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Originally Posted by Skybird
I tend to oppose genetical experiments with the human genome, being realistic enough at the same time to know for sure that experiments considered to be a taboo nevertheless will be carried out, and are being carried out right now, and that the general trend is towards genetically designing the babies that parents do desire. Legal rules and laws will not chnage that, and where it is not considered to be legal, it will be done illegally, or in other places where it is legal.
However, an even greater taboo is the creation of human-animal hybrides.
At the same time we live in a world dominated by the species of homo sapiens, whose reign over the planet kills plants and animals in apocalyptic dimensions and is on it's best way to devastate the biosphere to a degree where it cannot support many higher life forms anymore, including man.
This is due to the separation that many of man's ethical system make between man and the rest of nature, and man's life being so much more worthy than life of animals.
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Actually, if you figure Dawkins' got a point (I do in general, BTW), then it is far from clear that our current problems are because we are homo sapiens. In fact, it is likely if some other family evolved to be "as top dog" as humans are now, they would probably wind up handling Earth the same way we do.
According to Dawkins (in case you hadn't read some of his works), things like altruism and human ethics are not a sign of us "getting over" our animal base instincts. Basically, being appropriately nice to others pays off in higher reproduction chance and is thus favored from an evolutionary perspective.
If that's true, then it follows that the elitism is also favored in an evolutionary sense, and is likely to be present in all species ....
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It should have become obvious that we are in need to raise our respect for the rest of natural creation, since it is our lack of respect for it that makes us destroying it so carelessly. The creation of human-animal hybride lifeforms maybe is a way to produce that additional respect, and to change man's thinking to abandon his murderous egocentrism and to include the interest of other life on planet Earth in our thinking as well.
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... following from the above, should humans somehow create succesful human-animal hybrids, we will be very hard pressed to treat them as equals. We had such problems treating people with different skin color with relative equality (thanks to our elitism) that we are much more likely to treat them as "almost animals" rather than "almost humans".
Also, thanks to the above, should we somehow start seeing them as "almost humans", it hardly follows that we'll see other animals as equals. The worst is that our newly founded human-hybrid species, due to what is explained above, is likely to treat animals (even animals from his own family or genus - say dog-man and a dog) the same way we do today.
In short, given human nature, I have serious doubts Dawkins' idea would work.