Transgenics Creating Real Monsters?
The science of transgenics is moving forward despite bad publicity surrounding genetically modified foods. When it involves ‘enhancing the human species,’ the Bible has something to say.
Recently Presbyterian leadership voted down a proposal to bar the denomination’s clergy from officiating at commitment ceremonies for gay couples. The United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church have also warmed up to the idea, allowing ministers in their fellowship to conduct domestic partnership ceremonies. Denominations such as the Assemblies of God have gone the opposite direction, adopting resolutions forbidding their ministers to conduct gay unions.
Same-sex partnerships have been debated since the great community barbecue at Sodom and Gomorrah, and the trend will undoubtedly continue. But a related issue of monstrous proportions is on the horizon: Impending legislative changes regarding gender definition as a result of sex-change operations, and a scarier subject, transgenics, both of which challenge the orthodox rendering of the divine order, are inevitable.
Up until now, a man who submitted to sex-reassignment remained legally defined as a man regardless of how he mutilated himself. That’s because the law was based on existing limitations regarding reproduction; a person who went through a sex-change operation did not acquire the necessary internal organs for procreation during the procedure and therefore continued to be defined by his gender at birth.
But such concepts are changing. The catch phrase has gone from “sex reassignment surgery” to “gender reassignment surgery.” The language is intentional. The goal is to change state and federal definitions of male and female to existing physical characteristics, rather than gender at the time of birth. To make matters worse, cloning and alternative conception and gestation methods have been developed to satisfy the legal requirements of genetic reproduction by gender-altered couples.
Over the next 20 years gender confusion will exponentially escalate through Transgenics. In this case, Transgenics are humans whose genetic structure has been altered through introducing animal DNA into their genome. Researchers claim the unique opportunity to study gene development and disease processes through transgenics should be celebrated.
The government must agree because transgenic research will capture 20% of this years government-funded research grants. Transgenic exploration is considered a forward-thinking technology and boasts advanced medical treatments such as organ development for human transplantation (known as “xenotransplantation”).
The successful application of such technologies encourages human mutation and other assassinations of reason. Yet the governments position is something akin to, “don’t worry, be happy!” Not that I want to be a kill joy, but before we break open the champagne bottles and announce our omnipotence, shouldn’t we think through whether we want to live next door to Franken-neighbor?
Across Europe where the scientific community has aggressively moved forward into the mostly unregulated field of transgenics, concerns are being voiced by researchers themselves over breaching the species barrier. And that’s because nobody knows for sure what pestilences the mutations we so lovingly embrace will spawn!
Conservative Christians are concerned with such ramifications as well, not only because the plagues released through transgenic research could be of Biblical proportions, but because such technology is an affront to the divine order. The Bible tells us that God requires humans, animals, and plants to reproduce “after their own kind.” Biblically speaking, species integrity, including the idea of male and female, is required by God. Transgenics not only violates this order but opens a Pandora’s box for a molecular biological nightmare.
Transgenics may also violate Biblical laws concerning bestiality (sex between humans and animals). Leviticus 18:23 says “it is confusion,” and the punishment for participating in such intercourse was death. The Hebrew word confusion (tebel) means a “violation of nature or of God’s divine order.” Today, Levitical code surpasses the physical act of intercourse and speaks to the issue of ‘confusion’ of the species. By this standard transgenically altered humans are no longer human at all. In fact, we don’t know what they are. We cannot know because introducing animal genes into human DNA creates an unclassified mutation outside of the ‘divine order.’
Lastly, molecular biologists classify individual genes by function. Nobody knows for sure if a gene’s coding will function the same way from one species to another. Interspecies differences could measurably effect the gene’s protein interactions, altering hereditary traits for generations to come and ultimately producing animal characteristics within humans.
One cannot help but wonder what apocalyptic horrors transgenic science will unleash, and why Christians and secularists alike are not forcing protections from Capital Hill to the state legislative corridors. But there is no doubt that for humanists, this is evolution in reverse and a violation of nature. For those who subscribe to the science of catastrophe, it’s Jurassic Park. For believers in God it is an assault on His creative genius.
No matter how one slices the redefinition of the human species, the Nephilim Goliath must be rolling over in his huge grave.