An Afraid New World

A New York Times headline today says;

SCIENTISTS USE MONKEY CLONES TO EXTRACT STEM CELLS

Not only is this the first time such cells have been produced in any animal other than a mouse, but the method, the researchers say, should also work in humans.

“We hope the technology will be useful for other labs that are working on human eggs and human cells,” the lead researcher of the group, Shoukhrat Mitalipov at Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, said in a telephone interview. “I am quite sure it will work in humans.”

Not everyone is happy about this development. Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center said:

“I certainly think that this represents a new threshold in the entire discussion,” said the Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. “At this point, it becomes essential to ask a question as a society: Are there ever going to be circumstances where it is morally justifiable to clone human beings?”

What do you think?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/science/15primate.html?ex=1352782800&en=64dd27c654844c3a&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

Science and Faith; Universal Allies

In an article on http://atheistperspective.com , the author at one point has this to say;

The longer I spend talking about creationism, the more I feel I’m validating something which is just patently stupid…. Creationists are not interested in science, they are interested in defending their religion.

I have to agree with him here, I think he is close to the mark (although maybe a little insensitive). I hate to say it, but the vast majority of Creationist arguments are weak at best and do not stand up to honest scientific scrutiny. When I was an atheist (and even today) I felt as he does now. And of course when you abbreviate the Bible to a couple of sound bites then it does sound absurd. There is a great danger when we take the Bible too literally. We end up missing the point and it seems that, to many of us, the Bible often stands in place of God.

On the other hand….if we are nothing more than the most advanced animal on the planet, in which all of our activities may be explained as functions of our instinct to survive, then why do I continue to be moved by sunsets? Why do high mountains, with their harsh and inhospitable terrain attract me so? Why is there a Beethoven, a Duke Ellington or a Buddy Guy? How come Rembrandt, Degas and Picasso are all able to represent beauty in their own individual ways? What is beauty? Or even,Why is beauty and to what is its purpose? I have no need to eat lichen on a mountain peak’s hostile environment. I cannot procreate with a painting. Myriads of orchstrated man made sounds do nothing to help me detect the approach of my next meal.

Why do I become teary eyed every time I see “It’s a Wonderful Life“? I know what is going to happen, is my hardwiring faulty? Perhaps this emotional response is sourced somewhere in my DNA from when I was a savage hunter. (I guess my ancestors were just a bunch of weepy gatherers)

Why is a sense of right and wrong written on every person’s heart for him or her to consider or ignore? My cat certainly doesn’t have this capacity . For that matter, why do I have a cats? (I have three, talk about lacking a survival instinct.) They are rude, dirty and expensive, yet I spent a lot of (non-expendable) money last year at the feline ER after one got into a drunken bar fight. Where did I get that ridiculous gene?!

Why are the stripes on some animals, such as cats, beautiful to some of us? To what real purpose does it serve to have these varying shades and hues of thousands of individual hairs? It can’t be not to attract a mate because as we know, all cats are gray in the dark, right? Is it for camouflage? I guess there are more white cats in Finland than in Brazil.

Why do I love my wife, my children and my friends when they at times can make my life hell? Why l do Iove at all? To take pleasure and joy in the beauty that we find in nature, the arts and each other hardly makes sense if all we are is the sum of millions of years of random natural selection, a collection of particles bumping in the night.

Look at pacifists like Gandhi. We all admire them for what they do but usually it gets them killed. Some of the first people killed by the Nazis and the Communists were the pacifists and those who gave their lives protecting others. Of course, many more did not choose self sacrifice, their sense of survival overriding their sense of justice. Now that secon course of action makes much more sense in a merely naturalistic world. Yet we still admire those who give their lives for others. Is there a passive self destructive gene as well?

Why are we curious about things that cannot really benefit us? To what concievable, materialistic benefit is astronomy? What are we looking for? Why waste the time on any scientific research that does not help put a chicken in every pot? Because of scientific research we have the capability to destroy ourselves and much of this planet. It would seem that science has become very detrimental to the specie’s survival. Has the evolutionary process gone awry?

What has gone awry is the seeping away of our collective conscience and it is not unique to the secular world. It is my belief (and I am sorry if this sounds arrogant) that the vast majority of religious people in the world have completely missed the point. And because of this we have made God out to be so unpalatable that some of us will prefer almost anything in his place. This is why God gave us Jesus. Not to act as cosmic traffic cop, laying down the law, the ‘oughts’ and the ‘ought nots’. He did not come to give us the answers to every question we have about the universe. He came to show us how simple and pure it can be to know God while at the same time being who we are, with all of our passions, dreams and yearnings intact.

Science is not the enemy of faith. Faith is not the enemy of science. God is not about giving us all the answers (how boring would that be?). He leaves the answers for us to find for ourselves and this is often accomplished through science. Religious doctrine and scientific dogma have their places but there is nothing wrong with questioning either of them. The study of our universe, what we call science, is one essential ingredient for man to be complete. God made us curious, and it is our passion for his creation that drives this curiosity. The great religious scriptures were not written to answer our questions about natural history nor were they written to discourage us from searching for answers through scientific discovery.

Many secularists accuse people of faith as being closed minded. Perhaps, but much of the world’s problems arise when we consider scientific discovery to be our sole source of truth.

*If God Is In The Details Why Does Genesis Offer So Few?

All things are possible with God. So it could very well be that the universe was created precisely as it has been laid out in the book of Genesis. Science certainly has not been able to prove otherwise, but for many of us the culmination of the evidence does paint a slightly different picture.

It is often said that God is in the details. The closer we scrutinize nature and observe its intricate workings the more God reveals himself to us. We often come upon paradoxes that would only seem to be explicable as long as there is some benevolent intellect at work behind the scenes. (For example: proteins are manufactured in cells yet cells need proteins to exist).

But if God is in the details, Genesis surely does not present us with too many of them. Perhaps the creation account is correct but the picture it paints has been made with broad, flowing strokes of the author’s brush. Perhaps there was no felt need at the time to be very detailed and precise in describing the process of God’s creativity. We should remember that the Bible was originally an oral history. How much detail could be retained and then passed on from generation to generation? How much detail was even necessary to convey God’s message of love and beauty? We need only to look around and it is all there for us to behold.

As creation surrounds us, it bedazzles us, inspires us and nurtures us. It also intrigues us. Being creatures in his image we are obsessed with the rest of God’s creation. The longing for God’s nature drives us to uncover more of his mysteries. How and why do things happen? To what purpose is there to the observable world, if any at all? The more we study our universe the more we learn about ourselves as well as the artist who first imagined us.

There are some very concise (yet hypothetical) explanations by various highly accredited scientists, theologians and philosophers that bring Genesis and science together with little trouble. The problem seems to be that many good people on both sides of this debate feel that the wall of separation is too high to be able to see over.

Maybe both arguments are correct. Before I am accused of relativism here let me try to explain by analogy:

Statement #1) In 1863 Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.
Statement #2) In 1865 the Union finally defeated rebel forces thereby ensuring the emancipation of the slaves held by the Confederate states.

Although both the above statements are true, neither one is complete. Some people may even think that these statements are virtually at odds with each other.

Is it possible that Genesis says all that is necessary but is deliberately lacking the detail to fully explain God’s artistic process, that it describes the picture without identifying the medium or the technique? Isn’t it also possible that secularized science does a good job of identifying the palettes, pixels and mediums involved in the painting yet fails to see the hand of the artist, the passion that the artist has for his work? Every work of art denotes an artist and every artwork is the culmination of an intricate combination of materials and processes used by the artist. It is often hoped by the artist that his work be studied, pondered and examined and that truth may be revealed to the observer in the process. With all good art there are usually more questions raised than answers given but the truth will shine through.

How else could it be in the hands of the Maestro?