alan
05-30-2005, 05:39 PM
[/URL=
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701285_pf.html
/End URL]
washingtonpost.com
Beware of Stem Cell Theology
By Jerome Groopman
Post
Sunday, May 29, 2005; B07
At many pivotal moments in American history, leaders have turned to the Bible to justify their actions. The Founding Fathers, at the advent of the Revolution, inscribed the Liberty Bell with a line from Leviticus proclaiming freedom throughout the land. Martin Luther King Jr. thundered that he had gone to the mountaintop and, like Moses, was ready to show his people the promised land. Church and state are separated by law, but our country's visionaries assume a mantle of morality by invoking the priests and prophets of Scripture.
Last week, in opposing a bill that would allow discarded early embryos to be used as sources of stem cells, House Republican leader Tom DeLay cast himself with the originators of the three major monotheistic faiths. "An embryo," he said, "is a person, a distinct internally directed, self-integrating human organism. We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth."
Secular scientists are often quick to dismiss faith as having any relevance to their work, but in fact much of our moral code, personal and civil, is rooted in religious tradition. The Bible and its commentaries are a wealth not only of ethical imperatives but also of insights into character and behavior. It is foolish or naive to ignore this fact.
But it is also foolish, and wrong, to use the founders of Judaism, Islam and Christianity as foils to support the current administration's views on pressing moral questions in medicine. It demonstrates a remarkable ignorance about the diversity of religious thought concerning when life begins, when it ends and what makes it sacred.
DeLay and others who oppose stem cell research on theological grounds might be surprised to learn that it is not Abraham but Adam whose life and circumstances are interpreted by Jewish and Muslim thinkers when they assess the morality of this science. In Genesis, God breathes into a lump of clay to form the first man, Adam. Thus, life is seen as beginning when organs, particularly the lungs, develop, since it is then that the vital spirit arrives. The Talmud states that before 40 days, what is in the uterus is akin to water, not a human being. DeLay would do well to return to the Bible, because rabbis and imams who read it as their source of inspiration would not concur that Abraham's life and Muhammad's life were defined some seven to eight days after their conception, the time when researchers take stem cells from the blastocyst.
<snip>
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Alan
There's a fungus among us, and I'm not lichen it!
Nerve Center Telnet BBS - tncbbs.no-ip.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701285_pf.html
/End URL]
washingtonpost.com
Beware of Stem Cell Theology
By Jerome Groopman
Post
Sunday, May 29, 2005; B07
At many pivotal moments in American history, leaders have turned to the Bible to justify their actions. The Founding Fathers, at the advent of the Revolution, inscribed the Liberty Bell with a line from Leviticus proclaiming freedom throughout the land. Martin Luther King Jr. thundered that he had gone to the mountaintop and, like Moses, was ready to show his people the promised land. Church and state are separated by law, but our country's visionaries assume a mantle of morality by invoking the priests and prophets of Scripture.
Last week, in opposing a bill that would allow discarded early embryos to be used as sources of stem cells, House Republican leader Tom DeLay cast himself with the originators of the three major monotheistic faiths. "An embryo," he said, "is a person, a distinct internally directed, self-integrating human organism. We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth."
Secular scientists are often quick to dismiss faith as having any relevance to their work, but in fact much of our moral code, personal and civil, is rooted in religious tradition. The Bible and its commentaries are a wealth not only of ethical imperatives but also of insights into character and behavior. It is foolish or naive to ignore this fact.
But it is also foolish, and wrong, to use the founders of Judaism, Islam and Christianity as foils to support the current administration's views on pressing moral questions in medicine. It demonstrates a remarkable ignorance about the diversity of religious thought concerning when life begins, when it ends and what makes it sacred.
DeLay and others who oppose stem cell research on theological grounds might be surprised to learn that it is not Abraham but Adam whose life and circumstances are interpreted by Jewish and Muslim thinkers when they assess the morality of this science. In Genesis, God breathes into a lump of clay to form the first man, Adam. Thus, life is seen as beginning when organs, particularly the lungs, develop, since it is then that the vital spirit arrives. The Talmud states that before 40 days, what is in the uterus is akin to water, not a human being. DeLay would do well to return to the Bible, because rabbis and imams who read it as their source of inspiration would not concur that Abraham's life and Muhammad's life were defined some seven to eight days after their conception, the time when researchers take stem cells from the blastocyst.
<snip>
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Alan
There's a fungus among us, and I'm not lichen it!
Nerve Center Telnet BBS - tncbbs.no-ip.com