By I L Chegis

Human cloning is not something absolutely new that has been generated by the XX century as a result of intellectual development, accumulation of knowledge and technological know-how, interaction of various scientific and social ideas. As a matter of fact, two of the most fundamental ideas relating to the problem of human cloning one can trace in evangelic description of birth of Jesus Christ.

Firstly, functionally (from the point of view of abilities) Christ was conceived by God as a morally and physically perfect creature (even destined to eternity) that may be considered as  the most important aim of cloning. Secondly, from the technological point of view, this brainchild of God was carried out by means of a certain manipulation with the process of conception.

Religious (theological) paradigm of origin of the world and Man gives us another obvious conclusion: Man is the clone of God in some respects. So, in accordance with Old Testament, God said “they will be like us and resemble us” and  “created human beings, making them to be like himself”. But inasmuch as God is unbodied, only spirit and intellectual likeness may take place. As subsequent history of  the human race has shown, the clone turned out to be rather imperfect which has to serve as a lesson and warning to Man in his aspiration to self-cloning.

As the clone of God, Man possesses many qualities which make him godlike - indomitable will and energy, aspiration to unlimited cognition. In this aspiration, Man never quitted his attempts to comprehend even God himself. The model has been built for God as a creature – omniscient, Almighty and all-powerful - and having care of every human being as His top care. But such  model is increasingly disappointing of present-day human being because it does not explain quite reasonably His invisibility and obvious noninterference in affairs of mankind (it is impossible to perceive neither casual effects nor any definite ethical substance in His acts). The only theological explanation for this phenomenon – that He is suprarational – looks absolutely invalid beside a thorough insight of Man into all the mysteries of outward things.

But, on the other hand, it is clear now that complete negation of God (vulgar atheism) is not possible either. Conception of God in history of all the tribes, ethnic groups, nations, cultures, civilizations at all times is inseparably linked with a great many grandiose events, achievements and phenomena which exert profound effect upon emotions, perceptions, thinking of the great mass of the people and, finally, on their intentions, decisions, acts, creative work, fortunes. One need only remember about ethics (practically completely based on religion), hieratic architecture and art, benefits of clergy, religious wars. So, divinity (all the divine) is entirely real, natural phenomenon and, consequently, may be described with some rational model. And while there are not yet any strong presumptions for a scientific (on the basis of experiment) model of God, the search of Him has been already carried out along the natural philosophy direction and modern fundamental science does not deny anymore God as definitely as it was in the days of the first great discoveries in astronomy and physics. Now, as perhaps never before, the cardinal problem lies in comprehension of what we ought to identify as God.

From the foregoing it follows that we have the certain reasons to state a quite realistic postulate that in Universe, along with matter, there is another essence, which is non-identical with matter but is the dialectic complement of matter with respect to the bipolarity which is immanent in the Universe. This divine essence is the metaphysical world of potentialities for actualization of being, laws of its development, laws of emergence of mind, emotions, instincts, will, intuition, laws of perception of Good and Evil, of the beautiful and hideous. Matter is continuously structured in the well-known forms – elementary particles, nucleuses, atoms and molecules, crystals, fields, radiations, stars, nebulae, galaxies… Any equilibrium structures of the divine essence have not been identified so far with the scientific definiteness, but according to the logic of universal evolving it also must of necessity be structured. Developing the above postulate one can suppose that the divine essence evolved perennially in the direction of formation of rational beings (since God without any living being who cognize His is nonsensical). This essence, in its eternal existence, combines with the material one, probably, according to the well-known evolutionary process: primarily in the form of chemical compounds which were forecrops for life, and then formation of the cells, organs, organisms, and, finally, individuals (in particular, human ones) takes place.

Thus, it was just the Man who, in the Earth’s conditions, once became the apex for evolution of the divine essence, and cloning which he now apperceives, is, seemingly, no more than a maintenance of the evolution.

One of the most important problems, which Man continuously solves during all his history, is that of retention of his godlikeness. That is why Man always aspired to the self-perfection (in moral respect, first of all), to the triumph of Good over Evil in his being. But, on the strength of specific dynamics of maintenance of Good and Evil, as such, all the lines and methods for the self-perfection used by Man had failed. Evil has revealed the tendency for accumulation and predominance over Good. As a result, Man has found himself in the state of the anthropological crisis, which threatens him with the moral degradation and physical destruction. It is apparently that realization even one of the threats would mean disappearing of the divine essence on the Earth. All the previous threats to mankind had only local character and were, more or less successfully, eliminated with the help of the methods which were psychological in their nature and content. Crisis character of the present-day development of civilization is compelling of Man, for the avoidance of the physical destruction and moral degradation, to take protective precautions equally as radical, superior in their resources to all previous methods and means for self-perfection. So, in the present-day extraordinary circumstances, Man must perforce get down to the transformation himself on the physiological level.

  Many scientists and thinkers became aware of the barest necessity for such radicalism by the end of the XIX century. Mention may be made here of two of them who, in context of the article, represent two diametrically opposite points of departure in the problem of the physiological transformation of Man, but who, nevertheless, become very closely with each other in respect to the solution of the problem. Great Spanish biologist S. Ramon-y-Cajal, the Nobel Prize winner (1906),  near to agnosticism as a thinker, pointed out the address for the radical change of human nature – cells of human organism and, especially, cells of the brain. And at the same years, Russian philosopher-cosmist N.F. Fyodorov, classic of Russian religious thought, named all the more exact address – mechanisms of heredity – for construction of the perfect (even immortal) human being. But only by the end of the XX century Man got down to the practical realization of the program using the technology of cloning for regulation of the process of conception and formation of the human embryo. And it means that Man started to prove himself quite consciously like God-Creator.

Thus, Man is now faced with a totally new problem – a self-designing. It is obviously that for the self-designing Man to be guided by a certain plan, to have the main purpose – moral perfection - in order to stand up to threats of the anthropological crisis. Choice of the doctrine for self-designing (and concrete models) is fundamentally important: from the history of the Earth’s civilization one can see that the kind of the person designed has to be rather conservative than innovative.

To summarize, it will be observed that all the presented here is only one of the versions for understanding of the divine essence and evolution of its incarnation on the Earth. Really, God is in evidence across-the-board, but not only in the theological – mystical and spiritual - sense, but also in the physicalistic one.  God incessantly (with space and time) abides everywhere in the Universe and on the Earth He manifests itself in the form of the objective laws of animate Nature. The genes are atoms of the divine essence embodied in the Man. Human cloning is not a paroxysm of the Man’s innovation enthusiasm, but the natural evolution of the divine essence under the Earth’s conditions, a self-development of God, some means for continuation of His ens in the form in which He has been translated into reality.

According to N. Fyodorov, center of the whole creation is the Most High. In order to solve successfully the cardinal problem  - “achievement of the fraternal state of mankind” -  Man and science have to unite in God. In the model, being discussed here, Man and God unite in science, but it does not mean that Man becomes a hostage of his own technologies and the “fraternal state of mankind” turns into the vulgar intercommunity of genes of a multiplied man. On the contrary, there is a hope that all the features that make Man godlike - thinking, morals, free will – are indestructible; all this will remain forever the driving power for achievement of spiritual unity of all men and women, which is, by Fyodorov, genuine “philosophy of common cause” for mankind.