March 2, 1997

Cloned Ewe Suggests Reasons To Believe Immortality

God has nothing to worry about. The Scottish scientist who "cloned" a ewe has not found a way to create life - only to rearrange it somewhat.

The world hails the feat as a breakthrough that someday might be able to duplicate an Einstein or a Beethoven.

The new sheep was named after Dolly Parton - a famous singer who was singled out more for her physical attributes than for her musical ability. Dr. Ian Wilmut took some DNA chromosomes from the udder of a ewe, injected them into an sheep egg, and placed the egg in a ewe's womb. The offspring is said to be "exactly" like her mother.

Certainly it is not the first mammal to be cloned, as ill-informed media types breathlessly report.

Back in 1980, Dr. Peter Hopkins at Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine, cloned a mouse. The last I heard, a mouse is a mammal. Dr. Hopkins' experiment would have received more notice if he had named it for a celebrity, say, Mickey Mouse.

Ethicists have worked up a sweat over Dolly. Hundreds of religious and health groups are already busy getting up petitions to have cloning of humans banned by law.

Immortality via the test tube is a long way off - if not impossible. The mysterious spark that initiates life remains a divine prerogative. Neither Drs. Wilmut or Hopkins could create an egg.

Nevertheless, we can expect immortality of that life spark within all humans. Something in our brains transcends mere existence. We call it a "soul."

Since the time of Plato, discussion of immortality of the soul has been conducted by the greatest minds at the highest level of thought.

Among the more provocative thinkers on the subject was the late Rev. Dr. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of Community Church in New York City.

Dr. Holmes compiled ten non-religious reasons for believing in immortality unassisted by genetic tinkering:

1. First, we may believe in immortality because there is no reason for NOT believing. Immortality has never been proved, but neither has it been disproved. As the question is open, so must our minds be open.
   
2. The idea of immortality is universal with all people in all times. The thought is elemental in the sense that it is grounded in the forces we possess. When we find in animals some inner faculty which persists from generation to generation - we may be sure it represents some link with reality which has made survival possible.
   
3. Throughout history, most great thinkers believed in immortality. Though there have been some notable dissenters, the consensus overwhelmingly affirms the belief - from Plato to Kant, from Aristotle to Darwin, from Sophocles to Goethe, from Socrates to Gandhi.
   
   If the belief in immortality is not justified, then we join James Martineau in asking: "Who are those who are mistaken? Not the groveling souls who never reached to so great a thought. No, the deceived then are the great and holy whom all men revere - the men who have lived for something better than their own happiness."
   
4. Evidence of immortality is our over-endowment as a creature of this earth - our surplus mental equipment for the adventures of our present life.
   
   The physical attributes of any animal seem perfectly to endow it to its natural environment. It has what it takes to live and procreate, but nothing more. The outfit of humans, however, seems to constitute something like a vast over- provision for our necessities.
   
   If earthly life is all there is, what need have we for mental faculties, moral aspirations, spiritual ideals? There is a fundamental discrepancy between the endowment of humans and the life they have to live - an unparalleled violation of the creative economy of nature without immortality.
   
   What we have in mind and heart and spirit can only be explained by the supposition that we are preparing for another and vaster life. We are immortal because the signs of immortality are upon us.
   
5. The lack of proportion between a person's body and mind argue for immortality. If body and mind are aspects of a single organism, adapted only to the conditions of this present life, why do they so early begin to pull apart?
   
   Though the body weakens through the years, the soul grows stronger. We come to death only to discover within ourselves exhaustless possibilities.
   
6. Our souls have potentials and promises which should not, as indeed they cannot, be subject to the chance of earthly fortune. Is it possible that great people with great minds can die prematurely from disease and accidents, and their contributions be wasted in nature?
   
7. This world is the result of a natural process of development which has been going on for millions of years. If this process is rational, as man's processes are rational, it must have been working all those eons of time to the achievement of some worthy end.
   
8. A scientific reason for believing in immortality is found in the principle of "conservation of energy." The gist of this fundamental is that nothing in the universe is ever lost. All energy persists - if not in its original form, then in a new one. The sum total of energy in the universe remains the same. Life is a form of electro-chemical energy.
   
   It can change form, but it cannot disappear.
   
9. All the values of life exist in humans, and in them alone. The world as we know it is not the world as we receive it, but is the world as we make it by the creative genius of the inward spirit.
   
   The being who created the world must itself be greater than the product of its handiwork. Nothing has any value without man. Man, therefore, is the supreme value.
   
10. Faith in an eternal life beyond the grave justifies itself in terms of the life we are now living. We are immortal today if we are ever going to be immortal tomorrow. This means we have the opportunity to put it to the test, even now and here.

PARTING SHOTS

• Kenneth Starr, independent counsel for Whitewater investigations, resigned then un-resigned last week. He still hopes to find a smoking gun. It appears that so far he has found only smoked herring.
  
• Hillary Clinton received a Grammy award for the "best spoken word" video reading of her ghost-written booklet "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child." Eat your heart out Newt.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers