Cloning

[Risasi]

Tangent, but I have to ask.

Why are so many ultra conservatives against stem cell research and human cloning? Clones are just identical twins with a large time offset (and aged cells).

See if God sacrifices his Son/Himself to remove the need of all future sacrifices surely stem cell research is in the same vein?

Jesus is a clone of God put into Mary the (surrogate) Mother.

So if God can do good things by sarificing a clone, why can't humans do stem cell research or raise (but not sacrifice) clones?

Here is your answer, Papewaio

Gen 1:26-27; And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them..

Gen 2:7; And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life*; and man became a living soul**.

---
נְשָׁמָה*
Nesamah - breath of life, spirit,

נֶפֶשׁ**
Nepes, nephesh - soul, life, living being.

According to the bible, Adam was unique to all humanity. He was directly created by God. He had no mother (so no, probably no navel), and since being directly created of God was a son of God. There are many sons of God. Angels are sons of God. But not THE Son of God. I am a son of man. As much as some of my friends like to joke that I was created in a lab, no I actually came from my mother and father.

God is the source of life. He breathed into the Adam and he became a living being. It is given then to procreate. The seed of life is found in man. It is implanted in the woman and brings forth new life. This is actually a pretty efficient system, let me tell you. I've never even specifically tried to do this, but my wife and I still have managed to have three reproductions of us. =) All rather cheaply too, in the big scheme of things. Way cheaper than if left to the hands of scientists to get it done.

So mankind is made up of three parts; body, soul(life) and spirit. When the spirit departs the body the life is gone and the body is just a rapidly deteriorating shell.

---

So now cloning. I cannot speak to all "cloning", because I don't fully understand what these men are doing now. I can assure you though, whatever is being reported in the news, that is probably what they were doing 5-10 years ago. Since someone mentioned Dolly let's focus on that.
In simple terms somatic cell cloning, they take an egg, empty it out, put their homebrew genetic nucleus into the empty egg and jump-start it into cell division via an electric shock. What's missing in this process? The seed.

So from a christian's point of view what they are doing is against the natural laws of the way things have been organized by God. Seed + egg = new life.

It gets worse though.

There is further concern by many of us who study our bibles, because we see in the scriptures where this experimentation in illegal knowledge is realized. The focus of some of these scientists has also turned to cross species experimentation. They don't realize the fire they play with...or perhaps they do and it's even more worrisome. There is so much more I can say on this, but I doubt you have the ears to hear it.

I would also like to point out that Jesus Christ was not a clone. The promise of His coming was all the way back in Genesis 3. He is the Seed which comes from the woman. She is not the originator of the seed, the Spirit of God overshadowed Mary. God provided the seed Himself, so rather, Jesus Christ is the seed that came out of her.

[Husar]

So from a christian's point of view what they are doing is against the natural laws of the way things have been organized by God. Seed + egg = new life.

Why does it work then?
If they could and would clone a human, does he or she not get a soul from God because it was against God's laws? Do the animals lack a spirit because they can only acquire one from a seed? And if the seed is life then animals have a soul as well since having life means having a soul? I thought in Christianity animals are different from humans in that they do not have a soul, but you say a soul is life and animals are clearly alive, no? So if God has his rules and we assume he does not break them himself, why are cloned animals alive if their creation breaks God's rules? Can humans insert a soul into a cloned being?

[Risasi]

The scriptures are very clear in differentiating between a soul and a spirit. They are two very different things. And yes, I believe animals also have a spirit, and obviously a body. And they live a life, or soul. But I would argue they are clearly different from humans.

Ecc 3:19-21; For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to death: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth?

Let me ask you this. Is a virus life?

---

As for Dolly the sheep. Was she "alive"? It would appear so, and she also had offspring. But this is what is so disturbing to many of us bible believers. If not broken outright, then at the very least the laws of nature are being bent.

Elsewhere in the scriptures there are accounts of what happened last time. The mixing of different kinds of flesh, hybridization perhaps, including the irruption of the angelic race into the human genome. And all flesh on the earth having corrupted itself. The scriptures also state it will happen again. There will be ten "dead ones". They will be kings.

[Husar]

The scriptures are very clear in differentiating between a soul and a spirit. They are two very different things. And yes, I believe animals also have a spirit, and obviously a body. And they live a life, or soul. But I would argue they are clearly different from humans.

So animals do have a soul but it is different from a human soul?

Let me ask you this. Is a virus life?

I think a virus exists somewhere on the border, it is most likely not sentient life, but neither is a tree one would think. The distinction is not black and white however as there is a lot of grey. Is a plant sentient? Some plants can certainly sense certain changes in their environment, does that make them sentient beings? Viruses do certainly reproduce and even change over time. However, their "life" is a very mechanic one and one virus has to cease existing as such in order to form new ones. They have no brain etc. Basically just a protein hull with DNS that reproduces itself as much as possible. To me it is more like a machine and so is a tree, but then again so can animals and humans seem like machines, more sophisticated ones but still machines. We can clearly see how more brain etc. leads to animals which can do more sophisticated things and are "more sentient" etc. but we always try to decouple humans from this gradual progress and think this does not apply to us even though we have the same basic makeup with a stomach, a heart, lungs, a (more sophisticated) brain, etc.

If all that makes us different and more sophisticated than these animals is "a more sophisticated soul", then why does brain damage or brain altering through drugs affect us so much? Or can humans alter souls?

As for Dolly the sheep. Was she "alive"? It would appear so, and she also had offspring. But this is what is so disturbing to many of us bible believers. If not broken outright, then at the very least the laws of nature are being bent.

But if there are laws of nature, then we cannot bend them, that is the point of saying something is a law of nature. It is however possible that we thought or think that something is a law of nature when it really isn't. Because our understanding of the laws of nature is neither complete nor perfect.

Elsewhere in the scriptures there are accounts of what happened last time. The mixing of different kinds of flesh, hybridization perhaps, including the irruption of the angelic race into the human genome. And all flesh on the earth having corrupted itself. The scriptures also state it will happen again. There will be ten "dead ones". They will be kings.

Then what is the point of warning against it?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Ye gads - the OP is stuck in the 16th Century.

So - first off - what he is espousing is not actually what most Christians believe. Today most Christians believe that the soul is something imparted to each individual but when this happens is hotly debated. Some contend that it happens when the sperm and the ovum come together and merge, others that it only happens when the newborn draws breath. What very few Christians believe is that it come specifically from the man's "seed" or that men are the "implanters" of life within women who are then the fertile soil within which this life grows.

Now, to be sure, the belief that the new life was contained within the man's "seed" was a popular a pre-Christian idea which, off the top of my head, can be traced back to the pre-Socratics and was popular with doctors and scientists consistently thought Classical antiquity all the way through the Renaissance only began to be challenged as more powerful microscopes were invented during the enlightenment and we began to actually understand the nature of reproduction.

Now, while there is some debate about whether a human clone would have a human soul I believe the majority answer is a definite "yes" because today we would accept that God, in Hi infinite Love would impart a soul to any thinking human and not allow them to be a monster. Where the anxiety comes is in the transgression of natural processes, which is not a specifically Christian concern - again see pre-Socratics.

The problem with cloning is that we are potentially "making" new life, we are designing it to order rather than allowing it to come inot being through the natural machinery God designed and, frankly, we don't know what we were doing. Dolly the sheep was something of a failure as a clone, she was sick and miserable for most of her life and inevitable the first batch of human clones would be the same, malformed and doomed to short painful lives.

Now, people will tell you a lot about the scientific advantages of being able to clone something but you really have to ask if we should, because the road to hell really is paved with good intetions.

[Veho Nex]

Every single picture of Adam and Eve shows they have belly buttons. therefor god is not real, only satan exist.

[Risasi]

I find it curious you guys have jumped in when I'm answering Papewaio's question...not that I mind.

Elsewhere in the scriptures there are accounts of what happened last time. The mixing of different kinds of flesh, hybridization perhaps, including the irruption of the angelic race into the human genome. And all flesh on the earth having corrupted itself. The scriptures also state it will happen again. There will be ten "dead ones". They will be kings.

Then what is the point of warning against it?

Because in this age there is a war going on. It's in an unseen war in the heavens, for the minds of men. Men that the god of this age (Satan) has blinded. And that is the point. Satan and his minions have broken the rules. Everyone has to choose sides because in the future this upside-down world will be set aright. Heed the warning or not, your choice.

Every single picture of Adam and Eve shows they have belly buttons. therefor god is not real, only satan exist.

Satan most surely exists, and precedes man in creation. And is more powerful, likely smarter since he is at least 6000 years old, and has one heck of an espionage ring. The lake of fire was prepared for Lucifer and his angels. If you wish to mock God, that is fine. Anyone who rejects the grace freely given by the Lord Jesus Christ may join Satan there come judgment day.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I find it curious you guys have jumped in when I'm answering Papewaio's question...not that I mind.

Because in this age there is a war going on. It's in an unseen war in the heavens, for the minds of men. Men that the god of this age (Satan) has blinded. And that is the point. Satan and his minions have broken the rules. Everyone has to choose sides because in the future this upside-down world will be set aright. Heed the warning or not, your choice.

Satan most surely exists, and precedes man in creation. And is more powerful, likely smarter since he is at least 6000 years old, and has one heck of an espionage ring. The lake of fire was prepared for Lucifer and his angels. If you wish to mock God, that is fine. Anyone who rejects the grace freely given by the Lord Jesus Christ may join Satan there come judgment day.

All things are within the power of the Lord, you should read the Book of Job - Satan's original name was "The Accuser" in the legal sense and, in fact, there's nothing in the Bible that makes him the enemy of God, nor is he ever actually given the name "Lucifer" that is an invention of the early medieval Church, or at best Late Antiquity.

The Book of Revelations is a Book of Prophecy from the 1st Century AD where John is shown what appear to be a set of allegorical murals (they notably lack depth, they are not three dimensional) and it has been persuasively argued that they refer to events that happened within a few decades of the prophecies being made.

Certainly, the belief that we are living in the End Times is not a new one, there are several epochs where men believed, as you do, that Satan was walking the Earth and was the driving force in human affairs - the Hunnic invasion, the Muslim invasions, most the early medieval period up to around 1100, the Black Death, the Fall of Constantinople, the 30 Years War, even World War I was believed by some to be the opening of the Time of Tribulation but time has marches pass all those periods and the End Times have not come.

So, if you are trying to frighten people into believing whatever you believe by convincing them that their souls are in imminet danger then perhaps you are the real problem, and not them.

[Husar]

Because in this age there is a war going on. It's in an unseen war in the heavens, for the minds of men. Men that the god of this age (Satan) has blinded. And that is the point. Satan and his minions have broken the rules. Everyone has to choose sides because in the future this upside-down world will be set aright. Heed the warning or not, your choice.

If god has already meticulously planned the future, how can I have a choice? My future seems to be already planned. Which was also the point of the question, if you believe this future will inevitably happen, how can you think that your warning would change anything?
And if you could prevent someone from fulfilling the prophecy, the prophecy would be unfulfilled, not a good scenario for you either.

[CrossLOPER]

Ye gads - the OP is stuck in the 16th Century.

Did you not see his reply to me in the other thread?

I'm probably wasting my time, but okay: Bible > Science. Scientists don't have a good track record in...ever. Heck, I remember my grade school days. When I was a wee lad they were saying the universe was 3 billion years old. Now it's 14 billion, or have they amended it again?
True science is the study of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. That does not mean it can accurately ascertain origin.
Bible is a historical account written by an eye witness. So the bible says the Lord Jesus Christ is the creator of the heavens and the earth. It says he also framed time. It also says Jesus Christ is holding the whole thing together, right now. If he didn't it would go fissionable and explode (or implode?). What it doesn't say is how old the earth actually is (it could actually be pretty old).
Approximately 6000 years ago it suffered an extreme cataclysmic event, due to the fall of an angel named Lucifer (aka Satan, the Devil, Diablos). The earth that then was being overflowed with water. It was then rebuilt and humanity was created. Then roughly 4400 years ago due to the genetic corruption and wickedness of mankind, to actually preserve the human race, there was a second worldwide flood event and the account of Noah. This was a pretty big deal, and can explain some of what we can observe through science today.
Anyway, I'm sure all of that is crazy talk to you and you should probably ignore me before I start talking more about Jesus Christ and how he is God and coming back some day to rule over all of humanity.

My claim is I have the writings of the Author of the universe as my reference. You could crack it open too, you know and actually see what it says. Although clearly that's not good enough for you. I suppose God doesn't have enough initials after his name...

He has the writings of the Author of the universe.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But what if we could clone Jesus?

[wooly_mammoth]

I finished SOMA a couple of days ago and I'm still stormblown by the themes it presented for thought. I'll throw in spoiler tags just to be safe, in case anyone wants to try that game.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

At this point, I can't even see the ethical issue of growing physical bodies anymore (either by cloning or 3D printing or whatever other means). I can imagine a distant future where you just pick a bucketful of dirt from whatever planet you landed on and carve yourself a realization from the atoms contained within. The problem that I see now is in the uniqueness of the "self". What happens when we reach the point that one "self" can be copied, stored and later installed on a given realization, be it biological, mechanical or bio-mechanical? What happens when there are multiple copies of "you" that have branched off from one point (i.e. they share the same past in their memories) and just went their separate ways, sometimes separated by a vast space-time interval?

Cloning or building up someone from scratch and having them equipped with their own unique "self" seems entirely alright now, as opposed to the idea of having multiple copies of the same "self" running around in various corners of the Universe at various times. It completely messes up the idea of "identity", a problem which does not arise if you are cloned and your mind emerges in the "natural" way.

[Brenus]

“Ye gads - the OP is stuck in the 16th Century.” That late? Push few centuries in past…

“The problem with cloning is that we are potentially "making" new life”
Science Fiction from the Cyteen series to Mass Effect games gave you the answer:
“Does this unit have a soul?"
“Do we deserve death?”
“Kellah se’lai”.

[Risasi]

But what if we could clone Jesus?

Have fun trying to get his DNA.

John 8:57-59; Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

Jesus, knowing all things, I don't believe he's left his DNA around for anyone to find.

And right now he is in the highest heavens, and not coming down for awhile. And even when he does it appears that the Lord will set up David as king of the earth again. So I doubt the general terrestrial populace will have direct access to Jesus Christ again.

[CrossLOPER]

I finished SOMA a couple of days ago and I'm still stormblown by the themes it presented for thought. I'll throw in spoiler tags just to be safe, in case anyone wants to try that game.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

At this point, I can't even see the ethical issue of growing physical bodies anymore (either by cloning or 3D printing or whatever other means). I can imagine a distant future where you just pick a bucketful of dirt from whatever planet you landed on and carve yourself a realization from the atoms contained within. The problem that I see now is in the uniqueness of the "self". What happens when we reach the point that one "self" can be copied, stored and later installed on a given realization, be it biological, mechanical or bio-mechanical? What happens when there are multiple copies of "you" that have branched off from one point (i.e. they share the same past in their memories) and just went their separate ways, sometimes separated by a vast space-time interval?

Cloning or building up someone from scratch and having them equipped with their own unique "self" seems entirely alright now, as opposed to the idea of having multiple copies of the same "self" running around in various corners of the Universe at various times. It completely messes up the idea of "identity", a problem which does not arise if you are cloned and your mind emerges in the "natural" way.

I would think that the new "self" would diverge behaviorally, and in other ways, to become a completely different being over time.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

“Ye gads - the OP is stuck in the 16th Century.” That late? Push few centuries in past…

“The problem with cloning is that we are potentially "making" new life”
Science Fiction from the Cyteen series to Mass Effect games gave you the answer:
“Does this unit have a soul?"
“Do we deserve death?”
“Kellah se’lai”.

At least that late - and the issue is not so much whether the life is real, but the quality of the life of the creature you create.

Did you not see his reply to me in the other thread?

He has the writings of the Author of the universe.

Clearly he has an excess of Pride, I should know.

Posting a supposedly "private" reply to Husar publicly and then feigning an objection when others weigh in.

But what if we could clone Jesus?

That would probably be the Anti-Christ, because we'd screw it up.

Have fun trying to get his DNA.

John 8:57-59; Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

Jesus, knowing all things, I don't believe he's left his DNA around for anyone to find.

And right now he is in the highest heavens, and not coming down for awhile. And even when he does it appears that the Lord will set up David as king of the earth again. So I doubt the general terrestrial populace will have direct access to Jesus Christ again.

Actually, that's fairly easy - we have his death shroud, his face cloth (blood spatter on the two match), and at least some of the nails that pieced his flesh might be real...

So, lots of possible sources.

[Montmorency]

It's doubtful you could extract any usable DNA from that. But it doesn't matter since presumably what made Jesus Christ was the divine in him.

The only thing you get out of "cloning" Jesus is the best model for Jesus art that we can get.

Not Christ, nor AntiChrist - just some guy who looks good in a graven image, and attracts assassination attempts and terrorist attacks wherever he goes.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It's doubtful you could extract any usable DNA from that. But it doesn't matter since presumably what made Jesus Christ was the divine in him.

The only thing you get out of "cloning" Jesus is the best model for Jesus art that we can get.

Not Christ, nor AntiChrist - just some guy who looks good in a graven image, and attracts assassination attempts and terrorist attacks wherever he goes.

Well, that rather encapsulates the problem with cloning - who would wish that fate on any man. In this example looking like Jesus and being the target of assassination attempts would not be a hand that fate, or chance, or God, had dealt but one dealt by the men who cooked him up in a test tube.

[Brenus]

"It's doubtful you could extract any usable DNA from that." Not from Jesus for sure.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

"It's doubtful you could extract any usable DNA from that." Not from Jesus for sure.

That's genuinely debatable - the Shoud and the face cloth certainly come from the same man and both appear to be genuine 1st century artefacts. Whether they were what Jesus was buried in is a separate question.

Just a point of order.

[Brenus]

"That's genuinely debatable - the Shoud and the face cloth certainly come from the same man and both appear to be genuine 1st century artefacts": "In 1988, the Vatican allowed the shroud to be dated by three independent sources--Oxford University, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology--and each of them dated the cloth as originating in medieval times, around 1350"
In http://skepdic.com/shroud.html
Just a point of order.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

"That's genuinely debatable - the Shoud and the face cloth certainly come from the same man and both appear to be genuine 1st century artefacts": "In 1988, the Vatican allowed the shroud to be dated by three independent sources--Oxford University, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology--and each of them dated the cloth as originating in medieval times, around 1350"
In http://skepdic.com/shroud.html
Just a point of order.

I knew you'd bring that up - three things.

1# It's virtually impossible for it to be a medieval fake, unless it was created from the original by an artist with unheard of skill. In particular - the shroud depicts a man crucified in the manner appropriate to the 1st century AD, not in the manner the medieval Christians believed Christ was crucified. Also, there's the problem of the blood-spatter matching exactly to the face cloth which is known to be older.

2# The Shroud is reported in Constantinople at least a century before 1350.

3# It's now believed the carbon-dated strands were erroneously taken from a medieval repair to the cloth, contaminating the results.

[Papewaio]

2# Is it the same shroud?

There was quite a lot of holy relic counterfeiting in the past. If all of them where true holy relics I wonder why we don't have more reports of six fingered saints or three legged ones. Oh look the 5th little toe of Saint Toealot.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

2# Is it the same shroud?

There was quite a lot of holy relic counterfeiting in the past. If all of them where true holy relics I wonder why we don't have more reports of six fingered saints or three legged ones. Oh look the 5th little toe of Saint Toealot.

Well, if it's a fake they broke into a Jewish tomb in Jerusalem and stole some dirt and pollen and deliberately inpregnated the modern cloth which, by the way, they wove using a 1st Century Syrian method.

[CrossLOPER]

Well, if it's a fake they broke into a Jewish tomb in Jerusalem and stole some dirt and pollen and deliberately inpregnated the modern cloth which, by the way, they wove using a 1st Century Syrian method.

That shroud is as real as the other 6 shrouds, 400 spears and who knows how many pieces of wood.

[Viking]

I finished SOMA a couple of days ago and I'm still stormblown by the themes it presented for thought. I'll throw in spoiler tags just to be safe, in case anyone wants to try that game.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

At this point, I can't even see the ethical issue of growing physical bodies anymore (either by cloning or 3D printing or whatever other means). I can imagine a distant future where you just pick a bucketful of dirt from whatever planet you landed on and carve yourself a realization from the atoms contained within. The problem that I see now is in the uniqueness of the "self". What happens when we reach the point that one "self" can be copied, stored and later installed on a given realization, be it biological, mechanical or bio-mechanical? What happens when there are multiple copies of "you" that have branched off from one point (i.e. they share the same past in their memories) and just went their separate ways, sometimes separated by a vast space-time interval?

Cloning or building up someone from scratch and having them equipped with their own unique "self" seems entirely alright now, as opposed to the idea of having multiple copies of the same "self" running around in various corners of the Universe at various times. It completely messes up the idea of "identity", a problem which does not arise if you are cloned and your mind emerges in the "natural" way.

From a purely biological point of view (i.e. non-religious, non-spiritual), the usefulness of the concepts of 'the self' and of individuals springs from actual reality rather than some inherent trait.

For example, when you say that you did something one year ago, it's not hard to argue that this does not make sense. That's because you know the consequences of what that individual did, yet that individual did not know the consequences - so how could it be you that did it? Why should we say that you and that individual are the same?

Well, in practice it makes sense to do so; given the relative continuity of how humans develop - there's a continuous line of development between you and that individual. Yet, in theory (don't know about practice), not a single atom that made up that individual's body could make up your body due to a continuous replacement of atoms and molecules since then.

If a 100% accurate copy is made of one person, then for all practical purposes, that individual and their copy would be one and the same as far as the past is concerned (their friends would not be able to tell who is the copy and who is the original; unless e.g. one of them gets a certain tattoo or a scar). Past the date of copying, they'll be two different individuals - like a more 'extreme' version of identical twins (like CrossLOPER says, their lives will of course diverge).

[Montmorency]

From a purely biological point of view (i.e. non-religious, non-spiritual), the usefulness of the concepts of 'the self' and of individuals springs from actual reality rather than some inherent trait.

Have no idea what this game is and I won't read the spoiler, but non-essential identity is a philosophical point-of-view and doesn't spring out of any particular observation on its own. As for "selves", a "self" has no coherent metaphysical identity other than the fact of reference from others, which is just to say that selves are socially-constructed. But be careful, this has nothing to do with "dynamical" self or process philosophy; selves are still nothing at all. I am merely pointing out that "self" is one of our many (not-so-)useful fictions, like "memory", "social", "intelligence", "emotion", etc. that greases the wheels of our lives.

But of course I agree that it is a biological and developmental reality which brings us to commit such "selves" in all our thousands of years.

[Risasi]

The shroud is bogus, just like all the other tourist traps scattered around Israel...and their stupid wailing wall. That's all BS. It's just part of the wall left over from the adjoining Roman fortress, Antonia. Pretty ironic that those Khazars over there are sticking little prayers in Caesar's wall. "We have no king but Caesar"...

[a completely inoffensive name]

DNA only has a 521 year half life. Also, I'm sure some pious duke wiped his nasty gut sweat with the shroud at some point to try and cure his indigestion.

[Husar]

DNA only has a 521 year half life.

So there's still 1/16th of it left.