Religious People Are Skeptics When It Comes to Biotechnology and Humans

Many Americans are wary of the prospect of implanting a computer chip in their brains to improve their mental abilities or adding synthetic blood to their veins to make them stronger and faster, according to a major new Pew Research Center survey gauging the public’s views on technologies that could enhance human abilities. And this is particularly true of those who are highly religious.

For instance, a majority of highly religious Americans (based on an index of common religious measures) say they would not want to use a potential gene-editing technology that would give their baby a much reduced risk of disease (64%), while almost the same share of U.S. adults with “low” religious commitment would want to use such a technology (63%).

Similar patterns exist on questions about whether people would want to enhance themselves by implanting a computer chip in their brains or by having synthetic blood transfusions. Not only are highly religious Americans less open to healthy people using these potential technologies, but they are more likely to cite a moral opposition to them – and even to connect them directly to religious themes.

Case in point: Many people who said these technologies would be morally unacceptable explained their position with references to “changing God’s plan.” In the case of a computer chip in the brain, some opponents connected this idea to the “mark of the beast,” a reference involving Satan in the Bible’s book of Revelation.

Read more at the Pew Research Center.

Photo by newsonline

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1 comment

  1. 1

    I would encourage readers to check out “Forbidden Gates” by Tom Horn and “Corrupting the Image” by Douglas Hamp to better understand the reasoning behind this belief in not altering the body on a genetic level. I count myself as definitely a member of this camp.

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