What God Says About Genetic Engineering
 A Difficult Issue
The issue of genetic engineering is an important one in our world today as we struggle to come to terms with some very difficult moral issues. Most people think of ‘cloning’ when they think of this topic, but there is so much more to consider! Now I just want you to know that much of what we are going to talk about here has been well researched and described by the same great thinker that we resourced when talking about Abortion. His name is Scott Klusendorf and he leads an important organization called the “Life Training Institute”.
When Does Life Begin?
OK, Before we can even look at the issue and type of genetic engineering research that is occurring in our world today, we had better review the first and most important question related to these issues. This is the question that has to be answered before we can take a position on the subject! We have to ask ourselves, “When Does Life Begin?” As a Christian, I believe that life begins at the point of conception, but even if I wasn’t a Christian, I do believe that science and philosophy also point to this truth! Sometimes you will hear the ‘pro-choice’ crowd describe something they call a ‘fertilized egg’. They use this term to describe the entity that results from the sperm penetrating the egg. But there is a problem with this term. The problem is that there is no such thing as a fertilized egg! Once the egg is penetrated by the sperm, the egg ceases to exist. As soon as the union occurs, the sperm and the egg both die altogether. There is no sperm and there is no egg! Something new has started! In science, we call this an ‘ontological change’. The old life forms have died and something new has started!
Zygote? Embryo? Person?
So what should scientists call this new life form? Well, some call it a ‘zygote’ and some call it an ‘embryo’. But these terms are just nouns that require an adjective to identify them. Are they dog zygotes or cat embryos? No! They need the adjective, “human” to correctly identify them! And that is a very interesting truth. Once we place the adjective “human” in front of these nouns, we see the real identity of this new life form. You see, this is no longer a sperm or an egg. This is a human being! You see, the real issue here is when we decide that this little life is a ‘person’! when do we agree that the new life form has something that we call ‘personhood’?
Is Personhood Based on the Sum of Parts?
Well we need to realize that you don’t have to look like a grown adult, or function like a perfect, mature human specimen to be considered a person! OK, so tell me. Is someone who is severely handicapped a real person? If we agree on this, and say ‘yes, the handicapped are real persons!” then we have to acknowledge that they are persons even though all their ‘parts’ are not working properly! This seems to make sense, because we recognize that just because a character like C3PO from Star Wars has ‘parts’ that function, this collection of parts does not make him a person! Now you have encountered the first great argument of many of those who advance genetic engineering. Many people in the scientific community do not believe that we are human persons until all our parts work. As a matter of fact, they would argue that machines with working parts should be considered to be persons! Look at what Paul Churchland, a self proclaimed philosopher and ‘cognitive scientist’ says about this issue:
“when computers are able to function at the same level as humans, only a racial bigot will deny them full rights of personhood.”
You see, many in the scientific community would like you to believe that personhood is based on the sum of our parts. If we have all the parts, we are persons, if we don’t then we are something less than human! Now here is the problem. Embryos clearly have a couple of parts that are either missing or don’t work at all. One of these is what is called “self-awareness”, the ability to understand who we are, our surroundings, and track our lives from day to day. The other ‘part’ is simply brainwave activity! Now the argument could be made that since embryos don’t have these two working parts, they are simply not human! Let’s start by looking at the issue of ‘self-awareness’. This is often described as a matter of ‘intellect’.
See, the argument is that personhood is determined in large part by your intellect, your ability to reason from your surroundings! Well, embryos are not the only members of our human family that has a missing or non-working part in this area. Do any of you have an aging grandparent? Well, you recognize that in our old age, we often revert back to the intellect levels of our embryonic stages! In fact if we could chart self-awareness or intellect on a bell curve, we would see that we peak in our adult years and then return to infant levels as we get very, very old. So are the aged less human than people in their prime? Are great grandparents in their final months still human? Are they still persons? Of course they are!
My grandfather now has incredible short term memory loss. He can’t even remember what happen just a few hours ago. In many ways, his self-awareness is dissolving. But I am convinced that he is still a person. Have any of you seen the movie “50 First Dates”? in this movie, the lead character has incredible short term memory loss based on an old car accident. She has to start over again each day and can’t remember the past at all. She definitely has a missing “part”. But clearly, she is still a human person!
OK, let’s take a look at the issue of brainwave activity. What if we are missing this important ‘part’? Are we still human? Are we still persons? Well many scientists would argue that you are not human until you have brainwave activity, but if you know someone like this, you don’t want to sleep around them, that’s for sure! When we sleep, our brainwave activity changes dramatically and is often absent in many ways. So are we only human when we are awake? Of course not! The brainwave activity of sleeping people is very similar to the brainwave activity of the unborn. You wouldn’t deny on their personhood, so why do these people want to deny the unborn the right of personhood?
Is Personhood Based on Functionality?
Now let’s examine another way that scientists often want to define personhood. Many would argue that the unborn are not persons because they can not function properly or fully! They argue that functionality is what makes us human!
But let’s compare a couple of infants, OK? Let’s take a look at a baby cow. This little creature has a relatively high level of functionality from a very early age. Within minutes it’s birth it is able to walk, interact with others, find it’s own food source and experience the world in a full and rich way! Now an infant human is another thing altogether! The infant human is completely dependent, cannot function on its own at all, and has no idea what is going on? So which one of these two creatures belongs in the barn? Clearly we recognize that functionality had nothing to do with personhood. We don’t determine your humanity based on “current functional ability” but on your “inherent functional ability”! Years from now, the calf will just be a cow, in spite of its apparent head start on the infant. But years from now, they infant will be the farmer!
And what about people who are in a coma? Do you lose your humanity as soon as your brainwaves stall? Well there are many people who recover from Comas! We don’t kill them as soon as we see their brainwave activity drop because we say they are no longer human! But that does raise an important issue! Many would say that it is OK to ‘turn-off’ those who are in irreversible comas. They believe that life has ended altogether. And many Christians also believe this. In fact, many state laws recognize the fact that life is over when there are no ‘signs of life”. When someone is in an irreversible coma, and is unable to breath on his own and has no brainwave activity, many would agree that this person is dead! But even if you agree with this, there is a huge difference between the person in a irreversible Coma and the unborn. The person in the Coma is in a position that we could call “no more”. At some point we can determine that his ability to sustain himself is NEVER coming back. But the unborn is not in the position of “no more”. The unborn is in the position of “not yet”.
Look if you go into the refrigerator to get a banana, and you discover that the only bananas in there are terribly green, you don’t eat them and you don’t throw them away! You WAIT, because these green things are NOT YET ripe (mature)! On the other hand, if you go in that refrigerator and discover that the only bananas in there are old and black, you are not going to eat them, but you are going to dispose of them. The green ones are ‘not yet’ and the black ones are ‘no more’. You save one and wait, you dispose of the other!
Is Personhood Based on Shape or Development?
OK, now let’s take a look at one of the final ways that many scientists and genetic engineers determine personhood. Many of these folks would argue that personhood is determined by shape! I know that sounds crazy, but Mary Tyler Moore once appeared in front of congress and argued that stem cell research should occur on embryos because they don’t even look like humans! She argued that they look more like fish than humans! This kind of logic argues that we have the right to do what we want with those ‘things’ that don’t look like us!
Well you know where that kind of thinking can lead us. After all, we’ve seen it before. Hitler desired a world in which all of us would look alike, have the same genetic material and exist without intolerable diversity or lack of functionality. You see, when we believe that the embryo can be treated differently because it looks different than us, we start down the same path that justifies racism and prejudice! See we have this problem in thinking that one form of human development is less human than another stage of that development. We sometimes get confused here. While a baby human certainly looks different than an adult human, they are both human! We get confused by common perceptions we have been taught in nature! We look, for example, at the caterpillar and say that it is a different creature than a butterfly! Of course the reality is that they are one in the same. Caterpillars are butterflies that are in their infancy! You want proof of this? OK, imagine someone tells you that he has developed a special insecticide that will only kill caterpillars! He decides to use it and says he will kill every caterpillar in the entire world. But he tells you not to worry, because he will not harm any butterflies! Well, you know that if he kills every caterpillar, he is going to kill all the butterflies too! Why? Because caterpillars ARE butterflies!
Now, in spite of all their talk about embryos not being persons or humans, even scientists behave as though they know that embryos are as human as the rest of us! Scientists at the University of Edinburgh are actually aborting 10 week old female fetuses in the womb, then stripping their ovaries for eggs, and then implanting these eggs in women who are infertile! Do you see what they are doing here? They are imposing MOTHERHOOD on embryos to whom they have denied PERSONHOOD. In spite of what they say, these scientists are behaving as though they understand that these embryos are in fact human, possessing the ability to reproduce more humans! Hopefully our society is starting to understand this reality. Several years ago, President Bush signed a bill into law that says that if a pregnant lady is killed in a homicide, and her unborn child also dies, the murderer is responsible for two homicides. By definition, a homicide is the killing of a human, so this law establishes the fact that the unborn are human! Hopefully we are now headed in the right direction!
Types of Genetic Engineering
Now we are going to look at a number of ways in which we, as humans, desire to get involved in both the act of creation and in the act of corrective formation. We, as humans, want to be involved in the basic building block of humanity! When we talk about genetic engineering today, we are going to focus quickly on three large areas of research and science that seem to encompass just about everything. Today we are going to focus on Artificial Insemination, Cloning and Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Now the fundamental issue we are going to examine here is not so much the fact that mankind is now in the business of CREATING life, although we will talk about that for sure! But more troubling to God, I think, is not the issue of how life is started, is how we, as humans, so carelessly END life.
 Artificial Insemination
Let’s start with artificial insemination. Most of us think about this in terms of ‘test tube’ babies. But the process is really simple. The human egg is isolated in the laboratory and inject with a sperm, causing the ontological change we talked about earlier. This new life form, the embryo or zygote, is then placed in the mother’s womb where it continues to grow.
There is a big issue here. It is not uncommon for a couple to do this with a number of eggs and either freeze or implant several of them in the womb. Then if one or more successfully develops, it is allowed to grow, while the ‘extra’ embryos are aborted or thrown away. Do you see the problem? We are killing humans here! In theory, it is possible to only create the exact number of embryos that you will use, but in practice, this is rarely the case. Many ‘leftover’ embryos are destroyed in the process, and this is the killing of humans.
 Cloning
The most widely recognized area of human engineering today seems to be the practice of ‘cloning’. In this process, the genetic material from the female egg is removes, and the genetic material from the patient is injected and the egg is shocked. This then grows into an exact genetic duplicate of the patient!
Now there are many issues here that need to be examined. So far, clones have all demonstrated some form of deviance or deterioration that make them fallible. In addition, scientists often create many test embryos as part of the process and these are later discarded. Finally the cloning process is most often used in research that is designed to kill the resulting embryo! We’ll talk about that more in a minute!
 Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Scientists have discovered something very power full called, “stem Cells”. These are primitive, highly specialized cells that have not yet taken there final form. They are fast growing and are able to develop into any kind of body tissue. If these stem cells can be collected, they can be transformed into tissue to help cure a variety of diseases where healthy tissue is needed to replace sick tissue! Scientists also observed that embryos have an abundance of these kind of stem cells! So for this reason they are harvesting embryos in order to extract the stem cells. The problem is that the embryos have to be killed in order to extract these cells.
So where do the scientists get the embryos? They get them from fertility labs where artificial insemination has created the embryos, or they create the embryos through the process of “therapeutic” cloning. In either case, life is being created for the express purpose of killing it to do research, and that is where the problem lies!
 Adult Stem Cell Research
All the while, these scientists are ignoring a growing area of stem cell research that promises great results without having to kill anyone. The new frontier in genetic engineering is the research behind “Adult Stem Cells”. Adult Stem Cells are being used to accomplish great things!
Adult Bone Marrow Stem Cells
Adult bone marrow stem cells are being used to create new nerve and brain cells to treat brain and spinal disease!
Adult Cord Stem Cells
Adult Spinal Cord Blood Cells are being used to treat blood diseases.
Adult Cornea Stem Cells
Adult Cornea Stem Cells are being used to cure Cornea and eye diseases
Adult Pancreatic Stem Cells
And Adult Pancreatic Stem Cells are being used to treat liver disease. In all these cases, Adult Stem Cells have been seen to be MORE effective than Embryonic Stem Cells and they don’t involve the killing of embryos!
What God Says
God wants us to remember who we are and who He is. But along the way, we have become more and more comfortable with our role not just as the creation of God, but as the creator of life. Why is this so? What is it that motivates us?
Pride (To Know What God Knows)
I think we are motivated by two things. First, I think we are motivated by PRIDE. From the beginning of time, we have always wanted to know what God Knows:
 Genesis 3:4-5
"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Pride (To Do What God Does)
In addition to this, we also have had an ancient desire to do what God does. When we create life, we are playing God for sure, and in our pride, we want to see ourselves as capable of anything! That is why God stopped the people at Babel!
Genesis 11:5-7
But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
Pride (To Be What God Is)
But there is more. In our pride, we also desire to be what God is! When we act as Creator, we start to act as though we have no need for God at all. We can take care of ourselves, and be the creator and healer that God once was! When we do that, we start to worship ourselves instead of the God whop truly created us:
Romans 1:25
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.
Impatience (To Live As God Lives)
Finally, there is another motivation behind our desire to create and alter life. In addition to being motivated by pride, we are also motivated by impatience. We want to live as God lives. We don’t want to wait for answers, we want to know them immediately. Just like God, we want to be in control of the timing of our pregnancies and our cures! But only God has that kind of control:
Psalm 75:1-2
We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds. You say, "I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge uprightly.”
If God Wants It Done
But remember that God does not act rashly just to be expedient. If God wants us to accomplish something or to do something, he will provide us a way to do it without having to violate His morality. We will not have to kill innocent life to accomplish it, and if killing is what is required, we need to understand that it is outside the will of God. Our life begins to change when we come to the realization that there is a God, and we are not Him! God alone is God, and only he should be in the business of playing God:
Jeremiah 10:6
Our LORD, great and powerful, you alone are God. You are King of the nations. Everyone should worship you. No human anywhere on earth is wiser than you.
Who, after all, do you hire to build your house? Do you hire experts and professionals or are you willing to use people who know only a little bit about design and construction? Who, after all, do you want to build your car? Do you trust experts and professionals or are you willing to rely on people who know only a little bit about design and construction? Who, after all, do you hire to build your high-rise? Do you hire experts and professionals or are you willing to use people who know only a little bit about design and construction? OK, if you are only willing to rely on experts and professionals in these areas, why would you want anything less than the best when it comes to building human lives? Compared to God, we are still rank amateurs in the field of human design and construction. Don’t believe for a moment that you are the product of random chance, and therefore we are simple accidents that can be manipulated and examined at will. You were created by God.
Psalm 127:1
Despite our best efforts, we will never be able to do what god has already done. If we try to eliminate god from our lives and from our understanding of science, we will end up with something that leads us to destruction and fails to stand the test of time:
Psalm 127:1
Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
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