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[Free Courses Article/News]:   The biological world has gone cloning crazy. World newspapers carried the report of the successful cloning of sheep, and articles are now coming out on an almost weekly basis of some other animal that has been cloned. Almost every science or popular magazine that has seen a story on this subject has addressed the question of human cloning. Is all of this a problem for those who believe that God created and made all things? Has the process of cloning somehow eliminated God or minimized or trivialized His creative acts?

What happens in cloning in very simple terms is that reproduction occurs by a man-made process. Genetic material is reproduced in a mechanical physical way instead of by the combination of two different genetic materials. The result is that the properties of the cloned individual are identical to the donor of the original genetic material. If you took a cell from me and cloned it, you would have a person who would have my physical properties. He would not have my memory or even my personality, but he would have my eye color, hair color, sex, height, skin color, etc. If you took five cells from my body and cloned them, you could produce five individuals physically like me.

Horrendous as that may sound, there are some good reasons to do that. Superior strains of animals could be cloned, improving size, resistance to disease, leanness, and other desirable characteristics. Many times a super cow or plant that contains special nutrients is sterile, and if we could reproduce them by cloning, we could ease world hunger. In humans, you could help sterile couples have a child uniquely theirs genetically, or you could make sure a genetically-caused disease is not perpetuated in a family.

From a biblical perspective, is there a problem with this kind of activity. God designed a system that has operated well for a long time. His command was to have each animal “bring forth after their kind.” Certainly that is happening in cloning. God designed the eye with a lens so that we could see, and man has learned in cataract surgery to take the lens out and replace it with a man-made lens. We have learned to make artificial skin, heart/lung machines for open-heart surgery, artificial blood, food supplements, etc. Very few seem to object to these types of procedures. Why would a cloned human be a problem?

The most immediate answer to that question is that the human would not be a spiritual being if it were cloned. The question has to be, “Why not?” The Bible does not tell us specifically when or how the soul of man is fused into his makeup. It seems to this writer that the soul in natural reproduction is present when the sperm meets the egg. In natural reproduction, everything genetic about the person is set when the sperm meets the egg–the person’s eye color, hair color, height, even the weaknesses genetically determined in their body is set. In cloning, it would seem that the same thing would be true. When the genetic material begins its reproductive process, the spiritual dimension is present for that individual. The pattern God gave in the genetic part of the individual is set and being followed. God’s sovereignty is not invaded nor is His plan destroyed.

There are good reasons for not cloning people. The ecological problems of overpopulation would be negatively impacted by adding another method of reproduction. The mental and psychological problems of having a small version of you on earth could be enormous. Geneticists know that combining genetic characteristics can lead to desirable new properties in all living things. The fact still remains that no cloning process or result poses a religious dilemma.

We would suggest that the whole cloning situation has led to another interesting observation. Biologists speak even today about how hard it is to clone anything. When the one successful sheep cloning was accomplished, there were literally hundreds of failures. The complexities of genetic and cell structure are enormous. All of the hardware, failure, hard work, and confusion about how all of this works should be a strong argument that life is not a product of chance. The more complex something is, the less likely it is that it could have come into existence by chance. Truly, we can know there is a God through the things He has made (Romans 1:18-22).

–John N. Clayton, [Free Courses offers this info With Permission from DoesGodExist.Org]

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[Free Courses News]:  DNA from a Neanderthal arm bone considered to be less than 100,000 years old by those analyzing the DNA has turned out to be different in more ways than anyone would have guessed. If you were to analyze the DNA from different races of mankind on the earth today you would find that no race varies by more than eight variations in genetic material from any other race. The Neanderthal DNA, on the other hand, varies from modern human DNA in 27 places. The Neanderthal DNA was extracted from the mitochondrion and should not be easily changed by environmental factors or the extraction process. This does not mean that Neanderthals were a different species, but it does mean that they were significantly different than the racial variations you see in the human population today. Humans who are older than the Neanderthals like Homo Erectus and Rhodesian Man may have been much more varied in physical characteristics than you might be led to believe by most reconstructions seen in textbooks and popular charts like the Time-Life series. Having a broader racial variation among humans than was previously thought possible may seriously challenge the usual evolution of man portrayals of National Geographic, Time-Life, and other popularizers of man’s evolution.–U.S. News and World Report, July 21, 1997, page 9, and Science News, July 19, 1997, page 37 [Free Courses offers this info With Permission from DoesGodExist.Org]

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The conflict between creation and evolution has escalated to a very high level in the last two decades. Almost every person has heard something on this topic without actively trying to do so. It is no longer surprising to see an article on evolution/creation in publications which have no relation to these topics.

Many Christians who never gave any attention to these subjects now find themselves in a very perplexing situation. They believe in creation but, when questioned by an enquirer or a skeptic, they don’t know what to say. Some of them even go to the extant of believing that creation is a spiritual belief while evolution is science. In the light of Logic  this is a false classification.

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[Free Courses News]:   CAVE MEN OR CAVE APES? It is our contention that those who try to construct a scenario of lemur to man frequently ignore race in making their arguments. Was Homo erectus a different species than modern man or was he a different race? Was Neanderthal man an ape or a true man. New discoveries of Homo erectus skeletons have been made in Java in rocks considered to be 27,000 years old, much too recent for most evolutionary scenarios. A flute used by the Neanderthals at about the same time in Ljubljana (in Slovenia) indicates a talent for language and articulate speech, which many anthropologists try to maintain they did not have. We would suggest that wide varieties of ancient man spread over the whole world and that, as more and more data is gathered, we will see that there has been racial variation, but not an inferior cave ape evolving into various species of man, one of which led to us. The oneness of man is seen in many ways, and the fossil record is just one of them. [Free Courses offers this info With Permission from DoesGodExist.Org]

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For decades population-experts have been proclaiming that the world population is exploding at an awesome rate. They blame this for all ills of the society — hunger, joblessness, and increased crime.

Well-funded organizations have come up all over the world to persuade people to restrict world-population. The scare tactics used by them have set into motion an awesome  snowball of fear and reaction. Consequently, people in almost all countries are now mentally prepared for the extermination of significant portions of their population.

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Science students attending Bible/Science conferences often ask me this  question : "Did the sun really stand still when Joshua commanded it to be still ?" The reference is to Joshua 10:12-13, which says :

"On the day that the Lord gave the men of Israel, victory over the Amorites, Joshua spoke to the Lord. In the presence of the Israelites he said ‘Sun stand still over Gibeon; Moon stop over Aijalon Valley’. The Sun stood still and the Moon did not move until the nation had conquered its enemies. This is written in the book of Jashar. The sun stood still in the middle of the sky and did not go down for a whole day."

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Man has a great desire to learn about the past.  Determination of how old relics from the past are is of great importance to everyone involved in studying the past, and as a consequence scientists have developed numerous methods to determine the age of old things.  Many of these methods depend upon "radioactivity", which is a special behavior exhibited by certain elements.  These methods are often called  "radioactive dating" methods.  Probably Radiocarbon Dating is the most well known of all these techniques, and even many laymen have heard this name.

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Natural science and technology has made enormous progress in the past few centuries, and this has been possible only because of experimentation.  Men everywhere, in their quest to understand the world better, have subjected every conceivable  process to experimentation and possible modification.  This has brought us numerous blessings in the form of modern means  of mass production, faster communication, better medicine, and better mass transportation.  However, careless use of science and technology has brought a number of curses also many of which manifest in the form of pollution.  Many kinds of experimentation in areas which  are ethically doubtful or completely wrong have also brought similar problems, and they are only going to increase with  time.

The products of technology breakthroughs often promise rich financial rewards in certain fields of research and this promise of pot of gold, coupled with the present day greed for money has made many researchers to overlook all kinds of moral obligation.  At the same time, man is becoming more and more daring to perform experiments which he perceives as doubtful or wrong because this adventure gives an expression to his rebellion against God.

Several dozen types of medical researches come in the category cited above, where the ethics of all of it becomes very important.  However, when such ethically doubtful  or wrong experiments  become the  routine practice  in  any  medical establishment, then even the Christians serving there tend to take it all so mechanically that they just overlook or forget the ethical side of it.

It has been widely reported in popular as well as medical publications that presently abortion is being  performed all over the world for the most trivial reason.  This procedure terminates the life of a person created in the image of God, but it has become such a part of many medical personnel that they just do not pause to think  what they are doing.  This attitude has given rise to another experimentation on live aborted fetuses | This is a cruel condemnable practice, but reportedly it is taking place all over the world.  They are using unwanted but lives babies to run all kinds of tests : the effect of chemicals, transplantation, and almost anything which one can conceive.  Some researchers even cut away the body part of these live bodies for harvesting their cells or for using the organs.  Many even do not care to anesthetize them, adding cruelty to the murder of an infant.

It is understood that some of the best cosmetics sold around the world contain cells extracted from the tender bodies of aborted babies.

God has created man in His own image, and in spite of man’s fall he carried that image in himself.  Therefore man is different  from all animals.  A baby, even at the youngest stage, is different from animals in kind.  It is a member of mankind and no one  except a court of law can order a life terminated.

Christians should therefore, never become an active party either in terminating a pregnancy or in conducting experiments on an  aborted baby.   They may never  be able to stop such activities   which go on in their institutions, and thus they might be constrained to become a passive party to it all, they should try their best to avoid active involvement.

Some might argue that there is nothing wrong with such experimentation because no one wants those babies anyway; they would have died sooner or latter.  Therefore  what is the harm if they are used for  something which might benefit the whole of mankind.  This argument depends upon a number of false arguments  – - the chief being that no one wants the baby.  There are many couples who might want to adopt the child if given a chance.  Also, there is no child who God does not love.  In fact, Christians should not contribute their energy to movements which divide children into wanted and unwanted categories.

Second, arguing does not conform to Christian ethics.  We do not evaluate the worth of a person or activity purely on the basis of some assumed worth.  Rather, the  appropriateness of every activity is judged on the basis of what the word of God would say about it.  In contrast to it something is accepted purely on the basis of its value to a great number of people, the people will soon find justification for even the most fallen and rotten activity.

Christians cannot stop all the unethical activities going around them, and they are surely not called to do that.  However, they can try their best to detach themselves from active involvement.  This might not be east because standing for one’s conviction demands a lot of cost.

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Christian believers often wonder about the apparently devote and saintly life of their unbelieving friends and neighbors.  Some of them even comment, `The lives many godly unbelievers is better than the life of an average believer’.  Even though such a comparison is often good for opening our eyes, this practice not to be indulged in without discrimination.

The life lived by believers cannot in any way be compared with the apparently good life of  unbeliever because the odds faced by them are very much different. For an unbeliever this world is his home, and he gets all kinds of help and cooperation from the world for his apparently religious activities.  The king of the present world knows that as long as this person does not trust in the Lord Jesus, he is bound for hell.  Hence the world-system of Satan does not interfere in the activities of this person.  In fact the religious set-up of the world motivates the unbeliever to be as religious and moral as he wishes because this external religion keeps him away from the real gospel for a long time.

On the other hand, a believer in Lord Jesus is not of this world.  Whether this person recognizes this fact or not, the master of the present world recognizes it very well.  As a consequence, a believer has to fight both internal as well as external enemies. The internal enemy is his old sin nature, often called `flesh’ in the word of God.  The external enemies are the devil and the world.  Since the world, the flesh, and the devil are constantly fighting against every believer, it not fair to compare his conduct with the conduct of a person for whom there is no such opposition.

However, the difficult situation of the believer does not excuse him of his sins, faults and shortcomings.  Rather, it should make every believer alert to the potential dangers facing everyone (like  soldiers on battlefield).

Of the three enemies mentioned above, world is the most subtle one in our generation. The word  "World" in our discussion does not refer to the mere physical world in which we live or 
move.  Rather, the reference here is to the false "world system"  that has been established by Satan.  The values placed by this system on different things is entirely different from the value assigned to them by the word of God.  For example, it has become a common belief that there is no harm in paying a bribe, if it can assure us a good job opportunity.  Many believers are known to indulge in giving and also in taking bribes, without realizing that ultimately a believer’s destiny is in the Lord’s hands.  Therefore, even if he seems to be a loser due to his beliefs, in the end he will turn out to be the real winner.

Satan’s false system of thought influences believers through many channels.  The newspapers that we read, the TV programs that we watch, the magazines we glance through, and even the social conversation in which we indulge have tremendous power to influence us.  Of course there is no way in which a believer can avoid reading newspaper or listening to common conversation, and so this should make them all the more alert in what is going into their minds.  The solution is not to avoid newspapers and such channels of communication, but rather in discerning when they try to influence our thought pattern.

Every generation of believers have many problems special to them, and one such problem of our generation is the world inside us.  Somehow, many of us have lost our alertness to this.  Many kinds of worldly attitudes have already crept into our thinking.  This will destroy us if we do not return to the norms and standards set by the word of God. 

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"Disciplining the tender children is a thing of the past.  Man has matured a lot, and today he has better methods than brutality to care for these flowers blossoming in his home".  This is a very popular slogan today, and many Christian parents fall for it.  But this is a wrong way of looking at discipline which is based upon a wrong conception of discipline, and also of children.

Brutality is not discipline, and only the most subjective person will equating them with each other.  Nor is punishment a synonym of discipline.  Disciplining of children is a broad process through which the parents build up their children to face the world, and punishment constitutes only a small part of it all.

There are at least three things in man’s nature that tend to produce unwanted behavior in childhood and also when the child grows up.  Only systematic discipline administered from a very early age will minimize the possibilities of such behavior.  The first of these three is the sin nature inherited by every baby.  This fallen nature motivates even small children to break common norms which they are expected to observe.  Second is the inclination in every person to follow the path of least resistance, leading children to a lot of unwanted behavior.  Third, all habits whether good or bad are learned behavior.  If a child is left to itself, it will inevitably pick up plenty of bad habits.  Only preventive discipline can minimize the problems caused by these three factors.

Preventive discipline is all discipline that aims to prevent problems that might arise in future.  There are two preparatory sides to it: to anticipate future problems which are common to all children, and second to anticipate future behavior which might be specific to the child being disciplined.  This might include stubbornness, selfishness, and bullying one’s may through life.  All kind of undesirable behavior, whether in the general category or in the specific one mentioned above, manifests itself very early in life and the wise parent should start tackling these symptoms much before they become pronounced.  The following principles should be used as practical guidelines for the general preventive discipline of all children:

First, every child should be given some responsibility according to his or her capacity to handle a job.  This might include putting of their books and shoes in the proper place, or helping mummy and daddy in certain tasks at home and outside.  The children should be helped to understand that no one can live without accepting a certain number of responsibilities; parents and others will always be there to help and motivate, but they themselves still must do all what is expected of them.  Children disciplined in this way will be less likely to avoid the serious responsibilities of life when they grow up.

Second, every child should be taught and required to respect authority.  This includes the authority of the parents, elders, teachers, and the authority of the Law.  Almost all children will start to defy the authority of their parents from a surprisingly early age, and it will be fatal to overlook that.  The child should be told lovingly but firmly that defiance will not be tolerated. If he does not change in spite of that he should be punished immediately to teach him that defiance does not pay ! Love for children should not cause parents to condone defiance. This will only lead to more difficult problems in future.  Parents must understand that if a child knows how to defy authority, then it has enough intellect to understand that this behavior will not be condoned in future.

Third, parents should be objective in all walks of their life, and they should elicit the same attitude from their children.  It is very easy for parents to become subjective when they judge their children.  As a result they may get into the habit of blaming the whole world for the shortcomings of their children.  The children are quick to get the hidden message — they are responsible for all their achievements, but it is OTHERS who are responsible for their shortcomings !

Once such children  grow into adults, they will never be able to see or own their personal shortcomings.  This will force them to be always on the defensive about their mistakes.  Parents should instill the values necessary for objectivity right from the childhood. Children should be made to understand that making of mistakes, and falling short of goals is quite common in human life.  A mistake is not the sign of weakness, but not owning what one has done and blaming it upon others is definitely a sign of weakness. It takes great courage and strength of character to accept and correct one’s own shortcomings, and parents have to instill this behavior pattern in their children.

The three principles for general preventive discipline explained above will lay the foundation for more specific discipline required for each child’s specific problems.  Whether it is stubbornness, selfishness, bullying, or any other problem, it manifests itself in the child at a very early stage.  Right from the moment such behavior is noticed, the child should be made to understand that he is not welcome to behave in that way.  For example, a stubborn child should never be given what he demands till he learns to request in a polite way.  But if parents miss the first few opportunities to correct such behavior, they may practically never be able to change that stubbornness in future.

Implementing the above suggestions is not easy because parents often get carried away in their subjectivity and emotionalism.  Many of them reason, "Oh, it is only a childish prank.  It will all change when the child grows older".  This is self deception; it is now or never in the case of preventive discipline.  If the symptoms are not checked now, it will become almost impossible to cure it in future.

Punishment is a definite part of discipline, and parents who shrug away from it are only working against the future welfare of their own children.  Sparing the rod, when it is needed, is not love but hatred in the long run ! However, all punishment should be administered with proper balance — objectively and commensurate to the offense — never in rage.  When seen in proper perspective, punishment constitutes only one part of the broad process of preventive discipline.

Today there is a big outcry against all forms of discipline.  Most proponents of such ideas are motivated by humanistic philosophies in which man is perceived as the most exalted creature in the world.  However according to the biblical viewpoint, man is born with a sin nature, and he is susceptible to evil; some form or other of preventive discipline is a must for him.  For a Christian, the Scriptures represents the highest authority in this matter. So why not look at the following verses before you quickly accept the dictates of subjective humanists: Proverbs 13:24, 19:18, 22:6&15, 3:13, and 29:15 & 17.

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