Where is the line with "playing God"?

[Ryukil]

A lot of religious people get annoyed at things like stem cell research, research into reversing aging, genetic engineering and it sort of confuses me.

Everyone talks about "playing God". Why isn't just treating cancer considered "playing God"? I mean if the idea is that disease came into the world because humans sinned, then don't we deserve these diseases? Isn't treating them "playing God" in this sense?

Why is it "playing God" to remove cancer genes from an embryo but not "playing God" to treat a person's cancer later in life?

Anyway, these are all really interesting questions because I'm positive in the next decades people will be fighting over this sort of thing.

I personally think if you could save a baby from developing cancer at age 50 by doing some genetic engineering, it would be immoral NOT to do it.

I also figure if God really had a problem with it he would let us know, but maybe that's not the case.

 

[juvenissun]

A lot of religious people get annoyed at things like stem cell research, research into reversing aging, genetic engineering and it sort of confuses me.

Everyone talks about "playing God". Why isn't just treating cancer considered "playing God"? I mean if the idea is that disease came into the world because humans sinned, then don't we deserve these diseases? Isn't treating them "playing God" in this sense?

Why is it "playing God" to remove cancer genes from an embryo but not "playing God" to treat a person's cancer later in life?

Anyway, these are all really interesting questions because I'm positive in the next decades people will be fighting over this sort of thing.

I personally think if you could save a baby from developing cancer at age 50 by doing some genetic engineering, it would be immoral NOT to do it.

I also figure if God really had a problem with it he would let us know, but maybe that's not the case.

I think we are playing God only when we start to clone human.
The rest are not.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Everyone talks about "playing God". Why isn't just treating cancer considered "playing God"? I mean if the idea is that disease came into the world because humans sinned, then don't we deserve these diseases? Isn't treating them "playing God" in this sense?

Treating cancer can be difficult. There is a trend in Medicine that suggests a lot of disease results from eating the wrong diet or wrong lifestyle choices. So there is a lot of research into the right diet that can help prevent disease. In this case an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. One example is if you have lung cancer from smoking and you want God to heal you, then you may need to quit smoking. If you have diabetes from drinking to much soda or eating to many raw sugars. Then you may want to get more fiber into your diet to slow down your insulin spikes.

 

[Strathos]

I think we are playing God only when we start to clone human.
The rest are not.

What about genetically engineering humans to be born with certain physical traits like choosing their hair color, eye color, skin color, intellectual and physical ability, etc.? I think that would be going too far.

 

[joshua 1 9]

What about genetically engineering humans to be born with certain physical traits like choosing their hair color, eye color, skin color, intellectual and physical ability, etc.? I think that would be going too far.

They have been screening out downs syndrome for a long time.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Good question.

 

[juvenissun]

What about genetically engineering humans to be born with certain physical traits like choosing their hair color, eye color, skin color, intellectual and physical ability, etc.? I think that would be going too far.

The key is the soul of human. As long as we do not multiply soul artificially, we are not playing God. The worst would be that we offended God.

 

[The Cadet]

I think we are playing God only when we start to clone human.
The rest are not.

The key is the soul of human. As long as we do not multiply soul artificially, we are not playing God. The worst would be that we offended God.

At first I considered not responding to this, but now that you put it like this... Modern cloning works nothing like how old-school cloning did. It's essentially not that different from IVF, and I don't know if you consider that playing god... But it happens before the zygote is fully formed, so if we want to assert that it then has a soul, we have some rather problematic math to worry about. What happens when the zygote splits into twins? What happens when one twin then reabsorbs the other (also known as "Vanishing Twin Syndrome")? Does it have two souls at any point during that process?

What about genetically engineering humans to be born with certain physical traits like choosing their hair color, eye color, skin color, intellectual and physical ability, etc.? I think that would be going too far.

I don't think this is playing god; I do, however, think that there are some really crucial ethical issues that need to be worked out surrounding designer babies (just like basically any other form of transhumanism) before it's really ready to become a thing. And that's really what most of this comes down to - ethics. Figuring out if we should do it, what the consequences could be, et cetera. I don't think "playing god" is really that big of a factor; the Greeks thought that we were "playing god" when we lit fires.

 

[Shemjaza]

The key is the soul of human. As long as we do not multiply soul artificially, we are not playing God. The worst would be that we offended God.

I don't think anyone has proposed any method to even do this.

 

[juvenissun]

At first I considered not responding to this, but now that you put it like this... Modern cloning works nothing like how old-school cloning did. It's essentially not that different from IVF, and I don't know if you consider that playing god... But it happens before the zygote is fully formed, so if we want to assert that it then has a soul, we have some rather problematic math to worry about. What happens when the zygote splits into twins? What happens when one twin then reabsorbs the other (also known as "Vanishing Twin Syndrome")? Does it have two souls at any point during that process?

The human cloning process is what I know very little. To me, cloning human is to make an alive human with an unidentified soul (no soul, or a soul with unknown origin). A human soul is given by God only when a human sperm and a human egg combined (through whatever process). To God, human soul is much much more important than human flesh.

The given and the take of human soul is a mysterious process controlled by God. There is a chapter of theology there concerned about the origin, the transition, the transformation, and the end of human soul. It should be another topic.

 

[juvenissun]

I don't think anyone has proposed any method to even do this.

Human cloning? I think it will happen sooner or later.
But my prediction is that it won't go far.

 

[The Cadet]

The human cloning process is what I know very little. To me, cloning human is to make an alive human with an unidentified soul (no soul, or a soul with unknown origin).

Well, we don't really have the capability to do anything along the lines of Star Trek cloning. That's pure science fiction; real "cloning" really is more like in vitro fertilization. A "clone" of a human would be a Zygote with the same genetic material as the human in question, essentially fertilizing the egg with its own genetics. You can read more about it here.

Perhaps the more interesting case is something like this: taking apart a human piece by piece, then putting it back together again at the other end. As the comic describes, you could hypothetically not take the human apart at one end, and end up with a duplicate. In that case... Well, I dunno. The problem really does come down to the concept of a soul - an indivisible, supernaturalistic thing that "makes me me". Given what we know about neurology and psychology, it's just not a particularly useful or coherent concept. :/

The given and the take of human soul is a mysterious process controlled by God. There is a chapter of theology there concerned about the origin, the transition, the transformation, and the end of human soul. It should be another topic.

Fair enough, I'll respect that.

 

[juvenissun]

Well, we don't really have the capability to do anything along the lines of Star Trek cloning. That's pure science fiction; real "cloning" really is more like in vitro fertilization. A "clone" of a human would be a Zygote with the same genetic material as the human in question, essentially fertilizing the egg with its own genetics. You can read more about it here.

Perhaps the more interesting case is something like this: taking apart a human piece by piece, then putting it back together again at the other end. As the comic describes, you could hypothetically not take the human apart at one end, and end up with a duplicate. In that case... Well, I dunno. The problem really does come down to the concept of a soul - an indivisible, supernaturalistic thing that "makes me me". Given what we know about neurology and psychology, it's just not a particularly useful or coherent concept. :/

In the cloning technology, the least concern among scientists is the soul problem. That is the line of "playing God".

 

[DogmaHunter]

I think we are playing God only when we start to clone human.
The rest are not.

Why?

 

[The Cadet]

In the cloning technology, the least concern among scientists is the soul problem. That is the line of "playing God".

Would you consider such a "cloning machine" working proof that the soul does not exist?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... To me, cloning human is to make an alive human with an unidentified soul (no soul, or a soul with unknown origin). A human soul is given by God only when a human sperm and a human egg combined (through whatever process).

So what happens with monozygotic (identical twins)? they come from a single egg fertilised by a single sperm - do they share a soul? does God make an exception and provide another soul from the spares box?

Also, why is a soul with unknown origin less desirable? and if souls are given by God, what does a soul of 'unknown origin' even mean?

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Would you consider such a "cloning machine" working proof that the soul does not exist?

Soul in the original Hebrew language is literally translated 'living and breathing'.

So, clones are life and are living souls.

I believe this is a case of man reaching out and taking from the Tree of Life which God knew would eventually happen. God closed the Garden of Eden to man because of this nature to take of that which he should not take of.

God is very zealous over life and death. He guards these powers more than anything else.

When man starts trying to play God, God gets angry. God will eventually punish man by causing an end to our earth as the hidden prophecy in Jeremiah states. God will not allow man nor angel to usurp his power.

 

[paulm50]

A lot of religious people get annoyed at things like stem cell research, research into reversing aging, genetic engineering and it sort of confuses me.

Everyone talks about "playing God". Why isn't just treating cancer considered "playing God"? I mean if the idea is that disease came into the world because humans sinned, then don't we deserve these diseases? Isn't treating them "playing God" in this sense?

Why is it "playing God" to remove cancer genes from an embryo but not "playing God" to treat a person's cancer later in life?

Anyway, these are all really interesting questions because I'm positive in the next decades people will be fighting over this sort of thing.

I personally think if you could save a baby from developing cancer at age 50 by doing some genetic engineering, it would be immoral NOT to do it.

I also figure if God really had a problem with it he would let us know, but maybe that's not the case.

Over the years all that has changed in this field is what's determined as "playing with god".

 

[lesliedellow]

I also figure if God really had a problem with it he would let us know, but maybe that's not the case.

We would find out what the problem was soon enough, if a genetically modified bacterium, or a nano machine, escaped into the environment, and it turned out not to be so harmless as was supposed. The British Government was so worried about the latter happening that it commissioned a report from the Royal Society.

Nuclear Armageddon is beginning to be a bit old hat, and soon we will have other ways of destroying ourselves. One day we will doubtless succeed in doing precisely that.

 

[Holoman]

I don't think people are opposed to stem cell research because it's "playing God", they are opposed to it because it involves essentially creating an embryo to harvest cells from and when they are done with it, they kill it. I don't think there is much opposition to non-embryonic stem cell research.

Cloning is a difficult one, the morality of it isn't clear, but I am not sure what benefit it brings at all to the human race.