Winnipeg-Canada based Lyndsey Smith, a writer for the Real Agriculture blog, discusses why religion and science often don’t mix well–and how the clergy can become a source of misinformation on issues that they are not knowledgeable about, in this case crop biotechnology.
Mark Hughes, a pastor at her hometown based Church of the Rock, made numerous false and misleading statements about genetically modified food in a recent sermon to a credulous congregation. Hughes claimed that genetically modifying food were “messing with nature,” saying that every time humans try to improve on “what God has created,” they screw it up. That’s just not true, as Smith points out. Humans have been improving on what “God created” for tens of thousands of years, ever since they first started “selectively choosing and propagating crops.”
Hughes claims that we have no idea what GMOs do to our bodies, which is “decidedly false,” as there are decades of research showing that GMOs have no adverse effect on human health. Hughes also claims that we “do not know what [GMOs] will do to our DNA,” which is also false, considering again the decades of research showing that GMOs are safe to consume. In fact, it seems that humans “have done more than a few things right by ‘messing with nature.’”
Hughes concludes:
There are, of course, several arguments for and against the use of genetically modified technology in food production, that go beyond transgenic technology. As such, I encourage you to re-visit Camille Ryan’s post here, entitled “10 Reasoned Responses to Why we Don’t Need GMOs.”
Read the full, original story here: Monsanto, GMOs & the Pulpit: Humans “Messing With Nature” Can Turn Out Just Fine
