From: matus [matus@snet.net]
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 11:40 PM
To: matus@snet.net
Subject: MFD List - Christian fundamentalists are the American
equivalent of the Taliban

(This is an interesting thread started on the Extropian mailing list I
subscribe to.  Extropians are a group or progressives and technophiles,
embracing technological advancement when it betters the human condition at
any given opportunity.  This subscribers points out, quite accurately, that
our own domestic Christian fundamentals support practices that are just as
morally repugnant as those of the Taliban.  One need only take a few seconds
to imagine what the US would be like if it was a fundamentalist christian
run country, while noting the past record of fundamentalist christians (and
fundamentalists of any kind for that matter)  A literal interpretation of
biblical law would, among other things, criminalize wearing cloths made of
two fabrics, eating meat on Fridays, and touching a women for seven days
after her menstrual cycle begins.  Conversely stoning your teenage child to
death for disobeying curfew would be acceptable and supported.  One wonders
what such a state would be like to live in!  The first part of this message
is some comments from an extropian member, the second a response to him, and
the third a link from the 'National Review'  a conservative publication... -
Mike)

Jeff Davis wrote:
> Christian fundamentalists with their biblical law and abortion-clinic
> assassins are the American equivalent of the Taliban with their Shari-a
> and throwers-of-acid-in-the-face-of-un-burquaed-women, and the anti-tech
> eco-terrorists and power-addicted PC ideologues of the extreme left are
> the American equivalent to the hate-filled, dogma-driven, anti-west,
> anti-modern, jihad psycho-killers of Al Queda.  I would do everything
> possible to spread, promote, suggest, convey, and in short, hammer home
> that analogy, apt as it is.  Rinse and repeat.

There was an article yesterday in the right-wing magazine National Review
which explored this same concept,
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment112701.shtml

Of course the NR columnist opposed the analogy, which she attributed to
a cloning researcher at a conference last August.  In fact the columnist
seemed to think that the comment was so self-evidentally absurd that
she was using it to make fun of cloning research in general.

The article also had some interesting quotes from the Raelians, who have
an odd mixture of religion and almost Extropian philosophy.  The cult
leader Rael is quoted as responding to September 11:

Hal

Just "Like the Taliban"
The human face of cloning.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO executive editor
November 27, 2001 12:20 p.m.



When Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts biotech firm, announced this
weekend that they had cloned human embryos, a group called Clonaid jumped
into their shadow by insisting that they, too, have been cloning human
embryos.

"I'm very pleased that I'm not alone," Clonaid director Brigitte Boisselier
said. "We're doing embryos every day."

Clonaid dubs itself "the first human cloning company." Whether or not it is
remains to be seen. Clonaid keeps its labs secret - they claim for security
reasons.

What it definitely is, is run by a cult that considers human cloning, and
ultimately immortality, a goal. Named after RAËL, the cult's founder, the
group claims "that life on earth was created scientifically in laboratories
by extraterrestrials whose name (ELOHIM) is found in the Hebrew Bible and
was mistranslated by the word 'God.'" They also claim that Jesus'
resurrection was, in fact, a cloning performed by ELOHIM. The Washington
Bulletin provided a good primer on the cult this summer.

And for the Raelians - whose Clonaid project is funded by a man whose
ten-month-old son died after a heart operation, and who wants the son's DNA
to be used for the creation of a clone - the time is now. They have their
own answer to terrorism. After September 11, RAËL declared:

We must accelerate the development of human cloning technology because it
will make terrorist attacks inefficient in the future. Indeed, when phase 3
of cloning will be reached (the one which will allow the direct cloning of
an adult thanks to the Accelerated Growth Process) it will be followed by
the uploading or downloading of information into one's brain that contains
personality, memory, and life experiences.

Therefore, when a tragedy occurs, such as the recent one, cloning will bring
back to life all of the victims - directly as adults and their personality
will be downloaded into their brain. For this to happen however, it will be
necessary to have a genetic bank in each country which would contain the
genetic code (what primitive people used to call the "soul") of each
individual from their birth, and for each individual to regularly download
on their PC a back-up of their personality (memory and experience) which
could then be transferred into the new clone. The person who would benefit
from this technology would only, after a tragedy, have the last day missing
from their memory. This technology would also allow the cloning of
terrorists, thus allowing us to try them for their crimes. This way, no
suicidal attack would see its perpetrator escape from justice through death.

Clonaid's are not the only cloning entrepreneurs with some PR issues. At a
meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences last August, an
international panel of scientists met to discuss human cloning. The
conference was an opportunity for supposed pioneers in the field to show
their true colors.

"It's like the Taliban in Afghanistan," "Dr. Miracle" Severino Antinori said
of the House of Representatives, which voted just before its August recess
to ban human cloning - a vote Antinori says took the U.S. back "into the
Dark Ages."

Antinori, who along with his partner, Dr. Panos Zavos, has run laboratories
in Kentucky, recruited over 1,300 American and 200 Italian couples to be
part of their human-clone experiments. Since cloning is outlawed in most
European countries, including Italy, by the terms of a 1988 treaty, and
since conducting it in the U.S. would require FDA approval, Antinori and
Zavos have not disclosed where their experiments will take place, although
Israel, Cyprus, and assorted former Soviet republics have been mentioned as
possibilities. Britian's ambiguous phony ban has led Antinori to publicly
set his sights there, too.

"Ours will be an experiment of therapeutic cloning for those couples who
have no hope of having children," Antinori told an Italian newspaper.
Reuters quoted him as saying that cloning will "help us put an end to so
many diseases, give infertile men the chance to have children. We can't miss
this opportunity." In the mid 1990s, Antinori garnered international
attention for using in vitro fertilization to allow a 62-year-old woman to
become pregnant.

Making sure not to be left out, Zavos said that his labs are not only
cloning human embryos, but are on the verge of implanting embryos into
infertile women. "We will be attempting pretty soon the first nuclear
transfers." He claims the deed will be done before the end of the year, or
at the beginning of 2002.

Whether the Raelians and other mad scientists are cloning or not, more
pernicious may be the mainstream biotech firms - like Advanced Cell
Technology - which are slowly making inroads in cloning technology, and
which may yet win the PR war, despite their odd compatriots. Once they've
won Americans' hearts and minds, without a permanent ban on human cloning,
you can preview the rest of the dehumanizing future with Aldous Huxley.

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