Matt Hickey, Ph.D. & Pastor Brent (contact us @ contactus@timberlinechurch.org)
This class will be taught by Dr. Matt Hickey & Pastor Brent Cunningham.Â
Matt Hickey has been on the faculty at CSU since 1997. His home department is Health and Exercise Science, and he holds joint appointments in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, and in Department of Biomedical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Matt’s Ph.D. is in bioenergetics, and he has post-doctoral training in biochemistry. He has chaired the Human Research Committee, which oversees human research ethics at CSU, for the past 4 years. He has been involved in research ethics review for over 10 years, including service on an ethics committee at a medical school.Â
This 5-week seminar is designed to:
1). To help us become familiar with the moral issues pressing upon us from our technological culture (cloning, genetic engineering, end of life issues, and abortion).
2). To help us develop a biblical and reasonable template of ethics for making moral decisions on human life.
3). To help us learn how to engage our culture in asking and answering the bioethical questions.
Description:
This seminar will equip you with the necessary tools to make consistent, biblically based, and ethically defensible decisions in all areas of life, although we will place special emphasis on current issues in bioethics. You will also be equipped in order to be able to engage the world on its own ethical terms. In other words, we must be able to show that the logical consequences of ethical frameworks that range from an “end justifies the means” mentality to worldviews in which ethics are solely personal, situational, or relative, can not support the type of ethical expectations necessary for life in a free society.  We believe with all our hearts we can and must engage the world without starting with “Thus saith the Lord”; such a starting point will not get us far! Come join us as we consider the basis for our own Christian worldview and consider how to engage the world with all our hearts and minds as we confront the challenges of biomedical ethics.
This short seminar is open to everyone.
April 22: Bioethics: Where do we begin?Â
              • What is a proper foundation for ethics?
              • How do we think and act “ethically”?
              • Ethics and the Christian worldview
              • What is our view of personhood? What determines moral status?
              • Problems and consequences with popular ethical frameworks        Â
April 29: Cloning
              • What is cloning? Â
              • What is the attraction to cloning? Â
              • Human dignity as a basis for ethics
May 6: Embryonic stem cell research
              • What are stem cells?
              • What is their purpose?
               • Adult vs. embryonic stem cells
              • Is all stem cell research morally inappropriate?
May 13: Reproductive & End of life-issues
              • Thinking about childbearing
              • In vitro fertilization  Â
              • Designer babies
              • Physician Assisted Suicide
              • Euthanasia
              • The ethics of allocating money
              • Human experimentation     Â
May 20: Abortion
              • Is there ever a justified case for abortion?
              • Common flaws of pro-abortion rhetoric
              • How to engage in a profitable, focused persuasion
              • Making abortion unthinkable    Â
For online resources on bioethics see:
www.bioethics.com
www.cbhd.org         Â
This class is designed as a 5-week training seminar and will take place Sunday mornings @ 9:45 a.m. in room #211.
8 Comments on “Christian Bioethics (Rm 211 @ 9:45) 5-wk seminar, APRIL 22-MAY 20”
There is a product, taken orally, that causes the body naturally to
create stem cells that go to the site in the body where there is damage. A man with Parkinson’s has no more tremors and is free of symptoms of Parkinson’s.
I am struggling to separate the “Christian World Viewâ€? with the political ideology of the Republican party. I understand that you are an absolutist when it comes to the dignity of life and that any fertilized egg is considered a life and should be protected – no exceptions. This seems to also be the view of the majority of the Republican party. How then can the party be pro-war, pro-death penalty, and pro-guns (even for use by law enforcement people)? Don’t each of these in effect promote the killing of people – innocent or not? Also, what is your response to the unfortunate situation where a mother’s life is threatened with a pregnancy? Is it then okay to abort the child to save the mother, or is it more ethical to let one or both die “naturallyâ€?? How about when parents and their doctors must chose which child shall be given the best chance at life when separating siamese twins (in essence killing one so the other can live)?
This is an excellent class – very thought provoking and respectful of all view points. I have long been comfortable with the belief that the world is very gray – I have more problems with the rigidity and intolerance of an absolutist ideology. Only God can comprehend the complexity of humankind – can it really be so simple as black and white? I’d appreciate your comments.
Pat, I certainly don\’t attempt to defend any political party on this blog. It\’s just not within the scope of my intent.
Regarding the issue of the rightness or wrongness of taking life, I’d encourage you to take a look at a post I wrote back on Oct 16, 2006 called, “Is Jesus a pacifist?� (http://www.brentcunningham.org/?p=161). I hope this will be helpful in seeing the distinction between the justified and unjustified taking of human life. The Bible certainly does distinguish killing and murdering.
I’d also encourage you to come to the bioethics class on the Sunday that we speak on abortion. We’ll discuss many issues surrounding abortion, including the case when a mother’s life is in danger.
I’d agree that there are many very difficult ethical issues in life. And I certainly don’t pretend to have it all figured out. But I do think that God has given us principles in His Word that we ought to utilize in order to make the best decisions we can. As we said week 1, there are both subjective and objective truths. In the above post I recognize the reality of subjective moral truth. But we also can not escape the existence of objective or absolute truths (moral or otherwise). They are realities which we simply cannot get away from. In fact, the funny thing is, we end up affirming them when we try to deny them (e.g., “It is universally true that there are no truths which apply universally!�). See what I mean?
Please keep up the engagement! I know I’m being sharpened through the process of this class!
Much of the discussion we have had reminds me of the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. The residents of the city of Omelas live well as long as their “sacrifice” is maintained. There are a lot of similarities here when it comes to discussing who is allowed to have the status of “person”.
Here is an online version, takes 30 minutes or so to read:
http://www.twinoaks.org/members-exmembers/exmembers/center/omelas.html
I do have a question for Matt about the Altered Nucleic Transfer, unless you would like to answer it. My friend was saying that she heard Matt say that in ANT the blastocyst is altered before it is fertilized, but a blastocyst is a fertilized cell, right?
Nancy, re: ANT, the \”alteration\” is in the nucleus of the somatic cell BEFORE the blastocyst stage (i.e., before fertilization). The altered nucleus is then inserted into an enucleated egg (exactly as in SCNT procedure for cloning), and the \”clone\” develops to the blastocyst stage.
Thanks Brent and Matt for teaching this thought-provoking class. I especially appreciate your willingness to be open and vulnerable enough to discuss the loss of your children and Matt, your wife also. It is impossible to comprehend how difficult that must have been. The discussion about the difference in the way we grieve for those who are born vs. those who are unborn and what that means in terms of their “moral worth” really struck home with me. Several years ago, I miscarried a baby at the end of the first trimester. At that time, I just “went through” the process with my doctor–there was very little recognition of the child that was lost. Later, I met a woman who went through a very similar loss. In her situation, tests were run to determine the cause of the miscarriage, the child was named and there was a memorial service. Is one way of “handling” this situation more “correct” than the other? Did one child have more “moral worth” than the other? Should it be the responsibility of the medical profession to offer more options in terms of how we recognize and grieve over these unborn children? It is easy to feel overwhelmed and under-informed about the best way to work through situations like this when you suddenly find yourself IN them. The fundamental concept we discussed in class–that ALL life is worthy of dignity, makes me want to see changes in the way we “deal with” the loss of these little lives. I could see that point clearly before in terms of abortion, where an action is being forcibly taken against a living being. In terms of miscarriage though, I think I have been too ready to accept that these things “just happen” and “it wasn’t meant to be” and not willing enough to ask “What now? How do we recognize the loss of this life that is worthy of dignity?”
Cyndi: Thanks so much for such a marvelous and emotionally transparent question. I do not think this is an area where we’ll find clear cut “right” or “wrong” answers in terms of what is a correct response to such a loss. There should be no doubt that a miscarriage is the loss of a young life – whether and to what extent we grieve over this loss does not impact the dignity or moral worth of the child in any way, in my opinion. That grieving may be very private, perhaps just between the parents, but there is certainly nothing wrong with a more formal or ceremonial reflection. I really appreciate your remark about feeling overwhelmed and under-informed about these situations, particularly when we are IN them – I believe very much that this accurately captures much of the challenge of confronting these ethical issues – lots of information, much of it complex, but much of it also only “clinical”, with less frank or open consideration of the attendant ethical issues (or emotional ones, often). Thanks so much for walking with us through these discussions! We both pray they are of some benefit. Warmly-Matt