Artificiality and Religion

[project2501]

As you no doubt notice: Izor N00b. But i thought that this site seems to host alot of thoughtful people of all religious denominations, so id like to posit a question:

Im curious as to opinions that religions might have to technologies that impinge upon the creations traditionally held to be gods own. Im aiming at such things as cloning and artificial sentience, and even at the notion of human augmentation and intelligence amplification.

All opinions will be of interest to me, and for what its worth, i think the above are all Good Things.

 

[iBrian]

Not a bad question - so as a starter, my personal 2c would not be so much about technology impinging upon creation, as much as humanity developing technologies without due ethical considerations.

Hope that helps.

 

[bgruagach]

To me it's all a matter of degree. It would be nice if things were always simple yes or no questions but the real world is a messy place with messy solutions and consequences.

The practice of medicine is inherently artificial -- we do things to lessen pain, to kill off other organisms (virii, bacteria, parasites), to prolong the lifespan. Premature babies used to die more often than survive. It wasn't uncommon for mothers to die in childbirth.

There are all sorts of things that people do today to artificially enhance fertility and bring to term babies that would have spontaeously aborted if they were left to go nature's course.

It's not just medicine where we have enhanced our lives (and usually take things for granted) by all sorts of very artificial means. We manipulate the breeding of farm animals to maximize whatever we are trying to get from the animal. We've done it to dogs, cats, birds, and fish too for generations all for the sake of our whims about what an ideal pet is supposed to be like. We build homes, suburbs, cities filled with concrete and glass and plastics and synthetics so that we can live all over the globe in places that were uninhabitable before. Swamps are turned into golf courses or amusement parks (Disneyworld in Florida is "reclaimed" swampland.)

We cut our hair, trim our nails, whiten our teeth, liposuction those extra pounds. Some people get implants to enhance parts of their anatomy. Men can take a little blue pill to have sexual relations. Women can take little pills to try and reduce the chance of getting pregnant.

I'm not sure that "artificiality" is a criterion that helps us differentiate good from bad. We need other reasons that make more sense if we are to do that. And no matter what checklists we come up with, personally I think it will always be a distinction we need to make on a case by case basis. Killing is not always wrong -- and extending life is not always good either.

 

[project2501]

With respect to Brian's reply, I agree with nieztche's argument that all morals and ethics are social constructions, and id like to see what people think of the the ethical constraints that should be imposed on them. I have noticed a large amount of ethical inflexibility on the part of secular thinking (my own country has a blanket ban on stem cell research, which halted a family friends' research into a way of producing them from red blood cells), I'm curious to see what different religions produce as arguments.

With respect to bgruagach's reply: Most of the technologies you cite are what id consider "refinements", you take an existing thing and refine it to be more useful or to make some natural thing more aesthetically appealing. But what about creation? what if you could create replicants, fully designed human beings? Or create a conscious entity that was not human, such as a machine, or a completely new living being? Since these are things traditionally reserved for the deity/ies, im curious as to the opinion of humanity creating a "Child of Creative Intelligence" rather than a "Child of Natural Function".
Im also curious as to how far we can change humanity before someone feels that we have violated the "in gods image" idea. If i could take my neural image and somehow copy it and put it into something definitely not human, would that be no longer "in gods image"? or does gods image have something to do with my mind, if so, does changing my mind into something else (via augmentation or by sharing my thoughts directly) make me into something godless?

 

[bgruagach]

With respect to bgruagach's reply: Most of the technologies you cite are what id consider "refinements", you take an existing thing and refine it to be more useful or to make some natural thing more aesthetically appealing. But what about creation? what if you could create replicants, fully designed human beings? Or create a conscious entity that was not human, such as a machine, or a completely new living being? Since these are things traditionally reserved for the deity/ies, im curious as to the opinion of humanity creating a "Child of Creative Intelligence" rather than a "Child of Natural Function".
Im also curious as to how far we can change humanity before someone feels that we have violated the "in gods image" idea. If i could take my neural image and somehow copy it and put it into something definitely not human, would that be no longer "in gods image"? or does gods image have something to do with my mind, if so, does changing my mind into something else (via augmentation or by sharing my thoughts directly) make me into something godless?

The refinements are all a matter of degree -- some are more subtle, and some are much more radical. If we look at any specific type of refinement there is a whole range of modifications that have been done. For instance, in horticulture we have pretty basic manipulations such as planting seeds in specific conditions at specific times because we know they produce maximum results. Then there is the selective breeding that has been done to maximize yield - the crop is the same species as it originally was, but is significantly different from what you would find in the wild. The selective breeding has gone on for long enough now that some of these domestic varieties are so different from the original wild variety that you'd almost think they couldn't be related. And now we have companies like Monsanto taking it a step further and not only eliminating genes considered detrimental, but introducing external genes into the crop varieties to try and add things they think would be beneficial.

It's all refinement -- just different degrees. It's all the result of human manipulation. If we humans just left things to run their natural course we wouldn't have domesticated plants or animals. We wouldn't have such a thing as purified and standardized medicines, let alone things like surgery.

God creates some people with serious physical differences that if left alone would often result in early death, yet we interfere and "correct" what God has done so that the individual can live a more normal and longer life. Is it inherently against God because we are essentially deciding that God made a mistake and correcting it?

It's a sticky question and I'm not sure it's something that can be decided except in a case-by-case manner. And no two cases, even dealing with the same degree of refinement or modification, are identical so could have completely different decisions.

 

[project2501]

Would you see the creation of a totally new creature (possibly some kind of microbe to eat plastics), not based on any previous entity as a refinement? I agree that there are degrees of refinement, but a machine that is "concious" is not so much a refinement of something existing as an attempt to create something not seen in nature, essentially a new class of entity, rather that subclassing by refinement.