Keeping Up With the Clones

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from the San Francisco Chronicle, dated August 8, 2001.The National Academy of Sciences came face to face Tuesday with the Earthly Representatives of Extraterrestrials who want to clone human beings.But in a sign of how fast science fiction is becoming fact no one was laughing.Human cloning is now probably just a matter of time and an Academy panel heard Tuesday from three renegade scientists vying to be the first to do it.The mainstream scientist, most of who are involved in stem cell research aimed at treating a variety of diseases urged caution warning that cloned babies could be born with horrible birth defects.But the advocates of cloning human babies for those who want to create their own genetic copies were unimpressed.If you want to have a baby using your own genes, it’s your right said Brigitte Boisselier, director of Clonaid, a Bahamas group working toward cloning humans.Clonaid is associated with a Raëlian Revolution, a group that says life on earth was originally created by extraterrestrials through cloning.The movement also claims these space creatures have delivered messages to Raël, the alias for a French ex-race car driver who founded the movement and that Jesus Christ was resurrected through an advanced cloning technique.Boisselier is a bishop in the group which claims 84,000 members world wide.As exotic as Boisselier’s résumé may be, her invitation to join the Academy’s panel on the scientific and medical aspects of human cloning shows how all areas of cloning research are generating intense public attention.The House of Representatives last week voted to outlaw all cloning and stem cell research whether to produce a baby or medical research.

Tom:

Dave you get on my case from time to time, the implication being that I find some of this stuff in the National Inquirer and—

Dave:

Oh no, I’ve never accused you of that.

Tom:

Okay, well let’s say maybe I am taking this personally.This is from the San Francisco Chronicle.We’re talking about something incredibly bizarre.It sounds like it comes from the National Inquirer, but it showed up in the—

Dave:

Again, Tom, it’s what we were talking about.It’s unnatural.If you want to have a baby—

Tom:

Well wait a minute; before you get to that, I want to get to the bizarre stuff. These people are representing ETIs, extraterrestrials intelligence.This Raëlian—you remember way back when, when we were doing things on UFOs and so on.These people are—you would—well you did go to a conference in which they had a representative.

Dave:

Tom I was an invited speaker there and there were representatives from the US Government, there were top scientists, there was a psychiatrist from Harvard who has regressed people back into the past to recover the memories of being abducted aboard.You know this is very serious stuff.

Tom:

Right.And this is serious stuff.

Dave:

Oh they’re serious about it, yes.

Tom:

Okay.Now the idea, why are these people representing UFOs or extraterrestrial intelligences—this is religious, obviously.

Dave:

They have a religion.

Tom:

They have a religion, she is a bishop, this Brigitte Boisselier.

Dave:

Boisselier, yes, but now Tom, they are downgrading the resurrection.The resurrection is a miracle.Christianity demands miracles.We are not embarrassed by miracles.Christianity demands miracles; in fact the creation of man would have to be a miracle.A miracle is God overriding the laws that govern this physical universe.Overriding nature if you will.But now they want to make that out to be scientific.These are scientists and they came from another planet and they brought us here.Yes, but who put them there?And who put them there, there and there, there, there, there?Go back as far as you want.We’ve got to get to the beginning.Somewhere this whole universe at sometime began out of nothing.So Tom, they are just kidding themselves.It’s a delusion and I would have to go back to Romans 1.They are without excuse.

Tom:

Right.

Dave:

They know better.

Tom:

Now the issue of cloning.Dave that’s always been a mystery to me, not so much that technologically it’s a mystery, but what do you do with a human being that was created, not created, but the elements were put together in a test tube?

Dave:

Real fast Tom, you remember the scientist that said we can do whatever God does?You make a man, we’ll make a man.You started with dirt, we’ll start with dirt, and God said no, no, you get your own dirt.They are not creating anything.They have to have cells to begin this process.Now the problem that concerns me is I don’t know when the human soul and spirit—God puts a human soul and spirit in there.I think these creatures, they will not have a human soul and spirit in there.This is a body they can occupy and do what they want with it.Frankenstein was nothing compared to this.But science is going to push on.They want to play God and this is what they are trying to do.They want to prove that they can take control of their own destiny of the universe and they don’t need God and they can explain everything without God.It isn’t going to happen, but it will lead to disaster. And that takes us back to the Tower of Babel.That’s why God scattered them and confounded their languages, because he said that whatever they imagine they will be able to accomplish and we are seeing that come about in our day.

Tom:

Dave just quickly with regard to what you said.Materially everything is there, but what animates this?Will it have the spark of life because you know, life is in the cell.

Dave:

Well I guess they’ve cloned a sheep and so forth, but Tom, I wouldn’t want to try it.