PLAYING GOD
CHANGING THE DEFINITION OF 'HUMAN BEINGS'
By David M. Bresnahan
July 5, 2002
NewsWithViews.com
God was removed from our schools in the early 60s, and now we have a generation of academics and scientists who think it is acceptable to "play God."
The results of that political action 40 years ago are frighteningly staring us in the face ready to not only alter our social beliefs, but also change who we are. For the first time we are on the brink of changing what defines a human being.
God created us, and He gave us a great opportunity. He has shared his power of creation, which He has commanded us to use in a moral and righteous manner only within the bounds of marriage.
God has also given us our free agency to make our own choices, but He has also given us guidance to shape the way we make those choices. We can follow His guidance and be blessed, or we can choose to do things our own way and pay the consequences.
We not only have the power and ability to create life, we can also take it. When we make that choice we are violating one of God's most basic laws. He will not stop us from making such a wrong choice, because he has given us our freedom and will not force us to be righteous. Instead he teaches us correct principles and allows us to govern ourselves.
God is the author, the creator, the engineer of humanity. We are his creation, but when we abandon God and then try to take on His role we risk destruction.
The current issue of World Watch http://www.worldwatch.org/mag/ magazine points out the very real likelihood that human genetic engineering could be the next major battleground for the global conservation movement, surpassing the past struggles to protect ecosystems and human societies from the unpredicted consequences of new technologies.
"This fight over high-risk applications of human genetic engineering is a struggle over who will decide what it means to be human," warns World Watch.
There are some countries with bans on reproductive cloning, and the U.N. may soon have a treaty designed to ban it from the earth. Unfortunately the same sense of urgency is not present when dealing with the question of genetic engineering, specifically "inheritable genetic modification." Experimentation with human genetic technology with the argument that it will be beneficial to society in the long term will most likely result in the death of babies who are the unsuccessful results of trial and error attempts to play God. The excuse that the science must be developed to cure this or that horrible disease does not wash when we recognize the real underlying reason is the potential for profit.
Revenues in the biotechnology industry have grown from $5 billion in 1989 to over $30 billion. World Watch points out that in 1991 there were 4,000 patents filed for human DNA sequences to over 500,000 in 1998.
"The victim of a failed experiment will not be an ecosystem, but a human child whose parents, seeking to give her greater intelligence, will saddle her with a greater propensity for cancer, or prolonged debility in old age, or some other completely unanticipated side effect that may emerge only after the experimenters have passed from the scene," said political scientist Francis Fukuyama writing in World Watch.
Hitler was on a quest to play God and create perfect human specimens. A super-human race superior to all other people on the earth. He used his quest as justification for forced sterilization of large populations, and the extermination of others.
We are on extremely dangerous ground, and given the fact that many godless scientists are the ones conducting these experiments we must question the motivations and purpose of such pursuits. The possibilities are endless, and most could be used for evil purposes.
"It is this potential for genocide based on genetic differences, which I have termed 'genetic genocide,' that makes species-altering genetic engineering a potential weapon of mass destruction, and makes the unaccountable genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist," writes George J. Annas, chairman of the Department of Health, Law, Bioethics and Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health, in World Watch.
God has shared with us His power to create and to take life. We will be accountable in this life and the next for the way we use those powers.
© David M. Bresnahan - All Rights Reserved
David M. Bresnahan David@InvestigativeJournal.com is an award-winning independent investigative journalist. He maintains an archive of his work at http://www.InvestigativeJournal.com and offers a free e-mail alert so you will not miss any of his news stories or commentaries.