Monday, November 19, 2007
![]() There are also specific and general problems with the typology. Consider the specific: Asia offers researchers new labs, fewer restrictions and a different view of divinity and the afterlife. In South Korea, when Hwang Woo Suk reported creating human embryonic stem cells through cloning, he did not apologize for offending religious taboos. He justified cloning by citing his Buddhist belief in recycling life through reincarnation. Hwang Woo Suk is a convert from Christianity to Buddhism. South Korea is a nation that is about 1/2 non-affiliated, 1/4 Buddhist and 1/4 Christian. Its ethical culture has been traditionally dominated by Confucianism, and there is a powerful substratum of indigenous shamanistic religion which suffuses the practices and outlooks of Christians & Buddhists alike. Christianity is gaining ground among the youth and in the educated segment of the population, and is the dominant religion in Seoul. The last two presidents of South Korea have been Roman Catholic, and that denomination is generally considered the most well educated, affluent and liberal of the religious pillars in South Korean society. South Korea also sends out the most Christian missionaries to the rest of the world aside from the United States. Christian fundamentalists in South Korea have even engaged in iconoclastic violence against Buddhist religious art and statuary. And yet South Koreans were also rather proud of their "cloning research." Then there is the biggest general issue with the typology: By contrast, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the master creator who gives out new souls to each individual human being and gives humans "dominion over soul-less plants and animals. To traditional Christians who consider an embryo to be a human being with a soul, it is wrong for scientists to use cloning to create human embryos or to destroy embryos in the course of research. I think the term Judeo-Christian is stupid. In any case, not only are there very few Jews in the world, their attitude toward biological engineering tends to be pragmatic and consequentialist from what I can tell. There is one religious group which is left out the typology: Islam. About 15-20% of the world's population this seems like a large oversight. There don't seem to be many laws about cloning in the Muslim world, but take a look at abortion laws. Their objection to interventions might be less coherent or precise than those of Roman Catholics, but they seem to mirror them pretty well. The New York Times piece also points out that in the post-Christian world, such as Sweden, there is a fear of some sorts of biological changes due to a resurgence in a form of natural religion or spirituality. This shouldn't surprise; the decline of institutional Christianity in northern and eastern Europe has been met with both a rise in a scientific materialist outlook, but even more significantly an unspecified monistic theism reminiscent of pre-Christian traditions. The Left-Right convergences alluded too suggest to me that the typology is too coarse and inchoate. There is a universal "Yuck" within our species, probably rooted in our cognitive hardware. Channeling the impulses culturally can be a tricky thing. For instance, the Japanese and Israelis are far less advanced than Americans in their acceptance or practice of organ donation, generally due to religious rationales. Obviously the Japanese and Israelis don't share a common spiritual root or background. Note: I place an emphasis on the Catholic Church as an institution affecting public policy because, for example, abortion rates of Catholics in the United States are at the national average. Moral suasion can only go so far, especially when individuals are making personal utility calculations. Labels: Bioethics |