The Human Soul Is Not for Cloning
According to modern sages, genetics is the road map of human existence because it is said to explain not only what we are, but who we can be. When a team of Scottish scientists cloned a female sheep a year ago, shock waves of awe and fear swept through the world’s scientific, religious and legal communities.
Now an American scientist wants to set up shop and begin cloning humans, the mere thought of which has raised a red flag, sparking ever more fervent debate on the ethics of science.
Many important questions are being raised. If two identical beings can be created, what are the implications for the human soul? If the body is made up of exactly the same genetic material as another person, what happens to the mind and spirit?
Many today seem to agree that all of God’s creatures are merely the sum of their parts. This view allows genetic engineering to pose serious threats. Would a duplicate Adolf Hitler also commit genocide and mass murder?
We are more than the sum of our parts, however. The whole of each individual consists of the physical as well as the spiritual nature. We are not human beings on a spiritual journey; rather, we are spiritual beings on a human journey, as Teilhard de Chardin reminds us. Our spirit can never be duplicated or cloned, for it is unique.
The nature-versus-nurture argument further makes this point. If two identical twins were brought up by different parents, in different cultures and socioeconomic circumstances, chances are they would make different choices in their lives. This highlights the fact that it is not our physical makeup that most prominently marks our uniqueness. It is our power to privately make personal choices. The evolving human personality can emerge into a person marked as either “kind” or “mean.”
We have the choice to bring good or evil into existence for ourselves. The extent to which we choose either accounts for the only truly significant disparity in human nature. The choices we make are based on the extent to which we try to civilize our souls and refine our character. This is an individual quest, one that no scientist can ever re-create.
One fact is irrefutable: You cannot inseminate and predetermine the “soul.”
As scientists inexhaustibly explore the unfathomable depths both within and outside the human body, they are often fascinated to find traces of a divine master plan. They give names to them, such as “DNA,” “The Theory of Relativity” or the less technical “Big Bang Theory.” But these names are only metaphors or lamp posts leading to the real nature of things. As such, they should not be mistaken for the deeper truths that lay beneath the surface. Each “Eureka!” produces new questions, which lead to new discoveries, none of which are ever final.
The faithful should take heart. No matter how clever we become, we cannot have the power to control creation. Every person is endowed with the ability to observe and select. No two persons will be identical in all of their responses, reactions, choices and decisions. We may be able to clone bodies, but the cloning of “persons” will remain an impossibility. If science could clone the personality, memory, mind and soul, the result would not be a “person” defined by the freedom to choose. Instead of a person, we would have a soulless product.
Science will never transcend the human soul, because the human soul transcends science.
