Apr 14, 2021 07:04 AM
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/...ered-head/
EXCERPTS: There’s a ghastly severed head in St Robert’s Roman Catholic church, just down the road from me in Catforth, northern England. [...] Only in real life (or rather death) it’s not a skull — it’s a gruesome human head, complete with protruding vertebrae, withered skin and mouth gaping wide in a frozen scream. Parish tradition says it’s the head of a local priest, Philip Holden...
However, a forensic examination in the 1960s suggested a different story and indeed a victim. The examiner determined the head had been ‘hanged, drawn and quartered’ [...] Circumstantial evidence suggest that the skull was likely that of a Catholic priest from nearby Wigan, who’d been captured and executed in 1590, Miles Gerrard.
[...] while genetic science could perhaps answer whose skull it actually is, it also raises some ethical issues. Just because we can satisfy our slightly morbid curiosity, does it therefore mean we should? Where do we draw lines in recreating the past driven by little more than curiosity?
While hard-nosed materialists might scoff at the idea that it’s somehow sacrilegious to interfere with such remains, we should at least pause to consider the wider context of any such a claim.
In the past, researchers riding roughshod over local knowledge and customs — or doing far, far worse [...] It’s also led to several high-profile stand-offs between (for want of a better phrase) science and spirituality —between those (who claim to be) advancing human knowledge and those (who see themselves as) protecting the sacred beliefs of historically disregarded peoples.
[...] Not only is there disagreement among these groups but also within the groups themselves. ... Compare this situation to human remains that have lost strong genealogical and/or spiritual connections to existing cultures, such as the famous ‘bog bodies’ of Europe (human cadavers naturally preserved in peat bogs)...
Is such treatment of once-living humans evidence of our descent into soulless materialism? Or of a loss of deeper respect for human life (and death)? Does it illustrate a deep divide between those cultures that have largely abandoned spiritual beliefs, which has produced most of the world’s scientists, and those that haven’t?
I would argue ‘no’, that there is a uniting spirit that links all of us to our past. [...] In modern secular societies, it seems, the passionate interest in what makes us human (and about our past) is now better catered to by science rather than religion.
[...] What many people don’t realize (and many scientists forget) is that science itself is driven by human emotion; and, dare I use the term, spirituality. As Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume once remarked, “reason is the slave of passion” — that is, it’s our pre-existing desires that motivates our actions rather than simply reason alone. Scratch any budding scientist (especially a biologist) and you’ll find an underlying fascination with the natural world and how it works.
Indeed, similar passions motivate both science and religion: a deep desire to understand why the world is as it is. It’s inherent in human nature.
[...] our primal ‘tribal’ nature, our deep loyalties for those with shared beliefs, still lurk beneath the veneer of rational modern life ... As EO Wilson, the towering figure of modern biology, aptly remarked, “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” ... We can create new knowledge while still preserving the past, a sentiment that also applies to other ancient human remains. Thought and respect go a long way.
[...] There’s perhaps a dozen or more churches in Europe that claim Jesus’s foreskin as a sacred treasure. Surely, these are relics worthy of modern genetic research... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: There’s a ghastly severed head in St Robert’s Roman Catholic church, just down the road from me in Catforth, northern England. [...] Only in real life (or rather death) it’s not a skull — it’s a gruesome human head, complete with protruding vertebrae, withered skin and mouth gaping wide in a frozen scream. Parish tradition says it’s the head of a local priest, Philip Holden...
However, a forensic examination in the 1960s suggested a different story and indeed a victim. The examiner determined the head had been ‘hanged, drawn and quartered’ [...] Circumstantial evidence suggest that the skull was likely that of a Catholic priest from nearby Wigan, who’d been captured and executed in 1590, Miles Gerrard.
[...] while genetic science could perhaps answer whose skull it actually is, it also raises some ethical issues. Just because we can satisfy our slightly morbid curiosity, does it therefore mean we should? Where do we draw lines in recreating the past driven by little more than curiosity?
While hard-nosed materialists might scoff at the idea that it’s somehow sacrilegious to interfere with such remains, we should at least pause to consider the wider context of any such a claim.
In the past, researchers riding roughshod over local knowledge and customs — or doing far, far worse [...] It’s also led to several high-profile stand-offs between (for want of a better phrase) science and spirituality —between those (who claim to be) advancing human knowledge and those (who see themselves as) protecting the sacred beliefs of historically disregarded peoples.
[...] Not only is there disagreement among these groups but also within the groups themselves. ... Compare this situation to human remains that have lost strong genealogical and/or spiritual connections to existing cultures, such as the famous ‘bog bodies’ of Europe (human cadavers naturally preserved in peat bogs)...
Is such treatment of once-living humans evidence of our descent into soulless materialism? Or of a loss of deeper respect for human life (and death)? Does it illustrate a deep divide between those cultures that have largely abandoned spiritual beliefs, which has produced most of the world’s scientists, and those that haven’t?
I would argue ‘no’, that there is a uniting spirit that links all of us to our past. [...] In modern secular societies, it seems, the passionate interest in what makes us human (and about our past) is now better catered to by science rather than religion.
[...] What many people don’t realize (and many scientists forget) is that science itself is driven by human emotion; and, dare I use the term, spirituality. As Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume once remarked, “reason is the slave of passion” — that is, it’s our pre-existing desires that motivates our actions rather than simply reason alone. Scratch any budding scientist (especially a biologist) and you’ll find an underlying fascination with the natural world and how it works.
Indeed, similar passions motivate both science and religion: a deep desire to understand why the world is as it is. It’s inherent in human nature.
[...] our primal ‘tribal’ nature, our deep loyalties for those with shared beliefs, still lurk beneath the veneer of rational modern life ... As EO Wilson, the towering figure of modern biology, aptly remarked, “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” ... We can create new knowledge while still preserving the past, a sentiment that also applies to other ancient human remains. Thought and respect go a long way.
[...] There’s perhaps a dozen or more churches in Europe that claim Jesus’s foreskin as a sacred treasure. Surely, these are relics worthy of modern genetic research... (MORE - details)