Little Known Facts

If I have talked to you in the last four months, there is a good chance you know I'm enrolled in a class based on ethical philosophy called Choosing and Using Values. For some reason, the population of class is overtly Christian. On a certain level, I don't have any issue with the personal beliefs of an individual. On another level, I question the idea of intellectualism and religion mixing and coexisting effectively.

I'm sure no one from my class reads this blog, so I'm sure I'm safe. Our last online discussion question was as follows.

Should there be international laws put in place to outlaw human cloning?

Valid question. Rather than breaking it down rationally, this was the first response. Excuse all the philosophical mumbo jumbo. I know, I think it sucks too.

This topic is incredibly interesting to me. If you think about the virtue theory we could just clone people to have our virtues and none of our vices. We would then have a better version of ourselves. Though this might seem intriguing I think it would cause a lot of controversy. Cloning to have organs to save lives is another interesting purpose for the procedure. With this idea I have to take a Divine Command Theory and revert back to my belief in God. To me everyone is here as long as he needs them here. When our job is done here on earth God will call us back to heaven. By cloning organs or ourselves to save us would be going against God's will. He did create man to be intelligent and has given us the ability to improve science. Therefore, I do think we should do whatever possible to save someone, but there has to be a line drawn at some point. We can't live forever.

Notice how she capitalizes 'God' but not 'Earth?' Yeah, me too. And I wonder how you take a Divine Command Theory? Most times after class and before my next one I take a big Divine Command Theory in the basement of the building where I take this class.

I won't include my snarky response. Hey, I've been nice all semester, it's the last week of class and this person probably won't even read my response. If we have to draw the line where we stop trying to save lives, can't we draw a line somewhere saying God (if you believe in God) or using God's name as a reason for things we can't explain is no longer acceptable? Try telling the parents of a seven year old kid, "we could have saved your son's life with a heart transplant but there were none available after the accident and we ran out of time, and the religious people banned human cloning which would have given us more availability. But hey, we can't live forever right?"

Hey, it's plausible. Life isn't an episode of Grey's Anatomy where a heart is always on hand to save the kid. Thank goodness. Life as that silly show, not saving kids. You know what I mean.

The point is I'm glad the semester is over for this class tomorrow at 11:25. Not because I didn't like the material or how it made me think about how big of an asshole I am, and how I lack certain ethical standards, but because I'm tired of listening to kids interpret how God would feel about eating a cheeseburger on Good Friday. I'm not joking. I asked this young student if eating one of my wife's Boca Burgers was acceptable, and if pretending it was meat was openly defying God because it's posing as a burger but it's not. She didn't like that question.

These are the things I missed the first time around in college. I'm glad I'm back to play the part of the older jerk with the dreaded "life experience" who should just be working some dead end job, but has decided to come back to school and hurt their chances of getting a good job because I'm clearly smarter.

Oh come on, you knew I couldn't make it out of this post without saying something of the sort.