Thursday, 20 May 2010

 
Synthetic cell is a giant leap for science
"Venter is not merely copying life artificially ... he is going towards the role of a god – creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally,"
     Yes. But what about that is unethical? Unless one thinks that god was unethical to do it in the first place.
To say that something is ethical when god does it, but unethical when another being does it, seems mere class prejudice.
[info]rumpledumplin wrote:  Friday, 21 May 2010 at 02:23 am (UTC)

You appear to be buying in to the idea that god(s) are necessary for life and therefore must exist..
had_it replied
Not so. Gods are hypothetical beings that may or may not exist. Although the religious see the case as proven, they have yet to offer replicable conditions that will prove it to non-religious.
If one or more gods do exist, what is ethical for them cannot be unethical for us, unless the ethical system in question is irrationally biased. Most reasonable people object to irrationally biased ethical systems - or any other systems, for that matter. 
When the top of a hierarchy says what is ethical for me is unethical for the lower orders, we call it tyranny. 
If, for example, a god has the power to stop an infant wandering out onto a busy highway and maintains that is ethical to refrain from using that power in service of some "plan", then it is irrational to punish a person for also standing idly by as their child gets run over - provided some plan of the idle person is served.

# posted by Had It in Holland Park @ 19:25
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