Dominion or Demonic: The Land of Misfit Genetics

Petri Dish Magic Cultivates a Modern Chimera

By: Anjana Ahuja

The chimera was a zoological monstrosity of Greek myth: a fire-breathing beast with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and a serpent for a tail. It was vanquished by Bellerophon, who dropped lead into the creature’s mouth, inducing molten suffocation. Scientists are now breathing life into the concept of chimeras by creating organisms containing the cells of humans and animals. Several teams in the US are inserting human tissue into early pig and sheep embryos...

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I didn’t have a lot of time to write an article but I tried to take some time to comment on the article above because of its ramifications for mankind and the direction it heralds for humanity. Of all the places to find an article on the moral ambivalence of the scientific community (and the negative impact it has on society), I find it in the Financial Times. It is an article on the hideous monstrosity of Greek myth: A Chimera or a fire-breathing beast with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and a serpent for a tail. 

In essence we read of what amounts to a genetic hybrid. What we read in the article is that scientists are at a point where they are now able to create organisms that are human/animal hybrids and the only thing that stops them or doesn’t stop them is their morality. As we have seen from history both in Scripture and out of it, men left to their own devices and their own measure of morality and ethics are let loose in a fool's paradise.

As it states directly in the article:

 The idea of mixing animal and human tissue is controversial — so much so that the US’s National Institutes of Health, which controls federal spending on medical research, has refused to fund it. It is notable, then, that scientists have sought private money to carry on. The biomedical fraternity are frustrated that fundamental science is being slowed down by conservative attitudes and outlandish fears. NIH’s stance has been labelled a “threat to progress”.

 Read that again. The people that have enough sense to not tinker and dabble in the things of God in terms of the Imago Dei and have some moral restraint in the National Institute of Health are being labelled as “backwards” and viewed as conservatives and they are over-reacting. They claim there is medical progress to make here. Tinkering with basic human building blocks in genetics and creating chimera is being viewed as acceptable. How many other “controversial” things have been framed this way to shame the wise into capitulating to the depravity of the wicked under the guise of "intellectual progress" or "medical advances". The Concentration Camps and the Japanese POW's were at the root of some of the medical advances by the Nazis and Imperial Japan. Did that make it okay for them to do experiments on the Jews and American soldiers? Sometimes progress is a leap backward, not forwards.

I suspect humans mixing and matching the genetics of humans with animals might very well be one of these instances of running to stand still or like a carousel horse always running but going nowhere. Progress for the sake of progress with no moral bearing or the bearing of men whose mind’s are predominately deadened to God has never been a good thing as attested to in Scripture. 

Instead of man taking dominion over the Creation the way God has given it, in this situation man is changing the very rudimentary parts that God gave to man to take dominion over. Man is saying, "We will not take dominion of Your Creation, only ours. Yours is not good enough God." In this way man is not taking dominion over the Creation, man is trying to be God by re-creating the Creation. This is too akin to trying to be God. When men try to emulate God in ways not outlined in Scripture it is always demonic. We're to emulate God through Scripture which says we are to be like Him in His holiness. When men attempt to do it other ways we see catastrophic judgment ensue. We see it in things like the forbidding of men to consult soothsayers who can supposedly can see the future. By consulting soothsayers, men are essentially not trusting in what God has said he would do or has already done. They go to other men who claim to have the ability to know things only God could know. In the end we see it is purely demonic. 

I suspect we are doing the same as we begin to create these “manimals”. We land firmly on the Island of Dr Moreau from H.G Wells. Humans become something less than they were created to be. Humans become breeding ground for organs. We are literally farmed for body parts. We become commodities. We are somehow cheapened not just at a human level but also at a spiritual level. When we tinker with the image of man, we in some way violate the image of God. God did not create us to be demeaned, he created us in His image. We lose that if we continue down the path this article is referring to. These medical issues are not advances, they are dramatic moral jumps backward into chaos and pollution of the human image which is, in reality, Imago Dei or the God image. When we demean ourselves in this manner, we demean God. That in itself should mortify anyone but since most are at enmity with God, they cannot even see the discontinuity. Once we lift the lid on this demonic Pandora's Box...we will never be able to close it again. We will literally have released the a beast to roam the Earth and devour it. Things will become, well, contaminated even more.

There is something inherently evil in mixing man’s image with the beasts of the field. Just as the angels mixing with the daughters of men in Scripture. They left their proper positions or stations and descended into condemnation for their actions. I just do not see the difference when men attempt to merge the genes of two different beings of separate kind or species. Our technical know-how and medical science has now outpaced our morality. The truth is, it isn’t even an issue of outpacing morality. A huge swathe of society and much of science has simply left morality behind. Either that or their hearts have become so deadened to God, they don’t even realize they no longer have a moral base to work from.

The biggest problem I see now though is the timing. The article openly acknowledges that a lot of what we have feared or dreaded about genetics has already been taking place. It is now just a legality to get the restraints removed. People wished be unshackled from their restraints to do whatever they feel like doing. Yet we never seem to learn that to give or get this type of freedom is to enslave oneself to the very things that we’ve been given over to. Our sin becomes its own punishment. What monsters lurk beyond that wall of restraint I wonder? That which is born of the demonic can itself only be demonic.

In the end what we see in the article is a clear delineation between those that have sense enough not to tinker in the Land of Misfit Genetics and those that have no moral bearing because they have no moral absolute. This is not improvement, it is interference and meddling.

As it was in the days of Noah…

Additional reading along similar lines:
Babies With Genes From Three Parents
British Researchers Get Green Light to Genetically Modify Human Embryos