Should We Play God?

This is one of the most emotive and simulaneously useless questions that is constantly asked, or often turned into the statement "We should not play at being God." The latter statement takes the view that it is axiomic that playing at being God is bad. Reading the Old Testament seems to me to be ample evidence (if we grant just for a sentence that God exists) that God is no more moral than humanity and indeed the main criteria for deciding whether people should live or die seems to depend not on their actions but whether they choose to indulge His whims. So in the first instance I would argue that the assumption that we are inherently worse at doing Godlike things is flawed.

The assumption behind the question is also flawed from a logical perspective. For an action to be of God it is inherently supernatural and hence we are unable to accomplish it by definition. If we can do something, it is natural by definition and is accomplished by science and technology at whatever level of knowledge is required. There is nothing supernatural about the fusion bomb or genetics, for example.

And that brings me to the important point, which is not how valid the question is, but the effect that asking it has. The use of it is an attempt to frame an argument in religious and emotive terms with the concurrent assumption that if you are playing at God (in a usually ill-defrined way) then what you are doing must be therefore inherently wrong and should be stopped. It may well be, and often is, true that the action in question should certainly be reviewed and discussed with regard to ethics, but based on the evidence and risks involved. The playing God argument attempts to sidestep this in an attempt to impose a certain world view based purely on a certain interpretation of a religious text. Unfortunately, despite all its flaws, it is not an argument that can ever be ignored and one that must be actively countered as its emotive content, and its short cut to a cultural reference, will and does short circuit critical thinking in many people.

Equality

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." United States of America Declaration of Independence

There are two concepts which are often confised:
1) Everyone is equal, ie: the same.
2) Everyone should be treated in the same way.

The first is obvious nonsense, but has given rise to some attempts to achieve it, usually by trying to remove competition, whether directly or by having no measures for comparing. The net effect of this is that the general level of achievement can only be at the level of the worst individual in the group. Quite clearly we are not equal in this sense, not least because half of us are men and half are women. Then there are differences in height, build, eyesight, hearing, intelligence and other factors all influenced by our genes and upbringing, and in later life our own decisions. Perhaps this aspect of non-equality can be best illustrated in the person of Stephen Hawking who is simultaneously one of the most intellectually brilliant people of his generation and also one of the most physically disabled due to MS.

Where a society should strive for equality therefore, is not in the individuals, but in the opportunities given to those individuals. The key word here is strive, because equality would in fact be easy to achieve by providing no access to any assistance of any kind. Equality should not be achieved by blocking opportunities but by attempting to give everyone access to as many opportunities as possible. In practice this is unlikely to be possible purely down to budgetry constraints on governments and other publically funded institutions, such as charities, and those with personal resources will always therefore be better placed. That is not an argument however for restricting the latter, but for finding ways to enable the rest.

Concurrent with equal opportunity needs to be equality under the law. This means that everyone, regardless of wealth or status, has the same access and accountability to the law. Again money talks: the wealthier tend to be able to afford better lawyers. That this makes such a difference probably points more to the fact that the law has become overly complicated and could do with simplifying than any other factor.

Even under an ideal system, we will still have rich and poor, winners and losers, because at the end of day a person's drive and the things that they consider most important will decide how their life unfolds. Some will want wealth, some power, some family, some to help others, etc., etc., etc. One person's achievement will be another's waste of time, and in that it would be a much more boring world if we were individually equal.