Playing God

Life & Faith

The astonishing technological progress humans have made sometimes raises the warning that we shouldn’t be “playing God”. Nick Spencer from Theos think tank disagrees.

In their book Playing God: science, religion, and the future of humanity, Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite insist that contrary to the warnings to avoid “playing God”, human beings are in fact a God-playing species and have a responsibility to ‘play God’ well.

They examine remarkable advancements we have made in technological capability—AI, pharmacology and genetic engineering, knowledge of outer space, genetic editing, healing in the womb—and note that the world that science is creating raises exactly the kind of questions that science can’t answer. Their book is a plea to maintain an open and multi-voiced language to address these questions drawing on ethical, humanistic and spiritual layers.

On Life & Faith this week Nick Spencer joined Simon Smart to delve into some urgent contemporary questions that all coalesce around the notion of who we are as humans.

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Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite, Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity

Theos Think Tank

Centre for Public Christianity