Some religious leaders and humanists,
however, had a huge problem with the idea. Among the world’s religions there
remained a heated debate not only to the regents’ humanity, but very existence
of their souls, if they, indeed, possessed them.
Roman Catholics and many conservative
Christians were vehemently against cloning humans, holding that both life and
the soul begin at conception. Conservative Christians held that only God had
the right to create human life. Many
believed that souls were not defined by DNA; otherwise, identical twins, which,
they debated, were essentially clones, would need to share one soul.
While Christians remained vehemently
against human cloning on a purely religious basis, some Jews associated cloning
directly to Nazi doctors who experimented on humans in an attempt to create a
master race. A rabbi in Britain said attempts to clone humans were a new low,
dangerous and irresponsible in playing roulette with human life.
Followers of Islam opposed cloning on a
religious and practical basis. Cloning is prohibited mainly because it
contradicts with the diversity of creation. Muslims stated that Allah created
the universe on the basis of diversity; cloning is based on duplicating one
individual.
More down
to earth, if cloning were permitted, scholars quizzed, how would the clone
be compared to the donor? Would it be a sibling, a child or even the donor,
himself or herself? Furthermore, cloning goes against Allah having created
humans by pairs in that a clone only needs one donor.
Even though no one was clear on the humanity of the clones, or regents, as
they were being called, or if they could possibly possess souls, those who
didn’t have skin in the game, reasoned it was wrong to send anyone—human or clone—into
space to die.
No comments:
Post a Comment