To begin my reply Kelly, I must thank you for being more civilized this time.
If you have been offended, apologies all around, as that is not our intent.
However, you have obviously misread some of our posts and I urge to reread.
As for cults being religion, I will now state one of my views which in no way reflects team 25.
Cults and religions are the same, to a point. Both are based upon belief systems. Cults have been given a bad name because many cults are simply ludicrous and take advantage of people. Remember that Christianity was originally a small sect of followers for a radical new religion. In other words- an old cult. The same goes for many world religions that started off. The difference is that they grew to full fledged religions. In a hundred years, who knows what cults may be powerful world religions (though I must say recently this has proven to be... not likely recently.)

Well, for starters, i never compared religion to cults, cause they are two seperate things (in my view). Secondly, the reason why bush cannot make choices based on his religious preference is because there are people, like me, like the muslim down the corner, or the buddhist monks, or anyone else who is not a christian, it could possibly offend. when you are the leader of a multi-religious nation, you must let go of your religion when you lead, because there are people who go completely against that religion for various reasons.

now, going back on topic. bush made a choice that goes against my beliefs, and i believe infringes upon my rights, if the bill is infact passed into being a law. there is nothing that i can think of in judiasm that says you can't do htereputic cloning. you yourself i believe said that thereutic cloning is fine with you. bush wants to outlaw anythnig that has anything to do with cloning or stem cell research. this could possible have detremental effects upon my life. if i develop a disease that's incurable. cloning WOULD have found a cure, if bush hadn't stopped it. now, i'm going to die because bush made a choice based on what his parents taught him. this is where i argue with his choice. i hope that hte bill is not passed, because if it is, america will fall behind in many aspects of biology. this is something easily preventable, but as long as bush uses his religious preferance, the problem will be there. now, can we switch back to the original topic, which is based on cloning, not religion?

and yes, thank you for being much more civil this time. i don't midn when people criticise what i say, as long as they do it in a polite/civilized manner. ohterwise, everything turns into a flame-fest, and everyone looses.

To blatantly rip off someone elses idea:

History up to a point can be learned, it has patterns, and the decisions that have been made in the past have led you up to that point, but do the decisions of the past have to affect the decisions of the present?

Without taking time to base your own decisions leads you to pre-meditated ignorance.

Anyways, the point is, if he wants to just 'automatically veto' any bill that comes in without giving any consideration, why have we elected him as our leader? Religion or not, biasing the fate of millions on beliefs that might only apply to a small percentage of people isn't going about things the right way, scientifically nor religiously.

The matter isn't about religion, it's about eliminating ignorance, just unfortunately, we have pseudo-fundamentalists bringing it forth, giving the populous no choice in the matter.

dangit, why do you always say what i'm trying to say so clearly and easily? i don't like you, you have a nice vocabulary. :p

apart from the joking though, unidan is right. i mentioned the fact that when bush said no to any cloning law, i got rather mad, because by doing that, he is effectively signing the death sentence for millions of people. now, how can anything, science, religion, or otherwise, say that this is good? even if you go and say cloning is bad, the only way around to a good result is to go through with the cloning experiements, and discover cures to incurable diseases.

ever heard of "the ends jusitfy the means"? forget who said it, but it basically states, any way you use to get to a point justifies the end result. sure, it doesn't work for the houlacost, but it does work for something like this. in the end, the people still win, because in stead of dieing, they live. sure, some embryos might be used in te proccess, but according to many soruces, life does not start until you ahve a beating heart. more proof for this. an 8 celled mass cannot have thought. there are no specialized neuron cells, therefore negating any idea that everything from a zygote on is truely living. sure, it might be alive, but is it a thinking, breathing, being? no, it's just a ball of cells, that one day may develop into a human child. don't forget, there are many stillbirths, so all embryos aren't destined to become children, which may put a dent in some ideas.

A religion is just a cult with more members...

I have nothing else to contribute (however this is a great read) I agree that politics and religion should be seperate things. Simply on the fact that religion clouds judgement which results in a poorly run state.

Time to add my two cents in =D

I am also deeply upset about Mr. Bush's decision. By stopping cloning, he is essentially stopping human progress due to what I feel are conservative beliefs. Stem cell research and cloning may very well be the most significant discovery of the 21st century. Everything that the transistor did for computers, human cloning and stem cell research may do for the human race.

How often have you heard about stories of people mangled in wars suchs as Vietnam or Korea? Stories about how people have lost limbs because of essentially guerilla tactics (Bush would call them 'terrorism', by the way. Terrorism seems to be the favorite word in politics since 9/11). How many people do you think lost limbs or damaged critical organs in all the recent suicide bombings? How many people die of diseases such as Parkinson's every year? People with Parkinson's slowly lose their memory day by day. Imagine the pain felt by families at that. Imagine witnessing your father, mother, or other close relative that is dear to your heart slowly wither away and lose all the memories that you share in common - everything that you have ever done together gets slowly erased. Then there is cancer. The breast cancer rate here on Long Island is one of the highest in the nation. Cancer is something that you can't change and is usually fatal. Stem cell research and cloning offer the possibilities of curing all of these. Does Bush really have the right to bring human progress to a halt? No, no he doesn't.

What it comes down to is that people are afraid of the Future. Cloning does offer some disturbing possibilities, but what significant human achievement doesn't do that? It is the nature of humanity to use every step forward for evil. However, denying progress based on some negative posibilities is silly. EVERY leap forward comes with these.

Take the transistor, for example. The transistor made modern life today posible. But the transistor also made every modern evil possible. 9/11 - that was due to the transistor. Nuclear weapons? Those are due to the transistor. Biological warefare? The transistor. Mass production of weapons, such as those that caused genocide during the Serbian war? Couldn't be possible without the transistor.

Despite the destruction offered by the transistor's power, saying that the transistor was a mistake is a completely ridiculous argument. Computers have shaped life as we know it. Increased education, organization on a global level, communication in an instant - admit it, you can not live without the transistor.

What Bush is essentially doing is he is stopping human progress. Bush is stopping the creation of the 'transistor' because of all the negative possibilities that it offers. He is overlooking the good that will come from it.

Think about it - you could stop all the horrors of modern life by going back in time and stopping the creation of the transistor. However, you would be stopping so much more. By stating that Bush will veto any bill that allows cloning, he is closing ALL the doors offered by that new technology. Looking back, no one would stop the creation of the transistor. Why is cloning and stem cell research any different?

Well put, Dan.

Also to, Ian's reply about conception and life, personally, what I think makes people so willy nilly about killing a fetus is that they're considering it a 'human' member of society.

Where you have to draw the line is: Do we attribute emotions and love to the baby after it is born, or before? The child obviously isn't aware of it's surroundings, and if it means using tissue samples off of ABORTED embryos, so be it.

You desecrate the 'corpse' of a body that had no cultural value yet. I understand the moral issues with destroying a fetus, 100%, heck, even I am a bit grossed on how the procedure goes, but like Dan hints at, you can't have progress without some costs.

If we abandon all research, even adult stem cells, used without hurting anyone, will lose all their purpose, turning a potentially non-negative attribute into something that was eradicated because of ignorance.

edited due to me extreme stupidity when i have no sleep. :p

Maybe it's just me, but I think it is odd how many FIRST people are so anti-religion.

corrupt people???
 

I myself am a Christian and I am undecided on this debate. I can see all points of views but I find it sad that almost all these post are anti religion. Like it or not religion and politics go together. I understand why many think they shouldn't. Some religions go against others. In the politically correct world that we live in today it's easy to take no side. However, this isn't a perfect world and we can't all get along and state our opinion without upsetting the oppossing side. Someone always gets overemotional and carried away. Not everyone cares about what the other person feels. Yet those are the people that want to be respected and sided with. Be thankful that Bush just vetoed the bill and didn't try to get rid of it. Maybe his conscience is telling him he needs to wait or doesn't want to be responsible for what may happen. It might be wrong for him. To each their own. Has anyone stopped to think about the fact that there are many corrupt people in the world. Cloning definitely could help many people. But just think if that technology ended up in the wrong hands. Imagine the possibilities.

Re: corrupt people???
 

*applauds then returns to her corner to be forever silent*

I'm officially throwing out my statement to be forever quiet..I just have one observation..

Somone said something about how many people in FIRST aren't religious. I have an idea as to why..FIRST is about science, math, and technology, all of which boil down into logic. With most religous beliefs, things cannot be divided into nice little logical slices. That's where faith comes it, to mesh the pieces together..without faith..religion and logic don't always get along so nicely

..just an idea..I myself live in both the words of logic and religion, so maybe I'm disproving my own idea..oh well..just a thought

Hmm, many people seem to see this as the anti-religion thread it seems. well, as littlefish180 said, science and religion don't mesh all that well. but if you think about it, most people in first are at least a little religious, praying to god that their team will do good, or that their robot will at least move for the next match, etc. first is not completely devoid of religion.

also, i'm not sure if i said this already, but if you dn't have a complete seperation of church and state, you can possibly wind up with a situation similar to India, where muslims and hindus have somewhat hard times getting along.

Science and religion are two totally different things. Science deals with what can be proven and tested. Most, if not all religions are faith-based. You have to take what they say on faith. The truth of any religion's beliefs can't be proven by science, period. Science is what we can prove. In my opinion, science and most religions mesh just fine.

I think President Bush did the right thing. While it is terrible to think that many people will not benefit from thereputic cloning, a ban on all human cloning, at least temporaily, is needed to try and keep crazy people from trying out reproductive cloning.

Sadly, it is practically inevitable that someone is going to clone a full human being somewhere. And many people will probably not benefit from these discoveries that could have happened. The morality of any cloning is kind of in a gray area, and I think that until we figure out where we stand we shouldn't mess with it.

My $0.02 :)

Also: I don't know all the particulars of cloning organs, but this doesen't make sense to me. Lets say your heart starts having problems. They decide to grow you a new one in a glass jar with your DNA. Once they start, it will take at least 9 months to develop into a baby's heart. It's going to take at the least another 14 or 15 years to become mature enough to be a decent replacement, right? Won't you be dead by then? Also, if the problem is genetic like a lot of medical problems, it will still be there in the new heart! Does this make sense? The logistics of this don't quite make sense to me...