Peterson, James C. Genetic Turning Points: The Ethics of Human Genetic Intervention Critical Issues in Bioethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001.

The question for any technology is, how can we develop this to best love God and our neighbors? Asking that question is not trying to be God; it is following God’s orders, fulfilling a God-give mandate to maximize our service while we are here. Such development and intervention is not playing God. It is fulfilling a God-give mandate to serve. Whether our current physical nature is a starting point God intends us to improve upon, broken in the devastation of the fall, or both, it is clear the we could be physically better. We are responsible to do the best we can with what we have. As God’s people we are being created, redeemed, and transformed by God. Part of our calling is to participate in that process by sustaining, restoring, and improving what has been temporarily entrusted to us. (p.89)

Peters, Ted. “The Soul of Trans-Humanism.” Dialog 44, no. 4 (2005): 381-395.

Drawing a bright sharp line between therapy and enhancement seems easy to do. Therapy is ethical, whereas enhancement is not. Yet, is it so easy? For the theologian, the line gets blurry quite quickly. Let’s ask: if therapy focuses on health, does this refer strictly to bodily function? Let’s also ask: if the Christian faith emphasizes redemption, would this lead to embracing all forms of human betterment, even enhancement? Still one more question: would good health within Christian theology include enhancement? (p.384)

Spezio, Michael L. “Brain and Machine: Minding the Transhuman Future.” Dialog 44, no. 4 (2005): 375-380.

Will such enhancements actualize dormant human possibilities, or will they rather make it more difficult for that which is most human to be actualized, in the individual and in relationships? (p.377)

Graham, Elaine. “Bioethics after Posthumanism: Natural Law, Communicative Action and the Problem of Self-Design.” Ecotheology 9, no. 2 (2004): 178-198.

Yet to speak of an orderliness to nature, of its integrity as a mediation of divine purpose, is not the same as inferring an immutability to nature which forbids the ‘unnatural’ interventions of technology or cultural diversity. So we must be ware of attributing to ‘nature’ a fixity and purpose – or even a homogeneity and determinism – which it does not possess. Human relationships to nature are altogether more complex, and appeals to what is ‘natural’ provide little help when, as in the age of advanced biotechnology, this is the very category which is revealed to be malleable and problematic.(p.184-185)

Socio-economic inequalities may thus represent as profound a threat to human dignity as biotechnologies. (p.189)

Hansen, Bart, and Paul Schotsmans. “Cloning: The Human as Created Co-Creator?” Ethical Perspectives 8, no. 2 (2001): 75-89.

In brief, the power of mastering (human) nature through (therapeutic) cloning raises the question whether the human being, as the image of God, is permitted to carry out this task or whether God alone may exercise this right? (p.82)

The drive toward biotechnological merger is deep within us—it is the direct expression of what is most characteristic of the human species. The task is to merge gracefully, to merge in ways that are virtuous, that bring us closer to one another, make us more tolerant, enhance understanding, celebrate embodiment, and encourage mutual respect. If we are to succeed in this important task, we must first understand ourselves and our complex relations with the technologies that surround us. We must recognize that, in a very deep sense, we were always hybrid beings, joint products of our biological nature and multilayered linguistic, cultural, and technological webs. Only then can we confront, without fear or prejudice, the specific demons in our cyborg closets. Only then can we actively structure the kinds of world, technology, and culture that will build the kinds of people we choose to be.

Clark’s ideas about the hybridity of human beings bears striking similarity to Philip Hefner’s metaphor of humans as ‘created co-creators’. For Clark, it is human beings existing in a symbiotic relationship between human and technology, whereas for Hefner it is the human being as the fusion of biological conditionedness and cultural freedom. Clark’s definition of a cyborg goes beyond the typical Star Trek or Bionic Woman visions:

For we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry.

And this is coupled with the drive to create (seen also in Hefner’s idea of the drive toward self-transcendence being part of nature) where Clark asserts:

By contrast it is our special character, as human beings, to be forever driven to create, co-opt, annex, and exploit nonbiological props and scaffoldings. We have be designed, by Mother Nature, to exploit deep neural plasticity in order to become one with our best and most reliable tools. Minds like ours were made for mergers. Tools-R-Us, and always have been.

Clark’s approach is techno-optimistic, where the benefits of technology outweight the problems. However, he does dedicate a chapter to the perceived downsides of living in a world of where technology is ‘the air that we breathe’. This serves as a useful, albeit brief, starting point for such discussions.

Chapter 1 of the book is available at the OUP web site on the like above. Some interesting ideas, and I like how he clearly reaffirms the place of the body in a technological society.

We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.

By focusing upon technology as an ecosystem they argue that (among other things) it:

• Focuses attention on the relationships between tools, people, and practices.
• Moves beyond the idea of technology as a single tool for a single person.
• Captures the notion of locality that is missing from high-level system views.

Furthermore, while an ecology is complex it can be views at many different scales because:

• An ecology responds to local environmental changes and local interventions.
• An ecology can be examined at the level of the individual.
• Individuals can participate in multiple ecologies.
• Individuals are involved with real relationships with other individuals in an ecology.
• Scale of the ecology allows for the identification of individual points of leverage, of ways into the system, and avenues of intervention.

I like their idea of librarians as ‘gardeners’ or ‘ecologists’ of information ecologies, and think the metaphor of the created co-creator (together with related metaphors of the cyborg and Incarnation) might connect well here.

Related links:
Greenflame: Appropriate technology

I inter-loaned the book rather than buying it (even though it’s one of the few that touches on my thesis topic) because of the price: US$120 / UK£60. Seriously, books like this should move to a publish on demand or electronic media version. Given the limited appeal (and sales) that’d make access better and more people might buy it outside of institutions.

Görman, Ulf, Willem B. Drees, and Hubert Meisinger, eds. Creative Creatures: Values and Ethical Issues in Theology, Science and Technology. Issues in Science and Theology. London; New York: T & T Clark, 2005.

to be co-creator with the ‘living God’ who always actualizes in his creation new possibilities, previously unimagined humanly speaking, is to be prepared always to adjust creatively and deliberately to the changes necessary for God’s purposes to be fulfilled—which includes maintaining the environment in such as way that it can go on being the medium through which life can continue and explore new modes of existence under the guidance of God. (p.316)

From: Peacocke, Arthur R. Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures, 1978. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.

Reminds me of this from a paper I read recently.

Hansen, Bart, and Paul Schotsmans. “Cloning: The Human as Created Co-Creator?” Ethical Perspectives 8, no. 2 (2001): 75-89. (Abstract)

It is equally compelling to investigate how a ‘gene theology’, insofar as it is formulated on the basis of a belief in a sort of predestination, reasons. Here the genome takes the place of a Janus-faced God who arbitrarily rules over and disposes of everything. On the one hand the human is literally bound by the invisible threads of DNA. Human life is reduced to the performance of a drama whose ‘dénouement’ has been determined in advance. The divine DNA directs the play and humans act it out. In this perspective of God’s providence the separation and autonomy of humanity over against God is eliminated. On the other hand, the illusion is created that once the genetic structure is untangled a total control of the further evolution of human dignity and scientific and technological development becomes possible. (pp.82-83)

Science & Theology News - God’s genetically modified image

Kull, Anne. “Cyborg Embodiment and the Incarnation.” Currents in Theology and Mission 28, no. 3-4 (2001): 279-284.

From the editorial for that issue (by Ralph W. Klein),

Anne Kull considers the views of Donna Haraway regarding the relationship between human beings and nature in our technological age. Haraway believes human beings have become “cybernetic organisms,” or cyborgs, through the marriage of machine and life. The cyborg has as much affinity with technology as it does with the wilderness. Cyborgs are hybrid entities and have the potential to disrupt present dualisms that set the natural body in opposition to the technologically recrafted body. Nature is a co-creation among humans and non humans, machines, and other partners. The concept of the cyborg makes it possible to affirm our createdness with a new specificity, along with the creativeness of the rest of nature. Since the incarnation of Jesus is so contrary to common sense, it is useful for critical positioning and for destabilizing categories.

Some interesting ideas in there, and Kull uses the idea of the hybrid to link together a whole bunch of ideas that I’d like to tease out sometime. In her paper she concludes,

Deliberately posing as a hybrid creature, Jesus can show the arbitrariness and constructed nature of what is considered the norm(al)—and often, significantly, natural. The borderland of history and consciousness, where crossings are never safe and names never original, allows for differently articulated stories for humanity. (p.284)

While I was reading the paper I was thinking about this image which I’d seen a while back.

The bibliographies are more of a sample selection than the definitive list, but now I have a place to refer people to when they ask for more information about the metaphor. Within my own work I take Hefner’s concept and rework it, so it’s useful for me to have it around too.

See The Created Co-Creator resource page.