excellent and important observations. And amusingly, the easiest way to resolve this question would be to clone a neanderthal. My sense is that the techology is still a bit primitive and refinement is needed before it can be pursued ethically, but its time will come.

And when it does, conservative Christianity will, as you describe, be faced with some very interestng questions regarding man and the image of God.

This is just one of the technological changes which make traditional conservative Christianity increasingly difficult to sustain.

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If they’re animals and you object to treating them a certain way because they’re particularly “smart” animals, then what does that imply about other species like dolphins and chimps?

If they’re “men” and yet are genetically distinct from homo sapiens, then that also creates some theological quandries.

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now we are creating life effectrviely to order in test tubes today. Why would creating a Neanderthal from DNA be any different?

We have already with SCNT techniques entered a world in which the DNA is the key measure of the identity, since once the DNA is established, the resulting entity can in principal be brought to life.

So lets do it in pieces: what is the problem with creating a mammoth? We hold elephants and other animals in zoos and animals are regularly used in scientific experiements. Creating a mammoth for science does not seem outside the realm of our present understanding of experimental (or agricultural) ethics.

Now if a mammoth is acceptable, why not a Neanderthal?

And of course, if a mammoth is acceptable, pursuing this path is also acceptable so long as we do not classify Neanderthals as human.

What Pauline’s post 3 includes as an implicit assumption is that Neanderthals were indeed human. If Neanderthals were human, however, this still begs the question of why such an effort is any different than say in vitro fertilizatikon?

If the Neanderthal is crerated for itself and the Neanderthals needs are consider of significance (much as with any child who is born), then what is the fundamental issue?

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To make such a claim, you must be God himself. Let us all bow down and worship you.

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But I think the spiritual questions – as you have posed them – are fundamentally flawed. The secular ones can be answered w/simple ethical value judgments, though I think it would be a long time before we’d achieve consensus!

We are not specially created in the image of God and, hence, distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom in other than our species-unique properties, which do not include being very God-like! Even our species distinctions are mostly a matter of degree, not a matter of kind. The idea that God created us in His image is no more true than the idea that he did it in a single day just a few thousand years ago!

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired. – Notebook, 1903; Mark Twain, a Biography

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion– several of them. – “The Lowest Animal,” 1897

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It would be almost as much fun as seeing a true “missing link” come to life.

I find myself in total agreement with Thomas.

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