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Religion and Tampering with Nature

Religion and Tampering with Nature

Last updated on: July 26, 2016 at 11:38 am by James F. McGrath

Religion and Tampering with Nature 2016-07-26T11:38:34-04:00 James F. McGrath

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

IO9 just posted a piece about transhumanism and fear of “tampering with nature” in the form of gene editing, brain chips, and other such technologies.

What I found most interesting, not surprisingly, was the information about how more devout religious people’s views tend to differ from those of others. Here are the statistics:

religion and tampering with nature

I suspect that many of the people who rank their religious commitment as high are conservative Evangelicals. And yet within conservative Evangelicalism, one often hears that God gave humans dominion over the Earth, as a way of justifying helping ourselves to oil and using it to the detriment of the environment.

Presumably they would make a distinction between “tampering with nature” (which is OK, indeed encouraged when profitable) and “tampering with human nature.”

Yet both the Bible and science show that our own existence is inseparable from that of the world we inhabit, in all its ecological and biological diversity.

These are the kinds of topics that get discussed in two classes I teach, one on religion and science, the other on religion and science fiction. Sci-fi is often crucial to any effective discussion of ethics, values, religion, science, the future, and public policy. Until we imagine the best and worst possible in the future, and what might bring those scenarios about, it is hard to take meaningful steps to avoid the one and achieve the other.

On a related note, our treatment of robots and other artificial intelligences is another subject that can come up in both classes. How we treat them may impact how they treat us in turn, when the time comes. And so perhaps we should take steps now to avoid the kind of discrimination depicted in the cartoon below?

prove you're not a robot

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