Playing God Take Two

Terry Rosell

Last week's post about "playing God" reminded of an online article (for mostly Christian clergy readers) at EthicsDaily.com based in Nashville. It was posted back in 2003 when the Raelians were making claims of having cloned "successfully" a baby or two.

I wrote the following in that brief essay titled, "Cloneaid: 'Cloning around' and 'playing God:'"

The commonly heard "playing God" defense against cloning technology has its value as a general reminder of human finitude relative to the divine powers. It also plays well in the media.

But as a means of defining limits within cloning technology, warnings against "playing God" are not all that helpful and are not very compelling to research scientists especially. Raelian researchers may actually gain inspiration from such a slogan.

Christians are in general agreement nowadays that human limits do exist, relative to God and creation, both by mandate and in some ontological sense. But where the boundaries lie in that regard is the harder and disputed question.