With some scientists saying they can clone a human being almost as easily as they cloned a sheep, ethicists and theologians already have begun weighing in on the implications.

Just because something is technically possible does not make it morally right, says David Clark, professor of theology at Bethel Theological Seminary, Arden Hills, Minn.

"It's enormously complicated," Clark says. "There are a lot of theologians and ethicists who argue that the desire for total control over the forms of life is a kind of hubris. In general terms, a lot of people are going to say this takes over God's role as the one who shapes life. It's kind of like playing God."

But James Burtness, a professor of theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., prefers not to think of cloning as playing God.

"I don't ever talk that way because I think it's God who created human agency, even knowing that human agency would be used against God," Burtness says. "That term 'playing God' could be used to condemn many things."

Burtness says scientists have been cloning frogs and plants for some time. But cloning sheep is so much closer to cloning human beings that public interest will now radically increase.

"One of the hopeful things is that within a month there will be massive interest in all of this," Burtness says. "And the cumulative effect of that will be to encourage us to talk about it. I am quite at ease that there will be a long time before someone tries this on humans. And by that time, there will have been so much discussion, that we will decide not to go ahead with it."

There are a couple of reasons, it seems to me, why we should not become unduly concerned with this matter.

First, before you know it, lawmakers will be forging strong legislation against cloning human beings, perhaps cloning of any kind.

Second, absolutely no religion on the face of the Earth would condone the cloning of human beings. And you can bet theologians and church officials will be vocal in the discussion.

The religious concern is simple: Cloning human beings would cheapen life. If endless numbers of human beings can be cloned, then of what value are the genuine articles? Further, many of those clones would be created out of arrogance, caprice or a desire to control.

These are all reasons that fly in the face of the purpose of religion, which is to connect human beings to something holy.

We are not put on Earth to control others or to use others for our own pleasure. Consider the nightmare if some madman cloned humans to use as personal slaves. Or worse, if some nation cloned humans to serve the state in some machine-like capacity. For all those reasons, religions would oppose and condemn any attempt at cloning humans.

In fact, in a 1987 instruction to Catholics, the Vatican clearly stated that cloning human beings would be contrary to the church's teachings. So far, the Vatican has made no direct statement concerning the cloning of other animals, according to Dan Maher, director of publications for the Pope John Center, a Braintree, Mass., group that studies ethics in health care.

Maher believes scientists will be eager to clone human beings.

"The people who want to do this won't look at it the way we do," Maher says. "They've already found the heart-strings case of why someone would want to do that, which is that a couple has a dying child and they want to replace it. That's what they will use to defend it."

Burtness of Luther Seminary takes a more laid-back view.

It's easy, he says, to imagine that someone eventually will try to clone a human being. On the other hand, Burtness says, many people in 1945 feared that nuclear energy would be used to destroy the entire world. "We all thought it would happen, but it didn't."

"These people who have the knowledge and the skill to do this are pretty respectable people," he says. "So the chances of that happening might be slim."

Clark D. Morphew