Curing Disease or Playing God: Obama and McCain on Genetics Research

Religion has to be considered in all scientific discussions. There has to be a check and balance. If not the world will become Nazi Germany. Luckily we have a Christians in the top positions in the country.

@Boka

Why should our technological evolution be subject to the whims of the Christian religion? Why should our technological evolution be subject to the whims of any Religion at all? If religion affects certain peoples ideals then that's fine, but that should be where it stops.

What the hell happened to separation of church and state and all that hoohah.

It's not lucky, if Christians are in the top positions, shouldn't there be an accurate representations of the other major religions? Or the minor ones for that matter? I don't think it's lucky at all that our advancement is subject to the beliefs of one set of (Sometimes Fundamentalist) Christians.

We all know what happened back in the day when the church tried to oversee scientific development, can anyone say "Home Arrest".

I'm just as much for freedom of religon as the next guy, but I don't think it has any place on the fringe of scientific discovery.

i agree with you householdutensils religion is a problem.

@boka and anyone else
well if you have a problem with what the goverment is doing them you can leave and pay taxes to a diffrent goverment. don't bitch about it and say its against your religion because your infringing on my right to find the truth

@ boka

Who's religion should be considered in all scientific discussions? Should it be Christianity? What form? Fundamentalist? Catholic? Unitarian? Southern Baptist? or any of the many other different sects? Should we disregard the millions of non-Christians' views and beliefs?

As for Nazi Germany, weren't most Nazis self-described Christians? Their government was very discriminatory towards other religions, and I don't remember anything about the catholic or protestant churches ever saying the Nazis were wrong until after the war.

"Luckily... Christians in top positions..." yes, luckily we have christian leaders who don't mind invading other nations, or stepping all over our civil liberties, or disregarding torture in cases of "national security", or disregarding the constitution, or bailing out the mistakes of the already rich, or discriminating against homosexual couples, or putting us over 10 trillion dollars in debt. I'm so glad we have good Christian leaders who concentrate power in Washington and take more and more of our freedoms from us everyday.

I believe our society's morals should be considered in scientific debates, but we can't be subject to one group's particular beliefs. What must also be considered is what will bring about the best outcome, both for our society and for the human race.

For genetics, what must be considered is whether our ability to make our lives better outweighs our tendency to make things that come back to bite us in the ass. We need more data on long term affects of certain genetic practices. Things like BT corn may increase yields and alleviate hunger in the short term, but it may also bring about BT resistant diseases that are worse than what we had to begin with.

Religion should not be in any scientific discussion. Praying will not help a downs syndrome child, nor will it a blind child, but stem cell treatment will. check out stemcellschina.com and see for yourself.

All of you who say that religion should not be in any scientific discussion are correct-- religion should not be included, but ethics should. For any research, an open debate must be held to determine whether there is an ethical problem involved in conducting that research.

Let's take the case of stem cell research, notably embryonic, not adult, where the issue is that a significant portion of the population believes the destruction of an embryo is the destruction of a human life. So, when the government takes a stance that it will not fund embryonic stem cell research, but will fund other promising avenues, it is not being unreasonable. In other words, they have funded non-controversial research and taken the less-risky stance: while the debate is not finished as to when human life begins, the government will not fund work that has the possibility of destroying human life.

So, no, religion should not be in the scientific discourse or we would be regressing to Galileo's days, but ethics should always be a primary concern of the government. When we stop making ethics a concern, we allow our government to commit unethical practices for only a *possible* future benefit(e.g. eugenics in the US see- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/021500-02.htm).

All of you who say that religion should not be in any scientific discussion are correct-- religion should not be included, but ethics should. For any research, an open debate must be held to determine whether there is an ethical problem involved in conducting that research.

Let's take the case of stem cell research, notably embryonic, not adult, where the issue is that a significant portion of the population believes the destruction of an embryo is the destruction of a human life. So, when the government takes a stance that it will not fund embryonic stem cell research, but will fund other promising avenues, it is not being unreasonable. In other words, they have funded non-controversial research and taken the less-risky stance: while the debate is not finished as to when human life begins, the government will not fund work that has the possibility of destroying human life.

So, no, religion should not be in the scientific discourse or we would be regressing to Galileo's days, but ethics should always be a primary concern of the government. When we stop making ethics a concern, we allow our government to commit unethical practices for only a *possible* future benefit(e.g. eugenics in the US see- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/021500-02.htm).

Religion is the belief in supernatural forces, without proof, and in the face of strong contradictory evidence. As such, it has no place in rational scientific discussions. Religion only distracts from rational thought.

Hmmm...some of these comments are interesting. It would seem that they are either made out of ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty.

Everyone starts with faith. Any axiomatic system starts by saying "this set of things is true, it's obvious". And they try and build up consistent systems from there. There is no proof for these things. For instence some people start with God in their axioms, others might start with the Copernican principal in theirs (I'm not saying the two must be in disjoint sets). It's quite possible that they should come to differing conclusions about reality.

Once a system is built up however it is able to make predictions about how things work. These predictions then are checked through science (the use of hypotheses, experiements, etc) to see if the models that were derived from a particular system are hold with observation. However science can only go as far as to show that a particular model is not consistent with observation. It doesn't have power to say if it is the model that reality actually does work on.

Now to push the discussion thus far a bit further. Someone brought up the "seperation of Church and State". How you define religion is important to how that statement should be thought of. If you're going to define religion as the unprovable, then I think you'll find that the world is full of many people who are very religious and may not even realize it.

For instance, it is well known that 'science' can provide proofs for what really is the cause of the origins of the universe. However, this is inconsistent with what science can speak to. If you believe in God then you must use science to prove His existence, and that He created the universe. But if He is this all powerful being why would He volunteer to allow you to test Him? Seems like it would always be the other way around. Further you will have to create a model to show how He created the world, and then be able to show that it fits with observation. But this is only good as insofar as you can use the model to make predictions from the model that you can observe today. Obviously there is no going back in time to make observations at the origin of the universe. Thus a particular model for God creating can only disproved with science, never proved. On the other hand if you're inclined to go with a more naturalistic model, you still cannot prove that your model is the model that fits with reality. Even when going with a naturalistic model you cannot go back in time to observe a phenomena which, though predicted by your model, is in the past. But you may say 'but our model does so well to show what is happening now' to that I would say. If two seperate models predict a particular phenomena and observation shows that this phenomena does indeed occurr, then you have no way to distinguish the validity of the one model over the other, except to push them further and see if other predictions they make stand or fall. A model saying God created, which accurately describes what we can observe, and a model which says nature happened accurately describes what we can observe are equally valid, in the sence that neither can be proven true, only with further prediction and observation proven false. Observation can only be made in the present. Even if youre model says that a praticular phenomena is from some event in the past, you still can only observe it in the present. Thus you have no way of proving that it is from the event your model predicts.

Conclusion: If you define religion to be the unprovable, and you want to quote "the seperation of church and state" then to be intellectually honest you must not only fight to have Christians, Buddihst, Hindues, Pantheists, etc from allowing their unprovable beliefs from affecting their policy making in government, but you must also fight to keep evolutionists from allowing their unprovable beliefs from affecting their policy making. If I'm not mistaken that might greatly affect America's educational system.

Bagpipe100, what do you mean by provable? Do you mean supported by facts or that it inherently true? If you get into metaphysical issues, then you can't prove anything. Descartes said "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). The only thing he could trust was true was that he exists. You can doubt all your other senses because they can be tricked (optical illusions, for example). When you say that evolution accounts just as well as a theory that has God in it, (I might ask what model or theory this is? Intelligent Design?) I can not help but wonder what you mean by provable. Evolution is a fact. It has happened. It is observed.

To even compare evolution's provability to religion seems incredibly dubious to me. Religion's do not make claims based on evidence (which is based on observation), they use whatever evidence they have in support of their claims. There is a great difference in that subtlety. Evolution is not a religion. It is based on observation, and is in agreement with the reality we know. It's predictions are true. I do not know of even a single God-based theory that comes even close to this. They simply posit that God "did it." Perhaps I'm ignorant of some theory that includes God that makes testable predictions, if so, please tell me about it. Many religions even say evolution was how God "did it."

As a side note, who are "evolutionists?" There is no church of evolution. We don't call people who believe in gravity "gravitists." Yet gravity is a theory (as always in this post, the scientific sense) that is just as unprovable in the sense of provability you use. If you propose that religion is things that are unprovable, I ask you to prove that gravity has always existed and will always exist. Of course, we can not prove that, but that does not make me doubt it because we have intensively tested this and it has always been true. If you reject that evolution is provable, you must admit you cannot prove anything with observation.

I am sorry if this seems a little harsh of your views, which I greatly disagree with, Bagpipe100, or if I have misconstrued any of your ideas. I have striven not to to have an argument ad hominem.

Dude, thanks for the feedback.

Supported by facts or inherent truth? How do you define those? That's a little confusing.

What we observe today doesn't prove what happened yesterday. People drive cars in our age. So people drove cars when Rome ruled the world. Obviously we know that wasn't the case, but that's because we have things recorded for us about what people observed back then...and apparently they didn't observe cars. Do we see evolution today? Yeah, things change. Does that justify it as our origins? No, you'd need a time machine to observe that. The LHC is supposed to show us what things were like seconds after the big bang. Not really though, it shows us what happens when you slam high energy particles together. You'd need a time machine to observe the origins of the universe.

"Evolution is not a religion. It is based on observation, and is in agreement with the reality we know. It's predictions are true."

Only when we are talking about a hypothetical cohesive scientific model which explains what happens in the present. In reality there is no singular theory of evolution, it doesn't always predict things right, it's not always consistent. Like any other scientific model it has to 'evolve'. :D It's always going to need tweeking. No I've never heard of an orginization calling themselves the church of Evolution. But I'm not sure you need an orginization to be religious. You just need to have faith in somthing. Which as I showed earlier were the basic axioms you start with. If you're one inclined to think that purely naturalistic methods caused everything come into existence and find itself as we see it today. Well then, that right there is one of those axioms. I'd like to see you prove it, though. If I'm wrong about the provablity of these axioms I'd like to know. And no, observation doesn't count as proof. Because if someone said God made things and set rules up for them to run on. I don't know that observation of the here and now will allow you to distinguish one from the other.

I can easily dismiss evolution as a means of origins as being proveable. Because it can't be observed. I'm a mathematician by trade, so lemme give a math example. Say I'm given a function over the real numbers....though I can only observe it starting at one point and then continuing from there. I may see many properties in this function, many trends, even be able to make predicitons about where it is going and see if those turn out true....however, I can't know much at all about what it was doing before I started my observations. It could be a peicewise function, and I just happen to have only part of one peice.

I'm just asking for intellectual honesty, and an end to arrogance. The scientific community would be better off if those in it would admit that science doesn't tell us what is true, but only what isn't. You propose a model for how somthing works, you can test it based on what you see. If it doesn't work then you throw it out. If it does, well then you still haven't shown that it is true over another model that predicted the same thing. Maybe you'll say that that everything works just as it always has, and that it work that way no matter where or when you are. And to a degree I might even agree...however this too is somthing taken on faith, and not somthing that can be observed, as we cannot be in all places and all times at once to check it's validity. The Copernican Principal, that we are in no special place in the universe. What would you found that upon? Observation? If you already have the bigbang in mind and are interpreting what you observe through that, then you might say that it is observed to be true...but chances are you've already used the Copernican Principal as a reason to believe in the big bang, and now have assumed what you are trying to prove. Which any math major undergrad will tell you is a cardnial sin in that subject.

You have faith, if your honest to yourself about that I can't tell. But I'd like to see more honestly in the scientific community. I'm fine with policy being made based upon worldviews which have things they can't prove, so long as those making them are up front about those things. If you're going to teach evolution as a means for origins, then at least admit it can't be proven as such, only as what we can observe happening today. Don't discreadit someone who wants to teach intelligent design for believing in a God they cannot prove exists. You can't prove He doesn't exist, nor can you prove your chosen method of origins with observations. You are on no more solid ground. It's the only intellectualy honest thing to do.

Men observed a Man alive after being dead.
Men observed differences and similarities between extinct and extant organisms.

Each of these pieces of evidence is used as a foundation for a worldview. I personally did not measure finch beaks, compare fossils in south America and Africa, use mass spec to analyze the results of the Miller-Urey experiment, however, I believe these observations are true. I use my worldview to interpret these observations. Others use their worldview and come to a different conclusion. These pieces of data (the finches, the fossils and the amino acids) do not constitute proof for either worldview. Each side draws from the same bag of data, then shows how the observations fit into their worldview. Personally, I can see the issue from both sides. I chose my worldview based on factors which are not directly connected to any of the observations used as proof for evolution.