

"Playing God" is a meaningless, dangerous cliche - jokermatt999
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/05/playing-god-is-a-meaningless-dangerous-cliche/

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hugh3
_Fair enough: that kind of accusation has indeed a long history, harking back
to the myths of Prometheus, Daedalus and Faust. But to regard hubris as
“playing God” is, first, a modern perspective, and second, a secular one.
After all, Prometheus did not in any sense “play God” (he was already divine,
and Zeus himself gave him the role that he was deemed to have abused)._

Yes, Prometheus was divine, but the point of the myth was not that he stole
godly powers but that he gave them to men. But the myth is interesting because
it all worked out pretty well for men (but badly for Prometheus), so
Prometheus is rebellious to the gods but still a great benefactor.

The closest analogy in the Abrahamic religion is Adam and Eve, who again got
godlike powers (the power to understand good and evil) from disobeying a god.
Unlike the case of Prometheus this act of rebellion is seen as an extremely
bad thing for which we are still being punished.

In the same tradition there's also the Tower of Babel, another story about how
man attempts to become Godlike and gets smacked down by god for it. And the
Greek tragedies are basically all about folks who hubristically claim to be
better than the Gods and wind up suffering horrible fates because of it.

Anyway, human mythology is full of all sorts of stories about humans who try
to claim powers of gods. Sometimes it ends well, usually it ends badly. Some
stories are teaching us to be happy with what we've got while others are
trying to explain why what we currently have sucks. Picking on Prometheus,
Daedelus and Faust are lousy examples, I don't know why the author picked 'em.

~~~
electromagnetic
Prometheus is a truly complex character, with a well thought out story -
unlike any in the Abrahamic religions.

To understand Prometheus, you have to understand his gift - foresight. He
could see the future. In the battle between the Titans (which he was) and the
Olympians, he saw that his kind would lose to their own children, so he
'joined' them.

His acts of defiance to Zeus weren't acts of rebellion, they were acts of
guerilla warfare. Prometheus took fire, the one thing that truly kept man
apart from the gods (IE the ability to change our environment at will), and he
didn't just give it to mankind like the myth states, he gave it to his own
children - many of which were also Zeus' offspring, and mankind as a whole was
allegedly Zeus' greatest love.

Prometheus as it were saw the cycle of the universe. Cronus had usurped
Uranus. Zeus had usurped Cronus, and Prometheus did everything in his power to
ensure humans usurped Zeus.

As you pointed out, there is his act of stealing fire. However, one of his
greater feats (which caused him the need to steal fire) was when an agreement
was to be struck between the mortals and the immortals. Prometheus had man
wrap beef within the cows stomach as one sacrifice and bones wrapped within
glistening fat as another. Zeus chose the latter, setting a precedent for all
sacrifices. When man started burning (IE sending to the gods) the junk parts
of the animals, Zeus was pissed and took fire from mankind. Then Prometheus
stole it back, and got chained to the rock.

However, again if you look at the bigger picture, Prometheus was never
disadvantaged. He lifted mankind from the burden of sacrifice, he again gave
fire to mankind, which landed him in eternal torture. However, Prometheus has
illustrated several times that his foresight far out performs Zeus'
omniscience. For him, eternal torture wasn't eternal, he knew Heracles (AKA
Hercules) would be along shortly to free him. Prometheus eventually reconciles
with Zeus by warning him that he's going to be usurped, and forms a sort of
power-sharing agreement if he helps protect Zeus from being overthrown. It
also, allegedly, led to the release of the other Titans from imprisonment.

So the real question here is, was Zeus ever going to be usurped in the first
place? It essentially went from the Titans being overthrown, Prometheus waging
a guerilla war and eventually forming a coalition government between the
Titans and Olympians.

I've said this before to people when discussing this, but where in the hell
was the imagination in the Abrahamic religions? Prometheus, a singular
character in the Ancient Greek religion has a story in such a scope that it
would kick LotR's ass, and still be 3-times longer . . . from what we,
thousands of years later, have pieced together.

~~~
hugh3
Thanks for that. You obviously know more about it than I do.

 _I've said this before to people when discussing this, but where in the hell
was the imagination in the Abrahamic religions?_

Interesting question. I'm not sure whether to attribute it to ancient Hebrew
culture being generally less sophisticated than ancient Greek culture, or
whether the Israelites just boxed themselves into a narrative corner by
declaring that there was only one god and that he was _perfect_. It's not easy
writing interesting stories when your only character is always right, knows
everything and is omnipotent.

------
macrael
_But to regard hubris as “playing God” is, first, a modern perspective, and
second, a secular one._

This seems true; the "God" invoked in this phrase is not the religious God but
more the God represented by nature and that sense of the natural order. I
think that the reason this notion has become popular in recent history is that
it is only in the last hundred years or so that our technology has advanced to
the point where we can really fundamentally disrupt the balance created here
by four and a half billion years of evolution. I'm not sure it is fair to
single out creating life as especially dangerous as, to me, there are many
abilities we have that wield similar amounts of power. I think of cane toads
in Australia and the oil spill in the gulf and climate change. All of these
are evidence of hubris, of mistakes with long term consequences and few good
solutions.

Creating and modifying life (something we have been in the business of doing
for quite some time) does fit into this category. We are messing with with
incredibly complex systems we don't near fully understand. It's science and
it's exciting and we are advancing our knowledge but the possible consequences
are indeed dire. I'm not trying to preach anti-technology or anything and I
don't think that the fact that we are indeed "playing God" should stop us from
pursuing this research and these ideas. But I do think that it is something to
be mindful of. We only have the one earth.

EDIT: hugh3 said it better than I did: '"Playing God" to me is just a turn of
phrase, shorthand (and somewhat cliched) for "messing with powers beyond your
understanding or ability to control".'

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...it is only in the last hundred years or so that our technology has
advanced to the point where we can really fundamentally disrupt the balance
created here by four and a half billion years of evolution..._

This statement is so wrong I don't even know where to start.

For hundreds (if not thousands) of years humans have dramatically altered
their natural environment by cultivating land, hunting various animals to
extinction and selective breeding. However, evolution never achieved a
"balance" for humans to disrupt. Evolution and "balance" are almost
diametrically opposite. Are you under the impression that after 4 billion
years of evolution, we finally reached a stable terminal point, only to be
disrupted by naughty humans?

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, before we built cities we were cutting down forests for farmland.
Before we built farms, we burnt down forests to create savannah to expand the
grazing land so we could herd more cattle (yes, there was a disturbing trend
100,000's of years ago - up to about 1 million years ago - that wherever
mankind lived, fire occurrence went through the roof)

People conveniently overlook our past whilst condemning our present.

I'm sorry to all those people who blindly don't see, but _we are god_. We
aren't playing as this secular god, we have been it since long before we even
acquired fire.

At our present point we can change the world in a heartbeat. If an ice age
begins, we have the ability to produce vast quantities of green house gasses
far more potent than CO2 or methane. Similarly, if the planet starts heating
dramatically, we have the ability to release vast quantities of SO2 into the
upper atmosphere and force the planet into a global dimming cycle like it was
in between the 1960's-90's.

Similarly, with our construction of vast arrays of wind turbines there has
been a noticeable decline in wind speeds in those areas. Incidentally,
something many people have failed to remember from basic high school physics
is that generators can act as motors and vice versa. If it ever came to it, we
have the ability to change the direction of winds in localised areas.

There's even debate over whether we have the ability to cause the formation of
rain (we invariably can heat+water, it just takes a lot more effort than the
cloud seeding hocus pocus method), and scientists around the world regularly
cause lightening.

Really, what do humans do that is _not_ attributed to a god?

~~~
macrael
The whole point of this phrase is to give us pause as we consider how to use
these massive powers. We clearly have the ability to effect these changes, but
your seeming confidence in our ability to easily solve massive problems only
reinforces how important our humility is.

Case in point, we accidentally dumped millions of gallons of oil into the
ocean, causing a huge mess. One solution, has been using chemicals to disperse
the oil, but now after trying that strategy for a bit, we are scaling back its
use for fear of causing more problems. These systems we are trying to change a
monstrously large and complicated and we don't understand them completely
enough to be able to know the concequences of our actions. That is why we must
be cautious when "playing God"

I mean, it is hard enough to change pieces of an OS without having unintended
consequences, and that is a system entirely of our own creation.

~~~
crystalis
I feel like you're stretching your story too thin when you claim oil drilling
and cleanup is a scenario under "playing God".

------
jordyhoyt
[http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-
fiction/?...](http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-
fiction/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rsspect%2FfJur+%28Dresden+Codak%29&utm_content=Google+Reader)

~~~
Groxx
Why didn't I know about this?

Thanks for the link!

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SlyShy
The people I've met who accuse scientists of "playing god" are usually doing
so themselves. That is, passing judgment and condemnation. Of course, they
think God is compelling them to do so, rather than that they are compelling
their idea of God to do so.

~~~
jswinghammer
Interesting interpretation of people who are judging others. The Bible states
that people are doing this in order to distract God from their own sins that
they need to confess and repent of.

~~~
hugh3
On the other hand, the Bible also says we should stone homosexuals, people who
work on the sabbath and girls who aren't virgins when they get married.

The Bible says a lot of things. Come to think of it, all the death-by-stoning
punishments make a lot more sense than the "never judge anyone for anything"
idea.

~~~
jswinghammer
Well the idea isn't to avoid correcting people who go astray but rather to
avoid pointing to others faults as evidence of your righteousness. That's what
most people do (even those who aren't religious as I'd normally define it).

The Bible states in the same book (Romans chapter 2 for the first citation and
6 for this one) that the wages of sin is death--meaning this life or the next.

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tjmaxal
I think it is interesting that most religions condemn man for using the name
of god to pass judgement and the religious conservatives who fear science
should be just as wary of anyone who claims to know the will of god and
specifically to pass judgement on others as if they were god. Those who
condemn the actions of others are truly "playing god" yet there is no
conservative theological out cry because as usual the heart of the matter has
nothing to do with theology but rather just simple fear mongering.

~~~
jessriedel
Why use the euphemism "I think it is interesting" instead of just saying that
you think it's hypocritical?

~~~
tjmaxal
Just trying to keep things polite here

~~~
jessriedel
Not that it's a big deal, but in my opinion it's more polite to criticize
someone directly than obliquely.

------
SlowOnTheUptake
I agree that the term doesn't carry much meaning, but what is "dangerous"
about it?

~~~
powrtoch
E.g, the way it's employed against stem-cell research that should otherwise go
on to save, you know, millions and millions of lives.

~~~
hugh3
Just because you think something will save millions of lives doesn't make
every counterargument, and every turn of phrase used by every counterargument,
"dangerous" though. That's just one step away from saying that your opponents
are not only mistaken but unconscionable.

~~~
jokermatt999
True, but "playing God" isn't always used as meaning "we should be aware of
the benefits", and often used as a cheap scare tactic. I feel that actually
analyzing the risks and benefits is a better tactic than trotting out this old
cliche. Furthermore, it has connotations of fearing new technology (I can't
quite phrase this right, sorry). There are legitimate reasons to be concerned
about discoveries such as artificially replicating DNA, but I don't think that
"Man vs God" is one of them.

I don't feel that I've phrased this quite as well as I'd like to. If you'd
like elaboration or clarification, please ask.

~~~
hugh3
"Playing God" to me is just a turn of phrase, shorthand (and somewhat cliched)
for "messing with powers beyond your understanding or ability to control". It
has nothing to do with whether one or more gods actually exists and can quite
sensibly be used by atheists since it means "assuming powers which should only
belong to (hypothetical) gods" rather than "assuming powers which should only
belong to that Yahweh dude".

~~~
lolcraft
_can quite sensibly be used by atheists since it means "assuming powers which
should only belong to (hypothetical) gods"_

Sorry, but I refuse to call atheist to anyone who believes that an arbitrary,
human-made list of values can be "godlike" in any meaningful sense. If
anything, should that person use that list of values to base their political
or scientific arguments, I would call them theocrats.

------
Charuru
"God" is a meaningless, dangerous cliche.

