My family is very deeply Mormon, so I know my way around Christian ideology fairly well. And as I was sitting in church the other day, I took a little bit of time to wonder:
"Would Yeshua of Nazareth actually approve of his followers today? Would he teach what they teach?"
I mean, think about it: When Jewish and Roman law became super restrictive and arbitrary, that Galilean carpenter-turned-rabbi basically made a career out of hanging with the wrong crowd and breaking the rules in the name of compassion, decency, and sanity. He shocked and appalled church leaders of the day. He openly criticized those who made a public display of their worship, telling them that spirituality was a personal and private experience. He practiced free health care. He wandered around, waxing philosophical and telling the uptight majority to chill out and help their brothers for a change, rather than react with hatred and violence.
He sounds EXACTLY like the kind of person that the right wing constantly reiterates is going to hell. He's like a middle-eastern John Lennon!
I think that over time, his followers got too caught up in all the baggage that any organization or church tends to accumulate. They forgot what he actually said, and remembered only what somebody said he said. It's sad.
I think that people who choose to hold hateful picket signs, tell other people how to live their lives, reject science of any kind because they can't find any way to reconcile their beliefs, and have the unmitigated gall to believe themselves superior to anyone else are directly rejecting the teachings of the man they continue to force people to embrace. I'm going to go do some things frowned upon by the church now. Why? Because that's what Jesus would have done.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Whew... Been a while.
Man, I almost forgot about this blog altogether when scifi class ended. Well, I guess now is as good a time as ever to get started again.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Test Tube Babies
We have been making babies in the lab for years now, starting with Louise Brown in 1978. Since that time more than 250,000 babies have been born thanks to biotechnologies like in vitro fertilization, and our understanding of the human embryonic process has progressed at a fast and steady pace.
The fact that we have the ability to affect human birth and have been perfecting it for over thirty years is a staggering fact indeed. And even though current techniques still (usually) require a womb and male fertilization cell, we now have the ability to artificially replicate both male sperm cells and ovaries. In fact, we don’t even need fully authentic DNA anymore… Scientists have been replicating DNA in the lab since the time of Louise’s birth. In theory, we could have a factory that churns out completely parentless children at this very moment. All someone needs to do is to figure out a way to make it fiscally practical. (And this won’t be too hard, with need for labor on the rise).
Aside from the moral ramifications of such a thing, we would need a vast overhaul of our legal system. What makes a parent in a world such as this? And is a human that has been grown artificially still a person? Would terminating a sequence early on be considered ‘abortion’? Does the factory become the guardian, or is it an individual who sponsors the child? Would these children be better off guardianless? These questions and more would need to be answered in the event of the popularization of synthetic people, lest legal/societal bedlam occur.
-source- -source- -source-
The fact that we have the ability to affect human birth and have been perfecting it for over thirty years is a staggering fact indeed. And even though current techniques still (usually) require a womb and male fertilization cell, we now have the ability to artificially replicate both male sperm cells and ovaries. In fact, we don’t even need fully authentic DNA anymore… Scientists have been replicating DNA in the lab since the time of Louise’s birth. In theory, we could have a factory that churns out completely parentless children at this very moment. All someone needs to do is to figure out a way to make it fiscally practical. (And this won’t be too hard, with need for labor on the rise).
Aside from the moral ramifications of such a thing, we would need a vast overhaul of our legal system. What makes a parent in a world such as this? And is a human that has been grown artificially still a person? Would terminating a sequence early on be considered ‘abortion’? Does the factory become the guardian, or is it an individual who sponsors the child? Would these children be better off guardianless? These questions and more would need to be answered in the event of the popularization of synthetic people, lest legal/societal bedlam occur.
-source- -source- -source-
Death
For all the faults of BNW's society, the did get some things right. One of these things is the issue of death. When someone dies, they simply pack them off to the crematorium, where they can continue to be useful, even in death.
Nobody mourns. Nobody cries. They remark "what a fabulous updraft" at your last burning huzzah. It's great.
Everybody dies. It's just a fact of existence. You can't really define what is alive without that which is not alive. And although every heartfelt movie tries to tell us this, we still end up blubbering in selfish sadness when the hero's mother dies. When family members pass, we inevitably stew on the fact that they are no more, crying and isolating ourselves as if doing so would bring them back.
What's the point?
What's the point in mourning death? It happens to everyone, and if it didn't we'd be in a tough spot right now. The people of the brave new world realize this, however superficially. They move on with their lives and celebrate the purposes that the dead continue to serve. "Why be sad?" is their rallying cry. And when it comes right down to it: Seriously, why?
-sadness that should not be-
Nobody mourns. Nobody cries. They remark "what a fabulous updraft" at your last burning huzzah. It's great.
Everybody dies. It's just a fact of existence. You can't really define what is alive without that which is not alive. And although every heartfelt movie tries to tell us this, we still end up blubbering in selfish sadness when the hero's mother dies. When family members pass, we inevitably stew on the fact that they are no more, crying and isolating ourselves as if doing so would bring them back.
What's the point?
What's the point in mourning death? It happens to everyone, and if it didn't we'd be in a tough spot right now. The people of the brave new world realize this, however superficially. They move on with their lives and celebrate the purposes that the dead continue to serve. "Why be sad?" is their rallying cry. And when it comes right down to it: Seriously, why?
-sadness that should not be-
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