The hackable human body
“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead.” ~C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”
The hackable human body
Long ago, back before COVID, and back before Francis Collins had (in the eyes of many, anyway) disgraced himself as a supposedly model Christian high official… so in 2018, I mean, I watched a talk he gave at the American Scientific Affiliation, an affiliation of Christians who work in science. The first half of the talk is his personal conversion story, and then in the second half of the talk he gets into some of the ethical challenges of biotechnology and human gene editing, with an urge that the Church make her voice heard and help society find its way to the proper ethical conclusions regarding the use of these technologies.
If memory serves, some of the answers he settled on were “we should generally not do any genetic therapy where the changes would be passed on to descendants”, and “it’s OK to correct defects but we shouldn’t go trying to ‘improve’ the human race”. And, if memory serves, I thought that the secular world would say, to the first, “why not?”, and to the second, “but what counts as a defect?” If a child could be made a little smarter, is that a defect to be remedied? But I appreciate that these are difficult questions, and I even sent the talk to the pastors of our church with the comment that I thought “human gene editing” was going to be a major moral question in a few years and that it would be good for the Church to be prepared to comment upon it.
Transhumanism is all around us, now
I haven’t seen much discussion of human gene editing per se recently, but the promotion of the modification of the human body in another ways (as “gender affirming care” or what have you) comes straight from the White House these days. Secular progressivism has adopted transhumanism as a positive good - I might go so far as to say that transhumanism is now the primary goal of secular progressivism. As I said in the last post, as one example of this, the progressive argument for abortion and the progressive argument for transgenderism are now the same argument. If Christianity believes there is a created order, which is good, and we owe a proper respect to that order, then secular progressivism believes the universe just happens to be the way it is, that there is no meaning there except the meaning you create, and therefore we are fully within our rights to technologically modify the world in whatever ways we’d like to bring it into accordance with our desires.
(Your fundamental beliefs about the world - e.g., “it’s an accident, things just happen to be the way they are right now”, eventually come to determine all your subsidiary beliefs and actions as well. Sometimes it takes a while, a society can coast on inertia for a while, but eventually you will live as your fundamental beliefs about the world say you should.)
I started this post with a quotation from C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man which, somehow, speaks to this issue directly despite the fact that he was writing 80 years ago (don’t we love authors like that?). The project now is to “subdue reality to the wishes of men”. And in order to accomplish that we are definitely willing to do things to the human body previously regarded as disgusting and impious.
Side comment - some of you know I’ll begin teaching at a classical Christian school in the Fall. There is a fair amount of chatter in the classical education world about “how do you teach science in a classical manner?”, and you hear various things. You hear “teach the history of the science too”, and that is valuable, especially because you understand an idea better, and know its limitations, when you know how the idea was developed over time. You hear “teach the biography of the scientists involved, emphasize that science is a human project” and, as some of my posts here have indicated, I am all in favor of teaching that science is an imperfect human project! But I would suggest that probably most important in our day is to teach science in a way that is not teaching “magic”, in a way that explicitly acknowledges and respects the created order and believes we should find our proper place in it, not destroy it, because that is where the cultural attack on what is good and true is directed right now.
A few more illustrations
And then let me close with just a few more illustrations and commentary.
Everyone’s favorite Lutheran pastor gets it, of course.
The emphasis for this post is on their rejecting “His order of nature”, absolutely. (Have I mentioned lately that every big cultural battle in the United States today is really a spiritual battle? Maybe I’ve mentioned that.) I think it was Russell Vought I saw say, a while back, that the slogan of the Democratic Party in the US today may as well be “man is the measure of all things”. That is another way to say it. God isn’t the measure of all things, there is no created order to be respected - man is the measure of all things. Support for same-sex marriage is another example of this.
I barely need to add my own comment to the following:
The original conception of medicine was inherently tied to the goodness of the created order. Medicine basically was restoring the body to its proper functioning within that order. If you do not believe there is a created order, you have difficulty even knowing what words like “proper” are supposed to mean. If that lodestar is deleted… then what is medicine, what determines if a procedure is proper, or ethically justified, or not? Just whatever the patient wants, is that all we have left now? We are approaching the point where that is all we will have left.
And one more, from my sometimes co-author here, @ArchibaldHeath1… and you can tell this one inspired my title.
THE END.
I've been following the body hacking movements for a decade. It's original goal was to defeat the curse of Eden, but it seems to have fallen to the curse of Babel and gotten everything confused. Now instead of a fighting death, they're promulgating it.
Such is the path of humanity when we try to take on God.
"Whatever the patient wants" is just an intermediate step. After that comes "whatever the provider wants". Like a Kindle e-book that seems so convenient, but can be "corrected" or even taken away from you. Or like a Tesla, that can also be shut down from afar.