Would you support a geneticly made anthropomorphic animal?

[ghastmaskzombie]

I think the idea would work, someday. Really, though, I can only think of two possible reasons for doing it. First, there's the possibility that humanity will eventually realize that faster-than-light can never be technologically facilitated, and we'll be so desperate to find other intelligent beings in our universe that we'll have to make them ourselves. The other, more practical reason would be that faster-than-light travel is possible and we end up with a Bowman's Wolf-like scenario. The essential idea is described perfectly here:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00710.htm
I'm afraid I don't know how to make that a functional link. Being able to turn into your fursona would be pretty cool though, not that I have one. I also strongly recommend the comic I just linked to. Very funny, very thoughtful, very good.
...but I digress.

[SirAwesome]

I think the idea would work, someday. Really, though, I can only think of two possible reasons for doing it. First, there's the possibility that humanity will eventually realize that faster-than-light can never be technologically facilitated, and we'll be so desperate to find other intelligent beings in our universe that we'll have to make them ourselves. The other, more practical reason would be that faster-than-light travel is possible and we end up with a Bowman's Wolf-like scenario. The essential idea is described perfectly here:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00710.htm
I'm afraid I don't know how to make that a functional link. Being able to turn into your fursona would be pretty cool though, not that I have one. I also strongly recommend the comic I just linked to. Very funny, very thoughtful, very good.
...but I digress.

The hardest parts of turning someone into there Fursona would be the mutation of the body while living. In theory it could be done, there is no evidence saying it cant be done but chances are it would be very painful, be it from a mass amount of immune suppressants to do a full scale change of the DNA to the Tail growth (of which would have to sprout from the body) and chances of it forming a human made cancer. But with the technology and testing, it could be done within the next 50-60 years. But if we do figure out how to do it theirs always the topic of "immortality" Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

[tony1695]

Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Would the human mind even be able to cope with immortality?

[Hoppy]

Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Would the human mind even be able to cope with immortality?

Only one way to truly find out. So, in the interest of furthering scientific study, I shall hereby attempt to live forever. If it works, I'll pass on all collected psychological data to everyones' descendants.

[SirAwesome]

Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Would the human mind even be able to cope with immortality?

Only one way to truly find out. So, in the interest of furthering scientific study, I shall hereby attempt to live forever. If it works, I'll pass on all collected psychological data to everyones' descendants.

If I ever get the ability to make one immortal ill give you a call

[MUDPUNISHER]

Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Would the human mind even be able to cope with immortality?

Only one way to truly find out. So, in the interest of furthering scientific study, I shall hereby attempt to live forever. If it works, I'll pass on all collected psychological data to everyones' descendants.

If I ever get the ability to make one immortal ill give you a call

So basically hoppy means make me immortal and I'll screw every living thing I can

[SirAwesome]

Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Would the human mind even be able to cope with immortality?

Only one way to truly find out. So, in the interest of furthering scientific study, I shall hereby attempt to live forever. If it works, I'll pass on all collected psychological data to everyones' descendants.

If I ever get the ability to make one immortal ill give you a call

So basically hoppy means make me immortal and I'll screw every living thing I can

That is what he said.

[Hoppy]

That is what he said.

That is NOT what I said!! ................ (but it is something that could happen.....maybe.)

[TinyVoices]

So basically hoppy means make me immortal and I'll screw every living thing I can

Why would you do dis Mud? I do not want to think of dis stuff.

But if we do figure out how to do it theirs always the topic of "immortality" Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Continually changing things doesn't exactly mean immortality. If anything, we need to figure out a more solid scientific understanding of what the hell the conscious is. What makes someone "alive".

As for transforming people into furries: I don't think you can ever manage a seamless transition like that. There will always be dead people, quarter furs or circus freaks coming out of those kinds of experiments.

It might not be too hard to make a future human baby who grows a tail and fur. But making a primate become another mammal altogether is something I doubt will happen anytime soon.

[SirAwesome]

So basically hoppy means make me immortal and I'll screw every living thing I can

Why would you do dis Mud? I do not want to think of dis stuff.

But if we do figure out how to do it theirs always the topic of "immortality" Change the DNA and the host's body and you can make one immune to death by old age, and is humanity ready for that?

Continually changing things doesn't exactly mean immortality. If anything, we need to figure out a more solid scientific understanding of what the hell the conscious is. What makes someone "alive".

As for transforming people into furries: I don't think you can ever manage a seamless transition like that. There will always be dead people, quarter furs or circus freaks coming out of those kinds of experiments.

It might not be too hard to make a future human baby who grows a tail and fur. But making a primate become another mammal altogether is something I doubt will happen anytime soon.

Beleve it or not once we figure out how to do minor changes to an already living thing, doing major changes wont be as hard as you think, granted developing the DNA needed to do it would be hard, not to mention there would be massive safety precaution and not be done unless it is 99.9999....% safe.

Also the immortality part is that some animals can not die from time, they die from being hunted (some jellyfish, and some oysters) they can live forever if not hunted or get killed die from a disease, if we take this and find out how, put it in humans and we have immortality (from time at least)

[Sithil]

To consider the project of creating life of intelligence and sentience equal to ours, yet distinctly different from us, no matter in what aspect, is to ponder the creation of a to us previously unknown existential position; one with potential for unimaginable pain.

Let’s say you have the intent to create this new life, or allow it to be created. You support it. If so, you must have a reason for why you wish it to happen. You must have a purpose in mind for why this new life should exist.
This might not appear like a problem, but consider this: we human beings have no idea why we exist. The question “why are we here?”, is one that has eluded any absolutely unambiguous answers since it was first posed. On one hand, this is a cause for tremendous pain for a great many. On the other hand, it means we are all forced to choose a potential answer for ourselves, and live with that, hopefully be content with it.
Now imagine that was not so. Imagine there was an answer to the question. You do not get to choose what to believe, there is an absolutely irrefutable answer, and you can do nothing about it. You exist for a reason, and that reason is known to you.
I can barely even imagine all the ways this can cause distress, but I shall attempt a few.

Not being able to disregard a notion for your existence, and accept a different, or forge your own, you are forced instead to take a stance to it, to form an opinion. And what if you find yourself utterly opposed to this purpose? What if you think it’s wrong? By extension, that means that you, yourself, are wrong, and should never have been. How do you handle this conflict?

In a scenario where you do not only know the purpose for which you were created, the beings who decided to bring you life for this purpose are right there, and can explain this purpose to you. You are brought into a world where you live next to creatures who have controlled you before you were even conceived. How do you relate to these other creatures? These life forms that chose to create you, chose what you would be, and why. How do you live alongside god?

We humans are often beset by the sensation that we are not who we wish to be, because the people and society around us, do not allow us to be that someone. We struggle with preconceptions, taboos and regulations, with the need to be accepted, and appreciated. We conform and adjust to the judgement of our surroundings from childbirth, and it is a common source of sadness and bitterness. How greatly multiplied is not the potential for this, when you have been shaped since even before your birth? How can you hope to be who you wish to be, how can you hope to be free and grow into someone you want to be, when god has already formed an opinion?

It really does not even matter what this potential purpose would be. To see if we can? To serve us? To fill some function? To contain characteristics we wish we had? To become something we can not? To see what might happen? Anything will cause these unimaginably numerous conflicts

If we consider creating another life, different from us, then we must accept that, along any potential joy or progress, we will be solely responsible for any and all suffering and pain that their unique existence causes them. And my personal opinion is that this is not a responsibility humanity is ready for.


I apologize if all this is not entirely coherent or accessible, it is late and I am out of practise.

[TinyVoices]

Beleve it or not once we figure out how to do minor changes to an already living thing, doing major changes wont be as hard as you think, granted developing the DNA needed to do it would be hard, not to mention there would be massive safety precaution and not be done unless it is 99.9999....% safe.

Also the immortality part is that some animals can not die from time, they die from being hunted (some jellyfish, and some oysters) they can live forever if not hunted or get killed die from a disease, if we take this and find out how, put it in humans and we have immortality (from time at least)

In an age where science fiction is now more so a to-do list, I suppose the idea of immortality or transformation isn't too hard to believe.

It would require several spectacular breakthroughs, however, before either of those could be reached. Not only would the hair on my arm need to become fur, but my bones would need to reshape, and my organs (including blood vessels, though I can't recall if they're technically organs) would need to acclimate. This is all if we don't want to just be fur covered humans.

As for immortality, I wonder if those creatures aren't just a mass of cells or bacteria or something. Like I said, an animal just derping about living forever is one thing. An intelligent, sapient life form living forever is something else. Still, isn't the key to long lives for some animals and plants just the idea of a slower metabolism or something? Whatever it is that is death from old age, that is what I'm concerned about. It isn't quite the same as giving someone a polio vaccine.

Mostly I'd say because a cell dying is because of its replication life timing out, is it not? What then of an entire human? It isn't pure luck that every major cell suddenly timed out at once.

[Sylence]

Despite the fact that ethics will be an eternal blight to the sciences, and sciences a corruptive poison to ethics, let us hypothetically assume a world in which this debate were legitimized. Here is my stance.

The individuals choice is of no concern. Nobody chooses to be who and what they are, they simply are. That is the nature of all existence. As far as race is concerned, it is the same as a black man wishing he had been born white.

Secondly, this is only physical form we're discussing. Trait combination, engineering individual bodies with a goal in mind. This is not an afront to humanity. Humanity (and in fact all things), as I know them to be, are spiritual beings. The nature of them, their heart, does not depend on the body, but on its own infallible existence. What can be changed by this, however, are the experiences that are likely to occur due to their physical form. Still, in the end it is no less, no worse, of an existence than what we have now. The moral concern is not that they may regret their existence, for that happens enough as it is. The concern is that they may regret aspects of their existence that can be blamed upon a singular entity. However, by the same token that entity may be accredited with improving the lives of others. In the end, everything will be as it will be, and all actions have as much potential to help as to harm.

So, unfortuantely, it comes down to a concern of mathematics. Is the cost in time and resources worth the benefit? If so, I wouldn't be surprised if scientists were already looking into it, perhaps already developing the technology into testable stages. If not, then the musing remains entirely hypothetical. Either way, my personal opinion is in favor to the idea.

[TraLi]

On the topic of philosophy, isn't purpose basically desire? Maybe a desire imposed on an entity from an external source... at least when invoked by religion: "God's purpose for you," and whatnot. Now, I'll try to tread lightly on the religion aspect here, but unfortunately I think Christianity (or... what's the name encompassing religions based on the Bible that don't necessarily include Jesus?) a source of contention on this topic as well as the predominant ethical framework in western culture. However, I must admit I am an outsider to religion, and can only speak in the most general terms. Even (especially?) then I may not get it right.

As I understand the Bible, God is our creator and has a purpose for every person. It seems reasonable to say that whatever the purpose might be, it's what God wants from us, his desire. But even under that frame of reference, I don't believe that privilege extends to humans: "People are not God." So why is it assumed we're allowed to make such demands on everything we create?

My own viewpoint is a bit simpler. Any creature we genetically engineer with sufficient intelligence would be a person, and put simply owning other people is wrong. Further, I would accept creation of an anthropomorphic animal only if they had similar or greater intelligence to ourselves.

As far as the claim that we would only create another race(?) of people with a purpose in mind, I flat-out disagree. We often create people with no purpose in mind -- they're called kids. To burden a child with your own purpose invites rebellion. Or perhaps merely justifies their rebellion. ;) There are plenty of other examples of things we create that lack much purpose. Art, for one. How the anthropomorphic community continually misses that point befuddles me to no end. Maybe it's better to phrase the problem as, "Everything we do we do only for our own gratification?" Personally, I don't have a problem with that as long as we aren't harming others.

In fact, harming the creation is what we're all really worried about. It's a mistake to confuse that problem with the act of creation. Every creation has the potential to harm and be harmed, but it also has the potential for good. Not everything has each in equal measure, of course. My feeling is that anthropomorphic animals have the potential to improve our understanding of the world around us quite a lot, improve the odds of our civilization surviving a major catastrophe (through diversity), and maybe they'll look good while doing those things. :) As mere mortals, we can't know our children's whole future with any degree of certainty. The best we can do is support them when they're getting started, guide them away from trouble, and prepare them to face the world on their own. And they would be our children in every way.
___
(?) I'm not sure how to classify here. I use the word "race" because it denotes superficial differences, but my vocabulary diverges from cultural norms at times. Please keep in mind my use of the term isn't meant to imply any sort of hierarchy; I just mean they have slight physical differences.

[Sylence]

As I feel that particular aspects of that article were directed to me specifically, I shall take the time to revisit a few points. When I mentioned engineering bodies with a purpose in mind, I feel secure in that statement, because unlike procreative reproduction, in which we have very little control over any aspects of the resultant child (although this may be changing too in the near future), we would be altering genetics to achieve a being with singular traits and abilities that they would not have had without our intervention. That is what I meant by a purpose.

And when you said that not everything has the potential for help and harm in equal measure, again I disagree. On the base of good and evil, everything has equal potential for both, hence free will. On help and harm, these are more judgements made by outside sources. And being such, they vary from perspective to perspective. If you were to look out far enough, you'd see that even acts you consider atrocious have consequences you consider unprecedentedly great.

Now, in clearing up some points on religion. I believe the word you were looking for is Abrahamic, or Judao-Christian. And when you say that, as you understand it, God has a purpose for everyone... Rather than say this is incorrect, I shall tell you things as I understand them. God gave all things free will, that they may choose to follow Him, or not. That they may choose who to be, and how to live. It is one of the great freedoms that cannot be taken from us. So when you use the word purpose, I get a little sketchy on what you mean.