Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly, they say they always believed it. — Louis Agassiz
RELIGION Inc has come out with guns blazing over the past couple of weeks, and heading the charge has been the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Archbishop Winston Ndungane.
The issue is the cloning of human beings. The response of Religion Inc — unchanged since the days of the Crusades, of Galileo Galilei and of the Spanish Inquisition — has been to line us up, Bart Simpson-like, before the chalkboard and get us to scribble in bold letters: "Thou shalt not play in God's Domain!"
Blessed Creator! Are we never to be freed of the scourge of those whose response to every significant stepping stone on the quest for knowledge is to step back and decree that it is forbidden by the scriptures?
What is to be done about the untrammelled hypocrisy of those who stand by in silence while the world's superpowers — practised at silencing their own citizens by lethal injection — prepare to drop bombs upon countless innocents, yet raise their ire at the thought of manipulating the process of creating and sustaining life?
Every day, we defy gravity in our aircraft. We stem the flow and harness the power of mighty rivers with our dams. We beam our voices throughout the firmament with our communication satellites. With our resuscitators and pacemakers, we snatch life from death's clammy embrace.
Every day, we show — unashamedly — that limits set upon human development by nature shall not go unchallenged.
Cloning, like every great scientific discovery, offers the promise of salvation, with the corresponding threat of those who would misuse this knowledge.
Alarmists resort to conjuring up the spectre of a new breed of race supremacists cloning armies of the likes of Hendrik Verwoerd or Adolf Hitler. It's a damaging approach. If we can agree that there was something intrinsically genetic that caused the evil of racism, are we not saying that race — itself intrinsically genetic — determines our moral fibre?
The single most significant gain to be had from the technology of cloning is that of spare parts — the ability to generate new hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers and limbs.
Suddenly, an alternative presents itself for the thousands upon thousands who sit upon the death row of those waiting for someone to die so that organs may become available for transplant.
Suddenly, an alternative presents itself for Mozambique and Angola's countless amputees, lives shattered by those landmines which this country has outlawed but America clings to.
And the world recoils. Our religious leaders would have us bow our heads in terror at the possibility of dictating that the process of creation shall not be subject to mere chance.
"Ban it! Outlaw it! Imprison those who would seek to practise it!"
Tell that to the mother whose child will die without a transplant, and suddenly the rules of the game change. That mother will violate every religious decree, every law, to ensure that her child will live.
Even if outlawed, the world will continue to develop the technology of cloning. The research will be conducted in the shadowy laboratories of the intelligence agencies — the selfsame people who seek to bomb Baghdad for developing biological weapons while themselves holding the world's largest stockpiles of such terrors.
The technology will be available — and used — to enhance the lives of the ultra-privileged while the rest of us stand self-imprisoned by hypocrisy.