INTELLIGENT REDESIGN

A few years back Man mapped the human genome, opening a world of possibilities, one of which being genetic perfection. Imagine a superhuman race, with hay fever a thing of the past. Genetic enhancement has a romantic chime to it, but it wasn’t always so. There was a time when the public at large would have denounced genetic engineering outright. “Genetically engineer not, for we are created by God, in his own image”, we may have collectively said, but that was before anybody knew that we could actually do it, and I am probably not alone in noticing that over the years Science has been able to give us what Religion as yet cannot; tangible results. This does bring up somewhat of a hot topic though, that of morality in the world of gene research, so let’s poke the coals a little and see if we can get a fire going.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that there is a God, and that we are created in his or her image (“his” from here on for simplicity’s sake, and only “his” because that is how “he” is portrayed in cartoons). Does that not make Adam the original clone? This theory alone legitimizes cloning. God himself invented cloning, and by giving us the intelligence to do so ourselves, God condones it. How then can we argue that cloning is morally reprehensible and contrary to God’s plan? It seems to me like that was the plan all along.

To be fair, I don’t want God to be my whipping boy, for lack of a better term, this whole argument through, so I’m going to require a certain argumentative ambiguity to keep it up. Instead of taking the side of either Science or Religion, I’ll compromise, like everybody else who believes in it, with Intelligent Design. God becomes Creator, and I get to use a term without being so offensive to some.

Intelligent Design. Is it Religion? Is it Science? Is it a peanut butter and jam sandwich? We may never know. My best guess is that it’s an amalgamation of the two, concocted for the Science v/ Religion fence sitters who need a non-threatening Faith to cling to when Science lets them down. If Intelligent Design states that there is a Creator, which it does, and that there was a grand plan, which it also does, does it not stand to reason that said Creator intended to create us with the ability to create for ourselves? I think the Science side has proven that to be so, and the frosted side says if this is the case, does it not also stand to reason that we were designed with enough intelligence to re-create ourselves in any image we might like? The door to designer genes opens thusly.

Let’s take a different tack. A cheetah can run fast, correct? And it has sharp claws and teeth? And am I correct in saying that the cheetah uses these bounties to the best of its abilities? Not knowing a cheetah personally we can’t say so with certainty, but for argument’s sake let’s suppose that it does. Now, if the cheetah was given its abilities by the Creator, can we also suppose that it was meant to use them for its own good? Again, let’s assume so. By that standard then, could we not say that if Man was given the intellectual capacity to discover the human genome, map it, and then begin genetically modifying ourselves for the better, or merely to our liking, were we not meant to do just that? It seems like an elegant theory to me.

In conclusion, if we are crediting Intelligent Design with any kind of legitimacy, and if we’re still following, we’re saying God (because let’s be honest, that’s what that means), if there is one, gave us the ability to improve on ourselves, and it would be an affront to God himself if we squandered that gift. So, if we’re still sticking to our God guns, we can probably agree that he gave us diseases, defects, and the utterly unintelligent, as well as, in some cases, enough Intelligence to eventually figure out how to get rid of those things. Let’s show God his faith in us is warranted and take everything apart like a little kid with an old radio, except this time we’ll use the parts to build a rocket ship. A sexy ass rocket ship. That would do him proud.