Genetic engineering will, at least at first, be used by parents on their children and as such parents will likely select for traits that they feel give there child the greatest chance of success in life. After all this is what parents already do in the form of extracurricular activities, summer camps and college prep courses and there is little reason to think this new tool will not find a similar use. If we look at what our society currently values (the acquisition of wealth and status) its not too far of a stretch to say that we may end up with a world of wunderkids simply as a result of what more or less amounts to a form of natural selection.

Thanks again for taking the time to read my response to this post. I wanted to alert you to a comment I posted over on Mr. Lawler’s follow-up post to my post. He has made some assertions about my intent in writing the post with which I disagreed (particularly one assertion that I was intending to call you intolerant), and I hope I made him aware of the way he was skewing my words to support his own intent. I look forward to your post in response to mine, and I hope you that you are enjoying your weekend.

Cheers,
Minerva

Second, yes, I have consulted the primary texts. Without a laundry list, I’ve read the Book cover to cover (Catholic, Mormon, and some apocryphal books as well), big chunks of the Talmud and Haggadah, Quran, and commenters ranging from Origen and Valentinus up through Augustine, Aquinas, Charles Taylor and Alvin Plantinga. Let’s not pretend I’m coming at Catholicism from a position of ignorance.

Third, my point is that your religious perspective should have no impact on our laws and social moral structure. You can certainly use it as a personal ethic, but just secularism demands evidence and logic to determine right action. As religion specifically demands faith (which is a step beyond evidence and logic) it should not be relevant to discussions of ethics. Was that point made with a bit more venom in the post? yes. It’s for effect.

Fourth, as for “fictive” burden of proof, it’s on you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Finally, I have a low tolerance for religious conservatives who insist on universalizing their perspectives in areas of science. Scientific ethics are based on logic, not divine fiat.

From a Catholic perspective the Church would not fall into the category you describe – i.e. “I have a book now prove it is not true”. The Church’s teachings on the Bible and its development are available for all to read from the Vatican’s website and supported by many Catholic apologists. Kyle’s criticism of, for example, Catholic teaching which he would consider to be one of many ‘fictive texts’ does not reference this material.

I dare say that if Kyle was to critique a scientific process, say the oxidation of copper, he would reference the appropriate research papers.

And yes, said old book is a fictive text if you take it literally (and not as some bizarre allegory). It clearly doesn’t describe the real world, the history of which is more or less well charted out from about 13.7 billion years ago to now.

How do explain creatio ex nihilo and the birth of scientific enquiry from the phrase ‘God ordered all things by measure, number, weight’ (Wis 11:21). Read P Duhem and S Jaki for a full explanation of that.

Can you prove that the ‘fictive texts’ of Catholicism are indeed ‘fictive texts’?

Think about it. A kid naturally ‘destined’ to have sickle-cell anemia or some other defect would be enhanced by removing the defect, regardless of what view the kid might take of the condition when grown to the point of developing his/her own judgment. S/he would probably grow up to see the lack of the defect as the better possibility, instead of remaining unmodified (and likely ending up trying to rationalize or teleologize their condition, or getting memed into the notion of the defect being “something good”).

Similarly, someone enhanced inherently to be good at math would see ‘being good at math’ to be a good thing, not an ad hoc desire of their parents forced upon them. Said kid would would then be able to spend less effort having to learn math and would be able to devote more time and effort to other things (UNLIKE the scenario of a parent forcing a normal child to spend immense effort on math in order to overachieve). If the mother does say “no” when offered the possibility of having a child inherently better at math, than that is because the mother has herself rationalized that ‘being good at math’ is not a good thing, somehow. Not enhancing when you could have would force the child to spend more effort during their life learning math, and that extra effort the parent making them spend IS an ad hoc desire that said parent is forcing upon the child.

(As for green eyes, that’s also ad hoc. But since most people take a liking to their personal aesthetic traits like eye color, probably the kid would end up liking hir green eyes anyway)

If you asked a mother of a child with juvenile diabetes, or sickle cell anemia, if they had had the opportunity to prevent that disease in their child whether they would take it, the answer will probably be yes. They are devastating diseases and the emotional and monetary costs are immense, and a good mother wants the best for her child.

On the other hand, if you ask a mother whether she would deliberately tamper with the DNA of her child to make sure it was good at math or had green eyes, the answer would probably be a no.

Preventing a disease is one thing. Enhancing traits is something else entirely. The former should be encouraged. The latter is going to be the real issue ethicists need to tackle.