Part 7: Irredeemable Tech
Why selective breeding seems right and genetic engineering seems wrong
Read also earlier posts »Intro: About Naturalism »Part 1: A New Faith, Born Of Lockdown »Part 2: The Need For Naturalism »Part 3: The Equivalence Of God And Nature »Part 4: The Special Role Of Science In Naturalism »Part 5: Right And Wrong Technology »Part 6: Smartphones And Covid Vaccines
In Part 6, I gave my methodical estimations on the morality of covid vaccines and smartphones, and I estimated them to be, respectively, obviously wrong or likely wrong. The question occurs to me now, are modern post-industrial technologies all simply wrong? It’s true that modern technologies are in general straying farther from nature than past technologies. Consider electronic circuitry itself. It involves the harms of chemical toxin exposure and e-waste pollution. These harms were fairly rare in the pre-industrial age, but now electronic circuitry is present as a component in most new products. That’s because our inventive species is frequently layering one technological advance upon the next. If a problematic tech A becomes a “normal” component of future tech B, then the future tech B will likely be at least as problematic going forward.
So yes, it seems modern tech is straying increasingly farther from rightness. One obvious reason for that is the rapid expansion of tech in the last couple centuries, but another important reason is the lack of ethical framework that I mentioned in part 5, the inability of our current institutions to review the morality of tech, to help righten tech that is going wrong, and to help put a brake on tech that is irredeemable.
Basically, society needs a set of morals that puts tech on the right path and prevents it from going astray. This set of morals is not something that will squelch tech, but something that keeps it on the right path, kind of like a parent should do for a child.
In Naturalism, this set of morals is based on a technology’s effect on nature. Since Naturalism holds that nature is equivalent to God, technological development should always be respectful of nature and should not aim to change nature in any fundamental way. That would be akin to a child trying to change the parent to fit his/her own whims, rather than learning by example from the parent. Since “mother nature” is an age-old concept, it’s perhaps not difficult to consider nature itself to be our guide and example, something like a mother or father should be.
In a household, there are many activities that children can enjoy, some activities that are problematic but can be made okay with guidance, and some activities that are simply not allowed. People need to start thinking of technological activities in a similar manner within the household of nature. Some technological activities are fine, some are problematic but can be mitigated, and some are simply irredeemable.
One example of tech that is irredeemably wrong—in my personal estimation—is genetic engineering. It changes the fundamentals of biological nature in a way that puts the “children” (namely, us) in charge of the household of nature, upsetting natural rules that are billions of years old. As a behavior it is extremely reckless, and as an economic or strategic pursuit it grows unfettered in modern society. Does anyone really think that we are wise enough to dodge the effects of opening this Pandora’s Box? The 2019 outbreak of the genetically-engineered coronavirus is just a mild starter.
But haven’t people traditionally manipulated species to their own advantage for thousands of years already? Selective breeding, domestication, and hybridization have been around a long time. Wouldn’t those also be a violation of the laws of nature?
One important difference between these traditional breeding activities and genetic engineering is that the nature of a species is not fundamentally changed with traditional breeding techniques. In animal breeding, if viable offspring is to be produced, nature obviously demands that the male and female of any hybridization be of the same or very similar species. When the genetics of a breeding pair are too different, nature automatically puts a brake on the process by making the pairing infertile, or else the offspring of the pairing infertile (such as the sterile mule born from a horse and a donkey).
We should be observing how nature puts such brakes on the fertility of unlike pairings, and asking ourselves why nature does that. We should be studying the workings of nature, which has had an enormously long track record of success. We should probably be assuming that there is a sort of universal wisdom in the way that nature works, given its long track record.
The study of how DNA works in nature is good science. But instead of pursuing that worthy study, we have leapt willy-nilly into the technology of manipulating DNA in decidedly non-natural ways, grafting genes of one animal on to a completely different animal, or even from an animal to a plant, and certainly from virus to virus. There are currently no significant brakes on our efforts to do so. That needs to change.
What nature seems to be telling us about species and types of organisms, is that slow, generational changes are good and workable, based on the genetic wholeness of the individual organisms involved. In natural change, each organism is a unique “package deal” and there is no tweaking of DNA. Selective breeding therefore is much more a “right” technology. It even has inherent natural infertility brakes on it if it is taken too far.
To pursue genetic engineering as we are now is akin to playing a super-God, imagining ourselves to be the masters of a brave new nature, without regard to consequences. In fact, we haven’t even learned enough to use nature as an example. We are like creative but reckless children with no supervision and little self-control. The need is clear for a new morality with regard to technology.
I could produce many more blog posts analyzing and comparing the morality of other technologies: nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, guns, modern farming, processed food, mass media, the printing press, the internet, etc. All of these are fair game in the pursuit of rightness. Maybe I will try to address these at a later date, but now I will turn to exploring the traditional basis for the the new, necessary ethics of Naturalism.
In the next post, I’ll explain how traditional wisdom from the Bible warns about technological over-reach.