Are We Asking Our Scientists to Play God?
The
debate over advanced genetic engineering such as germline intervention
brings us directly to the questions popularized by newspaper headlines:
Should we ask our scientists to play God? Or, should we ask them
to refrain from playing God? The way the questions are posed in
the press is usually so superficial as to be misleading. Yet,
beneath the superficiality we find a theological issue of some
consequence, namely, do we as human beings share with God some
responsibility for the ongoing creativity of our world?
The
rhetoric that usually employs the phrase, “play God,”
is aimed at inhibiting, if not shutting down, certain forms of
scientific research and medical therapy. This applies particularly
to the field of human genetics and, still more particularly, to
the prospect of germline intervention for purposes of human enhancement—that
is, the insertion of new gene segments of DNA into sperm or eggs
before fertilization or into undifferentiated cells of an early
embryo that will be passed on to future generations and may become
part of the permanent gene pool. Some scientists and religious
spokespersons are putting a chain across the gate to germline
enhancement and with a posted sign reading, “Thou shalt not
play God.” A Time/CNN poll cites a substantial majority (58%)
who believe altering human genes is against the will of God.
Why
do critics of genetic research prescribe a new commandment, “Thou
shalt not play God”? The answer is that human pride or hubris
is dangerous. We have learned from experience that what the Bible
says is true: “pride goes before destruction” (Proverbs
16:18). And in our modern era, pride among the natural scientists
has taken the form of overestimating our knowledge, of arrogating
for science a kind of omniscience that we do not in fact have.
Or, to refine it a bit: “playing God” means we confuse
the knowledge we do have with the wisdom to decide how to use
it. Frequently lacking this wisdom, we falsely assume we possess
beneficial scientific knowledge, which then leads to unforeseen
consequences, such as the destruction of the ecosphere. Applied
to genetic therapy, the commandment against “playing God”
implies that the unpredictability of destructive effects on the
human gene pool should lead to a proscription against germline
intervention.
A
related implication of the phrase, “playing God,” is
that DNA has come to function in effect as an inviolable sacred,
a special province of the divine, that should be off limits to
human tampering. Robert Sinsheimer, among others, suggests that
when we see ourselves as the creators of life then we lose reverence
for life. It
is just this lack of reverence for life, as nature has bequeathed
it to us, that drives Jeremy Rifkin to attack the kind of genetic
research that will lead to algeny; that is, to “the upgrading
of existing organisms and the design of wholly new ones with the
intent of ‘perfecting’ their performance.” The
problem with algeny is that it represents excessive human pride.
“It is humanity’s attempt to give metaphysical meaning
to its emerging technological relationship with nature.”Rifkin’s message is that we ought to let nature be. In advocating
this hands off policy, Rifkin does not appeal to any particular
theological principles. He issues his own missionary’s call:
“The resacralization of nature stands before us as the great
mission of the coming age.”
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| Contributed by: Dr. Ted Peters
|
