On the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

Oh look, Church leaders are up in arms about some new piece of legislation. Are we really surprised? After so many thousands of years of them proclaiming that anything which makes them, personally, feel uncomfortable is evil, how can we be anything but bored when they keep at it in the present time? Last year it was equal rights for homosexuals, this year it’s advanced research into human genetics. Before long it’ll be artificial intelligence, neuroscience, or some other thing which challenges, and advances, our view of ourselves.

Oh, and of course the cries are going to be led by the Catholic Church this time; they’re the ones with a huge theological investment in the subject. We’re talking about a cult whose insane superstitions about human genetic material lead them to declare male masturbation a “sin against God”, and to deduce that tens of millions of people in the third world dying of AIDS and hundreds of millions more living in miserable, starving poverty due to overpopulation is probably OK compared to the much greater sin of letting them use condoms. These are people whose core values are utterly incompatible with the human rights and human dignity they claim to be the guardians of, and our response to their claims of being some sort of authority on ethics (especially bioethics) should be to laugh disdainfully and get on with trying to make the world a better place.