The God Complex

I'd like to talk about Designer Babies and Large Hadron Collider. They are both dealing with the ever-growing advancement of science. In designer babies its biology, and in the collider its physics. The main thing i want to look at is how with both issues, one of the main reasonings against using this new advancement of science is the "playing God" question. First of all, what does that say about the nature of our science? and second, what does that say about how our society views religion?

In the Hadron Collider presentation, the group mentioned the "faith crisis", where the Catholic church will lose members if the so-called "god particle" will be discovered. Our science has grown so advanced that the possibility of the human being able to do what God can do is creeping closer and closer to a reality. Our ability to find out all of the secrets of the universe is pushing the idea of God out of our society. There are now basically two groupings of individuals: the scientific people and the religious fanatics. This is obviously a huge exaggeration, but its growing to be more and more like that.

Looking at this issue from the Designer Babies perspective, there is more of the "playing God" fear, where people feel like it is not it their place to choose what their child will look like, because we have always relied on God for that one. Again, God is becoming less necessary for our society, and becoming more of a hindrance. We used to pray to God to help our crops grow and make our children beautiful, and now all we have to do is throw down some fertilizer and pick out a few genes.

This idea has obviously been around since the enlightenment, but with the growth of science God keeps getting pushed further and further from the mainstream of society and its surprising how often this type of idea comes up. Not only did it show up in these two presentations, but also Birth Control and countless other things we experience every day. This is clearly and important issue in our world, and something we may have to pay attention to a bit closer.