My thoughts on life, relationships, and everything else!

Monday, August 16, 2004

Parthenogenesis and cloning: Jesus and the modern scientific world

I had read a BBC news article the other day on cloning and it really disturbs me. Even if it is made from an egg that would otherwise be discarded, It still is formed into a person, and still is a life. It also is a form of playing God and messing with nature.there are many different points of view out there on that.

I had to do a research paper a couple of years ago, and I chose to do cloning and parthenogenesis from a non critical Christian point of view, but what I learned is some really weird stuff! There re many different processes to form a clone, but the most common and the most simple is the nuclear transfer system. This is where they take an empty egg cell(it can be taken from any mammal)and they remove the core of the nucleus (the DNA rich center),retaining the membrane. Then they take a complete strand of DNA from the specimen that they want to clone, inject it into it, forming a new nucleus,zap it with electricity, and let it grow until ready to implant into the surrogate mother. Not something you would do in your garage, but not really complex either. The even weirder thing is that the egg doesn't have to even be from the same species as the clone. For example.they can clone mice with pig eggs and about ten years ago, they tried to clone an extinct animal called a gaur. To do this, they took a DNA sample from a deceased gaur and injected it into the egg of a cow and used the cow as a surrogate. This went well, and produced a young gaur, but it suffered the same serious health issues as all other clones do, which is my second objection to cloning.

Clones are not a perfect replicas of the original. There are many faults due to processing. Most clones have a significantly shorter life span and suffer severe health problems, so if you cloned a pet, not only may it not have the same disposition due to a lack of life experiences, but also would not live very long. The other bad thing is cloning people so that the childless can have blood related children. This is horrid because these kids would have lives full of horrible diseases and pain.believe it or not, there is a compliant supposedly offering this, but they are also raeliens, so what do you expect.

Parthenogenesis is very different and natural though. It's very common in some insects, and ocean life, such as anemones, sponges, and urchins. It has only occurred once in humans, Jesus Christ and will be the only time. Even many scientists and sociologists can not deny the fact that Jesus was conceived immaculately. During my research I read a book, written by an atheist none the less, that proves this point. According to the laws and customs of that era, Mary and Joseph would have been stoned to death if anyone even had an hint that they actually slept together pre marriage , no matter where they were. So, somehow, they had to believe that Mary had conceived Jesus immaculately. This still seems to keep the scientific world puzzled. The theories range from rape in her sleep to when she was conceived the egg didn't separate so she carried her twin, all kinds of strange things, but these all have one thing in common: they are wrong, and have been proven so.

It seems like no matter how hard science seems to prove God to be wrong, he is always right. It's something Christians have known all along, but the rest of the world has an hard time accepting. If everyone would open their eyes and their hearts, they wouldn't have to wonder anymore.