June 10, 2013
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Cloning the Mammoth ~ Yea or Nay?
Apparently, Russians have found a Mammoth that froze and preserved part of the body very well. Not only do they have meat and tissue, but they even got blood this time! And a neat aspect of it – it didn’t freeze even though the temperature was below freezing. So they’re thinking it has some kind of natural antifreeze in it. (It will be fun to hear what kind of new myth they come up with to explain the evolution of such a thing.) But, anyway, they plan on cloning this creature. Read more here: http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/exclusive-the-first-pictures-of-blood-from-a-10000-year-old-siberian-woolly-mammoth/
Personally, I was wondering if she froze right at the flood. (They are always so far off on the time frame, so who knows how old – or young – the body actually is.) Which brings me around to the point of this whole blog. Some folks – myself included – believe that a big part of the reason for the flood was that manipulation with genetics of God’s created kinds was going on. Now, cloning is not quite the same thing, but it is a sort of ‘playing God’. My stance is that they absolutely should not be messing with human embryos, at all. I have no idea when it comes to animals though. Animals were not created in the image of God, and Jesus did not shed His blood for them, so they are not exactly on the same level. However, they are part of God’s creation, and I kind of have a notion that He doesn’t like us messing with that, since He didn’t even want us to mess with different kinds of plant/animal life way back in the Old Testament. (Leviticus 19:19, Deuteronomy 22:9–11)
Now when they clone, what they do is take an already fertilized egg, strip away the information of what that was supposed to be, and then replace it with the information of whatever they are cloning. Essentially making it a twin of whatever they are cloning that the DNA information was extracted from. So, definitely messing with God’s creation. As stated, I don’t think it is as bad as with humans, but I don’t think I would be willing to risk doing it myself, just because I have a notion such a thing just might piss God off.
What do you think?
Comments (16)
I think it sounds scary.
I saw a special on this a few weeks ago…
I’m up and down on it. Ultimately, whatever, let them try. Just, when mammoths start eating us, I’ll laugh at all the jackasses that thought owning guns was stupid.
Ain’t no damn mammoth invasion gonna eat me, no sir.
@ata_grandma - I can understand that. It sort of makes me think we are racing to the end as fast as possible.
@Ghillies_guide - LOL I’d believe you’d eat them first.
If we’re not racing yet, we sure are picking up speed.
It’s almost too cool NOT to do.
I wouldn’t consider cloning to be playing God. Why not clone and give God the glory?
Genetic manipulation is in the Bible. Done by the man of God, Jacob himself. Before he could marry his true love Rachel, he had to wait 7 years, and then, surprise, he had to marry Rachel’s older sister first, and then wait another seven years to marry Rachel, well…during all this time Jacob genetically manipulating the breeding of the father’s flocks so that MORE SPOTTED SHEEP were born….Jacob got the spotted sheep…aha!…and the father got the white sheep. So, clever father of Israel that he was, Jacob influenced the breeding of the sheep to favor spotted sheep. It is a blessing. Our Catholic Church teaches natural birth control, which also allows or empowers the couple as co-Creators of the new human to determine the gender of the zygote/baby. As long, as the critical moral criteria are met, the natural moral law remains intact. Right now, the genetic manipulation of crops is a very big issue, because the genetically engineered crops cross pollinate with natural plants, forever altering the natural plants DNA. Most corn flakes are genetically altered…and tomatoes…if you have eaten them…you are altered too. Tiny bit. But somewhere in Revelation I think it says that humans will be hardly recognizable as human…yikes! I think saving near extinct animals is cool, by saving their DNA, and cloning them. This is why, Samantha, that Christian Bio-ethics is such an important field of study. Cf. Human Life International.
I could have sworn this was really, really old… I think it would be cool. I wouldn’t mind eating one, that’s for sure. It comes down to a personal ethical choice if it’s a good thing or not. I don’t think we should be fucking with our food, since it causes too many health problems. Cloning humans? I don’t know…I used to have a problem with it, but I’m wondering why.
I only see it as “playing god”, when you are doing it with the intention to be god or have the complex. We built cars and AI, but no body is screaming that we’re playing god by giving humans the ability to do something with outside interventions they wouldn’t be able to do other wise. We create vaccines and only a few individuals scream we are playing god. We create artificial limbs for people and no one screams we are playing god.
Honestly…what’s the big deal?
“Anti-freeze” does not imply anything artificial or complicated, the term simply refers to any chemical that lowers the freezing point of water. Salt is an anti-freeze for instance, and is abundant in nature. And the reason they can get DNA and blood and preserved meat from mammoths is that they went extinct a) recently, around 10,000 years ago, and b) in places that have been frozen since then. There are remains of dinosaurs in antarctica but we don’t find blood or meat or DNA on them, ever – because they died long before the continent froze over.
“Some folks – myself included – believe that a big part of the reason for the flood was that manipulation with genetics of God’s created kinds was going on.”
I have no idea what that could possibly be based on. I am not trying to be rude but how can you just believe something like that that you just made up without any evidence?
As for pissing god off if god destroyed the world because of the actions of a handful of scientists in some far-off lab he’d be crazy. Somewhere someone is doing any evil thing. If he’s going to punish everyone everywhere for what a few people do I’d think raping children or cannibalism or any of a hundred things would’ve made him do it a long time ago.
[So they're thinking it has some kind of natural antifreeze in it. (It will be fun to hear what kind of new myth they come up with to explain the evolution of such a thing.)]
First, the “antifreeze” is just a modification of the hemoglobin to require less energy to release oxygen into the blood.
Second, are you sure young earth creationists get to be the one casting stones about the other side not understanding something when discussing an animal that died 4000 years before the earth supposedly began?
Third, absolutely, clone it!
@GodlessLiberal – Your comment makes so many assumptions. Not buying something in your mind automatically means not understanding it. Secondly, the statement of how old it is can only come from a lot more assumptions.
I reserve the right to find the myths evolutionists come up with humorous because they so usually are. Even moreso when they cross over to pure faith/fantasy and they don’t even realize it.
@agnophilo – The belief that they were manipulating genes in the preflood world is based on the fact taht the Bible says that angels had offspring with humans. Once you realize that was what was going on it changes a lot of things. Noah was the only one who’s family was still pure human (“perfect in his generations”). TThe Bible says it went on after that too, and those were the places where God commanded every man woman and child to be put to death. It also puts a new light on many myths about “the gods” making demigod children with human women. The Bible also mentions, only in two places “lionlike men”. (II Sam. 23:20, I Chor. 11:22)
@agnophilo - Also, I wanted to respond to some other things you said.
////”Anti-freeze” does not imply anything artificial or complicated, the term simply refers to any chemical that lowers the freezing point of water. Salt is an anti-freeze for instance, and is abundant in nature.////
I have no idea why you felt the need to explain this. My remark about finding whatever myth they come up with to explain the evolution of such a thing was in reference to the fact that no other animal has this, other than some kinds of fish. It is always fun to watch them rearrange the mythological tree of life when they discover new facts that mess up their presumed order of evolution.
////And the reason they can get DNA and blood and preserved meat from mammoths is that they went extinct a) recently,////
Well, duh.
////around 10,000 years ago,////
here are your assumptions.
///and b) in places that have been frozen since then.///
Duh.
////There are remains of dinosaurs in antarctica but we don’t find blood or meat or DNA on them, ever – because they died long before the continent froze over.////
But it is interesting that we have found them with blood and soft tissue at all, and you guys still hold to the idea of millions of years anyway. I find that amusing.
I want you to understand that you can feel free to voice your disagreement, or whatever. But I also want you to make no mistake that I do not really care whether any of my own reasoning is sufficient for your standards, nor to make the mistake that I feel any obligation whatsoever to convince you of my position. I will always be happy to answer any of your questions, but just keep that in mind.
Well, it might be a way to produce meat, but I don’t think I’d choose to eat it. If there were a useful purpose, rather than a mammoth in some zoo… maybe. I doubt it matters what our opinions are, it’ll be done because it can be done. Then, what if the mammoth died because of some highly-contagious bloodborne disease? I’m leaning toward no on the novelty side, but if we someday had to clone honeybees to pollinate our food, or something along the lines of proven benefit, it might be alright. That would mean we’re concerned about certain species though, and we’re still pretty busy killing them off.
@mtngirlsouth - I meant that that was god’s motivation for the flood. I think it’s extremely likely that species were being genetically modified by human activity thousands of years ago whether people realized how they were doing it or not – if more people buy fred’s apples because they taste sweeter than bob’s apples they’re modifying the gene pool and selecting for the genes that make the apples sweeter. This is (partly) why modern marijuana has many times as much THC (something like 30 times as much) as it did in the 70′s, the strains that got people more high were more popular and sold more and were grown more. This would happen whether people were deliberately trying to modify life or not though, and it happens whether or not humans are even part of the equation just by environmental factors. So if god didn’t want it, why build it into nature?
As for angels having offspring with humans biologically speaking if that were the case (assuming for a moment there are angels to begin with etc) then angels and humans would have to be remarkably similar, we would have to be literally the same species, closer than humans and chimpanzees in nature, and sharing maybe 98-99% of our genes. So we would basically be angels now. We know humans have interbred with near-human relatives like neanderthals (we’ve sequenced their genome from fossils and everyone with non-african relatives has some neanderthal DNA). I imagine if some people had angel DNA we’d be able to isolate and study it (or be able to any day now). From my perspective though it’s more likely that heroes were simply deified, the way great leaders were often claimed to be demi-gods, have supernatural powers, be descended from dragons, born of virgins etc. It was probably a) an outpouring of love from their followers and a form of patriotism, ie “our hero/leader is better than your hero/leader” and/or b) a form of propaganda in times of conquest.
@mtngirlsouth - ”I have no idea why you felt the need to explain this.”
I thought you were implying that anti-freeze was somehow “unnatural” or artificial and therefore could not evolve.
“My remark about finding whatever myth they come up with to explain the evolution of such a thing was in reference to the fact that no other animal has this, other than some kinds of fish. It is always fun to watch them rearrange the mythological tree of life when they discover new facts that mess up their presumed order of evolution. “
How does something being rare in nature contradict common ancestry? And the tree of life was developed by creationist scientists trying to classify god’s created “kinds” before darwin ever put forth his theory, which simply explains it. That species fit into branching groups when you group them according to their common characteristics (and again when grouped according to genetic similarity) and that this forms a branching family-tree pattern is not a myth.
“////around 10,000 years ago,//// here are your assumptions. “
That is a conclusion based on a great deal of physical evidence gathered over several centuries actually. Disagree with it if you like, but it’s not a blind assumption or a random figure.
“But it is interesting that we have found them with blood and soft tissue at all,”
We haven’t. The claims that we found bloody chunks of dinosaur meat are, much like this story, overblown and based on exaggerations of initial findings. What they found are slime contaminated with fragments of organic chemicals and containing fossilized cells. The oldest fossilized cells are billions of years old, that is nothing new. And finding tiny fragments of cells in recent years is probably more due to our improved ability to detect more minute quantities of chemicals than we have been able to detect before.
“and you guys still hold to the idea of millions of years anyway. I find that amusing. “
Billions. And by “you guys” you mean virtually everyone who has ever studied any area of earth or life science to the point of becoming an expert in any field.
It’s worth mentioning that no chemical or detailed analysis has been done on the samples whatsoever and the liquid could simply resist freezing simply because it has little or no water in it.