Ovathinker

Cloning, gene splicing and therapy, desginer babies, stem-cell research.

With the recent advances in the field of human genetics, Im starting to think were getting too big for our own shoes.

For millions of years we have had evolution and natural selection to thank for getting us where we are today, the dominant species of earth.
As humans we have become so intelligent we now know what makes us 'us', and how to make it, manipulate it, control it and better it.

But should we?

Just because we have the technology dosent mean we have to start playing God.
Us humans have made too many mistakes as it is, to start thinking we can play around with our own evolution and future properly.
As for growing body parts, medical benefits, and designer babies parts of the technology, I feel that maybe we are trying to create a perfect race without even knowing it.

If this technology is let loose, in one thousand years we may be more synthetic than human.

Opinions?

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Roy

The technology has already been "let loose". The cat is out of the bag.
Anyway who doesn't like a White Widow clone? (Had to inject pot into the topic)

poTCat

We already are. As Roy said, the cat's out of the bag. We already are "playing" God. If we choose to do something, we make the choice to do it. If we don't choose to do something, we make the choice to not do it. If we choose to create a baby, we give it the chance to live. If we choose not to create a baby, despite having the ability, we reject its chance to live. "Playing God" is just as much about doing stuff we are capable of, as much as it is not doing stuff we are capable of. Unless you don't believe in free will, the choice is ours to do it, and therefor is completely in our hands to do with what we will. To do it, or not to do it.. we have the power, and constantly decide, to dictate what happens.

strange_blaze

I think that as soon as that sheep was cloned, we were doomed to only push further and further. We cant stop technology.

I agree with your post Ovathinker, humans have gone too far.

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Hiz Highness

I'm all for it. Let's genitically engineer ourselves into regenerating, immortal, super-geniuses.

We're definitely humans. Gods are weak, petty, and imaginary

. . . except godzilla . . . that jokers real. I've seen him.



-HH

beats

I guess it is all about how far it's taken. Vaccines, and any sort of medicines could be considered playing god, because we are increasing the amount of people living, than nature would allow without their presence.

I'd have to say we are still humans. Maybe if our society lasted another 10,000 years, we could achieve many of the attributes people believe "gods" have, but frankly, I can't see our way of life lasting another 500. We've used the rescources too quickly, and people are becoming more lazy, and self-destructive. If we lose electricity, running water, and just services in general (Supermarkets) nation-wide for a year or so, I bet at least 25% of the population will die, due to a lack of the skills required to survive in the stripped continent we live on.

Cloning is a step too far I think, unless they can guarantee 100% that the result won't live for 10 years, at a speedy growth rate, or grow up with open sores, or some other previously unknown defect. Even if they perfect animal cloning (which is kinda cruel on its own turf) they have no guarantee some poor baby won't have to learn how to walk with no skin on his body.

But I suppose it's part of human nature, if it can be done, it will be done, regardless of if it should be done.

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poTCat

Here's an interesting little piece that someone I know wrote. It was in reference to a story about some scientist who wanted to pantent chimeras so no one could make them:

TomBombadil

From what prespective would we be playing or be gods though? Surely, I don't think it's possible to reach a point where one human will look on another as a god. But for the rest of the world to regard humans as gods? That's a possibilty. Also, to me, when you say something is a "god" (just me here) the first and foremost thing I think of is powers of manipulation, followed by powers of creation. And humans have always had the abilitly to manipulate the world around them (i.e. ever since the earliest domestication of plants); it's what sets them apart from the rest of the world. So I think the rest of Earth may regard humans as somewhat god-like. But the powers of 'creation' part of being a god..Technically, they(scientists in cloning) aren't really creating anything new. Just splicing here and fusing there. It's like..they had some dough and some salt, right? And then they took off a lump of the dough, sprinkled some salt on it and made a pretzel. So anything they make will just be twisted components of life all mix-matched together. It's still life. Maybe if they created a whole new form of some weird@$$ 'dark-energy bizzaro-life' in a completely different dimesion..maybe then you would be a god. And something tells me THAT won't be happening anytime soon, if at all. To end this rambling gibbish, I think we'd have to do a sh*tload more than just clone this current form of life alone to become fullblown gods.

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poTCat

But as you said.. who's gods? My gods? or yours? or theirs? What is a god? How do you define a god?

Dictionary.com has these:
I think we can safely rule that one as a no.

This one's debateable. We can create forces and effects that people associate with being God.

Except for the supernatural thing (depending on how you view natural, anyway), I think humans have this pretty much covered.

Again, the supernatural thing. But the if someone from 100 years ago saw us today, I think he'd say we fit the bill here nicely too.

There's been plenty of those..

Can't quite attest for myself, but yeah. There's some of them floating around here.

Don't think anyone can disagree here that men like this have, and do, exist.

As for me personally, and my belief of what a god is.. yes, I think we've attained it, but rather crudely and not to the fullest or best of our abilities.

Lit_Match

If you look at the technological tree of human history you will see ages. The stone age, the bronz age, periods of mastery of the elements to include farming and domestication of wild life. No matter where you find human history you will see that we always will make things more convienient for us. However it is a long list which takes place over 50,000 years. In the last .2% of our existance on this planet we learned to fly, and 100 years later have achieved an immeasurable amount of increase in every aspect of our lives. The wright brothers started, and now we have unmanned vehicles on the face of mars, sattelites and hubble probing the known universe, this leap took place in 100 years and more was done than has been found out in the entire known history (believed to be 50,000 years (approximate). You should shudder to think what the next 20 years will bring. It is also an overly accepted theory that at the current rate which our cpu processing speed (which 3 years ago was 18 months) is doubling (currently every 10 months) that in a decade it will be so feasable that anything we as humans can concieve will be done. I truely cannot stress enough how fast we are becoming masters of the universe and we have thus far overcome every obsticle that stands in our objectives way (accept for funding, that is). How many of you remember Atari, I sure do. Well that was little more than a decade ago, my computer has the memory and processing speed to run tens of thousands of atari games simultaneously. Wait till you see fiber optic networking replace your average silicone semiconductory mainboard, HAH! That will literally be information processed at the speed of light. Basically my point is this cloning is really small potatos and there will come a time when time itself is the only thing slowing us down.