Playing God?
I heard the phrase used today. The one that is used by most any religious group that wants to protest most any new scientific development. The phrase that has been the bane of science since science emerged, blinking and stumbling from it's coccoon of suspicion and superstition into the light of experimentation. It's especially common when the topic of discussion comes to things like abortion, stem-cell research, genetic science,, and fetal development. To use a retrovirus to alter a malignant gene is to "play God." To abort a baby is to decide who has the right to live and who doesn't is to "play God." To alter corn to be more resistant to disease is to change the way it was intended to be is to "play God." To wish to alter the nature of the world, or to change the "natural" arrangement of things - this is to play God.
But what exactly constitutes playing God? Did Edison encounter this sort of resistance when he created the light bulb? Was he playing God by giving us light on a whim, at the push of a button? Was Pasteur playing God when he learned how life and chemistry work together to make our beverages? Were the Wright brothers plying God as they launched their first Icarian ventures into the great open skies above us? Things we take for granted as comforts or even necessities of today - were they once considered bane, violators of the natural order?
Let us look back farther into the past! Copernicus, an astronomer, who challenged the perceptions that the Earth was the center of the universe? Galileio, who followed Copernicus, who was persecuted by the Church for his studies into the nature of the stars and physics, forced to rescind his statements as falsehoods! The same man who said,
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
god who has endowed us with sense, reason and
intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
Was he playing God?
Was Isaac Newton, the spiritual successor of Galileio's work, playing God? He investigated the laws of force, of motion! He learned the basics that allow us even today to harness Nature's energies for our greatest projects! Such discoveries, the ideas that made our lives today possible - were they heresy?
If you asked the people at the time, the answers would likely all be a firm and resounding "Yes." But why is it that we are so quick to adopt these heresies once we see how they can benefit us? Are we, too, playing God every time we look at a diagram of the solar system? Every time we contradict an age-old religious teaching through the investigation of science?
If God had intended us to fly, would He not have given us wings? To travel the oceans, would we not have had flippers? I say NO! If God created us as brilliant as we are, as the most intelligent, ambitious, and dominant of all his species, He surely gave us poor physical capabilities to accomplish Our work or His. I say that we are intended to seek, to find, and failing that to CREATE the means of our own destinies! If we play God, it is because God has left the game. Perhaps Promethius stole fire from God or the Gods, but perhaps he stole it for the purpose of shining glory on the Gods! Or, conversely, perhaps it was to show us as Humanity that we can light our own way, that we need no Divine illumination to carry out our own machinations. Let God watch, let him see, let him gaze in wonder at the wonders of which His favorite children are capable! For I say we are not playing God, merely playing the Game He set out before us to play! So let the naysayers bray, and let the doomsayers plot gloom and destruction, but as for Humanity, let us stride boldly into that bright future that we create with the instruents of our own hands! If we are alone in this universe, then we play God because we ARE God. And if we are the children of God, then science is the toy that He placed into our infant hands so long ago. And now, now that we have learned to walk and talk, now we finally learn to play.
But what exactly constitutes playing God? Did Edison encounter this sort of resistance when he created the light bulb? Was he playing God by giving us light on a whim, at the push of a button? Was Pasteur playing God when he learned how life and chemistry work together to make our beverages? Were the Wright brothers plying God as they launched their first Icarian ventures into the great open skies above us? Things we take for granted as comforts or even necessities of today - were they once considered bane, violators of the natural order?
Let us look back farther into the past! Copernicus, an astronomer, who challenged the perceptions that the Earth was the center of the universe? Galileio, who followed Copernicus, who was persecuted by the Church for his studies into the nature of the stars and physics, forced to rescind his statements as falsehoods! The same man who said,
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
god who has endowed us with sense, reason and
intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
Was he playing God?
Was Isaac Newton, the spiritual successor of Galileio's work, playing God? He investigated the laws of force, of motion! He learned the basics that allow us even today to harness Nature's energies for our greatest projects! Such discoveries, the ideas that made our lives today possible - were they heresy?
If you asked the people at the time, the answers would likely all be a firm and resounding "Yes." But why is it that we are so quick to adopt these heresies once we see how they can benefit us? Are we, too, playing God every time we look at a diagram of the solar system? Every time we contradict an age-old religious teaching through the investigation of science?
If God had intended us to fly, would He not have given us wings? To travel the oceans, would we not have had flippers? I say NO! If God created us as brilliant as we are, as the most intelligent, ambitious, and dominant of all his species, He surely gave us poor physical capabilities to accomplish Our work or His. I say that we are intended to seek, to find, and failing that to CREATE the means of our own destinies! If we play God, it is because God has left the game. Perhaps Promethius stole fire from God or the Gods, but perhaps he stole it for the purpose of shining glory on the Gods! Or, conversely, perhaps it was to show us as Humanity that we can light our own way, that we need no Divine illumination to carry out our own machinations. Let God watch, let him see, let him gaze in wonder at the wonders of which His favorite children are capable! For I say we are not playing God, merely playing the Game He set out before us to play! So let the naysayers bray, and let the doomsayers plot gloom and destruction, but as for Humanity, let us stride boldly into that bright future that we create with the instruents of our own hands! If we are alone in this universe, then we play God because we ARE God. And if we are the children of God, then science is the toy that He placed into our infant hands so long ago. And now, now that we have learned to walk and talk, now we finally learn to play.