Hmm, I don't know who to agree with on this one. Lio makes some excellent points, and so does Calliander. It's interesting to debate cloning. It's not necessarily important in any of our lives, but it's an issue nonetheless. Calliander, it seems, doesn't want to discuss it because he's already developed his old solid opinion on it, and that's fine.
But the issue DOES still remain, whether anyone feels it should be debated or not. Whether cloning is "good" or "bad" is not for me to decide, and I will not get into a debate about the "moral" implications of it. But there ARE implications of it, and serious issues could arise from the abuse of that kind of technology. The majority of us being Star Wars fans, should realize that. I can see where cloning is absolutely acceptable. Allowing someone to have a child of their own blood is definitely an acceptable situation. But then again, people would argue (and I might be one of them depending on the day) that there are plenty of innocent children already alive who could use the love of good parents (of which there are so few). There's nothing wrong with adopting a child. Whether the child is your blood or not makes no difference. Being a "mommy" or "daddy" goes FAR beyond blood relation. You adopt a baby boy or girl, and raise it as your own, that child is YOURS. YOU'RE the one he or she will call mommy or daddy for the rest of his or her life, even if he or she does decide to one day search for his or her "blood" parents.
Cloning existing people, however, this will cause issues. I don't want two of me. I can't think of ANYONE who would want two of me or two of anyone else, for that matter. First, there's me. Gatekeeper of The Dark Side, with 21 years of my own life and experiences. Now pretend I have a clone of me. What the hell do I DO with it? It's highly doubtful that physically cloning me will also clone my personality, experiences, by entire non-physical being. Right now, from what I've heard and read, cloning can only recreate exact genetic duplicates, not exact physical duplicates. They cloned a cat, but the clone is a kitten, or something like that. Having a baby me would cause hardly any problems at all. It'll be a new form of life who can grow up and have his own life and experiences and all that. But imaging what would happen if the technology gets to a level where we can EXACTLY clone people, physically and mentally. I'm left with someone EXACTLY the same with me up until the point the cloning took place. You all have to admit, that would be kind of fucked up. Kind of neat, but kind of fucked up.
God has no place in this discussion. A serious discussion can't be based on something that may or may not exist, and I don't want to get into that right now. Whether God would "want" something or not is irrelevant. Human beings being able to do something is what's relevant. Certain types of cloning definitely can upset a balance that nature is usually in control of. It's okay, grandma. If you die, we'll just clone you, and then we can keep doing that forever. I think that'd be bad. B A D. Bad. There's enough people on this tiny little rock of a planet already. People need to be born and people need to die without interference, or there quite possibly could be serious repercussions. Someone loses an arm, clone them a new one of their own, sure, that's fine. I need a kidney. Beautiful, take some of the cells from my good kidney and make me one. I think this kind of cloning is excellent and beneficial. Anything further than that might be a little TOO much. Then again, I could be wrong.
So Speaks The Gatekeeper...So It Shall Be!