Re-creating God's Creation

 Re-creating God's Creation

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Living with Nature - School on Blog

When the molecular structure of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid or DNA was discovered and made into a hypothetical model by Watson and Crick in the sixties, the world began to view life differently. Although the stuff of life has been for many years a subject of numerous biological investigations, this time scientists began to look into life as a thing made up of ready-to-assemble parts.  By mere arranging them in various patterns, someday man would be able not only to create life but create life forms as well!

Published by Social Research Center, UST (First published 2003 Dominican  Publication Dublin, Ireland, 141 pp 

     So inspired was the creator of Jurassic Park, a movie featuring the resurrection of dinosaurs from the DNA of their fossils, that the idea of the dead coming back to life is no longer confined in our belief in the afterlife. If this is the case, then the subject of biology will have to be vastly revised and re-written, touching such sensitive issues as the genesis which zealots view as the first case of human cloning.

     Man’s lofty dream is to live long, if not to live forever. But the search for the Pierian Spring has only brought unimagined frustration and ruin to many ambitious people. Nonetheless it inspired man to build wonders, such as the Great Pyramids, which was built to enshrine man’s immortality. Man has not ceased in his search, and all the more he has become determined especially with the advances of science and technology.

     Today in the United States, there are a hundred human bodies preserved in cryonic tanks waiting for the day when science shall have the power to conquer death and resurrect the dead. By then science would have found a way to cure today’s incurable diseases, to stop aging or even reverse aging itself.  This extreme optimism must have solid foundations. Indeed man must be inspired and fascinated by many organisms in the lower rung of the phylogenic tree, those organisms that are simpler and older than man himself.

Proceedings of the International Congress on Bioethics, Manila: December 5-7, 2005 372 pp.  Available UST Publishing House. España , Manila 

     But first, man’s awareness of his past, from the time he began writing history, greatly inspire him to look for the elusive Utopia. He dreams of Shangri-La described in a novel, The Lost Horizon.  Somewhere out there on some lofty heights of the Himalayas lays a place where man does not age and die. It is like a kingdom half-earth, half-heaven, and a place that man sought to go while he lives on earth. To many Heaven is remote and they cannot wait to experience the beautiful things said about this ultimate destiny of the human soul.   

     But to others, that place may mean differently. For example Antonio Vivaldi, the great baroque composer found immortality in his music, The Four Seasons. The sweet changing of seasons throughout ones life, transports him into a feeling of immortality, a fascination not counted by years but by joy and fulfillment of living. It is as if living in harmony with nature on one hand, and long life expectancy on the other, are complementary to each other.  Personally, I believe so. 

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday [www.pbs.gov.ph]