Is Cloning Really Against the Will of God?

By Brent Hardy

            Cloning- it’s on everybody’s mind lately.  With reports that an organization called “Clonaid” has recently successfully cloned a human girl, everybody seems to be talking about this controversial procedure.  I walk around and ask people what they think about it and receive the same response almost every time.  “It’s against the laws of nature,” “Unethical,” or “Scientists just enjoy playing god,” are usually the first words to escape the lips of anyone approached with the subject of cloning.  This disturbs me!  People espouse their opinions without actually looking into the subject, usually the opinions their friends, family, or ministers tell them to have.  I honestly believe that if people looked unobjectively to the benefits cloning technology could bring humankind, they would change their minds about it.  People scream that cloning goes “against God’s plan,” but would God actually allow cloning to be possible if it were against his plan?  If God were so opposed to it, the procedure simply wouldn’t work.  The laws of nature wouldn’t allow it.  However, people who claim to know the will of God spread this to generate sympathy to their own agendas.  We try to achieve holiness by following the words of others, when what we really need to do is search our own hearts and bring our God-given logic to bear on the simple problems that surround us.

            In the same vein, it must not be unnatural, because the very laws of nature would scream out against the act.  Since it is possible, though, it must be natural, just as a tree growing vertically from an embankment is unusual but still natural, as it is possible.  In the future, when those who today are suppressing cloning need a heart or kidney transplant and are unable to receive one because the donor lists are so short, they will be the ones to pay, for one of the primary goals of cloning is to be able to produce viable organs for transplantation.  Instead of being able to receive a new organ and be made good as new, they will wither and die because they have suppressed the technology that would save them.  That, finally, puts the ethical quandary into perspective.  Is it more ethical to let people die when they could easily be saved in exchange for not offending God and nature?  Or would God rather us use our natural intellects to attempt to solve the problems around us and save those we can? 

            I only hope that people would start to open their eyes to the suffering they could ease if they only put their silly superstitions behind them and work toward the goal of salvaging human life from the ruin it so often finds itself in.  If we would only stop trying to know the will of God and work, as best we can, towards the betterment of ourselves as people, God will work through us and allow us to do whatever possible to achieve our goals.  In doing so we may even help ourselves tomorrow, by promoting the technology that helps others today.