If God is not - and humans are not like Him?

[SOIL]

from 'Human brained' monkeys :

SCIENTISTS have been warned that their latest experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal.

 

In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects.

Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare.

 

An eminent committee of American scientists will call for restrictions into the research, saying the outcome of such studies cannot be predicted and may in fact produce subjects with a 'super-animal' intelligence.

 

The high-powered committee of animal behaviourists, lawyers, philosophers, bio-ethicists and neuro-scientists was established four years ago to examine the growing numbers of human/monkey experiments.

 

These procedures, known as 'human-primate chimeras', involve the combination of human and monkey cells, tissue and DNA to observe any effect and examine the possibility that such combination could actually exist.

 

Chimeras are mythical monsters from Greek literature, which combined various bodyparts from lions, goats nd snakes.

 

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This team will soon publish its conclusions in leading journal Science. In the report the committee will address such unsettling questions as whether introducing human cells into non-human primate brains could cause "significant physical or biochemical changes that make the brain more human-like" and how those changes could be detected.

 

The committee will also examine how detectable differences in the monkey's brains, for example emotional or behavioural changes, or if the monkeys developed 'self awareness', could be measured - and dealt with.

 

"What we were trying to do was anticipate - recognising that if science were to take that path there might be some different kinds of moral challenges." said committee co-chairman Dr Ruth Faden, a professor in biomedical ethics.

(I added the bold, for emphasis)

 

-Dennis

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

It has forever been so that we value human life above that of the animals without any real reason to do so, except that we at least value our own species a good part of the time.

 

I see nothing about God or Godlikeness in this article.

 

We also have absolutely no evidence that animals have no self-awareness or other intelligences that we relegate only to those who walk upright.

[☆ TexasFreethinker ☆]

This will present moral challenges no matter the "source" of your morals. I won't speak for christians, but as a humanist I think this will hasten the debate on the rights of animals, especially sentient ones.

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

I suppose now would be a good time to have a steak, while I still can.

[Ouroboros]

I think we have been acting cruel against animals forever, and religion never solved the problem with how we act in regards to nature and animals. If we would accept that animals have emotions and conscious to some level, we wouldn't breed and kill them as we do.

 

I don't like these kinds of experiements either, since they create a new kind of species, that has to be killed eventually, and it doesn't fit in with our law to protect it. Would we find it more or less acceptable if we surgically removed a human brain and put it in a monkey, then when revived and alive, we would kill him/it? That's basically what this experiment will result in. Killing something that is partially human. Would we eat it after we killed it?

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

Many Native Americans believed, and maybe still do that all of the world is sentient. They believed that the rocks were ancient ancestors and that they spoke, you just had to learn how to hear them.

 

I am not sure they are wrong.

 

I know people who claim to hear trees scream when they are cut down. Very credible people.

[Ouroboros]

Many Native Americans believed, and maybe still do that all of the world is sentient. They believed that the rocks were ancient ancestors and that they spoke, you just had to learn how to hear them.

 

I am not sure they are wrong.

 

I know people who claim to hear trees scream when they are cut down. Very credible people.

They probably hear the chainsaw when the trees are cut down, making it sound like screams..

 

If we can't cut down trees, or eat fruit or vegetables, that means we have to starve to death, and we wouldn't exist as a species anymore... I don't think people would like that...

 

[Vixentrox]

That screaming noise is probably some spike grinding against the chainsaw that a tree rights activist placed there.

[Mythra]

Interesting.

 

Not such a weird concept when you think about it. I know people walking around with monkey-brains.

[☆ TexasFreethinker ☆]

Interesting. 

 

Not such a weird concept when you think about it.  I know people walking around with monkey-brains.

LOL - I think I know some of the same people.

[Ouroboros]

Interesting. 

 

Not such a weird concept when you think about it.  I know people walking around with monkey-brains.

 

Rather look like a monkey with a human brain, than the reversed...

[Vixentrox]

They go to the local church don't they?

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

Well, there is no reason why what we do to eat has to be moral. If there is no God, and there is no standard of morality, it does not follow that there is no intelligence or manner of communication of matter. And, we need not get permission to kill or eat anything.

 

I myself have never heard it, but I am cautious not to disregard that which I do not have proof does not exist.

 

Molecules indeed to organize themselves.

 

My point is that we have not taken seriously such a concept at all. I happen to think that trees are the highest life form because they need not kill to eat, but survive on what has died around them and from the sun and water. Whether or not they speak, well you cannot prove it by me.

 

Perhaps that is why the native Americans thanked the beings whose lives they took to nourish their own.

 

It is certainly more direct than thanking a third party.

 

This is just a stone tossed into the pond of preponderance. I just wonder.

[Ouroboros]

Yes, I heard about this thankfulness. Wasn't the ritual before and after the hunt a spiritual routine to get the permission to kill the animal and it it's flesh, and allow the spirit of the animal to move on? Basically they didn't kill and eat unless the animal was okay with it... Like the cow in the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

I think so. It is also a belief system like any other, but they believed and I am sure there are natives of tribes in Africa who believe the same....if they exist any longer that the animal willingly gave the sacrifice for human life.

 

As in all mythologies, the humans were never called upon to give their life for the animals or plants.

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

Has anyone read the Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker?

 

I found some of the concepts in there quite fascinating.

[Guest Roamin' Lion]

Brutality, thy name is human, but in all defense animals are also. Life just seems to need to feed on life of some sort. The problem is the hierarchy that we devise about what life has bigger rights than others.

 

But, I have observed with nature that humans are the only wasteful part of the nature chain. What I observe of the nature in our woods is this "Waste not, want not." Animals eat the skeletons of others for the calcium. The dead wood is consumed by termites. Everywhere I turn, it is all used.

 

Now, I look at humans, everything we make, we end up throwing away in the trash heaps and waste dump sites.

 

We throw out food, we make all manner of disposable items which we do not use.

 

If we had adhered to the rules of nature that I have observed, all we made would have had a use after this use.

[chefranden]

Right now I'm thinking that it may be good through forcing people to recognize that that we are a part of the whole of nature and not something above, it or special, or supernatural if you will.

 

By the way the problem is not that we must kill to eat so much as we refuse to participate in the food chain. Some days it is our turn to eat. Other days it is our turn to be eaten. We suppose ourselves to be too holy to participate in life.

 

A troop of baboons will kill a threatening Leopard if it can, but it will not hunt leopards on purpose and certainly not to extinction.

 

A point for Dennis: I don't see that the God of the Bible gives a rip about animals. The revulsion you feel is human chauvinism -- nothing else shall dare to be human!

[quicksand]

 

Rather look like a monkey with a human brain, than the reversed...

 

I would assume, not like this.... ?

[☆ TexasFreethinker ☆]

Dennis, to address your question in the title of this thread...

 

If God is not - and humans are not like Him?, why would this be bad?

 

I'd have to say that these experiments could be considered immoral from a secular standpoint because we're conducting experiments on sentient beings that would be considered immoral to conduct on humans. I doubt that anyone would consider it moral to place monkey brain cells into a human fetus in an attempt to give birth to a more monkey-like human.

 

These experiments are "bad" not because of anything to do with a god, but because of the extension of moral behavior to include our interaction with other beings in addition to humans.

 

Do you consider these experiments to be immoral Dennis? If so, what leads you to that conclusion based on revealed morals?

[Antlerman]

I can tell you why this would be bad! Haven't you ever seen Planet of the Apes? Those apes treated us humans of the future terribly! Let's stop this research now before that damned-dirty Ape Law Giver is born!!

 

[Mythra]

 

Rather look like a monkey with a human brain, than the reversed...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Boy, wouldn't that be a sight. Get em all together - a room full of people-brained monkeys and monkey-brained people to discuss evolution.

[doomguarder]

Dennis, to address your question in the title of this thread...

I'd have to say that these experiments could be considered immoral from a secular standpoint because we're conducting experiments on sentient beings that would be considered immoral to conduct on humans.  I doubt that anyone would consider it moral to place monkey brain cells into a human fetus in an attempt to give birth to a more monkey-like human.

 

These experiments are "bad" not because of anything to do with a god, but because of the extension of moral behavior to include our interaction with other beings in addition to humans.

 

Do you consider these experiments to be immoral Dennis?  If so, what leads you to that conclusion based on revealed morals?

 

Well put!

 

I am a strong atheist, and I find these experiments objectionable. Respect for the creatures we share this ball of rock with is not a theological stance. IMO we should be studying further to find just how sentient the other beings on this earth are. Dolphins, the great apes, heck DOGS. All are social creatures with ingrained systems of communication and observable feelings. I can make my dog scared, happy, content, or anxious by the tone in which I communicate with her. Dolphins have dialects, each pods has it's own chirp patterns, but they can communicate across these boundaries. On the dolphin stuff I have links. Last time I discussed this was ages ago, so they may be out of date.

 

Oddly enough, I looked up the information on animal intelligence in a debate I had over religion ages ago (3+yrs). Someone made the claim that humans being the only feeling, thinking, and sentient creatures on earth proved the bible was the word of god. In the course of two weeks of research on the subject I found more than enough information to make her question that statement.

 

Different creatures likely think on very different levels. I doubt a dolphin is contemplating the effect of industrialization on the earth, but I bet they do have 100s of sounds for water. Cold water, fast water, clear water, salt water.

 

Just because we feel so superior because of our accumulation of knowledge that has led to technology, does not mean we are the only sentient creature here. As the dominant species, we have an obligation to all of these beings. This form of experimentation may lead to our demise or to the rise of another competing species.

[Ouroboros]

I would assume, not like this.... ?

 

Ok here's the four leves of humans:

Look like a human, have a human brain (few people)

Look like a monkey, have a human brain (some people)

Look like a human, have a monkey brain (unfortunately many people)

Look like a monkey AND have monkey brain (Dubya)

[Vigile]

Interesting. 

 

Not such a weird concept when you think about it.  I know people walking around with monkey-brains.

 

Now cut that out! You know I do the best I can with what I've got.