I’d like to answer an important question that I’ve gotten a few times about this whole biohacking thing, namely…
…is biohacking “playing God”?
Frankly, it’s a great question, and one that seems to make sense when you look at the landscape of people doing things like:
- Harvesting “birth tissue“ in the form of umbilical cord extract to create stem cells…
- Infusing plasma from other humans into their bloodstream…
- Implanting electrical human-machine interfacing technologies in the brain and under the fingertips…
- Or using gene therapy to turn back the clock on aging…
So what’s my take on this?
First, this is indeed a slippery slope type of question.
After all, is constructing an airplane so that we can fly across the sky playing God?
Is building a skyscraper that stretches into the heavens playing God?
Is getting a severed nerve in a finger repaired by a surgeon playing God?
Is getting your knee or hip replaced with a ceramic and titanium implant playing God?
Is the implantation of a vagus nerve simulator to manage stress or PTSD playing God?
Is getting a vitamin IV to bypass the digestive tract playing God?
Is drinking a cup of coffee that floods your brain with neurotransmitters that normally wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t had the coffee playing God?
Is brain surgery playing God?
Is a diabetic injecting themselves with insulin to override the natural function of the pancreas playing God?
As you can imagine, you could take just about any inventive or creative act of a human that in some way upgrades our existence to be a version of playing God.
Whenever you come across a series of potentially slippery slopes like this, it’s helpful to have some kind of playbook, rubric, or set of rules to follow that guide the decisions you make.
So here are the three primary criteria that I use when it comes to biohacking in particular:
- Is this forbidden in the Bible (which is the rulebook that I follow for moral decisions)?
- Is this harming me?
- Is this harming someone else?
As you may have noticed, if you’re already an astute reader of the Bible, the second two criteria logically fall under the umbrella of the first criteria, but for the purposes of answering this question thoroughly, it’s useful to separate them out, and you’re about to see why.
First, there are ample examples of people inventing, building, and healing in the Bible.
So what type of things are forbidden?
I’ll name two I can think of that would be common practices in today’s biohacking world:
- Using drugs, plant medicine, and other mind-altering substances to divine with the spirit world (e.g., flood doses of ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, etc.), which is a practice called pharmakeia and something that I addressed in the two-part series here and here.
- Transhumanist body modification with the intent of “transcending human limits” or achieving immortality means that intentionality matters: someone using stem cells to “live forever” would be playing God in the wrong way, while someone using stem cells to fix a bum knee so they can run a marathon would not. Similarly, one could say the same about a “Tower of Babel” designed with the intention to display god-like powers versus a skyscraper designed to create good for an entire city.
Second, related to self-harm, the type of things you should avoid would be short-term biohacks that detract from long-term health, such as:
- Use of massive amounts of black-market steroids for the purposes of aesthetics or performance…
- Use of fertility-decreasing agents while one is still in their childbearing years (including high doses of testosterone in a young healthy male, especially without proper management)…
- Or engaging in medical protocols that have scant human research and are not reversible, like injecting chlorophyll into the eyeballs for night vision or a DIY fecal transplant from a random unscreened donor (yep, people do it)…
Third, related to harming others, the type of things you should avoid would be blood, plasma, organs, or other human tissue products derived from participants who did not volunteer that tissue willingly or were harmed in the process of giving it (such as well documented Chinese organ harvesting practices).
So when it comes to choosing “biohacks” or any other health or medical protocol or procedure, that’s the list of criteria I would include.
You may have others to add, and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section of this post, but before wrapping up, there’s one other important thing to think about:
The actual definition of “playing God” really matters here.
After all, God is the Creator, and God created humans as the only entity in the world that can create in a manner very similar to Him.
Sure, beavers can create dams, bees can create hives, and ants can create massive underground tunnel cities, but nothing really creates like a human.
You don’t see any creature besides humans designing spaceships, traveling to the moon, fabricating giant submarines for oceanic exploration, building robots, crafting pipe organs, or doing brain surgery, to name just a few examples (check out World of Engineering on Instagram to see plenty more examples).
So you can say that, in a way, we were created in the image of our creator to “play God.”
Sure, there should be boundaries and rules like those that I’ve described above, but it’s actually an incredible gift that you and I have to be able to create like nothing else that exists.
Yes, we should wield that power responsibly, but we should also not be ashamed of it or avoid it in fear of upsetting God or somehow spitting in His face because being made in God’s image uniquely equips and commissions us to be “sub-creators”—to invent, design, name, order, cultivate, and build—as a direct reflection of the ultimate Creator.
God smiles upon our creativity.
We should really like playing God, as long as we do it the right way. It’s our God-given human vocation. And that includes using our intelligence to biohack our bodies in an intelligent and responsible way.
Leave your thoughts, feedback, and comments below. I read them all. Next week, I’ll be back to move beyond biohacking and delve into natural, easy ways that you can maintain health and longevity, no umbilical stem cells infusions or organic coffee enemas required.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQLc3Uo5L0[/embed]
Previously Published on Ben Greenfield’s blog
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