Lesbian couples will soon be able to have thier "own" children.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh yeah, and I have no idea why anyone should think this is "creepy."

Probably because it's unnatural, and blatently so, on several different levels.
(should add that, personally, I find "ordinary" IVF to be almost as bad).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As an update of sorts using this procedure in fertility treatment (and etc) is probably going to be banned here

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also, a minor English quibble: "etc." is short for the Latin et cetera, which literally means "and the rest", so "and etc." means "and and the rest".

Oh, I already knew that. I have an odd sense of humour, that's all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't see how this is any more "playing God" than regular old heterosexual coitus.

F***ing is natural. Messing around with test tubes and the like isn't and is probably the thin end of the wedge anyway.

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You missed out "n't" from the word with i and the s.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As natural as f**king may be, what about everything else that must be "playing God"?  I assume you also find cola unnatural and playing God?

It's not creating life though (and it's the artificial creation of life here that I don't like; it's just wrong as far as I'm concerned)

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Saving life, not creating it.

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In just about every way possible (from a non-religious as well as a religious perspective).

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If God created life, then He also created the ability of living things to reproduce.

I think his main point is that the objective is to take a sperm and an egg and to get the two to combine to form an embryo, and was asking what difference it makes regarding how that gets done.

===
Exactly.

Nothing and everything.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I understand that.  I'm trying to elicit why.

I'm tempted to say that it's because it's wrong and to let things go off in circles from there. But I won't because that would just be totally unproductive.

It is wrong because, in my view, it is not for humans to have power over creation. You could ask "why" to that, but that question would be as perplexing to me as my views on this issue seem to be for you. If you (impersonal you, obviously) see a particular fact as being self-evident then explaining things to someone who does not see it as being self-evident (quite the reverse) and who regards it as an opinion (and a very strange one to boot) is quite difficult; in fact it's all too easy to head off into the territory of trite one-liners and respond with (say) "some things are wrong because they are wrong".
I could be very wrong here, but I'll guess that the problem in this case is that while I (essentially) live in a world of moral certainties, you don't. Of course, there's nothing wrong with people thinking in very different ways about certain issues. Dignity of difference and all that.

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You could certainly argue that all "interfering" in matters of life and death is "playing God" and in fact some people do. But I don't and don't see why it should be instantly assumed that I do think that. No more than it should be instantly assumed that you support (say) eugenics.

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You could argue (for example) that it's wrong to interfere in the evolutionary process in such a way.

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See that thing about things seeming self-evident from my perspective but apparently not yours.

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Uncalled for.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is wrong because, in my view, it is not for humans to have power over creation.

Don't they already have power over creation?  You don't get an egg meeting with a sperm until you have sex.

That's reproduction rather than creation. Perhaps creation should have been written as Creation (which would have, and does, look a little odd. Though also a little pre-19th century. Which is clearly a Good thing).

There's a real danger of this going round in circles, btw.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...but if you can't explain it to me, how did you explain it to yourself?

In the same sort of way that I know that (say) committing fraud against someone who never (not even at later date) finds out that they've been defrauded is wrong (yeah, probably not the best example, but I'm tired right now), it just seems obvious to me that messing around in test tubes and creating life from those tubes is wrong.

Which is the problem in explaining it in any detail. I suppose one way of putting it would be to say that if something isn't morally acceptable to me, it's morally unacceptable, but that's not entirely right either. Maybe I need some sleep now or something.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's an obvious and rational explanation for immorality there.

To you, yes. But presume that you grew up in a society in which it's fairly common to view something as immoral if it causes harm that the victim is aware of? No knowledge, no harm, or something like that?

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No, because I do have a reason for thinking in the way I do over this issue. But as I explained earlier it's not easy to explain something "obvious" to someone who does not see it as being "obvious" at all. Especially when the other person thinks in a different way to you.

The last point is the most important one IMO.

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Actually that's not the sort of attitude that fueled Racism (with a big "R") at all. If anything the opposite is the case; a hell of a lot of "scientific proof" for Racist theories was published in the 19th and early 20th centuries and was propagated (and believed) by countless well educated people who believed equally strongly in Reason, Science, Progress and so on (the capital letters are Important here). They "knew" that Whites were superior to other "races" and had plenty of "proof" for it.
The connection between a Mississippi lynch mob and 19th (and before then actually, although obviously not developed to the same ghastly extent) century intellectuals might seem like an odd (or even a far-fetched) idea, but it's there.