning” and with all this going on, it’s only a matter of time before someone takes a shot at “reproductive cloning,” just for the heck of it. It’s at this point I begin thinking about the Bible again.
It seems inevitable that humans are going to play God and start making people in our own image. I’m sure we’ll want to improve on the basic model, eliminating things like acne and split ends.
Of course, the public will soon grow bored, as the public is wont to do, and we’ll have to keep coming up with gimmicks to keep everyone’s attention during sweeps week.
In 15 years or so, I can imagine the mad scientists at ACT making a clone from some very old DNA, taken from – let’s say the Shroud of Turin for example. Then, just for fun, they’ll plant the embryo in the womb of a virgin and see who shows up to worship the baby, whose birth in a manger will be seen live on the web in RealVideo.
You can believe in God, or in Science, or Ethics or Law, but the times are changing and your belief had better be based on something more than card tricks.
Low-Grade Special Effects
Last September, I was sitting on a bench on the University of Vermont’s campus green when the sprinklers suddenly turned on. No, I wasn’t soaked, but I sat and watched what looked like jets of water shooting out of the lawn. I thought of the Bible story of Moses and Aaron bringing forth water from a rock by striking it with a staff. I doubt the result was anything as gaudy as the show provided by the UVM sprinkler system.
Rolling into the 21st century, we’re not as easily impressed by miracles as earlier generations were. Certainly the Old Testament miracles are getting a bit shopworn. Plague of locusts, plague of frogs? Easily explained, more likely caused by humans interfering with nature than God interfering with humans. Parting the Red Sea? Happens several times a day on the Universal Studios tour. A bush that burns without being consumed? Low-grade special effect, probably wind up on the cutting room floor.
The New Testament is a bit tougher, but we’re gaining. We can’t walk on water, but we ski on it. Raising people from the dead happens on “ER” three or four times a season, not counting reruns. Our science is overtaking our theology, leading some of us to worship science and others of us to insist every word in the Bible is true, regardless of what empiricism and common sense tell us.
I got to thinking about all this after reading a transcript of a BBC news report on the successful cloning of a human embryo. According to the BBC, a company called American Cell Technology used a human cell and a cow’s egg to create the clone, then destroyed it after 12 days. Wonder what the right-to-life crowd would say about that? This is not some teenager getting knocked up in the back seat of the family sedan. A corporation clones a an embryo, perhaps creating life, declares the procedure a success, then chucks it in the trash and everyone goes for a beer. Was that an abortion? Is Operation Rescue heading for American Cell Technology’s lab right now? Who knows? Our science is not only getting ahead of our theology, it’s ahead of our bioethics and our law.
The folks at ACT – who, by the way, say an embryo is not a person until 14 days – declare their goal is not “reproductive cloning” but “therapeutic cloning.” They don’t want to clone people, only people’s parts. Feel better now? If you need a new heart or liver, ACT hopes to clone just that organ, which can be implanted into your body with no fear of rejection. With news like that, it may be time to buy stock in R.J. Reynolds and Seagram.
Other companies are working on “therapeutic cloning” and with all this going on, it’s only a matter of time before someone takes a shot at “reproductive cloning,” just for the heck of it. It’s at this point I begin thinking about the Bible again.
It seems inevitable that humans are going to play God and start making people in our own image. I’m sure we’ll want to improve on the basic model, eliminating things like acne and split ends.
Of course, the public will soon grow bored, as the public is wont to do, and we’ll have to keep coming up with gimmicks to keep everyone’s attention during sweeps week.
In 15 years or so, I can imagine the mad scientists at ACT making a clone from some very old DNA, taken from – let’s say the Shroud of Turin for example. Then, just for fun, they’ll plant the embryo in the womb of a virgin and see who shows up to worship the baby, whose birth in a manger will be seen live on the web in RealVideo.
You can believe in God, or in Science, or Ethics or Law, but the times are changing and your belief had better be based on something more than card tricks.