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.