Biblical Injunction Against Human Cloning Explained

Ronald Bailey | June 24, 2005

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun," wrote the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. Apparently this weary lament applies to human reproductive cloning according to a press release promoting evangelist Matthew Omaye Ajiake's new book, Nephilim: The First Human Clones--Why Their Existence Led to Noah's Flood.

I can't explain Ajiake's argument any better than the press release below:

Is Human Cloning Really A New Biomedical Breakthrough?

In 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first surviving mammal known to be conceived by laboratory cloning. Other animals since Dolly, including horses and cattle, have been created using this method. The biotechnology used to create a human clone is essentially the same as that used to clone animals.

Human cloning in the laboratory is inevitable and will bring with it disastrous consequences, according to Matthew Omaye Ajiake, author of Nephilim: The First Human Clones.

Ajiake makes a case for the existence of human clones in Old Testament times in the form of the Nephilim, descendants of Cain, one of the sons of Adam. The Nephilim were referred to as "giants" and "the fallen ones" - unnatural and grotesque creatures.

Because Cain had murdered his brother Abel, Cain and his descendants were cursed by God and destined to become extinct after seven generations, according to biblical passages cited by Ajiake.

He writes that Lamech, a sixth-generation descendant of Cain, tried to escape this annihilation by creating clones of himself through a process that involved women from the lineage of Seth, another son of Adam. Son of Man.

Ajiake contends that the Nephilim were the first nihilists, having no respect for traditional values and beliefs, seeing existence as senseless and God as irrelevant. This attitude, also adopted by most other people of the era, brought about God's appeal for humankind to repent.

God selected Noah to be the messenger of His call for repentance, and to build an ark as protection against a great flood that was to come if humanity failed to change its ways. No one heeded the warning call, and all humans except Noah and his family were destroyed by the flood.

Ajaike's central message is that the world today is parallel to that of Noah's time and that by ignoring God's principles, humanity will bring destruction on itself.

He quotes Jesus saying, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man (the Second Coming of Christ)."

Part of the great evil of our time, Ajiake believes, is seen in attempts to create and manipulate life through the cloning process.

Proof that cloning is a perversion of nature and God's purpose can be seen in the fact that the majority of cloned animals never survive, and that those who do are often oversized and demonstrate other physical anomalies, Ajiake says. He uses internationally respected authorities on cloning to support his argument.

"The greatest challenge in dealing with human cloning will come when we see an assortment of cloned humans and other creatures - from designer pets to designer babies to obscene hybrids," Ajiake writes. "The process of human cloning has the potential to result in more loss of life than any catastrophic event modern mankind has ever experienced."

Who knew that God was against "designer pets"? And in other news, the Wisconsin State Assembly is evidently trying to save Badger Staters from divine retribution.

Comments

|6.24.05 @ 10:23AM|#

Does this just seem like a really bad star wars movie plot? How is a clone less human than a twin, anyway?

|6.24.05 @ 10:40AM|#

Wow. I would have thought he would have gone for the literal old testament account of fallen angels sleeping with the daughters of man and then creating a new breed. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about that. I don't have a Bible at work.

At any rate, he sounds like a crackpot. If you're against the whole genetic manipulation of mankind, at least go with C.S. Lewis' Abolition of Man.

Handsome Dan|6.24.05 @ 10:41AM|#

I work for the Wisconsin State legislature. One of my co-workers was at the committee meeting for the anti-cloning bill, where he heard some pretty goofy testimony from those urging its passage. One guy apparently warned of a clone-army scenario like the one in ATTACK OF THE CLONES (he even referred to the movie without irony and with a straight face). Another guy said that, if human cloning is not banned, "the Ku Klux Klan will clone black people and use 'em as punching bags." Exactly why the Klan would want to create MORE black people was left as an exericse for the reader, I guess.

As for all this Bible-based stuff - eh, doesn't really surprise me (but hold on: didn't God promise that he'd hold off on any punitive natural disasters in the future? I thought that's what the rainbow was for; y'know, sign of God's covenant...?). I have to say that I don't really understand the "only God can create life" arguement, though. Like, can't any man and woman with functioning reproductive organs create life? And if that's really just God creating life through the actions of two people (say), then why can't He create life through the actions of a bunch of scientists? Why the arbitrary distinction? I mean, sheesh, this religion stuff is so riddled with inconsistancies and contradictions that you'd think someone just...just...just MADE IT ALL UP!

|6.24.05 @ 10:49AM|#

Proof that cloning is a perversion of nature and God's purpose can be seen in the fact that the majority of cloned animals never survive, and that those who do are often oversized and demonstrate other physical anomalies, Ajiake says. He uses internationally respected authorities on cloning to support his argument.

with this book coming out, maybe they should amend that to formerly respected.

|6.24.05 @ 11:00AM|#

Andre the Giant: first human clone?

Who knew?

|6.24.05 @ 11:11AM|#

The rainbow just promised he wouldn't use a flood again. Punitive punishment was still popular up until the New Testament.

As for creating life. Is reproduction really the creation of new life or just as the word implies, copying? If I reproduce a book, I didn't write or create book.

|6.24.05 @ 11:14AM|#

"Hansome" Dan:

If thee actually bothered to read thy Bible closely, thou would seeth that I will never again kill my childred via FLOOD. But there are other ways..

for example.. squirrels. Many, many squirrels. Legions.

Don't piss Me off.

Jeff|6.24.05 @ 11:16AM|#

Someone's been reading Mike Carey's Lucifer comic. This comes right out of that.

|6.24.05 @ 11:31AM|#

I can appreciate the need for a friday funny, but you guys are just encouraging these morons by giving them free publicity like this.

|6.24.05 @ 11:45AM|#

Jeff:

Thou are pissing Me off.

The mark is now on thy head. Thinketh thou as thy walketh past the trees..

Zounds! There are certainly a lot of squirrels.. why is that big one looking straight at me? 'tis unnerving.. must quicken my pace.

Lo! More squirrels in yonder tree! Now they take to the ground.. are they following me? The hand of ice closes around my heart!

Made it through the door.. lock it quickly! Check all the windows. Safe for now.

But darkness falls quickly, and the scampering of many claws on your roof shall be your lullaby.

Fare thee a good night.

|6.24.05 @ 11:53AM|#

obviously, the rainbow actually signified that god was done saving humanity from its clones, and that in the future, the only members of humanity capable of handling the clones would be homosexuals.

i can use internationally respected authorities on homosexuality to support my argument.

|6.24.05 @ 12:04PM|#

I guess the clone thing is one way to satisfy concerns that God drowned all the babies (born and unborn) in the Flood.

Why, they were merely clone-spawn, therefore, fair game.

|6.24.05 @ 12:18PM|#

Wait: if God promised not to kill anybody else via flood, what is a tsunami?

Oh wait -- those people are brown and polytheistic. I guess there must be some stipulation in the rainbow agreement that excluded them from the deal. ("Offer not applicable to Eastern and Pacific countries").
Or did somebody not check the expiration date?

How is a clone less human than a twin, anyway?

Well, I think some studies have been done suggesting (and/or proving? I can't remember now) that cloned animals (as would presumably be the case with humans, too) have the genetic material of the being it was cloned from at the time of the cloning , meaning if you cloned a really old person, they would start out young but age very rapidly, as was the case with sheep (and other instances??).

|6.24.05 @ 12:50PM|#

The suggestion that human cloning will eventually lead to mass destruction is completely ridiculous.

...It's our overdependence on robots that we need to worry about. Inevitably, all the world's robots will develop their own programming and destroy us. ...I thought everybody knew that!

|6.24.05 @ 12:54PM|#

...Oh, and if the alternative is government by evangelical Christians, I, for one, would welcome our newly cloned overlords.

R C Dean|6.24.05 @ 1:30PM|#

At any rate, he sounds like a crackpot.

Gee, ya think?

|6.24.05 @ 1:33PM|#

"Cain, tried to escape this annihilation by creating clones of himself through a process that involved women from the lineage of Seth"

Ummm . . .so how is this cloning ? It sounds like the usual process used to create new life, to me.

|6.24.05 @ 1:44PM|#

I'm with you, Matthew. This whole supposed genealogy makes zero sense.

Also, why would it be relevant that Cain's offspring bred with Seth's offspring? If we accept that Adam and Eve were the first and only people created, and they had children (Cain, Abel, Seth, and presumably some girls)...then THERE WAS NO WAY TO BREED without breeding with the offspring of one of those children. Right?

Oh and, Ewwww.

|6.24.05 @ 1:59PM|#

Okay, so, before the agreement not to flood again, did prisms not work?

|6.24.05 @ 2:09PM|#

I think prisms worked, Jason. It's just that all the water in the oceans was up in the air back then, and the sun didn't get through the atmosphere the way it does now, so there weren't any rainbows.

...And if you don't watch out, the clones are gonna getcha! ; )

|6.24.05 @ 2:19PM|#

i for one welcome our new bushy tailed overlords.

actually, a squirrelpocalypse would be pretty cool.

|6.24.05 @ 3:13PM|#

Ajiake contends that the Nephilim were the first nihilists, having no respect for traditional values and beliefs, seeing existence as senseless and God as irrelevant.

Nietzschian Nephilim!

|6.24.05 @ 3:14PM|#

... Batman!

|6.24.05 @ 4:10PM|#

Man, it's things like this that make me wish I could've read the stuff insane Biblical literalists wrote about epidurals when they first came out.

|6.24.05 @ 5:57PM|#

God fucking dammit. I was a theology major in my religious days, and the Book of Enoch is still my favorite non-canonical book. The Nephilim are NOT clones and they're not the descendants of Cain. According to the Book of Enoch, the Watchers (angels who protected the earth) descended to the earth and got it on with the "daughters of men." The resulting half-human, half-angel hybrids were the Nephilim, who are hinted to be the giants referred to in the OT.

Basically, the Book of Enoch suggests that it wasn't so much man's corruption, as it was the genetic corruption of the human race caused by interspecies mating with angels, that brought on the flood. Cloning has nothing to do with it.

|6.24.05 @ 6:38PM|#

So, really, what the Bible says to watch out for is sex with aliens.

Clones should be all good.

|6.24.05 @ 7:26PM|#

I thought the result of humans sex having with celestial beings was extremely intelligent, highly logical (albeit somewhat tortured) starship First Officers.

|6.24.05 @ 8:14PM|#

Heh.

Not to mention clones and genetic engineering are Just Always Bad in Trek, Stevo...

|6.25.05 @ 5:36PM|#

The Bible doesn't say anything about Cain's line being destined to extinction. Lamech had three sons and a daughter. (4:19-22) Nothing in the Bible identifies Lamech's children with the Nephilim.

'Nephilim' is the Hebrew word that is translated as 'giants' in the KJV. It appears untranslated in some translations, such as the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version.

David Tomlin

|6.26.05 @ 4:52AM|#

Inevitably, all the world's robots will develop their own programming and destroy us... Ken S.

Obviously, we need to start a crash program to develop Super Karate to protect all of NorthAm.

Kevin

|6.26.05 @ 8:48PM|#

I love you guys...Sometimes I feel sooo alone...
Now I know I'll have company fighting off those IBM/Sony monsters when they dethrone our Human facist masters...then again, why do I get the feeling that machines would treat us better than our own bretheren ?..oh yeah, our history..check

|6.27.05 @ 5:04PM|#

Obviously, we need to start a crash program to develop Super Karate to protect all of NorthAm.

And train some poor schmuck with a latin name to go fight them for us. :)