{"id":37462,"date":"2016-07-26T11:38:34","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T15:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=37462"},"modified":"2016-07-26T11:38:34","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T15:38:34","slug":"religion-and-tampering-with-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/religion-and-tampering-with-nature.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion and Tampering with Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

IO9 just posted a piece about transhumanism and fear of \u201ctampering with nature\u201d<\/a> in the form of gene editing, brain chips, and other such technologies.<\/p>\n

What I found most interesting, not surprisingly, was the information about how more devout religious people\u2019s views tend to differ from those of others. Here are the statistics:<\/p>\n

\"religion<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Presumably they would make a distinction between \u201ctampering with nature\u201d (which is OK, indeed encouraged when profitable) and \u201ctampering with\u00a0human<\/em> nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.\u00a0Sci-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\u00a0take meaningful steps\u00a0to avoid the one and achieve the other.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

\"prove<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IO9 just posted a piece about transhumanism and fear of \u201ctampering with nature\u201d 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\u2019s views tend to differ from those of others. Here are the statistics: I suspect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":37470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,85,86],"tags":[14136,1262,1350,1579,14132,14135,2039,2962,14131,3839,14133,14134,5350,10494,10500,11848,12320],"class_list":["post-37462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","category-science","category-science-fiction","tag-artificial","tag-blood","tag-brain","tag-captcha","tag-chip","tag-chips","tag-comic","tag-editing","tag-gene","tag-genes","tag-implant","tag-implants","tag-io9","tag-robot","tag-robots","tag-statistics","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nReligion and Tampering with Nature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/religion-and-tampering-with-nature.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religion and Tampering with Nature\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/religion-and-tampering-with-nature.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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