Slashdot Mirror
Pope Denounces Some Biotech as Affront to 'Human Dignity'
eldavojohn writes "Today in a speech the pope denounced human cloning, embryonic stem cell research and artificial insemination, citing them as a violation of 'human dignity.' That said, the pope did 'appreciate and encourage' research on stem cells from non-embryonic cells in the human body. The pope encouraged the Vatican to be a leading voice in the philosophy and discussion of bioethics. 'Church teaching certainly cannot and must not weigh in on every novelty of science, but it has the task to reiterate the great values which are on the line and to propose to faithful and all men of good will ethical-moral principles and direction for new, important questions,' Benedict said."
Catholics who can't conceive are gonna be pissed too. Though I thought nowadays it was acceptable to simply ignore the pope when he makes an ass out of himself.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lets try a thought experiment: pretent that the Dalai Lama had spoken the Pope's words. Are those words more or less palatible based on who says them?
You don't even need to be religious to see that the commodization of human life, to say nothing of unfettered transhumanism, are not, on their face, good things. Call me a pesimist, but I'm more with Bill Joy than Ray Kurzweil.
A final thought: if there was the slightest chance that, by a snap of the fingers, I could remove all the harm to others attributed to the Roman Catholic Church, I'd do it - and I'm Catholic. Unfortunately, none of the evils attributed to Catholicism in particular or religion in general would disappear. So the cause must be elsewhere.
The "dignity of man" referenced by the Catholic Pope, regardless of modern religion, is the basis of the enlightenment and of all modern secular humanist societies and of the concept of human rights. Once the concept of innate human dignity is gone, you end up with societies where human beings are nothing more than raw material for the State machine. As the concept fades you see inhumane state practices appear such as denying health care to the obese in the UK or mandatory abortions in China. The needs of people can be ignored when they become inconvenient or expensive to the state if there is no innate dignity of man.
Sounds exactly like religion to me!
Look, I don't even recognize the papacy; but the silly attacks on this Pope on Slashdot have got to stop. You aren't even using logic and reasoning in your arguments. You just made two disjointed statements. The fact that the Pope belives in God (obviously) does not imply that he thinks we should abandon Science and Technology. In fact he never attacked anything regarding science. He just made his and the Catholic Churches opinion about the moral-ethical debate surrounding certain research and procedures known. There is nothing wrong with that. Religious people are not the only people who see an ethical dilemna within certain research and procedures. Do you mean to imply that all research is acceptable including research on unwilling medical subjects?
If you disagree, I challenge you to mention anything evil John Paul II has done, because he lectured A LOT about human dignity.
One evil thing that Pope John Paul II did -- he actively discouraged condom use in countries with almost pandemic levels of AIDS. Yes, he also discouraged premarital sex, but people are more easily convinced to avoid condoms than to avoid sex. I'm sure all of those sick and dieing people felt a lot more dignified than they would have if they'd used condoms -- after all, buying condoms can be kind of awkward.