Cloning from a Religious Aspect / 02.02.2003
If we supposed that human cloning was achieved, knowing that it isn’t until now, how could we judge it with divine thinking since God rules over everything and nothing rules him? First, we say that not every technological achievement is permissible. For example, science discovered how to work on the nucleus but didn’t teach us to manufacture the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Man should stay away from destroying humanity. Ethics should supervise scientific development.
What does God, who taught us ethics, say about giving birth to children, which is believed to be the purpose of what was called reproductive cloning that happens through the encounter between an ovule and a nucleus taken from a cell? God says: I have made for you a way to reproduce and it is the encounter between man and woman. God says in the book of Genesis: “Male and female he created them”, and this came after him saying: “God created mankind in his own image and likeness”. This means that man is male and female united together or that man and woman complete each other in a common life which is marriage in which the fruits are children except in sterility cases. This common life results from love and in it love is created; this love that became the basis of a covenant or pledge between man and woman to enrich this love, to experiment cooperation and accept children and family growth.
In Christianity, God blesses this marriage and is present in it to refresh it. This divine presence that united the male and female is called a sacrament because it expresses a divine will that united both sides. The production of a child from a man and woman without having homogeneity and a complete encounter does not agree with the divine will. Why should we have a replacement for a thing that already exists? For a thing that is beloved in the hearts of couples and that is a source of joy that makes them closer to each other and gives them the motivation to raise and work hard for the family? Marriage as we know it – since the creation of man – is a big human project that civilization committed to and that brought saints. On the other side, cloning is unknown for us: We don’t know whether we will get a human with a straight mind and body. The sheep “Dolly” came with the same cells of her mother, i.e. the cells of a 7 year old. The danger lies if these results were repeated in human cloning.
The other terrible thing, in case people tasted this new method, is to detach sex from birth giving since sexual relation will not be necessary to give birth for your child. Then, cloning lovers will have sexual relations just for the relation itself, it will be isolated from its awaited fruits. This carries huge ethical destruction.
In addition to that, we have what they call “therapeutic cloning” where a cell or a group of cells is taken from a fetus in order to cure a patient. This is also an experiment that doesn’t have fixed results. And the ethical question here is whether it is allowed to manipulate the fetus or not? This experiment implies killing the fetus.
This takes us back to the issue of abortion. In our church, abortion is prohibited because it is killing. The fetus is a human getting ready to appear, and after a known point he will have complete organs. We don’t believe that he gets a soul after a specific period of growth, but that he has a soul from the moment of the encounter between what the man gives with what the woman gives.
Therapeutic cloning is a clear crime as reproductive cloning is. Both are against the system that the creator put to create humans. Life has its sanctity and should not be destroyed through abortion; it is also not allowed to bring life except through the partnership of man and women, i.e. through the result of love.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “الاستنساخ دينيا” –Raiati no5- 02.02.2003
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