I already feel that way when watching sports, sometimes. But I compare them to video games — and cyber sports.

I get your point AGD — and obviously this ‘playing God’ thing is very closely entwined with the ’soul’ concept. Don’t mess around too much, lest we sever our connection to God…

But now we’re not moving into correcting failures. We’re now going into augmentation, upgrades. Replacing parts of our brain that are merely ‘average’ with faster, cybernetic equivalents. I guess from the grand picture these are still ‘faults’ — anything that can be improved should be, eh?

This ‘playing God’ stuff has never made too much sense. There’s no clear way to determine what belongs in that category, not least because of the distinct lack of agreement about the beardy entity in question. There’s nothing in, say, genetic engineering, that inherently rules it part of divine mandate without also capturing organ transplants, life support machines and prescription eyeglasses. All of these, it could be argued, go against what’s ‘meant’ to happen because each compensates for some failing or other of the basic human body.

I don’t presuppose that we like finding answers per se. More that we like poking at things; like the fabric of the universe. We don’t usually like the answers that arise from new knowledge, and it sometimes takes a long, long time to settle in… but it’s kind of hard to avoid scientific fact I guess (or is it… )

The question of what makes us human isn’t really an existential one but a question of essence, as it’s a question about what particular quality we pick out as the essential one in defining the human.

I think you overestimate how much people like finding answers, though, especially to metaphysics-type questions like ‘what is human?’.