In his article “Playing God,” in Human Enhancement, C. A. J. Coady looks at “the accusation of playing God” (179) when one is altering creation (nature). This accusation is often made “against secular agents, such as scientists, and very often made by clergy and theologians” (179). But first, Coady points out the positive and negative aspects of three Christian stances towards Creation: 1) dominion, 2) stewardship, and 3) co-creation.  He rightly points out that “the first two have been prominent in debates about the role of Christianity in promoting what many have seen as bad attitudes to the natural environment” (157). However, he does remind us that some Christians have followed the example of St Francis of Assisi. Coady writes, “Instead of viewing God as handing the created world to humans for domination and exploitation, the picture is one of God giving humans the task of caring for the creation on God’s behalf” (157). His critique continues, “The stewardship model tends to the opposite faults of the dominion model. Where the latter seems to ignore or fail to acknowledge properly the respect that is due to the non-human world, the stewards seem to have too passive attitude to what there is” (159). Codly then writes that “theologians have been moved to the metaphor of co-creation as a more adequate picture of the relation between God and man” (160). This might be problematic as “the distance between God and creatures” (161) might disappear. He concludes this first part, “It seems to me that all three pictures have an element of truth in them and that the dialogue between them exhibits the tensions that need to be kept in view by believers in negotiating the mystery of humanity’s place in the created order” (161).

Coady is really helpful by distinguishing those three Christian stances towards creation. However, while the stewards might be indeed too passive towards the world (159), if one considers the Christian idea of the Fall, it seems that even the stewards would know that the evil and suffering need to be fought against. Thus this would encourage the stewards to be less passivie. Moreover, the attitude towards Creation is not only reflected in Genesis 3 (which seems to be what Coady mainly refers to), but in the rest of the biblical narrative also. Just the idea that our story starts in a garden and ends up in a city points towards some changes in Creation.

Second, Coady looks at reasons the non-religious world has been accused of “playing God.” He defines playing God as “going beyond the limits we have in these three aspects, acting in ways that ignore the in-built constraints on our knowledge, power, and benevolence” (163). The critique of playing God is the critique towards an attitude that desires omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence (characteristic usually given to God). He reminds us of the ecological disaster that we brought by relying too much on our own understanding (164). He writes, “The greatest achievement of science and the prospects they open up for us can lead us to an exaggerated sense of what we know, to misplaced confidence in our powers to change the world and blindness to our own moral deficiencies” (164). This clearly lacks “a degree of humility about how much we now know” (164). Moreover, because of our human limitations, we “do well to be on guard about exaggerated claims, public relations hype, and insufficient efforts to discover what can be known about effects and implications” (165). He concludes this section by reminding us that, “The Critique of playing God is primarily a criticism of an attitude and only derivatively of a program or proposal” (165). This attitude might “embody an unjustified confidence in knowledge, power, and virtue beyond what can reasonably be allowed to human beings” (165).

Third, Coady analyses cases “in which the intentions of the agent are benevolent, but are criticized for seeking to transcend legitimate limits on what it is to be human” (166). He points example of “playing God with the genes,” “Changing Human Nature,” and “Damaging autonomy.” I will write more on this section later.

He concludes:

Since the accusation of playing God is invariably made against secular agents, such as scientist, and very often made by clergy and theologians, it is worth reflecting on the possibility that the charge could be turned in the opposite direction. After all, it is often religious authority that claims to be representing God and God’s purposes. Have the Churches been playing God in the crisis created by new technologies? (179)

He adds, “The temptation to act in ways that ignore or make light of the in-built constraints on human knowledge, power, and benevolence is certainly one to which all humans are prone, including bishop, theologians, and priests” (179).

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