Cloning Allows Second Coming

Jesus Christ could be reborn any day. This is the astonishing news from the University of Dallas where a team of researchers have analyzed the mystical Shroud of Turin for genetic material. According to legend, the Shroud of Turan covered the face of Jesus Christ, and the research team led by Dr. Martin Dickens has discovered human hair among the shroud fibers. The researchers are convinced that these hairs belonged to Christ.

Researchers have found the hair of Christ in the Shroud of Turin.

The hair contains enough genetic material to allow a cloning of Christ, Dr. Dickens concludes. I met Dr. Dickens at his office at the University of Dallas, and Dr. Dickens agreed on a brief interview.

Wolf: Congratulations on this amazing discovery. What do you think the new Jesus can tell us?

Dickens: That is hard to tell, of course. Christian theologists have discussed for centuries what Jesus meant, but we're convinced that Jesus could be persuaded to tell us which one of the about 30,000 different kinds of Christianity around the world is the correct one, or maybe he could offer his own version.

Wolf: How do you think other religions will react on the rebirth of Christ?

Dickens: I think this is a very important question, and we have already consulted Jewish and Muslem experts, asking them how they would react if one day Christ was to be reborn. They were actually surprisingly positive towards the thought. The Muslems thought that since Jesus was just person within an array of prophets, he would simply applaud Muhammed's teachings. The Jews didn't quite consider the theological implications; the rabbi that we spoke with just shrugged his shoulders and said that they could just kill him again if he started any kind of trouble.

Wolf: Excuse me, but I thought you said the Jewish reaction was positive?

Dickens: Ha ha, yes, you might say that their reaction was a bit hostile, but keep in mind that we could just clone another Jesus. So it wouldn't matter if they killed him. Each time they killed one of him, we would just create a new one.

Wolf: That sounds like a strong theological defense. You could actually create an entire army of Christs?

Dickens: Well, we are scientists, and we prefer to focus on protecting our research subjects. We prefer to leave the political aspects to others. But yes, we have in fact decided to create several clones of Christ and place them in different environments to determine whether they will develop the same thoughts of Jesus if they are not aware of their divine identity. It will be very interesting to follow their development. I'm sure you can imagine that their school teachers will believe they are cheating at their exams, ha ha!

Wolf: When do you intend to begin the cloning of Christ?

Dickens: Um, er, this is where we have a somewhat awkward problem. You see, we obviously scrutinized the genetic material meticulously, and while they are surprisingly complete and intact, they are... not so fortunate based on a number of considerations.

Wolf: What are those considerations?

Dickens: Yes, er, theological interpretations have provided us with certain expectations of his perfection and beauty, and the genes do not necessarily support this view. We are also not completely certain that Jesus would be able to engage in deep, theological or philosophical discussions. We do not feel that we can allow ourselves to clone Jesus until we have discussed the problem with leading Christian theologists.

Wolf: I'm not sure I follow you. What is this problem?

Dickens: It... you see, circumstances unfortunately indicate that, ... er ... the genes indicate that Jesus had Down's syndrome.

Wolf: You mean, he was a mongoloid?

Dickens: We prefer the clinical diagnose, but yes, he had Down's syndrome. He was simply mentally retarted. This obviously puts the entire Christian world-view in a somewhat unfortunate light, and we are not sure how to deal with this problem. From a scientific point of view we should perhaps acknowledge that Jesus was mentally retarded, and I'm sure we could explain quite a few Christian thoughts based on this fact. On the other hand, if we were to somehow alter the genes to remove this syndrome, perhaps we could create a Jesus without Down's syndrome and obtain theological information that would otherwise not be accessible. We have not yet decided, but I am hoping that we could create a number of Christs with Down's syndrome and a number of Christs without Down's syndrome and leave it to theologicians to determine who should be the authority on Christianity.

Wolf: Thank you for your time!

Dickens: No problem. Have a great day.

The Christian right in the US has denied funding for research in Down's syndrome, stating that no science should receive funding if it threatens the Christian mind.