"Church warns cell scientists not to play God"

Wow, there's a cliche for the century. But wait, that's just the news article headline covering the Catholic Church's response to Dr. J C Venter's recent creation of a synthetic cell. What did the Church actually say?

"It's a great scientific discovery. Now we have to understand how it will be implemented in the future," Monsignor Rino Fisichella, the Vatican's top bioethics official, told Associated Press Television News.

"If we ascertain that it is for the good of all, of the environment and man in it, we'll keep the same judgment," he said. "If, on the other hand, the use of this discovery should turn against the dignity of and respect for human life, then our judgment would change."

Oh, so this Vatican bioethicist, who thinks it's better to spread AIDS than to use condoms, and it's better for a pregnant woman to die than for her to get a life-saving abortion, wants a say in how this new technology is developed and used. What else did he say about science?

Fisichella, who heads Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, stressed there is no necessary clash between science and faith.

...Except that science is the process of gaining knowledge through the study of empirical evidence, and faith is belief in absence (or direct contradiction) of evidence. Now back to that title cliche.

Another official with the Italian bishops' conference, Bishop Domenico Mogavero, expressed concern that scientists might be tempted to play God.

"Pretending to be God and parroting his power of creation is an enormous risk that can plunge men into a barbarity," Mogavero told newspaper La Stampa in an interview. Scientists "should never forget that there is only one creator: God."

OK, so they really did say that: don't pretend to be God. How about this? We won't pretend to be God, if you'll stop pretending to know that an all powerful god exists, and that it talks to you. OK? Oh forgetaboutit. The day I take ethical advice from an organization that aids and abets pedophiles, hiding them and putting off their dismissal for years, while immediately excommunicating a nun for allowing a woman to have a life-saving abortion, is the day I get baptized.