Religion and Science are not opposites
on
Planet Gattaca
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· Score: 1
Ok, before I go with this, I'm going to state for the record that, while I have studied a lot of religions and religious mythos, I am neither Christian, Wiccan, nor any of the ramifications thereof (satan worship, neo-anything, etc). I speak for myself and only myself, and everything in this post is my own damn opinion - if you don't like it, reply with intelligence or ignore it, as you choose.
Religion usually involves one or more gods or goddesses, embodiments of whatever qualities we most want to see in ourselves. If you worship a god you can't identify with, chances are your religion isn't the right one for you. We generally want to be _more_ like our gods, not less. This is why Christianity and Wicca and things like that are just not for me - their gods don't agree with my stomach. So, in any 'religious' debate, the only thing we would wind up debating is personal opinions of the SOCIAL ramifications of genetic engineering.
From a scientific viewpoint, it's an amazing discovery. The ideas it brings up - the ability to cure cancer, the ability to FIX MY DAMN EYESIGHT so I can see things farther than a foot away! To be able to get rid of arthritis, saving so many people from pain they've simply had to learn to live with every day. These things would be amazing.
Not all of them are worth it, however. For example, we already have tests for pregnant women for some genetic problems. There is a blood test which is given (optional, you can refuse it, which I did) to pregnant women, which can detect spina biffida and a few other birth defects which can be seriously problematic. However, this test checks ONLY for the _gene_ for it. It can't tell you whether the baby actually has any problems. You have to wait to find that out, either through amniocentesis (you Do NOT want to know) or through the sonogram (ultrasound) later on. The tests also can't help you actually do anything about it. For some children, something can be done post birth, but nothing in the prenatal stages. So, what's the point of this test? Frankly, the only reason I can find for it is so that mothers who wouldn't want the baby if it was potentially 'defective' could have an abortion. Stupid test, it doesn't help anything, and it's just one more reason to poke you with their damn needles. 'But it's scientific!' they yell - too bad science hasn't solved everything yet.
Debating it all from a social standpoint, we have to sit back and take a hard look at human nature, without the padding of our optimism - or pessimism.
If this sort of genetic mapping and creation of life becomes available (and it _will_, science can't be stopped even if you don't like what they're doing - if we don't, someone else will, and humans LIKE to be first to do something (witness the stupid First Posts). It's an Alpha thing.:P), people will use it. Some of them will be good people, who will use it to cure cancer. Others will not, and will use it to discriminate against - or to eliminate - entire races or groups of people. We will almost without doubt begin to see 'genetic diseases' (ohhh, what did I say about disease being the end of the world?). We will also likely see genetic cures for those diseases. However, since cures always come slower than diseases, we'll likely wind up in some insane scramble to repair the genetic damage before our species gets wiped out - or mutated to extinction.
Genetic research is both a good and a bad thing. I don't want to have to submit my hair to get in to work in the morning, but I also don't want to see my children die of cancer. Perhaps this sort of mapping and altering could have changed my cousin's life. She had a heart defect. She was supposed to die by the time she was four or five. She lived until she was a few weeks short of 21. If they had only been able to correct the gene that gave her that defect, she could have lived to a ripe old age.
On the other hand, many of our greatests artists of all mediums - words, pictures, math - have been VASTLY mentally ill. Are we, then, to genetically remove all of the artistic talent from our species? Where does our artistic talent come from? Which gene represents that? Is it the same one that causes alcoholism and drug addiction and depression? How do we know?
And when we do know, what should - or shouldn't - we do about it?
I don't know anyone who can answer those questions in a satisfactory manner for anyone but himself.
Ok, first off, setting water and food aside is a good idea no matter where or when you are living. I come from a weird family (ok, flat-out dysfunctional, they're all freaks). But the one thing my mother has tons of is common sense. She has always had a deep freezer, and a back room full of cans. We ate this food - you don't want to keep cans for more than a year or so, so we cycled through them. But they always kept that room etc. full. We had enough food back there to keep us for a good three or four months, just in case. We also had a week's worth of water, which she changed frequently so as to keep it fresh. We lived in a rural area.
What did this mean, practically? A lot of work for mom - but when hurricane Diana hit and laid waste to our neighbors' places (we were on a hill, and what neighbors were around in that rural area lived in houses like ours, 200 years old), we were ok. We didn't need the ability to get to the garden or the store, we had enough water, etc. When we had a massive blizzard and were stuck in the house for a week and a half, the only problems we had involved keeping four hyper, annoying, ADD-affected monsters from destroying everything.
Keeping stores is always a good idea (but it does take work and space, and I'm lazy and live in an apartment so I'm not ready for _anything_ right now).
Also, this thing about the sewage and water treatment systems: I have been under the impression that the number of backup systems is downright funny for that sort of thing. Human labor did it at first, without computers, and they never removed the ability for human labor to do it still. So maybe our water bills will be a bit higher (ok, the water bills of those of you who own houses:P ).
There's going to be a run on bottled water and canned food anyway, due to the mass hysteria that this date-change has caused in the US. I think I'm more afraid of the crowds in the stores than I am of this sort of thing.
Besides, the 'end of the world' is going to happen via diseases anyway. Now that I have nightmares about - Plague Patrols going on witchhunts, killing anyone who has even bad acne in an effort to keep diseases under control, buildings falling down due to lack of maintenance, people fighting over food because they don't know how to hunt - or don't want to eat diseased rats and pigeons... *shudder* (but that's not based on date anyway, it's based on how-long-humans-keep-fighting).
((Yes, the IMF may have effectively removed Suharto with their demands -- but how often have other governments done similar things? ))
This makes no sense to me. In many cases I agree with what you are saying, but this is NOT a reason to do things. How often have governments practiced - or attempted to practice - genocide based on race? Is that any reason for us to tolerate it being done by our government, if it were (it was, now they just repress the natives instead of killing them, but it's still no excuse). This is not an argument that is worth opening your statement with, as I feel you have a few good points, and this argument undermines them.
I don't think we are seeing the start of an alternate government so much as a larger, broader one. World government. Whether it's bound by corporate agreements (is anyone else seeing shades of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk here?), or by various smaller (national) governments, it's the idea of one government over all the world. Corrupted, maybe, but a single one.
Every government is corrupt, by the way, it's the political nature of the human being. But we still need them. Anarchy may not be corrupt in that sense, but it's definitely not preferable - I have no desire to become the forced wife of some random gorilla just because he's bigger and stronger than my chosen, or because his gang is bigger and stronger. As a result, I feel violence should be a last resort. Revolution is necessary only when you have tried _everything_ else, and _nothing_ has even seemed like it might someday work. Because you never know, what you wind up with after the revolution might be worse than what you have now - the only way to assure that it won't be is to be sure that it _can't_ get any worse than it is now. Until then, the best option is to try to work within the system, even if you don't think it will work as fast as you want it to.
So, if you don't like the way the laws go, try to change them. Start letter-writing campaigns. Find people who have relevant lawsuits going on, and help them work on it. Push your local grassroots organizations and civil liberties groups (PIRG and the ACLU come to mind, along with a handful of others) to take these things on as 'issues'. Bring it to the largest group of people you possibly can - because popular opinion _does_ affect law, whether you like it or not.
I wouldn't recommend just ignoring the laws, even if the penalty is minor. Keep in mind that if putting whatever it is into law is gotten away with the first time, it could get worse. Unless there's an outcry, noone will know how wrong it is until it's too late. So, even if you don't get penalized heavily for, say, having a porn website that some idiot parents got pissed at having their kid see, you could get penalized the next time, and perhaps it will eventually even become illegal to _have_ that website. Snowballs have a good chance in legislative places, despite the similarities between politics and That Other Christian Place.
Not to mention that you would have all of the inherent problems with real infrared vision. This thing, it would seem, ignores engine heat from your car, environmental heat from whatever you happen to be near, including the _road_ (in high-heat areas or in summer, that asphalt gets pretty hot), and various other things that would serve as distractions and/or blinding lights in an infrared-only vision toy. How it knows what to ignore I don't know. Then again, looking at it on Cadillac's site, I'm not surprised it looks so good, we're dealing with a BIG corp here, folks! Marketing City.
At first, I was thinking it would look like a full HUD - think Mechwarrior or Heavy Gear. (bugsplat) Oh, woops, I lost my HUD - now I can't see through the windshield, *CRASH*. Mounted on the dash is nice, but it's one more thing for people to look at. We have enough irresponsible idiots on the road already, do we really need to give them _more_ distractions? On second thought, give ALL of them one of these. Maybe natural selection will clear the roads a little.
Ok, so it's neat. But personally I'd rather go gargoyle and make one of Steve Mann's WearComps, and run around like that, than waste time putting distractions into a car. Now if I could just get some optical armor like they had in Ghost in the Shell. *drool*
Then again, you don't really need a car living in or near NYC, so maybe I don't count. But still:P
I think it's going to cause more accidents than it prevents, even if it is a neat toy and a cool idea. I'm pessimistic when it comes to humans, I can't help myself.
Ok. The story behind that one IS because some dumb guy stuck his donkey in his bathtub. And yes, that one incident caused the law to be enacted. That one came straight out of a book called "Blue Laws, Brahmins, and Breakdown Lanes", by Karen Taylor. I think it's out of print, my copy's rather old. There are a lot of laws that are enacted for this sort of reason. Lawmakers just love the idea of protecting us from ourselves, something the american public used to be dead set against but is becoming more and more tolerant - even demanding - of. It's sad, really. If you can't raise your kids to know right from wrong, why blame video games? If you can't control your anger, why blame the people who kicked you out of your office? If you can't keep your farm animals outside, why blame faulty (lacking?) laws? Personal responsibility has gone the way of the dinosaur, and privacy and safety from overzealous officials is going to go the same way soon if it doesn't stop. *sigh*
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Ok, before I go with this, I'm going to state for the record that, while I have studied a lot of religions and religious mythos, I am neither Christian, Wiccan, nor any of the ramifications thereof (satan worship, neo-anything, etc). I speak for myself and only myself, and everything in this post is my own damn opinion - if you don't like it, reply with intelligence or ignore it, as you choose.
:P), people will use it. Some of them will be good people, who will use it to cure cancer. Others will not, and will use it to discriminate against - or to eliminate - entire races or groups of people. We will almost without doubt begin to see 'genetic diseases' (ohhh, what did I say about disease being the end of the world?). We will also likely see genetic cures for those diseases. However, since cures always come slower than diseases, we'll likely wind up in some insane scramble to repair the genetic damage before our species gets wiped out - or mutated to extinction.
Religion usually involves one or more gods or goddesses, embodiments of whatever qualities we most want to see in ourselves. If you worship a god you can't identify with, chances are your religion isn't the right one for you. We generally want to be _more_ like our gods, not less. This is why Christianity and Wicca and things like that are just not for me - their gods don't agree with my stomach. So, in any 'religious' debate, the only thing we would wind up debating is personal opinions of the SOCIAL ramifications of genetic engineering.
From a scientific viewpoint, it's an amazing discovery. The ideas it brings up - the ability to cure cancer, the ability to FIX MY DAMN EYESIGHT so I can see things farther than a foot away! To be able to get rid of arthritis, saving so many people from pain they've simply had to learn to live with every day. These things would be amazing.
Not all of them are worth it, however. For example, we already have tests for pregnant women for some genetic problems. There is a blood test which is given (optional, you can refuse it, which I did) to pregnant women, which can detect spina biffida and a few other birth defects which can be seriously problematic. However, this test checks ONLY for the _gene_ for it. It can't tell you whether the baby actually has any problems. You have to wait to find that out, either through amniocentesis (you Do NOT want to know) or through the sonogram (ultrasound) later on. The tests also can't help you actually do anything about it. For some children, something can be done post birth, but nothing in the prenatal stages. So, what's the point of this test? Frankly, the only reason I can find for it is so that mothers who wouldn't want the baby if it was potentially 'defective' could have an abortion. Stupid test, it doesn't help anything, and it's just one more reason to poke you with their damn needles. 'But it's scientific!' they yell - too bad science hasn't solved everything yet.
Debating it all from a social standpoint, we have to sit back and take a hard look at human nature, without the padding of our optimism - or pessimism.
If this sort of genetic mapping and creation of life becomes available (and it _will_, science can't be stopped even if you don't like what they're doing - if we don't, someone else will, and humans LIKE to be first to do something (witness the stupid First Posts). It's an Alpha thing.
Genetic research is both a good and a bad thing. I don't want to have to submit my hair to get in to work in the morning, but I also don't want to see my children die of cancer. Perhaps this sort of mapping and altering could have changed my cousin's life. She had a heart defect. She was supposed to die by the time she was four or five. She lived until she was a few weeks short of 21. If they had only been able to correct the gene that gave her that defect, she could have lived to a ripe old age.
On the other hand, many of our greatests artists of all mediums - words, pictures, math - have been VASTLY mentally ill. Are we, then, to genetically remove all of the artistic talent from our species? Where does our artistic talent come from? Which gene represents that? Is it the same one that causes alcoholism and drug addiction and depression? How do we know?
And when we do know, what should - or shouldn't - we do about it?
I don't know anyone who can answer those questions in a satisfactory manner for anyone but himself.
Ok, first off, setting water and food aside is a good idea no matter where or when you are living. I come from a weird family (ok, flat-out dysfunctional, they're all freaks). But the one thing my mother has tons of is common sense. She has always had a deep freezer, and a back room full of cans. We ate this food - you don't want to keep cans for more than a year or so, so we cycled through them. But they always kept that room etc. full. We had enough food back there to keep us for a good three or four months, just in case. We also had a week's worth of water, which she changed frequently so as to keep it fresh. We lived in a rural area.
:P ).
What did this mean, practically? A lot of work for mom - but when hurricane Diana hit and laid waste to our neighbors' places (we were on a hill, and what neighbors were around in that rural area lived in houses like ours, 200 years old), we were ok. We didn't need the ability to get to the garden or the store, we had enough water, etc. When we had a massive blizzard and were stuck in the house for a week and a half, the only problems we had involved keeping four hyper, annoying, ADD-affected monsters from destroying everything.
Keeping stores is always a good idea (but it does take work and space, and I'm lazy and live in an apartment so I'm not ready for _anything_ right now).
Also, this thing about the sewage and water treatment systems: I have been under the impression that the number of backup systems is downright funny for that sort of thing. Human labor did it at first, without computers, and they never removed the ability for human labor to do it still. So maybe our water bills will be a bit higher (ok, the water bills of those of you who own houses
There's going to be a run on bottled water and canned food anyway, due to the mass hysteria that this date-change has caused in the US. I think I'm more afraid of the crowds in the stores than I am of this sort of thing.
Besides, the 'end of the world' is going to happen via diseases anyway. Now that I have nightmares about - Plague Patrols going on witchhunts, killing anyone who has even bad acne in an effort to keep diseases under control, buildings falling down due to lack of maintenance, people fighting over food because they don't know how to hunt - or don't want to eat diseased rats and pigeons... *shudder* (but that's not based on date anyway, it's based on how-long-humans-keep-fighting).
Bleh.
-Elthia
((Yes, the IMF may have effectively removed Suharto with their demands -- but how often have other governments done similar things? ))
This makes no sense to me. In many cases I agree with what you are saying, but this is NOT a reason to do things. How often have governments practiced - or attempted to practice - genocide based on race? Is that any reason for us to tolerate it being done by our government, if it were (it was, now they just repress the natives instead of killing them, but it's still no excuse). This is not an argument that is worth opening your statement with, as I feel you have a few good points, and this argument undermines them.
I don't think we are seeing the start of an alternate government so much as a larger, broader one. World government. Whether it's bound by corporate agreements (is anyone else seeing shades of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk here?), or by various smaller (national) governments, it's the idea of one government over all the world. Corrupted, maybe, but a single one.
Every government is corrupt, by the way, it's the political nature of the human being. But we still need them. Anarchy may not be corrupt in that sense, but it's definitely not preferable - I have no desire to become the forced wife of some random gorilla just because he's bigger and stronger than my chosen, or because his gang is bigger and stronger. As a result, I feel violence should be a last resort. Revolution is necessary only when you have tried _everything_ else, and _nothing_ has even seemed like it might someday work. Because you never know, what you wind up with after the revolution might be worse than what you have now - the only way to assure that it won't be is to be sure that it _can't_ get any worse than it is now. Until then, the best option is to try to work within the system, even if you don't think it will work as fast as you want it to.
So, if you don't like the way the laws go, try to change them. Start letter-writing campaigns. Find people who have relevant lawsuits going on, and help them work on it. Push your local grassroots organizations and civil liberties groups (PIRG and the ACLU come to mind, along with a handful of others) to take these things on as 'issues'. Bring it to the largest group of people you possibly can - because popular opinion _does_ affect law, whether you like it or not.
I wouldn't recommend just ignoring the laws, even if the penalty is minor. Keep in mind that if putting whatever it is into law is gotten away with the first time, it could get worse. Unless there's an outcry, noone will know how wrong it is until it's too late. So, even if you don't get penalized heavily for, say, having a porn website that some idiot parents got pissed at having their kid see, you could get penalized the next time, and perhaps it will eventually even become illegal to _have_ that website. Snowballs have a good chance in legislative places, despite the similarities between politics and That Other Christian Place.
-Elthia
Not to mention that you would have all of the inherent problems with real infrared vision. This thing, it would seem, ignores engine heat from your car, environmental heat from whatever you happen to be near, including the _road_ (in high-heat areas or in summer, that asphalt gets pretty hot), and various other things that would serve as distractions and/or blinding lights in an infrared-only vision toy. How it knows what to ignore I don't know. Then again, looking at it on Cadillac's site, I'm not surprised it looks so good, we're dealing with a BIG corp here, folks! Marketing City.
:P
At first, I was thinking it would look like a full HUD - think Mechwarrior or Heavy Gear. (bugsplat) Oh, woops, I lost my HUD - now I can't see through the windshield, *CRASH*. Mounted on the dash is nice, but it's one more thing for people to look at. We have enough irresponsible idiots on the road already, do we really need to give them _more_ distractions? On second thought, give ALL of them one of these. Maybe natural selection will clear the roads a little.
Ok, so it's neat. But personally I'd rather go gargoyle and make one of Steve Mann's WearComps, and run around like that, than waste time putting distractions into a car. Now if I could just get some optical armor like they had in Ghost in the Shell. *drool*
Then again, you don't really need a car living in or near NYC, so maybe I don't count. But still
I think it's going to cause more accidents than it prevents, even if it is a neat toy and a cool idea. I'm pessimistic when it comes to humans, I can't help myself.
-Elthia
Ok. The story behind that one IS because some dumb guy stuck his donkey in his bathtub. And yes, that one incident caused the law to be enacted. That one came straight out of a book called "Blue Laws, Brahmins, and Breakdown Lanes", by Karen Taylor. I think it's out of print, my copy's rather old. There are a lot of laws that are enacted for this sort of reason. Lawmakers just love the idea of protecting us from ourselves, something the american public used to be dead set against but is becoming more and more tolerant - even demanding - of. It's sad, really. If you can't raise your kids to know right from wrong, why blame video games? If you can't control your anger, why blame the people who kicked you out of your office? If you can't keep your farm animals outside, why blame faulty (lacking?) laws? Personal responsibility has gone the way of the dinosaur, and privacy and safety from overzealous officials is going to go the same way soon if it doesn't stop. *sigh*
How depressing.
-Elthia