Playing God

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how, according Allen Verhey's essay on medicine, modern bioethics, and "Playing God and Invoking a Perspective ", the phrase "humans should not play God" has been used quite often by individuals of a particular, naturalistic ideological frame of mind to argue against using of supposedly unnatural forms of medicine, technology, and the use of related forms of biotechnology to sustain human life or to ameliorate the sufferings of human life. It also explores how the idea that physicians, scientists, and medical practitioners should not play God has even been used to argue against such processes as cloning and genetically modified food because these methodologies are considered unnatural.

From the Paper:

"The notions of God, and of not interfering or "playing" at the works of God, are often drawn in a fuzzy fashion, with even fuzzier logic. This naturalistic notion of what is God's realm and what is science and humanity's realm seems to be drawn along the lines of what makes the human advocate of "not playing God" as uncomfortable in the present day. However, technology is always shifting and changing. Conceivably, many years ago, playing God could be putting fluoride in the water, or pasteurization anything that changed the natural, chemical composition of a natural product, even if these unnatural, human created processes and chemicals improved the fate of humanity and the fabric of human daily life."

More papers on Playing God:

• Article Review # 145563 : "Analysis of "'Playing God' and Invoking a Perspective"
• Article Review # 84409 : "Playing God in the Garden"
• Research Paper # 107800 : "Playing God: Artificial Intelligence"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: