playing in the image of God

The news broke this week that Scientists have created the first Synthetic living cell. This was done by recreating the DNA of a Bacterium cell and transplanting it into a host cell which has had its natural DNA removed. Although the DNA created was an exact replica of an existing cell, this breakthrough raises the possibility that DNA could be purpose-built to perform specific tasks. This means that we could, hypothetically, create new forms of synthetic life with a specific purpose.

This is not to say we will be creating synthetic humans in the near future. The breakthrough was made on bacteria DNA, which is far simpler than one human, plant, animal or even fungi cell, let alone entire organisms made up of billions of cells with different purposes and functions. While it is hypothetically possible, it would take decades before science was able to artificially create a human being using synthetic DNA.

Scientists think that this development could lead to a new industrial revolution because of the potential of this new technology to custom build organisms to serve a specific purpose by engineering its DNA. It has been speculated that bacteria could be created to produce new vaccines, new fuels and absorb CO2 in the atmosphere, reducing mankind’s impact on Global Climate Change. Indeed Dr Venter (the leader of the project) had already collaborated with pharmaceutical and fuel companies to design Chromosomes for bacteria which would realise the potential of this technology.

We should be sceptical however. No doubt the technology has great potential for good, but it also has great potential for bad; if we can create vaccines, we can also create diseases, if we can create fuels, we can create explosives. If history teaches us anything, it’s that mankind’s capacity for good is at least matched by our capacity for evil. Great innovations and technological advances are almost always followed up by a corresponding increase in our capacity to slaughter each other. I’m not saying we should not use this technology to better our lives, but we must be wary that we do not use it to end them. Technology is amoral, the way we apply it dictates whether a new technology is evil or good.

There are those who object to this new technology on principle. It has been claimed that, in creating synthetic life, we are ‘playing God’. Perhaps they fear that such hubris will lead to our downfall as a species. This is not a great work of tragedy however; it is unlikely that God (should he exist) will become jealous of our newfound power over his creation and bring a disaster of biblical proportions upon us for our pale imitation of Him. Indeed those who cry that we are ‘playing God’ at every biological advance (the same accusations were thrown about when we first cloned an animal) profoundly misunderstand what it is to be human.

The concept of ‘playing god’ means, at heart, manipulating our environment. It means adapting the world around us to suit our needs rather than adapting to the demands of our environment. This is something that mankind has been doing since the beginning of civilisation. Ever since mankind began to settle in permanent settlements and grow food rather than simply catching it, we have been ‘playing God’. Agriculture and animal husbandry are no different in nature from genetic engineering and creating synthetic DNA. We have been manipulating nature by selective breeding and farming for thousands of years. ‘Playing God’, ironically enough, is fundamentally human.

What sets us apart as a species is our ability to manipulate the world around us, out ability to ‘play God’. No other species on the planet is capable of adapting its environment in the creative and original ways that we can. What makes mankind the most successful species on the planet is not our ability to adapt to it, but our ability to adapt it to us. We make our lives better by making our environment better suited to our needs. We are able to do this because of our unique capacity for rational thought. We do not simply act according to instinct, but can act against our instincts to make the world a better place.

The concept of ‘playing god’ is profoundly human, which is hardly surprising given that we make God in our image (or vice-versa if you swing that way). This new scientific breakthrough is the latest chapter in a long history of ‘playing God’, a history that defines humans and sets us apart from every other animal on the planet. This history, however, runs in parallel with a long and ungodly history of mass slaughter. Our capacity to ‘play God’ bring out both the best and the worst in people and we must remain ever vigilant that we do not use our great capacity for self-improvement to make ever more efficient ways of killing each other. This technology should be used to improve our lives by further manipulating our environment; it should not be used to destroy lives by the same means.

The Dragon in my Garage

While I was surfing reddit looking for something to write about for this week’s blog I found a quite interesting story-essay from the Atheists of Silicon Valley called The Dragon in my Garage by Carl Sagan. If you want to understand the rest of this blog and indeed read something both very well written and thought provoking, I suggest you read it now.

For the slow ones the invisible, floating, heatless, incorporeal dragon is a metaphor for God. To begin with Sagan seems to imply that not believing in the God-dragon is reasonable; as indeed it would be were the dragon completely undetectable. However at the end of his first scenario he proposes a case where, while the dragon is not directly visible, a number of alternative ways of detecting it seems to strongly suggest that it exists. As he correctly says

you must now acknowledge that there is something here.

It seems to me that Sagan is implying that there are enough pieces of evidence of God’s presence to mean that it would be reasonable to believe in him despite not being able to directly experience him.

However by listing a series of ways in which a dragon is someone’s garage may be detected, he assumes that the evidence for God is as convincing without ever explaining why. By using the mysterious dragon as a metaphor he allows himself to invent proof for the dragon and then transcribe those proofs onto God without ever making it explicit. It is up to the reader to make the connection, but in essence what Sagan has done is played a clever little word trick. He never tell us what the corresponding evidence which god leaves us is, he simply implies that it is there.

His second scenario muddies the waters further because he seems to disagree with the conclucions of his first scenario. In this case he says that

the only sensible approach is to tenatively reject the dragon hypothesis 

on the basis that there is some evidence, but it is not compelling. In this scenario Sagan widens the perspective of the metaphor to include multiple dragons inhabiting the garages of multiple people. This would seem to widen the base of evidence, but he now seems to reduce the amount of evidence we are getting from each individual dragon, making the essay seem a little confused. But who am I to criticise the writing of one of the greatest minds of the 20^th century?

Anyway, to cut through the dragon bullshit because it is getting rather tiresome, Sagan is essentially saying that there is some rather unconvincing evidence for the existence of God which leads seemingly sane people to believe in him. What he neglects to account for is the fact that much of the evidence is mutually excusive; you cannot have a god which exactly fits the profiles created by both Muslims and Christians. While we may be able to pick out certain key themes between theses two faiths, it is hard to see how evidence which is so far from these key themes and so contradictory in the specifics can point towards the same God.

Further research (read Wikipedia) tells me that Sagan was an agnostic and the conclusions of his essay point to this. It would be interesting to know exactly what Sagan understood by the term ‘agnostic’ because for me the term is almost meaningless; it literally means ‘without knowledge’ and it would defy intellectual honesty for anyone to claim that they ‘knew’ god did or did not exist. It seems to me then that we are all ‘without knowledge’ one way or another about god, so are we not all agnostic? If we are all agnostic then the term is meaningless as a distinguisher; both the theist and the atheist will be agnostic by virtue of the fact that they cannot know that they are right. It seems to me from his essay that Sagan does not believe in God, but is open to the possibility that He does exist. As yet the evidence is inconclusive, but that, as always, is subject to change. By my understanding that makes Sagan an atheist, maybe not as convince an atheist as Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, but an atheist nonetheless.

Atheism literally means ‘without belief in god’. It seems to me that this is a default position; everyone who is not a theist is an atheist by virtue of the fact that they do not believe in god. Atheism is often touted as an opposite and equal faith position to theism but this assumes that there is some positive statement about the nature of the universe inherent in atheism; there is not. It is simply a rejection of the statement made by theists that the universe somehow depends on a metaphysically being which we cannot directly experience; a dragon living in the universe’s garage. People often ask me to prove that god does not exist, but I content that this is impossible; you cannot prove that there is not a dragon living in my garage, this does not meant that it is any more reasonable to believe in the dragon that not to. It need not be proven that there is no dragon living in my garage for me to believe that anyone who thinks there is one is batshit-bonkers.

So, to return to the original topic, Sagan builds up a picture of an elusive dragon (or collection of dragons), living in a garage, leaving the odd piece of inconclusive evidence. Because of this barely palatable evidence, which he neglects to say is somewhat contradictory, he seems to imply that it is reasonable to reserve judgment on the existence of the dragon, refusing to even concede the default position of disbelieve until proven; innocent until proven guilty. While it is an incredibly perceptive and thought provoking essay, it is not a complete picture. Nonetheless it provided an interesting platform for something that I’ve wanted to write about for a while, but never been able to find a good way of getting into to.