The Guide for the Perplexed was a book written by Moses Maimonides, and is considered one of the most important works in medieval times because of the influence it had on Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thoughts. Maimonides known for being a philosopher and a biblical scholar. With his book The Guide for the Perplexed he tried to help people decipher through the confusing thoughts of religion and science/philosophy. While The Guide for the Perplexed helped answer many conflicts between science and religion back then, there has continually been new struggles between religion and science today. In this paper, we are going to look closely at gene therapy and the “designer baby”, which both can cause a struggle between Christianity and science.
…show more content…
Gene therapy for example has some ethical issues of how they decide which cases gene therapy is acceptable and which is not, high costs may only make it available to the wealthy, and possibly make society less accepting of different people (What Is Gene Therapy). Another problem arises with this, where does it stop? While in some cases it may be very helpful to cure a disease, people may take advantage and start using this therapy to try to alter things like athleticism, intelligence, or other traits they may wish to change. Those ethical problems are also similar ones we are seeing today with the designer baby, especially the social gap. Being able to design your child with specific traits that give them an advantage would then make a big gap between the rich and poor, being that rich can pick the traits out for a “better child”. This could create even more social separation between the rich and the poor than we see today. The last major ethical problem is that we do not know the true side effects that it could have on the kids in the future. Do we really want to be putting kids at risk later on in their life, just so they can have “desirable” traits, like hair or eye color? These ethnical issues are hard to ignore when thinking about gene therapy, and designer …show more content…
We still struggle today with ideas that cause us to have a divide in our lives between what we believe and what is known. Ideas like gene therapy and the designer babies, are today’s issues that could’ve been talked about in The Guide for the Perplexed. Similar to how Maimonides thought, gene therapy and designer babies may not have a simple right or wrong answer. Which is why even still today the struggle between belief and reason, because even in Maimonides book there was no simple answer, because sometimes he went with religion, and other times, when the support was there he believed in science and reasoning. Maimonides believed that there was room in the world to believe both, and science and religion didn’t have to be two separate things, but could actually support one another. I believe that there is a similar solution here with gene therapy and designer babies. There could be obvious reasons where gene therapy and designer babies, could really help people cure diseases but there is a point where it crosses the line to be too much. While I don’t think there is one right or wrong solution, there could be a compromise for religious beliefs, and new scientific discoveries not only when dealing with gene therapy and designer babies, but in all aspects between religion and
Gene therapy for example has some ethical issues of how they decide which cases gene therapy is acceptable and which is not, high costs may only make it available to the wealthy, and possibly make society less accepting of different people (What Is Gene Therapy). Another problem arises with this, where does it stop? While in some cases it may be very helpful to cure a disease, people may take advantage and start using this therapy to try to alter things like athleticism, intelligence, or other traits they may wish to change. Those ethical problems are also similar ones we are seeing today with the designer baby, especially the social gap. Being able to design your child with specific traits that give them an advantage would then make a big gap between the rich and poor, being that rich can pick the traits out for a “better child”. This could create even more social separation between the rich and the poor than we see today. The last major ethical problem is that we do not know the true side effects that it could have on the kids in the future. Do we really want to be putting kids at risk later on in their life, just so they can have “desirable” traits, like hair or eye color? These ethnical issues are hard to ignore when thinking about gene therapy, and designer …show more content…
We still struggle today with ideas that cause us to have a divide in our lives between what we believe and what is known. Ideas like gene therapy and the designer babies, are today’s issues that could’ve been talked about in The Guide for the Perplexed. Similar to how Maimonides thought, gene therapy and designer babies may not have a simple right or wrong answer. Which is why even still today the struggle between belief and reason, because even in Maimonides book there was no simple answer, because sometimes he went with religion, and other times, when the support was there he believed in science and reasoning. Maimonides believed that there was room in the world to believe both, and science and religion didn’t have to be two separate things, but could actually support one another. I believe that there is a similar solution here with gene therapy and designer babies. There could be obvious reasons where gene therapy and designer babies, could really help people cure diseases but there is a point where it crosses the line to be too much. While I don’t think there is one right or wrong solution, there could be a compromise for religious beliefs, and new scientific discoveries not only when dealing with gene therapy and designer babies, but in all aspects between religion and