Friday, December 5

Old Question, New Answers?

An article in Scientific American* postulating the potential reincarnation of neanderthals with a new technology involving either Human or Chimpanzee embryos. The technique isn't what interested me so much as the implications. Bringing one of these creatures to life would be able to answer innumerable questions about how closely they resemble humans and how they interacted with each other. The curiosity in me says 'go for it!'.

Obviously there are way more implications to a move like this. It would challenge what we consider human and what defines us as different from animals. Just the uncanny resemblance to your hairy uncle Hank would make facing one in a zoo uncomfortable. What if they actually have the capacity for language? Do they then gain all of the rights given to humans?

Would it be wrong to keep them captive? We do this to chimps and orangutans in order to study them. Maybe they would be billeted to families, or request their own freedom to live in our world unrestricted. If they are/were self-aware, linguistic beings, where does God fit into this? Would he have created Adam and Eve only to make Gog and Lu in almost the same image?

*the article I attached is not the original one I read. I continue to search for it but the theoretical questions still intrigue me.

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