Category: Humans

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Bioethics and Playing God

DNA Molecules
DNA Molecules (Illustration)

Over the past several months, the media has published dozens of articles about a new genetic technique of modifying DNA called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). This method can be used to edit the embryonic or reproductive cells of human beings, passing on genetic changes to future generations. It makes altering our DNA faster and easier. The media has emphasized the possible positive impact of this technique. The Week magazine (March 14, 2016) called it “genetic research nearing a breakthrough that could transform the world.” We know that many diseases are genetic in nature, including sickle-cell anemia, Huntington’s disease, muscular dystrophy, and some forms of cancer. The problem is that with some 20,000 genes involved and the fact that genes interact, the possible negative consequences of making permanent changes to human DNA are very high. This technique could potentially be used to alter the genomes of a child to suit parental preferences. The question is whether CRISPR will be used for therapy or enhancement or both. This bioethical question cannot be answered by science alone.

For almost 50 years, this ministry has tried to demonstrate how science enhances faith. At the same time, faith can answer questions that science cannot answer. The question of shaping the human body to suit our desires is an issue of science and faith because we are more than just a body. We were created in God’s image, but we are not God. Whether humans use CRISPR in a constructive way or in a potentially destructive way will be answered by the moral and religious belief systems of those who decide how this new technique will be used. An interesting article on this subject is in the March 2017, issue of Christianity Today, pages 49-51.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Mind as a Miraculous Healer

Mind as Healer
It is difficult to have discussions about the validity of Christianity without the question of miracles coming up. Some skeptics would flat-out deny that miracles happen today or that they have ever happened.

When you get into a discussion about biblical miracles, there is no physical way to verify what happened. You either accept that it happened by faith or you reject it the same way. Miracles that happen today are a different matter. The kind of miracles Jesus did don’t happen today. No one has verified that a person was raised from the dead. By the same token, there are numerous claims of healings by people that seem to be verified by family and/or friends.

A very useful article appeared in National Geographic (December 2016) titled “Mind over Matter.” The basic thrust of the article is that the brain can have chemical stimulation that is natural or artificial which can make a healing take place. Belief, even if it is false, can be a cause of healing. A Parkinson’s victim in a trial at Stanford was given what he believed was a surgery to alleviate Parkinson’s symptoms. The surgeons did nothing to him, but he believed they did and was “significantly improved.” His comment is “Whether it was placebo or some kind of a drug doesn’t matter to me.”

I have learned in my many years of talking to people about miracles they believe they were given, that it doesn’t do any good to try to discredit the miracle. The important questions are: “What was the cause of the miracle?” and “What we are going to do with the new life that has been given?” Healing can happen in many ways. Mental and spiritual parameters can make things happen that we might assume are of a supernatural nature, when they may be a product of the awesome way our minds, souls, and bodies were created by God.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Tool Use and Animals

Baboon with Primitive Tool
Baboon with Primitive Tool

There was a time when human beings were defined as those individuals who fashion and use tools. When researchers showed that chimps could fashion sticks to pull ants out of their anthills, paleontologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey was quoted as saying, “We are either going to have to change our definition of ‘human’ or invite the chimps to send a representative to the United Nations.”

Recently it has been shown that Orangutans, after watching humans use canoes, borrowed the canoes to forage for aquatic plants using the same techniques the humans had used. Octopuses have been seen carrying coconut shells around with them and then using the shells as a shelter. Crows have been seen fashioning sticks to use as levers to pry the lids off of bottles. Several kinds of monkeys have been seen to use conchoidally shaped chert or flint as a cutting tool. I have a raccoon that pulls my bird feeder up hand over hand, hooks it on a nail that is sticking out of the support my feeder hangs on and proceeds to empty the feeder.

Dr. Robert Shumaker of the Indianapolis Zoo has an interesting article about tool use by animals in the “Explore” section of National Geographic for March 2017. He gives 22 different animal groups all of which use tools in one way or another. Some animals, like the chimps, can imitate tool use. We all know that dogs can learn. At least some animals can think, but some clearly others cannot learn or think. Archerfish, capture insects by shooting streams of water from their mouths to knock insects off of plants near the water. They compensate for refraction, and they do this even if they have never been around another archerfish. It is clearly built into their DNA and is not learned or thought out.

What defines humans is our spiritual nature, not our ability to think or reason or make tools. We are created in the image of God, and that is what makes us human.
–John N. Clayton © 2017