Posted on 02/11/2003 1:43:02 PM PST by Remedy
On February 5th the issue of cloning heated up. ...
The controversy of life's sanctity versus its utility was starkly illustrated on Wednesday this week, when Christian leaders who oppose cloning met in Washington, D.C., to sign The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World: A Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity. Later that day, at a separate press conference, U.S. senators announced legislation that would allow cloning of human embryos only to extract their stem cells, and not to allow them to develop until birth.
CWA President Sandy Rios, along with Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Joni Eareckson Tada of Joni and Friends, and others, signed the Manifesto, a document that outlines a basic moral framework for decision-making in the emerging field of bioethics.
On behalf of the leaders present, Joni Earekson Tada signed the Manifesto. A quadriplegic for 35 years, she has spoken eloquently against the sacrifice of embryos even for research that could potentially restore her ability to walk.
"We know that Congress has the duty and we believe Congress has the will to regulate biotechnology ... ," Rios said. "We desperately need a moral compass to direct our exploration of biotechnology."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), a sponsor of legislation that outlaws all forms of cloning, also spoke. "If we allow a human cloning system to move forward, we're creating a person ... ," he said, according to Cybercast News Service (CNS). "Cloning is cloning is cloning."
At the pro-cloning news conference, Dr. David Baltimore, the 1975 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for his cancer research, spoke against Brownback's legislation, which would ban all cloning. On the other hand, Baltimore said he did not support reproductive cloning, which would allow cloned embryos to develop into newborns and be born, because of the increased risk of abnormalities.
"We don't want to bring more defective people into the world," said Baltimore, according to CNS, a statement that reportedly drew audible gasps from the audience.
The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World A Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity "Our children are creations, not commodities." "If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after are the patients of that power," slaves to the "dead hand of the great planners and conditioners."
We therefore seek as an urgent first step a comprehensive ban on all human cloning and inheritable genetic modification. This is imperative to prevent the birth of a generation of malformed humans (animal cloning has led to grotesque failures), and establish vast experimental embryo farms with millions of cloned humans.
We emphasize: All human cloning must be banned. There are those who argue that cloning can be sanctioned for medical experimentation-so-called "therapeutic" purposes. No matter what promise this might hold-all of which we note is speculative-it is morally offensive since it involves creating, killing, and harvesting one human being in the service of others. No civilized state could countenance such a practice. Moreover, if cloning for experiments is allowed, how could we ensure that a cloned embryo would not be implanted in a womb? The Department of Justice has testified that such a law would be unenforceable.
We also seek legislation to prohibit discrimination based on genetic information, which is private to the individual. We seek a wide-ranging review of the patent law to protect human dignity from the commercial use of human genes, cells, and other tissue. We believe that such public policy initiatives will help ensure the progress of ethical biotechnology while protecting the sanctity of human life.
We welcome all medical and scientific research as long as it is firmly tethered to moral truth. History teaches that whenever the two have been separated, the consequence is disaster and great suffering for humanity.
(Signed)
Carl Anderson
Supreme Knight
Knights of Columbus
Robert H. Bork
Senior Fellow
The American Enterprise Institute
Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D.
Founding Editor, Ethics and Medicine
Dean, Wilberforce Forum
Director, Council for Biotechnology Policy
Dr. Ben Carson
Neurosurgeon
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dept. of Neurosurgery
Charles W. Colson
Chairman
The Wilberforce Forum, Prison Fellowship Ministries
Ken Connor
President
Family Research Council
Paige Comstock Cunningham, J.D.
Board Chair and former President
Americans United for Life
Dr. James Dobson
Focus on the Family
Dr. Maxie D. Dunnam
Asbury Theological Seminary
C. Christopher Hook, M.D.
Mayo Clinic
Deal W. Hudson
Editor and Publisher
CRISIS magazine
Dr. Henk Jochemsen
Director
Lindeboom Institute
Dr. D. James Kennedy
Senior Pastor
Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
C. Everett Koop, M.D., Sc.D.
C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth
Former U.S. Surgeon General
Bill Kristol
Chairman, Project for The New American Century
Editor, The Weekly Standard
Jennifer Lahl
Executive Director
The Center for Bioethics and Culture
Dr. Richard D. Land
President
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
of the Southern Baptist Convention
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell
Trinity International University
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
President
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Fr. Richard Neuhaus
Institute for Religion and Public Life
David Prentice, Ph.D.
Professor, Life Sciences
Indiana State University
Sandy Rios
President
Concerned Women for America
Dr. William Saunders
Senior Fellow & Director, Center for Human Life & Bioethics
Family Research Council
Joni Eareckson Tada
President
Joni and Friends
Paul Weyrich
Chairman and CEO
The Free Congress Foundation
Ravi Zacharias
President
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
Biotech Manifesto Signature Form
If you agree with this statement, click here to join with Chuck Colson, James Dobson, Joni Eareckson Tada, Dr. Richard Land, and the other signatories listed above in signing on to the Biotech Manifesto.
One of the great hallmarks of American law has been its solicitous protection of the lives of individuals, especially the vulnerable. ...–one of the great achievements of the modern world–is founded on the conviction that when the dignity of one human being is assaulted, all of us are threatened.
Current law against funding research in which human embryos are harmed and destroyed reflects well-established national and international legal and ethical norms against the misuse of any human being for research purposes. Since 1975, those norms have been applied to unborn children at every stage of development in the womb, and since 1995 they have been applied to the human embryo outside the womb as well. The existing law on human embryonic research is a reflection of universally accepted principles governing experiments on human subjects–principles reflected in the Nuremberg Code, the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and many other statements. Accordingly, members of the human species who cannot give informed consent for research should not be the subjects of an experiment unless they personally may benefit from it or the experiment carries no significant risk of harming them.
...the Supreme Court has never prevented the government from protecting prenatal life outside the abortion context, and public sentiment also seems even more opposed to government funding of embryo experimentation than to the funding of abortion. The laws of a number of states–including Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah–specifically protect embryonic human beings outside the womb. Most of these provisions prohibit experiments on embryos outside the womb.
Human Embryo Research After the Genome …The Orwellian terms "pre-embryo" and "potential human being" no longer have any scientific validity.
The genome is simply the sum of hereditary information for the species. Written in the molecular language of DNA and organized into genes, the genome encodes all the instructions the organism needs to synthesize cellular building blocks and develop from an embryo into a unique, mature individual with a beating heart, sensitive fingers, and a brain that even in toddlers vastly outclasses the most advanced computers. Although microscopic in size, the human genome is enormous in its information content. Its 3.1 billion nucleotide base pairs are arranged along a double helical strand of DNA that, if removed from a single cell and stretched out, would measure more than five feet long, but only 50 trillionths of an inch in thickness.iii If written out as a book, the human genome would take up the equivalent of 200 volumes the size of a Manhattan telephone book at 1000 pages each. It would take 19 years to read aloud without stopping, at 5 bases per second, the entire sequence of the genome within the nucleus of the human embryo.vv
…If the embryo were not so busy, he or she might take a moment to wink at the thousand scientists who labored for 15 years to sequence the complete human genome. Hailed as "a massive project on a scale unparalleled in the history of biology,"ii and at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, the Human Genome Project has yielded a staggering volume of data. The only problem is that science knows how to read only a small portion of the genome. The underrated human embryo can read it all.
Studying adult stem cells, it is very likely that scientists will discover how to 'back up' differentiated stem cells to less differentiated pluripotent cells, then bring the cells forward again growing specific tissues and organs. The creation and killing of embryos, for their body parts--their stem cells--is being pushed because it is deemed by the devious scientists as 'easier' to reach the goal of controlled cellular differentiation. Such scientists care not one whit for whether the embryo is an individual human being at a natural age along a lifetime continuum begun at conception; they would use any age for their tissue sources if allowed. But they will dissemble to the uneducated public, claiming all manner of hollow reasons why the embryo should not be thought of as an individual human life ... simply because they want to kill and harvest from those individual human lives. To allow such by our tacit acceptance (the way we've allowed 42,000,000 individual human lives to be slaughtered on the altar of convenience and expedience along the highway which leads from in vitro fertilization to partial birth infanticide) of individual life created for harvesting purposes (therapeutic cloning) will be the final slide into CANNIBALISM. What a wonder modern man has become, eh? Cannibalizing from the youngest individual humans to serve the older, larger individual humans. Disgusting. And astonishing that so many Americans are in favor of this final degeneration into cannibalism.
Some abortion advocates are willing to concede that unborn children are human beings. Surprisingly enough, they claim that they would still be able to justify abortion. According to their argument, no person-no unborn child-has a right to access the bodily resources of an unwilling host. Unborn children may have a right to life, but that right to life ends where it encroaches upon a mother's right to bodily autonomy. The argument is called the bodyright argument, and it is refuted in the following essays...
Why would it be wrong to kill an adult? Why would it be wrong to kill a baby after it has been born? Questions like these seems trivial, but their answers are extremely important to the abortion debate. What many people fail to realize is that most of the arguments used to justify killing unborn children could be used with just as much force to justify killing newborn children and, in some cases, even full-grown adults. The wrongness of killing is discussed in the following essays...
While it is commonly assumed that the moral atrocities associated with the Holocaust were the exclusive domain of Adolf Hitler and his loyal henchmen Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer, this was only the final act, as it were, of a narrative whose beginnings are traceable to the turn of the century. Indeed it would appear, as authors as diverse as Alexander Mitscherlich, Robert Jay Lifton, Michael Burleigh, and Wesley Smith have documented, that the path to medical evil was prepared "long before Nazism was even a cloud on the German horizon." One of the tragic legacies of social Darwinism, rooted in the presupposition of biological determinism, is that it assisted in giving justification--frequently couched in the language of "compassion"--to the elimination of lebensunwertes Leben, life that is unworthy of living, or, in the language of Darwinists, life that is simply unfit.
In addition to the ascendancy of biological determinism, an important step in legitimizing the killing of the weak, the infirm, the terminally ill, and the incompetent was the shift in ethos among medical doctors and psychiatrists several decades prior to WWII. Historian Robert Proctor has argued persuasively that the Nazi experiment was rooted in pre-1933 thinking about the essence of personhood, racial hygienics and survival economics and that physicians were instrumental both in pioneering research and in carrying out this program. In fact, Proctor is adamant that scientists and physicians were pioneers and not pawns in this process. By 1933, however, when political power was consolidated by National Socialists, resistance within the medical community was too late. Proctor notes, for example, that most of the fifteen-odd journals devoted to racial hygienics were established long before the rise of National Socialism.
Few accounts of this period are more thoroughly researched than Michael Burleigh’s Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany ca. 1900-1945. Particularly important is Burleigh’s discussion of psychiatric reform and medical utilitarianism during the Weimar period. During the years of WWI, it is estimated that over 140,000 people died in German psychiatric asylums . This would suggest that about 30% of the entire pre-war asylum population died as a result of hunger, disease or neglect. Following the war, evidence indicates that a shift in the moral climate had begun. In the Spring of 1920, the chairman of the German Psychiatric Association, Karl Bonhoeffer, testified before Association members at the GPA annual meeting that "we have witnessed a change in the concept of humanity"; moreover, in emphasizing the right of the healthy to stay alive, which is an inevitable result of periods of necessity, there is also a danger of going too far: a danger that the self-sacrificing subordination of the strong to the needs of the helpless and ill, which lies at the heart of any true concern for the sick, will give ground to the demand of the healthy to live.
According to Burleigh, Bonhoeffer went on in the 1930s to offer courses that trained those who in time would be authorized with implementing sterilization policies introduced by the National Socialists.
Already in the 1890s, the traditional view of medicine that physicians are not to harm but to cure was being questioned in some corners by a "right-to-die" ethos. Voluntary euthanasia was supported by a concept of negative human worth -- i.e., the combined notion that suffering negates human worth and the incurably ill and mentally defective place an enormous burden on families and surrounding communities. It is at this time that the expression "life unworthy of being lived" seems to have emerged and was the subject of heated debate by the time WWI had ended.
One notable "early" proponent of involuntary euthanasia was influential biologist and Darwinian social theorist Ernst Haeckel. In 1899 Haeckel published The Riddle of the Universe, which became one of the most widely read science books of the era. One of several influential voices contending for the utility of euthanasia, Haeckel combined the notion of euthanasia as an act of mercy with economic concerns that considerable money might thereby be saved.
Further justification for euthanasia in the pre-WWI era was provided by people such as social theorist Adolf Jost and Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. According to Ostwald, "in all circumstances suffering represents a restriction upon, and diminution of, the individual and capacity to perform in society of the person suffering." In his 1895 book Das Recht auf den Tod ("The Right to Death"), Jost set forth the argument–-an argument almost forty years in advance of Nazi prescriptions–-that the "right" to kill existed in the context of the higher rights possessed by the state, since all individuals belong to the social organism of the state. Furthermore, this was couched in terms of "compassion" and "relief" from one’s suffering. Finally, the right to kill compassionately was predicated on biology, in accordance with the spirit of the age: the state must ensure that the social organism remains fit and healthy.
Andrew C. Ivy, M.D., asked in 1946 by the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association to serve as a consultant at the Nuremberg trial of Nazi physicians who had been indicted for "crimes against humanity," reflected on his difficult experience with the following observation:
It was inconceivable that a group of men trained in medicine and in official positions of power in German governmental circles could ignore the ethical principles of medicine and the unwritten law that a doctor should be nearer humanity than other men… [W]e had assumed that the sacred aspects of medicine and its ethics would certainly remain inviolate.
Although, according to Ivy, "fewer than two hundred German physicians participated directly in the medical war crimes," it became clear to Ivy that these atrocities were only "the end result" of the "complete encroachment on the ethics and freedom of medicine" by those in positions of influence.
From the early years, leading Nazis openly attacked Christianity. Joseph Goebbels declared that "Christianity has infused our erotic attitudes with dishonesty" (Taylor:20). It is in this campaign against Judeo- Christian morality that we find the reason for the German people's acceptance of Nazism's most extreme atrocities. Their religious foundations had been systematically eroded over a period of decades by powerful social forces. By the time the Nazis came to power, German culture was spiritually bankrupt. Too often, historians have largely ignored the spiritual element of Nazi history; but if we look closely at Hitler's campaign of extermination of the Jews, it becomes clear that his ostensive racial motive obscures a deeper and more primal hatred of the Jews as the "People of God."
"Why do you say 'No" to historical-critical theology?" I have been confronted with this question, and I wish to state at the outset: My "No!" to historical-critical theology stems from my "Yes!" to my wonderful Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and to the glorious redemption he accomplished for me on Golgotha.
As a student of Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs, as well as Friedrich Gogarten and Gerhard Ebeling, I had the best professors which historical-critical theology could offer to me. And I did not do too badly in other respects, either. My first book turned out to be a best-seller. I became professor of theology and religious education at Braunschweig Technical University, West Germany. Upon completing the rigorous requirements for a university lectureship,[1] I was awarded the title of honorary professor of New Testament in the theology faculty of Philipps University, Marburg, West Germany. I was inducted into the Society for New Testament Studies. I had the satisfaction of an increasing degree of recognition from my colleagues.
Today I realize that historical-critical theology's monopolistic character and world-wide influence is a sign of God's judgment (Rom. 1:18-32). God predicted this in his Word: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Tim. 4:3). He also promised to send "a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie" (2 Thess. 2:11). God is not dead, nor has he resigned. He reigns, and he is already executing judgment on those who declare him dead or assert that he is a false god who does nothing, either good or evil.
About a month after this, alone in my room and quite apart from any input from others around me, I found myself faced with a momentous decision. Would I continue to control the Bible by my intellect, or would I allow my thinking to be transformed by the Holy Spirit? John 3:16 shed light on this decision, for I had recently experienced the truth of this verse. My life now consisted of what God had done for me and for the whole world--he had given his dear Son. I could no longer brush this verse aside as the nonbinding, meaningless theological assertion of a more-or-less gnostic writer.[3] Faith can rest on God's binding promise; speculative theological principles are of merely academic interest.
That is why I say "No!" to historical-critical theology. I regard everything that I taught and wrote before I entrusted my life to Jesus as refuse. I wish to use this opportunity to mention that I pitched my two books Gleichnisse Jesu . . . [4] and Studien zur Passionsgeschichte, along with my contributions to journals, anthologies, and Festschriften.[5] Whatever of these writings I had in my possession I threw into the trash with my own hands in 1978. I ask you sincerely to do the same thing with any of them you may have on your own bookshelf.
Amazon.com: Books: The Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical ... This is one of the best analysis of Higher Biblical Criticism available. Two evangelical Biblical scholars (Thomas & Farnell) tackle this issues quite ably. They begin by discussing the roots of Higher Biblical Criticism and the trends it has undergone up to the present day. Moreover, the authors do in fact cover B. Spinoza's influence on the overall issue, something that many books of this kind neglect (Spinoza could be considered one of the "father's" of Higher Criticism). Furthermore, the authors deal with the philosophical rub of higher criticism (i.e. philosophical hermeneutics) as well as the areas of source criticism and redaction criticism. Another positive aspect of the book is the fact that these authors discuss the well known Biblical scholar Eta Linnemann (former student of Rudolf Bultmann - I had the privilege of hearing her speak on these very issues). Linnemann has some of the strongest refutations of Higher Biblical Criticism still in print today. Lastly, these authors discuss the inroads of higher criticism into evangelical circles and the dangers and problems that it causes in the areas of apologetics, the gospel, preaching, and especially hermeneutics. While the topics at hand can be somewhat difficult, these authors have brought the issues back down to earth and written in such a way that a wide ranged audience will be able to enjoy the contents. This is a definitive work in this area, and a must read for evangelicals (and/or other Biblical conservatives) who find men like J. Crossan, M. Borg, R. Funk (the current adherents to many of the issues of Higher Biblical Criticism) and others intimidating. I highly recommend this book.
Biblical Criticism on Trial: How Scientific Is "Scientific Theology"?
Table of Contents
1. The Lost Gospel of Q: Fact or Fantasy?
2. Another Look at the Synoptic Problem
3. Pauline Authorship and Vocabulary
4. "Inauthentic" New Testament Writings: Scientific Findings or a Witch Trial?
5. The Quantitative Structure of the New Testament Vocabulary
About the Author
Eta Linnemann taught New Testament at Philipps University, Marburg, West Germany until her personal spiritual crisis and conversion. Later she became a missionary teacher of native pastors at a Bible institute in Batu, Indonesia. She lectures on historical-critical theology throughout Europe and North America.
Robert Yarbrough has translated a number of German works of special interest for English-speaking evangelicals. He has taught at Wheaton College and Covenant Theological Seminary and is now on the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Theologians Under Hitler The figure of Adolf Hitler stands alone in modern history as a symbol of evil. In hindsight, the evils of Nazi Germany are obvious. But what led many good, intelligent people to follow National Socialism and serve as its apologists? And how could three of Germany's greatest Protestant theologians: Paul Althaus, Gerhard Kittel, and Emanuel Hirsch, support Hitler?
This documentary will explore the paradox of three great theologians- whose work still stands today- who supported Hitler during the Nazi era. It will examine difficult questions about the Church's ability to recognize evil, both yesterday and today, and will contrast these issues with Christian figures, such as Bonhoeffer and Niemoller, who did indeed stand against evil.
The producers are working with Robert P. Ericksen, author of "Theologians Under Hitler (1985 Yale University Press)," the definitive work on this subject, and will be seeking out and interviewing students, friends, and family members of the subjects of this documentary.
This program is currently planned to fit the PBS guidelines for a one-hour documentary. We plan to produce this program in high-definition video.
Humanity’s rapid technology growth coupled with its rejection of basic morality in favor of utilitarianism will soon reach a new depth. I pray and hope that I am wrong but (imho) the Pandora’s box is now open and those with the “moral authority” have neither the will nor spine to attempt to close it. While it is a good document, it is tantamount to handing someone Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation when they already have one foot off the cliff. Too little MUCH too late.
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