Wednesday, March 10, 2004
I read James Patterson's New Book, 3rd Degree today. A small diversion. The characters in this series of Patterson books are nicely drawn, and this story was at least a complete one. Patterson's last book, The Big Bad Wolf, was a cheap cheat of a story and incomplete at that. Oh well, Patterson is book-candy at best anyway.
I put a link in to Catholic Answers on the left bar. It's a nice site and I used it during what little time I had today to look up the Catholic Church's positions on stem-cell research, cloning, and other matters biological. It is as I suspected, the Church is against these things, as am I. This doesn't answer my problem or question, though. My problem is that if, as the Pope says, the Bible does not concern itself with details of the physical world, and if stem-cell research, cloning, contraception, homosexuality, etc. are all details of the physical world, then in 4 or 500 years will the Church look back and say, oops, we were wrong?
Here's the thing, unlike with Galileo, we're not talking about matters outside now, we're talking about matters inside. Stem-cell research is taking a dead start of a person and experimenting with it. Perhaps people once felt blood transfusions and heart transplants were taking dead parts of people and experimenting with them, too. It didn't take long for opinion to change once the lives started being saved, did it. If we make stem-cell research and cloning illegal in America, scientists who want to go in that direction will go elsewhere. Ancient China used to be at the top of the scientific world until they started looking for signs in the sky to inform their science. At some point, they just froze and remained unchanging while the world went around them. I guess I'm coming down on the side that even though no good Catholic would/should go into that field of study, America maybe shouldn't pass laws making research illegal.
I put a link in to Catholic Answers on the left bar. It's a nice site and I used it during what little time I had today to look up the Catholic Church's positions on stem-cell research, cloning, and other matters biological. It is as I suspected, the Church is against these things, as am I. This doesn't answer my problem or question, though. My problem is that if, as the Pope says, the Bible does not concern itself with details of the physical world, and if stem-cell research, cloning, contraception, homosexuality, etc. are all details of the physical world, then in 4 or 500 years will the Church look back and say, oops, we were wrong?
Here's the thing, unlike with Galileo, we're not talking about matters outside now, we're talking about matters inside. Stem-cell research is taking a dead start of a person and experimenting with it. Perhaps people once felt blood transfusions and heart transplants were taking dead parts of people and experimenting with them, too. It didn't take long for opinion to change once the lives started being saved, did it. If we make stem-cell research and cloning illegal in America, scientists who want to go in that direction will go elsewhere. Ancient China used to be at the top of the scientific world until they started looking for signs in the sky to inform their science. At some point, they just froze and remained unchanging while the world went around them. I guess I'm coming down on the side that even though no good Catholic would/should go into that field of study, America maybe shouldn't pass laws making research illegal.
