[Extropy-chat] Stem cells, starts of life, politics and religion

[Brett Paatsch]

Next steps in the great dance between science and religion - 
where science discovers and then religion adapts (but only through
the agency of some of its better minds). This can be seen happening
in this little article.  

I recently met Archbishop Peter Carnley at the opening of the
National Stem Cell Centre inaugural conference. We chatted amiably
until I said I was a catholic who became an atheist - and he retorted
I should have become an Anglican :-)

Peter Carnley (head of the Anglican Church in Australia) talks in an
article in today's edition of The Age about the origins of the religious
notion of 'conception' in 1869 and how that notion of conception 
and the notion of when the human individual life  begins must change
now in the modern world to avoid logical inconsistency, and further,
how this can enable stem cell research (i.e. "therapeutic cloning") to
be seen as ethical - God bless Peter Carnley, gentleman and 
scholar ;-)

http://theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/04/1067708217596.html

Regards,
Brett