Another resource

On Sunday Pastor Allen used a quote by British Professor Nigel Cameron: "The greatest evil is not that we have the power to destroy the next generation, but the power to produce it." Cameron was speaking, of course, of cloning.

This thought led me to a great resource called "The Christian Institute," whose mission is "Christian influence in a secular world." The site, which can be seen here has many thoughtful articles of interest in the midst of our current culture wars.

In particular, I like their list of Biblical arguments against cloning:

1.Human cloning creates human beings – from conception
Whether it be “therapeutic” or “reproductive” cloning – both techniques create human life.

Life is sacred from conception. The embryo has personhood at conception regardless of how that conception comes about. Once a new life has been created through cloning there is no moral distinction between it and any other embryo. All embryos deserve our protection.

“Therapeutic” cloning is morally repugnant because it creates life with the specific aim of experimentation and destruction. The stem cells are extracted for research and the embryo dies. Pro-lifers have called this practice “technological cannibalism”.

2. “Reproductive” cloning is also morally indefensible on the following grounds:
Human cloning is biological manufacturing by man not creation by God
Human cloning, and particularly “reproductive cloning”, puts the choices about a new life in the hands of a person rather than God. It will be left to the scientist to decide which embryo appears fit for implantation and which should be discarded. Human cloning usurps God’s position as the Almighty Creator. Job acknowledged, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away” (Job 1:21).

Under this new regime man, and not God, chooses the desired characteristics of any resultant children. It gives man control over the next generation. Cloning gives humans control over human fertility and therefore over the design/genetics of future generations. Thus man exerts a tyranny over future generations. As C. S. Lewis said:

“In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them.”

3. Children are a gift from God
Children are a gift from God. No one has a ‘right’ to have children even though they may be earnestly desired and infertility is usually found to be deeply distressing. However, cloning and many forms of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) make commodities out of children who are “made to order”. Procreation is taken out of God’s hands and given to man.

4. Cloning breaks the link with parentsGod created man and woman; He instituted marriage for their mutual benefit and for the procreation of children. God told Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”

In this way human relationships are based on relations between a husband and wife, their children and the wider family. God’s creation of the marriage relationship, and its central place in the procreation of the next generation, is for our benefit.

God’s intention is that children are procreated using genetic material from both their parents. With cloning the genetic material comes from only one ‘parent’. The child will be the genetic brother of the ‘father’ or the genetic sister of the ‘mother’. This profoundly undermines God’s intended order for procreation.