Psych Prof Advocates Human/Chimp Hybrids – But only to Offend Christians

Lifesite ^ | July 28, 2006 | Hilary White

[NYer]

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an op ed piece in the LA Times, David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that reproductive facilities should work towards creating a race of human/chimpanzee hybrids, but, he admits, only because it would offend Christians.
 
Some geneticists have postulated that their distant evolutionary ancestors may have interbred with those of chimps, and Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee, or indeed, between a human being and a sea sponge.
 
The psychology professor looks forward to the day when IVF facilities will create human/animal hybrids. He reveals, however, that his motivation is not a pure interest in advancing science, but his hatred for “know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” and “religious fundamentalists,” who hold human life to be sacred.
 
Barash says he advocates interbreeding humans with animals not because it would be a good idea in itself, but because it would offend believers. “In these dark days of know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” he writes, “with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools, a powerful dose of biological reality would be healthy indeed.”
 
Barash says that creating animal/human hybrids would effectively quash the belief that “the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature.”
 
“Should geneticists and developmental biologists succeed once again in joining human and nonhuman animals in a viable organism,” Barash writes, “it would be difficult and perhaps impossible for the special pleaders to maintain the fallacy that Homo sapiens is uniquely disconnected from the rest of life.”
 
One of the ideological offshoots of Darwinsim is radical environmentalism, advocates of which hold that human beings are a kind of virus threatening the earth’s ecosystems. According to the pure materialist philosophy, the environmental threat is directly the fault of “a bogus ‘faith based’ worldview,” the “Judeo-Christian proclamation of radical discontinuity between people and the rest of ‘creation.’”
 
Such shrill anti-religious polemics are increasingly being challenged from within the scientific community as bigotry, however, and recent revelations have indicated that Barash’s pure Darwinian faith may be going the way of the dodo.
 
In a new book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, asks scientific skeptics to approach religious belief God with a more open mind. Collins is among a growing movement in the science world that asserts there is no necessary rift between real science and religious belief.
 
Collins is far from the stereotype religious “know-nothing” presented by anti-religious Darwinists. One of the world’s leading geneticists, he led the international Human Genome Project that mapped the 3.1 billion chemical base pairs in humanity's DNA. He now runs the government research foundation guiding work in the medical applications of this historic international project.
 
Collins attributed his rejection of the atheistic position to the writings of Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, the early 20th century English professor known and loved around the world for his ironclad logic in explaining Christian doctrines and debunking modern liberal atheism.
 
At a conference sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Foundation, Collins said, “For a scientist, it's uncomfortable to admit there are questions that your scientific method isn't going to be able to address.”
 
Collins refutes the Darwinists’ out-of-hand rejection of religion. An article in the Washington Post quotes him saying scientists are “not supposed to decide something is true until [they’ve] looked at the data. And yet I had become an atheist without ever looking at the evidence whether God exists or not."
 
Collins decries both the anti-religious materialists who dominate his profession, and the Christian reaction that, he says, attempts to ignore hard scientific evidence. Both approaches, he said, are “profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary.”
 

[trisham]

Barash says that creating animal/human hybrids would effectively quash the belief that “the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature.”

************

Behold the face of evil.

[Clintonfatigued]

This is absolutely revolting.

[trisham]

Barash says that creating animal/human hybrids would effectively quash the belief that “the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature.”

************

Behold the face of evil.

[RegulatorCountry]

"I've heard it said that monkeys,both in the wild and in captivity,enjoy throwing excreta."

I did a marketing internship at a science center that had a zoo as well, and having witnessed it firsthand, many times, I'll agree that they certainly do enjoy flinging their own excrement.

[Junior]

A "Here we go again" ping.

[RegulatorCountry]

"At *people?*"

Yes, and with gusto. Particularly toward the people who clean their cages.

[dalereed]

"So what are we supposed to do with the hybrids after they complete their task of offending Christians? Not much use for them as I can tell."

Replace all the illegals that the farmers keep crying that they need.

For the row crops they would be close to the ground, long arms, wouldn't have to pay them, just house them and feed them.

[HairOfTheDog]

What do you expect.... he's a psych professor. He likes to wind people up and watch them go... He's pretty good at it too :~)

[william clark]

Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee, or indeed, between a human being and a sea sponge.

Then, logically, if someone were to catch Barash in a dark alley and dismember him, there would be no moral argument against doing so.

[RFC_Gal]

Cloning is just plain wrong. For whatever purposes. All plant and animal cloning or just cloning of humans?

[texpat72]

Post of the day!

[ExTexasRedhead]

This dumbass professor is teaching the next generation making them dumbasses also known as Liberals.

[Vaquero]

We were created to have a relationship with the creator. Chimps were not created for that purpose.

Yes you can believe that if you like. Its a free country.

[markomalley]

All plant and animal cloning or just cloning of humans?

Should have been more specific...sorry.

The moral objections come to the cloning of humans. Having said that, I would have grave concerns on a moral basis regarding the cloning multiple species together. I think a person is playing with fire when he does that.

Gen 1:21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Gen 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."

Gen 1:23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Gen 1:24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. Gen 1:25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Mixing the genes from multiple species of organisms just doesn't sound like "according to its kind." Genetic engineering and cloning of plants has, so far, worked out very well. But, at the same time, I think we're playing with fire and need to be exceedingly careful so to not be burned.

But back to your original question, the blanket statement frankly is in regards to humans.

[orionblamblam]

Read the post in context.

[orionblamblam]

> Mixing the genes from multiple species of organisms just doesn't sound like "according to its kind."

Then it'd be a "new kind," and your objection would be moot.

[Quark2005]

Collins decries both the anti-religious materialists who dominate his profession, and the Christian reaction that, he says, attempts to ignore hard scientific evidence. Both approaches, he said, are “profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary.

Well stated. We see too much of both of these extremes.

[Beckwith]

Wouldn't you just know.

[thoughtomator]

That would be a significant improvement over, say, Chuck Schumer.