Nanotech versus God [I Heart Tech]

Could a Diamond Age-like nanotech future be thwarted, at least in the United States by religious conservatives?  Why in the world would someone find nanotech a slight against their religion?  But according to a recent study, only 29.4% of Americans find nanotechnology “morally acceptable”, claiming that it is Man attempting to play God.Compare that to a 62.7% acceptance rate in Germany and a 71% acceptance rate in France and the difference is religion.  This country was founded as a haven for the ultra-religious and it’s remained so for its history.

With nanotech poised to give sensation to artificial skin, cure brain cancer and even make your blood cells intelligent, you could see a gulf between European post-humans and American ortho-humans in a few decades if these views translate into law.

Addressing scientists Feb. 15, 2008 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, presented new survey results that show religion exerts far more influence on public views of technology in the United States than in Europe.

“Our data show a much lower percentage of people who agree that nanotechnology is morally acceptable in the U.S. than in Europe,” says Scheufele, an expert on public opinion and science and technology.

Nanotechnology is a branch of science and engineering devoted to the design and production of materials, structures, devices and circuits at the smallest achievable scale, typically in the realm of individual atoms and molecules. The ability to engineer matter at that scale has the potential to produce a vast array of new technologies that could influence everything from computers to medicine. Already, dozens of products containing nanoscale materials or devices are on the market.

In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.

In European surveys that posed identical questions about nanotechnology to people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, significantly higher percentages of people accepted the moral validity of the technology. In the United Kingdom, 54.1 percent found nanotechnology to be morally acceptable. In Germany, 62.7 percent had no moral qualms about nanotechnology, and in France 72.1 percent of survey respondents saw no problems with the technology.

It raises a question however and that is– where is the line that for someone says “you are doing something that only God is supposed to”?  This debate has raged in the US over almost every technology– automobiles, agriculture, medicine, space travel, flight, etc etc.   So most likely, by the time nanotech gets around to becoming a part of our everyday life, a generation will have gone by and any religious naysayers will have passed the fire on to their youth, who will hopefully be more accepting.  But what if not?  What if America is held back from one of the greatest advances in technology because of a fear of God?  It won’t be the first time.

Via: io9