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"Playing God" to me is just a turn of phrase, shorthand (and somewhat cliched) for "messing with powers beyond your understanding or ability to control". It has nothing to do with whether one or more gods actually exists and can quite sensibly be used by atheists since it means "assuming powers which should only belong to (hypothetical) gods" rather than "assuming powers which should only belong to that Yahweh dude".

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can quite sensibly be used by atheists since it means "assuming powers which should only belong to (hypothetical) gods"

Sorry, but I refuse to call atheist to anyone who believes that an arbitrary, human-made list of values can be "godlike" in any meaningful sense. If anything, should that person use that list of values to base their political or scientific arguments, I would call them theocrats.

I definitely agree that it can be used secularly (I probably should have phrased that last part better), but I still feel that it isn't a good phrase. Of course these type of things are currently beyond our understanding or control, that's why they're carefully being experimented on. Obviously scientists realize there are risks to these types of technologies. Too often, I see the phrase "playing God" followed by unrealistic, uninformed scaremongering. It promotes fear of those discoveries, rather than a healthy respect and caution for their possible risks. Rather than accusations "playing God", I'd prefer to see a truly balanced critique. It's easy to write an a hollow fearmongering article a scary phrase.

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