i) I had my first exam this morning – Theological Ethics – and the paper was a good one. So thanks to those of you who were praying for me. I answered questions on natural law, necessary evils, and the theological virtues.
ii) Having just sat the exam, and finished my ethics essay, I can now go out and do some ethics. And immediately an issue has come up – the Australian Senate has just passed a bill that would allow therapeutic cloning. And honestly, I don't know what to think about it. I certainly believe that personhood begins at conception, but in this case a skin cell is being cloned using an egg as an incubator – since there is no sperm involved, the embryo is not a human being. So I'm wondering, is the slippery-slope argument strong enough to make Christians deem therapeutic cloning to be unethical?
ADDENDUM: Maybe the afore-mentioned cell is a human being after all. After all, once we begin to clone humans, this is how they will commence life. Human clones would begin life as soon as the cell starts to divide, and clones are people too. Megan Best has more.
iii) America is gripped with election fever, and it looks like the Democrats have made something of a comeback. Reclusive blogging legend holyoffice says that he gets "unaccountably excited on Election Day," which is how he imagines lapsed Catholics feel on Christmas: they don't believe a word of it, but they enjoy going to church with their family and having roast goose for dinner. But more interesting are the ethical issues that went to a vote:
UPDATE: The stem cell research proposal has been passed in Missouri, and there are only two Senate seats left to be decided – Montana and Virginia. If the Democrats win both of these, then they will control the Senate; if the Republicans win both, they stay on top; while if it's one each, neither party will have a majority.
iv) Finally, I picked up some books at a library book sale today, including Portofino (Frank Schaeffer's thinly-disguised autobiography) for just 20 cents. I read it several years ago, but still remember the narrator describing how he he wasn't able to read (since he was home-schooled) and so had to dog-ear the pages of his Bible to make himself look spiritual.
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