Subject: [extropy-chat] Anti-transhumanist op-ed: Is the world ready for a superboy - or a dogboy?

From: "Neil H." <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:38:09 -0800

The Dallas Morning News has an anti-transhumanist op-ed by a senior fellow
at the Discovery Institute (a conservative Christian think-tank).

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-smith_13edi.ART.State.Edition1.2f25c31.html

Some quotes:

 Look out, America: The trajectory of science is coming into conflict with
venerable human values and even our self-definition as a species, raising
urgent ethical issues that will have to be answered before it is too late.
...

 The "sanctity/equality of life ethic" holds that all human beings have
equal moral worth, regardless of their abilities or capacities. This
objective standard is now threatened by "personhood theory," which holds
that rights only belong to "persons," a status earned by possessing minimal
cognitive capacities. If personhood theory supplants sanctity of life as the
governing ethic of society, it would open the door to harvesting organs from
people like Terri Schiavo or permitting biotechnologists to "farm" cloned
fetuses for use in drug testing or experiments in genetic engineering.
...
 If scientists can insert human DNA into animal embryos, then animal DNA
could just as easily be inserted into human embryos. Such experiments are
far from unthinkable. A social movement called "transhumanism" advocates the
creation of a "post human species," which would include using animal genes
in progeny to increase strength or make senses more acute.
...
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From: David Harris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:25:09 +0000

The Discovery Institute (http://www.discovery.org/) is in Southern 
Caliornia and is the institution that brought us the concept of 
"Intelligent Design".  The ACLU, in the Dover, Pennsylvania, school 
board case, points out that Intelligent Design seems to be a way of 
avoiding the word "God" in what otherwise looks like Creationism, which 
has been kept out of schools by court decisions on separation of church 
and state.

The Discovery Institute folks are responsible for the "Wedge strategy" 
(http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html), a plan to integrate 
Intelligent Design into science classes and gradually separate popular 
thinking into a choice between God and materialism/evolution/science. 
To many religions, that is a needlessly narrow choice.

I'm working on an essay suggesting that the border between science and 
supernatural religions can and should be drawn somewhat differently than 
current usage.

I've been doing the computer work for Darwin Day Celebration 
(http://DarwinDay.org), very much the opposite of the Discovery 
Institute, except they have much more money and we have real science on 
our side.  We promote Darwin's birthday ("Darwin Day") as a celebration 
of science and humanity, much like "Newtonmas" in spirit.

   - David Harris, Palo Alto, California

Neil H. wrote:
> The Dallas Morning News has an anti-transhumanist op-ed by a senior 
> fellow at the Discovery Institute (a conservative Christian think-tank).
...