It's the means that lessen the value of it, not the end result (the child). Nobody is blaming the children that come about for the perilousness posed by in-vitro. When I said 'lessen the value' I meant that human life will be devalued in the same way you see it happening today: let's choose our baby's sex; let's take DNA tests of the fetus and abort it if it is not 'perfect'; let's whip up 10 embryos in a lab and, if one takes, let's flush the rest or harvest their DNA. In-vitro, like it or not, means that human beings are no longer ends in themselves - they are means to "parenthood", and procreation is taken out of the sacrament and into the lab.
You might say "In-vitro doesn't lead to that - bad decisions do." Well, that's true, but so does sex outside of marriage. And to the Catholic Church and its understanding of natural law, that's what in-vitro is. And that's where all its abuses come from - good intentions wrapped up in commodifying technology run by people who don't value life as an end in itself and sold to people who think they know themselves better than God does.
I don't mean to come down hard but that's my understanding of why the Church thinks in-vitro is wrong. For me, it's the pandora's box that's most obviously troubling - science's unfailing pursuit to do whatever it can if it can. They will do whatever they can with human DNA, too, and they will take reproduction outside of the sacramental confines of marriage to do it, too, it goes without saying.
I evil (the devil) can turn good intentions into harmful results and God can turn bad intentions into good things. We'll see what He makes of this.
So, how then do you and the church feel about adoption?
I have an adopted girl too.
If she was conceived out of wedlock, and I adopt her, is this not violating the same standards you put forward, that we adopted her not for the beauty and miracle of creating a human being, but for the sake of parenthood, and that procreation has been taken out of the sacrament.
You weren't coming down hard by the way, you are just laying out your argument.
I fully agree that science pursues things and does them without questioning whether they should. I'm not sure about whether scientists are the ones best suited to debating the merits of their pursuits.
The A-bomb is the obvious example, right? Did the A-bomb save more lives than it took? So far, maybe.
That'll change if China decides to invade Taiwan probably.
Back on point, we are God's creatures, and we are curious, and we are laden with the talents God gave us.
Oppenheimer brought us both the bomb and nuclear power.
As you say, people kill people, guns don't kill people.
I say that if you restrict scientists from discovery that is achieved in accordance with the laws of God and man, it is up to us to provide the discipline to properly use these discoveries afterward.
Stem-cell research on aborted fetus' - bad
Stem-cell research on adult cells and ambilical cord blood, no problem.
Research on the effects of hypothermia - good.
Nazi's using Jews in those experiments - bad.
The church's deal with Galileo gave us some insight on what would happen if we put the church in charge of what we ought to be studying.
I'm all for the church telling us HOW we ought to be studying, but not what.