🚀 go-pugleaf

g92m2571@hippo.ru.ac.za (John A. McKane) writes:



>Research Essay Questionnaire.


I, like the other respondent, had the idea that this so-called
"research" was badly conceived.   

Someone whose name escapes me said something like 
 "The keys to heaven are the same keys that open the gates to hell."

There is no morality or ethics involved in knowledge.  Once upon
a time the religious leaders taught that irrational numbers (those
that cannot be written in the form x/y) were somehow evil, and 
some cynics have attributed the downfall of the Greek empire to
the discovery of the irrationality of pi. (pi is an intrinsic
part of the relationship between the radius and area of a
circle, and both these notions were held to be "pure".  That 
the pure circle inherently contained this "evil" component 
struck quite deeply into their cultural roots.)  (This is not
*real* history, of course, so take it with a pinch of salt!)

Understanding predisposition and development of diseases and their
genetic indicators has no morality attached to it.   If we accept
that a fundamental goal of life is to survive, then I'm sure most
thinking people would like to know what kind of state they are
in and how to go about fixing or avoiding future diseases.

Don't confuse "use of science" with "science".  Of course the
way you use things may be acceptable or not, but then those
same keys... 

The rest of the survey seems like mumbo-jumbo: you
don't define what you mean by a clone, so the questions
does not have any meaning at all for me.  In fact, I
can't think of any evidence that we are not clones. 
(Does "In His Image" fall into your definition of cloning?)

As to the bit about asking respondents to second-guess 
"God's will" on this issue, that is really asking a bit much.
Do the theology students presume that they are able to 
determine God's will?

Peter

--
EP Wentworth - Dept. of Comp. Sci. - Rhodes University - Grahamstown - RSA.
cspw@cs.ru.ac.za  		          ANSI-standard disclaimer, etc....