The Lausanne Global Conversation is on the World Wide Open Network
Author: Nigel Cameron and John Wyatt
Date: 20.08.2010
Category: Science and Bioethics
Editor’s Note: This Cape Town 2010 Advance Paper has been written by Nigel Cameron and John Wyatt as an overview of the topic to be discussed at the Multiplex session on “Ethics, Emerging Technologies and the Human Future.” Responses to this paper through the Lausanne Global Conversation will be fed back to the authors and others to help shape their final presentations at the Congress.
What does it mean to be human? In traditional thought there has always been a clear distinction between “natural” beings, derived from the natural order, and those that were “artifacts,” a product of human ingenuity and craft. For many centuries our embodied human nature was the last frontier of the natural order. Although human beings could modify and instrumentalise every other aspect of their environment, they could not escape the “given-ness” of their own humanity.
But the rapid development of emerging technologies is about to create a new and profoundly troubling assault on human identity in the 21st century. This new assault cuts to the quick of our anthropology: it focuses on the fundamental relationship between our artifacts and our own nature, between our manipulative capabilities and our own selves. It was this recognition that drove C.S. Lewis, back in the dark days of 1943, to write his prophetic essay on “The Abolition of Man,” perhaps the most penetrating statement yet made of the greatest question that will confront the 21st century. The pivotal significance of the Christian belief that we are made in the image of God is about to be tested as never before.
Lewis argued that while technology appeared to extend the human race’s ability to control and subdue nature, “what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” There can be no “increase in power on Man’s side. Each new power won by Man is a power over Man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides the general who triumphs, he is a prisoner who follows the triumphal car. . . . Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. We shall … be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it? . . . . Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”
In other words by taking to ourselves the power to determine our own future, we turn ourselves into creatures of our own design, artifacts of our own manufacture.
Human Dignity and the “Biotech Century”
The question we face is what to do with the extraordinary new powers that we are taking to ourselves. Developments in human genetics, biotechnology, pharmacology, neuroscience and nanomedicine raise high hopes of cures for terrible diseases, including inherited disorders, cancer and degenerative conditions. Yet as C S Lewis warned, the spectacular promise which these technologies offer, driven in part by a noble desire to combat the destructive consequences of disease, always carries a darker side – the instrumentalisation and manipulation of vulnerable human lives.
We are in the process of gaining unparalleled understanding of the human genome. It is hoped that this new knowledge will lead to precisely targeted drugs and sophisticated new clinical applications. But this explosion in genetic knowledge has also led directly to new and sophisticated means of identifying and destroying embryonic and fetal human beings who carry unwanted genetic variants. This way of dealing with disease by destroying those who carry it offends the consciences of many more than those who call themselves “pro-life.” It should perhaps be no surprise that in Germany, where they have not forgotten what eugenics means, in vitro fertilisation is perfectly legal, but embryos must be implanted without quality control.
Reproductive technology has enabled couples to overcome the pain of infertility, but it has also led to the deliberate creation of embryonic human beings for destructive research, and the creation of cloned embryos and even human-animal hybrids. As Oliver O’Donovan warned we have replaced “the old-fashioned crime of killing babies” with “the new and subtle crime of making babies to be ambiguously human, of presenting to us members of our own species who are doubtfully proper objects of compassion and love.”
There is a tendency for ethically-conservative religious people to define such debates in “pro-life” terms, and in the process, despite their intentions, to have the effect of aiding those in the science, business and policy communities who are resistant to calls for ethical limitations in these technologies. By asserting their position on abortion as the paradigm of the agenda, they unwittingly marginalise their position and make it difficult to build common cause with wider forces in the culture who may share many of their concerns – about particular aspects of the technologies in question; about the need in principle for limits; and about the profound significance of these questions of policy.
But we make a big mistake if we see discussion of the human future as mainly concerning reproductive and embryo issues, for the most sobering scenarios lie ahead and elsewhere. In the field of neuroscience the emerging technologies are enabling us to monitor, control, manipulate and enhance our brain function. It is becoming increasingly possible to manipulate perception and memory, whether through neuro-pharmacology (including what has been termed “cosmetic neurology”) or cognitive prostheses.
The goal of technology is not only to understand the world but to control it, and neuroscience offers potent new possibilities for social control. Take all the forms of human behaviour which threaten our future – violence, inter-racial conflict, religious fanaticism, addiction, selfish squandering of the world’s resources. At heart these can all be seen as due to malfunctioning of the human brain. If we can only understand how to prevent this faulty cognitive processing, we will be able to usher in a new dawn of social harmony and global peace. By making our own human functioning an object of scientific study – by objectifying ourselves – we hope to control ourselves, to achieve self-mastery.
Since so-called “religious fundamentalism” is regarded as a major source of social and political conflict, it is not surprising that an active area of neuroscience research is into the brain mechanisms which underlie religious beliefs and experiences, and the cognitive processes which lie at the formation of moral beliefs and the resolution of moral conflicts and dilemmas. It does not require much imagination to see the manipulative and coercive possibilities which this knowledge will bring. At the same time, advances in stem cell technology and regenerative medicine enable us to enhance our functioning and extend human life span, and create human-machine interfaces of unparalleled power.
Genetic and biological science erodes the traditional distinction between humanity and the animal world. We are merely one primate species amongst many others. On the other hand, emerging technologies erode the distinction between the human and the artifact. We are merely machines made out of carbon instead of silicon. How can we preserve our unique human identity and help to create a genuinely pro-human future in the light of these technological challenges?
As biblical Christians our starting-point remains in the creation narratives of Genesis, where we read that humans are made in the image of God himself – with a mandate to rule and steward the creation for God – and in the New Testament, where we read that Jesus Christ is God made flesh – God himself taking our human form. So Christians are called to treat the human body, with its strange and idiosyncratic design, with special respect. This is the form in which God became flesh. We are neither animals nor machines – we are humans made in God’s image; he has taken that image for his own by joining us in our membership in the species Homo sapiens. As we rule and steward the creation – including the extraordinary possibilities of science and technology – it is as human beings accountable and responsible to him and stewards of what he has made.
The “pro-human” cause presents as the great question of the 21st century, as we confront the rapid development of emerging technologies and their offer of powers to aid or undermine our humanness at the most fundamental level.
Key Questions raised by Emerging Technologies
Several sets of questions should be on our minds as we consider policy approaches to these technologies. They intersect but offer different standpoints from which to view and critique both the technologies themselves and the matrix of law and practice within which they are applied. A future that is both pro-technology and pro-human will depend on their answers.
1. Commodification. As our powers extend over our own bodies and the bodies of others, and technologies lead to products and processes, questions of intellectual property will occupy centre-stage. A case in point: in the United States there was a recent debate over whether human embryos could be patented. The biotechnology industry, though its trade group BIO, argued that genetically-engineered human embryos were appropriate subjects of patent claims. How can we protect vulnerable human beings – the modern equivalents of widows, orphans and aliens – from the manipulative possibilities of technology?
2. Eugenics. There is growing pressure for eugenic uses of in vitro fertilisation, not simply to screen out embryos with genetic diseases, but also to select the sex and other “desirable” inherited characteristics of our future children. And within society, there is corresponding pressure for various forms of genetic discrimination – in employment and insurance, especially. In Christian thought the dignity of a human being resides not in our function or our biological potential, but in what we are, by creation. In the literal words of the eighth psalm, each one of us is “lacking a very little of God” (Psalm 8:5). Our human dignity is intrinsic, in the way we have been made, in how God remembers us and calls us. How can we preserve and defend the biblical understanding that each human life has a unique and incalculable value because of the indwelling image of God?
3. “Enhancement.” Whether through genetics or nanotechnology and cybernetics, it is likely that we shall see the development of human enhancements, especially in cognition – in effect blending human and machine through such means as the implanting of brain chips for memory, skills or communication. The logic of such developments is far-reaching, since while they would begin incrementally and through dual-use devices with genuine medical applications (for example, for stroke victims), they would have longer-term impact through compounding both the intelligence and the wealth of a small segment of society, perhaps leading ultimately to a new feudalism in which power of all kinds is concentrated in the hands of “enhanced” persons.
We should also note the steady growth of “transhumanism,” a network of science-fiction enthusiasts and outlandish thinkers who deliberately seek radical changes in human nature. They have recently begun to move from the fringes of society into mainstream contexts, and are pressing the idea of radical “enhancement” in academic and policy-making circles.
In contrast, the resurrection of Christ as a physical human being can be seen as God’s vote of confidence in the created human nature. The original design of human beings is not abandoned, despised or marginalised; it is affirmed and fulfilled. In Jesus, the second Adam, we see both a perfect human being – what the original Adam was meant to be – and we see the pioneer, the blueprint for a new type of person – the one in whose likeness a new creation will spring, the first fruits of those who are to come (1 Corinthians 15:20). God declares that for all future time he will sustain, redeem and transform the humanity that was originally made.
The resurrection is God’s final and irrevocable “Yes” to humankind. If we take the biblical doctrines of the incarnation and resurrection seriously, perhaps we should conclude that the physical structure of our human bodies is not something we are free to change without very careful thought. How can emerging technologies with their extraordinary power be used not to manipulate and destroy but to better fulfill our humanness?
Conclusion
The great issues of ethics and policy that we face are all focused on questions of human dignity and the significance of human nature. Developments in emerging technologies are leading to very great increases in our power over human nature itself. While policy must address a wide range of questions, at the heart of the agenda for the 21st century lies the need to build a policy framework in which ethical principles set the ground-rules for our use of these new powers. In parallel with legislative and regulatory interventions in particular technology areas (for example, in relation to cognitive enhancement, or animal-human chimeras), the intellectual property landscape must be shaped to secure human nature from commodification; and genetic discrimination, itself the obverse of eugenics, must be comprehensively outlawed. A robust approach to each of these questions will enable us to welcome emerging technologies with their extraordinary capacity to enhance not human nature but our capacity to be human, that we may better fulfill our humanness. At the same time, as our recent experience of genetically-modified foods demonstrates, it is not in the interests of the scientific or business communities to develop technologies that are freighted with controversy, and those who would take a lead in the development of pro-human technology policies will find allies in many quarters.
Of course, every application of every new technology will be presented to us as yet another wonderful benefit for human beings that will make life better and easier. The Brave New World question that must always be asked is, at what cost? Lewis’s essay on “The Abolition of Man” opens with a potent quotation from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, with which we conclude: “It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.”
© The Lausanne Movement 2010
Keywords: Ethics, human, humanity, technology, technologies, identity, artifacts, Abolition of Man, image of God, future, dignity, dignity, genetic, embryo, neuroscience, brain, eugenic, enhancement, transhumanism, creation, resurrection
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Conversation Post Comment
United States
I suppose all of the emerging technologies can be seen as good or bad. If these technologies can be used to find cures for diseases and cure things like birth defects in children, it would be good. If it gets into the genetic modification, it is not a good thing. Where does good begin and then turn into evil? All the technology facing us is sometimes scary. Hopefully it can be used to bring glory to God and to help share the gospel around the world. In all of these issues, we must focus on God and work to keep others focused on God as well
07.12.2011
United States
An interesting outlook on emerging technologies. This paper emphasizes how humankind has and is continually trying to gain power over or humanness and our future.
19.09.2011
United States
As technological innovations continue to change the way our daily lives are lived, Cameron and Wyatt caution us that "the pivotal significance of the Christian belief that we are made in the image of God is about to be tested as never before." New technologies are leading us down a path where the lines between human and artifact. While these new discoveries and new applications will undoubtedly have the power to address some of the world’s greatest problems, they also will present new opportunities to degrade human dignity and intensify wealth and power stratification.
The close of the paper asserts that "the resurrection of Christ as a physical human being can be seen as God’s vote of confidence in the created human nature. . . . The resurrection is God’s final and irrevocable ’yes’ to humankind."
While Cameron and Wyatt have in their minds a vision of the future that evokes images of A Brave New World, The Matrix, and iRobot, their concerns are not fundamentally new. Each new epoch of innovation brings about new possibilities for the advancement of human society and stark warnings of the evils that may ensue. While it may be tempting to write off their questions as paranoid with perhaps a conspiratorial air, the authors’ centering of technological restraint based on the incarnation and resurrection, is key. God chose to enter the world as human, with all the limitations that entails, and succumbed to the eventual end of entropy - death and decay - that nearly all human technological innovation seeks to thwart.
In the resurrection, God did thwart death and decay. And Christ was raised human! It is true that the resurrected Christ was, somehow, different. His perfected humanness is not fully manifest in us yet. It is the Spirit, not technology, that is at work within us to change us "from glory to glory." That is not a blanket condemnation of new technology or subsequent applications. But it is an exhortation to remember that no technology will save the world or alleviate all suffering. Christ has already done that. Our call is to subordinate the fidelity of technology to the work He’s already (and, paradoxically not yet) done.
Well done, gentlemen. Well done.
16.10.2010
New Zealand
Emerging tech goes far beyond and is wrapped deep within the concept of humanity.
Our digital identity and biological reality often become the focus of quantum considerations. As we address the problems of the minutiae of fragmentation let us not turn our eyes from the macro of God’s creation. We were not created to be, nor redeemed through Christ for, fragmentation but rather for the resurrection of the body into eternal life.
Any threat to our inherent created special position and degrading of humanity to biological, neurological or technological details has to be challenged by the incarnational power of God-in-Flesh: redeeming and elevating humanity in eschatalogically informed hope.
The article is really helpful in beginning to challenge our thinking about the cost and the benefit of technological advance.
Just because it is possible does not mean it is necessary - indeed sometimes possibility must be constrained by truth and ethics and even theology.
12.10.2010
Italy
I found the paper very interesting.
I think that that you are right that the new genetic technologies can drive us toward a kind of abolition of man.
The scriptural basis of your reflections are solid.
I think that we can use some ideas of some secular thinker like Michel Foucault. He talked of biological power and I think that sometimes we are close to this idea. The governance of biological technological can conduct to a new biological power on our bodies and the individual, in this new form of power can lose his humanities and also the control of his body.
08.10.2010
Netherlands
Interesting and scary in a way. To see that what C.S. Lewis wrote about is happening today. An interesting read, connected to this subject and C.S. Lewis would be: ’Real Presence’ - the Glory of Christ with us and within us, by Leanne Payne, Baker Book House, ISBN 0-8010-5172-X
05.10.2010
France
I am not so convinced by the opposition between nature and technology in the introduction: I think the postulate should be nuanced (although it is partly done in the core of the paper).
A dialogue with epistemology could be interesting to connect technology, ethics, science and knowledge. Some elements could help us to see the very difficulty of the christian position towards technological progress: The prolegomena of science that are the base of technological development have kicked out the possible foundation of knowledge in a preexistent God. In other words, there is something deeply human at work here: sinful pride in the use of our capacities, yet still (common grace) incredible opportunities for progress.
I do agree with the author’s emphasis on the necessity for christian to be present in discussions on technology, and not to step out immediately because of pro-life premices. Technology is always ambiguous, because it is structuraly (like all parts of our humanity) sinful: and we are, or will be, or can not always avoid to be participants, beneficiaries and in complicity with its sin. We still are to remain humbly but firmly prophetic voices that warn and address the sin there as in other issues (justice, prejudices etc)
05.10.2010
Australia
Thanks guys--lots of food for thought. I’m looking forward to the multiplex! Presently I’m reading through C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, in particular "That Hideous Strength." The Abolition of Man takes on flesh in frightening form as NICE (the national institute for co-ordinated experiments) hits full stride with modifications to humanity.
But I wonder in this if we fall foul of Neil Postman’s critique in Technopoly that by so emphasizing the problems with technology as prophets, that are dismissed by the populace who perhaps can only see (like techno-priests) the way technology has mediated blessings to the world.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this framing question: "How can emerging technologies with their extraordinary power be used not to manipulate and destroy but to better fulfill our humanness?"
Our church recently ran a forum--"Unplugged: Imaging God in a High Tech World" (see http://www.kbc.org.au/media/message-logos-unplugged/)--precisely on this question. Do our devices amplify or suppress a desire for the Kingdom. Does our use of technology magnify or mutilate the image of God in me?
I agree with one other response on this forum, asking to broaden the topic out beyond medical technology. What about the impact of multiplayer games, t.v., mobile phones, etc. ... how are we shaped by the media we use?
Does our use of technology lead to
Humility or Pride; Transformation or Information; Connection or Fragmentation; Serving or Self-Serving; Freedom or Addiction; Cultivating or Consuming.
This relates directly to evangelism, as Christ sends us not as a twitter from heaven or a detached word-file, but as a broken medium of flesh and blood. Our lives and community are the medium that either establishes or invalidates our message of the Kingdom of God. We definitely need wisdom as we soul search why our technology consumption and patterns are virtually identical to the surrounding world.
God bless as you tackle such a pressing but difficult and diverse topic :)
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28.09.2010
United States
Thank you Nigel and John for your thought-provoking paper.
Moving to the question of "What then shall we do?", the answer you propose appears to be that Christians should discern the issues and hold fast to the dignity of human life as verified in the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Christian voices of orthodoxy iwould presumably shape public policy in the face of dehumanizing technology. This is where we need to carefully discern what you are proposing regarding the shaping of public policy.
I live in Colorado Springs, CO, the presumed "Mecca" of the expression of evangelicalism in the United States. In the minds of some Christians within the wider Church, the vocal attempts of several ministries to influence public policy have paradoxically increased the divide between the perceived secular and sacred and decreased the influence of the voice of the Church. It would be helpful to hear how an ethical influence in public policy is best presented by the church in a secular, pluralistic, and sometimes dehumanizing public arena. An inclusion of more "therefore..." would greatly help many of us.
Respectfully yours,
Sara Singleton
26.09.2010
Sri Lanka
Thank you Nigel and John.
The first example of man’s desire to manipulate genetics is found in Jacob’s attempt to increase the flock with spots and speckles as found in Genesis 30:32-43. Though he did not have the knowledge and the technology we posses today he still pursued a course of action he thought would make the flock appear the way which was beneficiary to him. Jacob could be named the father of genetic engineering though his concepts were wrong scientifically. He had the vision. He believed in the possibility of interfering with nature to manipulate the outward appearance of animals. God did not need Jacobs help to do what Jacob wanted done. What is startling here is that God simply let it happen the way Jacob wanted it. But Jacob would have imagined himself a wise man interfering in the natural process of genetic selection.
Today we know a little better than Jacob. But our knowledge of God is not as much. God was not ashamed to call Himself the God of Jacob. We are so full of ourselves that we forget to fear God and thus misuse the scientific and technological capabilities. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” Pro.1:7 . Christian believers must use all what modern technology has to offer in the fear of God. It has been the choice they all ways had to make in every generation. We are no different.
07.09.2010
South Africa
A fictional concept that captures the same sentiment as the C.S. Lewis excerpts you quote is the "ring of power" in the "Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Lewis and Tolkien were close friends.) When Gandalf is offered the ring he replies, “With that power, I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly... the way of the ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good... The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength.”
Emerging technologies are providing humanity with a power both too great and terrible, too wonderful and waylaying. Or as you argue from the words of C.S Lewis, that here can be no increase in power on humanity’s side since each new power won by humanity is a power over humanity as well (each advance leaves us weaker as well as stronger). This biblical truth about sinful human is narrated in fantasy (Tolkien) and philosophy (Lewis). Since the final conquest is our own abolition, we require saving from our own humanity and a reference external to ourselves.
01.09.2010
Singapore
This multiplex sesssion could include other ethical issues and emerging technologies, not only bioethical issues and medical technologies. What are the ethical concerns for other emerging technologies which could significantly affect our human future? Technologies such as mobile computing, social networking, genetically modified food, robotics, etc. Besides addressing the challenges of emerging technologies, the discussion should highlight the opportunities to employ new technologies for ministry.
26.08.2010
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