When I was growing up I was always under the assumption that “nature knows best.” When you are raised with a religious background and a belief in God, it’s pretty easy to fall into this type of logic. After all, if there is a God then God controls everything and everything is as it should be.
It wasn’t until my twenties when I became an atheist that I began to look at the world with a slightly different point of view. “What if nature isn’t perfect?” This question popped up. Before it would have seemed like such a silly question. If even a question to be asked at all. But I started to think about it. As I had become an atheist I had already dismissed the idea of God. In doing so I had pretty much dismissed the idea of an overall purpose and perfection to the universe. So it became easier to ask a question such as this.
“If nature wasn’t perfect, could we as human beings help to perfect it or at least mold it to our desires?”
Well, I’m not an atheist any longer. But I haven’t thrown out this idea. It has evolved along with the rest of my beliefs.
So often I’ve heard people say “natural is better” or “we human beings are messing with nature” or something along those lines. The assumption being that whatever we as human beings do is inferior to what was already here. Or in other words, what nature would have done anyway.
But has anyone stopped to think that we ourselves are a product of nature. Our natural drive and desire to invent and discover and use science to manipulate is not derived from some other worldly evil. Perhaps it was natures intention for us to intervene. After all we don’t understand the full scope of the universe and what it is capable of. Maybe it is natures intention that we take our own evolution to the next level. It has afterall given us the ability to think and reason and to create. Would it be such an impossible idea that it wants us to take some things into our own hands? Maybe it’s testing us? Seeing if we can take ourselves to the next level. Seeing if we are worthy of it. If we’re willing to earn it.
There is no doubt that not all things natural are good for us. Disease is generally not very good for us. Yet there are few around today would deny antibiotics to cure such disease. In taking those antibiotics those people are admitting that nature isn’t always right and that natural isn’t always good. After all many diseases are perfectly natural. Antibiotics, well… not so much. See my point yet?
So with all of that said, where do we draw the line? If given the chance to genetically weed out natural disabilities from our unborn children, would we do it? Yes, many of us would. Because we would rather our children not be born with life threatening traits embedded into them from birth, if we had the option to rid them of it. So then if given the opportunity to also alter them to be more beautiful, would we also not do that? Here’s where the line gets shaky with many people.
There have been scientific studies on the qualities of beauty. Certain traits and shapes have been deemed to be more beautiful then others by the majority. Beauty isn’t entirely in the eye of the beholder, there are actual mathematics behind what is considered beautiful. So if given the chance would we deny our children those superior traits?
What about ourselves? If given the opportunity to upgrade yourself with better sight, hearing, strength and memory capabilities would you shake your head and say “I don’t need to mess with nature” or would you say “this is natural to do this”?
Just some things to think about.
Good post! I have often thought about this too.
That is a lot to think about. It’s a frightening idea that we would be able to design our own children.
Cool thoughts. What’s interesting to me is humanity evidently has an enormous sense of needing a purpose. If not a God, then nature wanting us to do something, whether taming it or leaving it be. I suppose nature could have given us that sense of needing a purpose, but there’s no denying that it’s there. (Do we feel like we need a purpose because we have a purpose already? Or because we don’t?) Anyway, good thoughts, you got me thinking.
Approximately 3 years ago I heard a story of someone building a road through a forest, destroying many trees, and in effect, destroying a part of nature. But as humans, animals, any act we commit is in fact nature. I do not perceive this question as nature vs. science, for science is a product of our inquisitive nature, and in my view, nothing we can possibly do is beyond the scope of nature. Could we alter natural selection? It seems, at first, yes, that we could, but we are forever encased in a dense cloud that is our nature, and no matter the forces of thought or intuition in attempt to escape such state, we are forever entrapped. And so, I believe the question is actually one for man to answer entirely, for how else can nature play an effect? In my opinion, we should genetically engineer ourselves to become vastly more intelligent, we should pursue the deepest depths of space. I just lost my thread of thought entirely, but nice blog.