Mammoth Resurrection
 

Anyone posted anything on this yet? It would be fairly nifty if they can pull it off. I would pay a lot of coin to see one alive. And by a lot of coin, I mean about $10. Anyone have any ethical issues with it?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...urrection.html

Re: Mammoth Resurrection
 

Why would there be any ethical issues?

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Can't imagine any. I can't personally wait to see one in real life. It will take a few generations in that the first baby will be one half mammoth, one half elephant but the next will be 3/4 mammoth and 1/4 elephant, etc.

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What about dinosaurs? Not really interested in the mammoths.

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One would have to isolate some viable DNA which would require for the animal to have been in a state that would keep some type of cellular structure still moist and usable. That's not an easy thing to find.

Actually there was a scientist that said he had found viable Dinosaur DNA back in the mid 90's. I don't guess anything ever came from it.

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Wouldn't this be the first step in including human beings in this project? That would surely be unethical, in my opinion.

BT

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Just what I was thinking! Love those Jurassic Park movies.

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Me too!!

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Why would that be unethical?

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One would assume since the clone was human, he would have a soul the same way as all other humans do. That same logic would apply towards his ability to gain salvation.

I am sure God's stance for this human would be the same for the clone as for any human. Why would him being cloned change God's stance on him? It's not like he asked to be cloned, lol.

Now, one could try to make an argument that the clone does not have a soul and therefore could not be human, but to me, that would be a silly argument, since we cannot determine where the soul is or how to measure for it.

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I don't think we can say one way or the other.

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Would you agree that it is a break away from His natural design ?

If God was angry with man for building the tower of babel to get closer to Him, would it be too far a stretch to think He would have a problem with man trying to be Him ?

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Who knows? As said earlier, who can know what His natural plan was/is? Technically, His natural design was creating man from earth, and woman from rib. We are fairly far away from that now, lol.

I do not see how cloning is our way of trying to become God. We can make babies anytime we want to anyway, through natural conception, through IVF, through IUI. This is just another way of doing what we are already doing.

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Those would generally be a little harder to keep in the yard than a woolly mammoth.

Also, with a mammoth we're talking about a species that went extinct only around 10,000 years ago with some holdouts lasting until as recently as 3600 years ago. The "mega-fauna" dinosaurs died out some 65 million years ago.

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Maybe they can make "minis" using a Gecko? Mommy I want a mini T-Rex!!!!

Toy designer dinos ... I think I'm on to something!

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Ummm, well.... the natural plan is plainly stated in the bible.

I understand the making babies and I agree, but we aren't talking about artificial insemination. We are talking about taking the cells of one who has past on and re-creating that person.

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I agree. Identical twins are clones of one another. Some would say that's why one of them is "evil" - I guess. One doesn't haven't a soul while the other does.

In reality, they both have souls along with their own genome, though the genome is identical at first.

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You know PETA would have something to say about Dino fighting. And Vick might be tempted to fall off the wagon again.

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I don't take the Tower of Babel as being an attempt to "be closer to God." It strikes me as more of an attempt to "be like God" and to usurp God's position while also refusing to fulfill His commands ("... lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" & etc.).

I don't see "cloning" as an attempt by man "to be God." It's a method of reproducing an organism - not creating one.

That being said, I don't think it's always in the organism's best interest to be cloned either. Still, a woolly mammoth would be pretty cool. One foreseeable problem however, is that we don't really know or understand their habitats and ecosystems.

African elephants tear up the forests and open grazing land. That's a good thing, generally. However, with the climate changes over the past million years, the African forests have become a rather fragile thing. The mammoths of North America likely opened up grazing areas in the hard wood forests like their African cousins but that isn't really something we need right now.

Who knows? Maybe pachyderms are "supposed" to be going extinct?

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If God didn't want us to try and re-create His work, He shouldn't have made cloning devices in women, lol. He should have just kept with the tried and true dirt/rib method.

We already create humans, via natural and artificial methods. Artificial cloning would just be an extension of that. What's the phrase, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Who knows, He might like it. lol

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The ecological effect and other problems that might arise with this new species ... including defects ... would be the ethical issue, if any.

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Now that is the question to be asking. Perhaps they went extinct for a reason, a la the ecosystem could not longer support them. Perhaps bringing them, or any animal back, would cause ripple effects in ways we cannot possible fathom.

"A Sound of Thunder", anybody?

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This would be an interesting experiment in what it means to be not only human, but what it means to be "ourselves."

Identical twins are clones, but they are unique individuals. In fact, as time goes on their features often become increasingly distinguished along with their lifestyles.

If we were to clone Leonardo da Vinci today, would "our" da Vinci be guaranteed to be a great artist?

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There disappearance coincides perfectly with the receding of the glaciers during the last ice age. I am sure they didn't breed like rabbits so even mild hunting from the native populations would have decimated them as their habitat decreased.

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Whatever.

There is every reason to think that they are close enough to modern elephants that interbreeding would have been possible, at least under lab conditions.

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When you visit the zoo you are NOT supposed to feed the animals. Of course, the best arguments against YEC are coadie's posts themselves.

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Ya, there are more then a few contradictions in YEC thinking when talking about things like woolly mammoths.

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The Kentucky Coffee tree of the American Midwest drops its seeds in large pods that resemble giant pea pods. The Kentucky Coffee tree's pods and the seeds themselves are tough. So tough in fact that they always fail to germinate when they are dropped from the trees today. The seeds evolved alongside some means of dispersal that no longer exists today.

Currently, younger trees are only found naturally along water courses where the seeds are dropped into very damp soils and are subjected to bacterial decay that eats away the tough membranes around the seeds. At one time, it was thought that river banks and wetlands were the only habitat for the Kentucky Coffee tree. Yet, the geologic record shows them to have once been very numerous throughout North America even in dry areas. They are found in the geologic record to have grown prolifically far into Canada - but today they are completely absent from Canada and the Upper Midwest.

The reason for this discrepancy was discovered by paleobotanist Connie Barlow, wife of minister and author Michael Dowd. Dowd is the author of "Thank God for Evolution." He and Connie travel the county visiting churches where they spread the message that science and faith don't have to conflict. Barlow attributes the dispersal of the Kentucky Coffee tree seeds to the now extinct mega-fauna of North America - creatures like the woolly rhinoceros.

As the various Ice Age glaciations came and went, the animals would move back northward with the retreating glaciers, spreading the digested coffee tree seeds as they migrated. These seeds would sprout and the Kentucky Coffee Tree would be reintroduced to biomes that had been covered by ice for millennia. When the woolly rhinos died out, the means by which the coffee trees spread themselves was lost.

The tree only survives today because the seeds can be "digested" in very damp soils like wetlands and along river courses. This is why the Kentucky Coffee tree is no longer found in dryer areas even though it grows quite well in those conditions. It also is not found naturally in any area that was covered by ice during the last glaciation which coincided with the demise of the woolly rhinoceros.

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That would be interesting to see. In nature/nuture discussions, I tend to come down on the side of nurture, so I would think it would end up being a different Leonardo da Vinci.