Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision of Our Future Evolution

by Ted Chu

Exercising God-given capabilities is a way to honor God; to refuse to exercise them is a form of dishonor. Even if we wanted to, we could not play God, and the act of advancing our technology does not mean we are usurping divine prerogatives, even if we are creating posthuman beings. In earlier times, the scope of what “only God can do” was vast; now it is shrinking rapidly, and it will continue to shrink. Therefore, the notion that we can “play God” is based on a false assumption of what our natural, or God-given, capabilities are. We should also consider the possibility that we truly are godlike in our ability to be consciously creative, even co-creative with divine evolutionary purposes, and that there is no strict boundary between the human and the divine. On the other hand, if we stick to traditional definitions of “playing God,” then we might find that we cannot help but do so by our very nature. If, for example, “playing God” means “tampering” with nature, then we already have a long and proven track record of doing it—for example, with healing and medicine. While some cultures still hold that illness is a form of divine punishment or that curing illness should be the exclusive province of God, we have long tried various ways to cure diseases, from the premodern use of medicinal herbs to the modern inventions of drugs, surgery, and vaccines.