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The Necessity of Apotheosis in Animal Revival
The term “Playing God” is a derivation of the Greek word ‘apotheosis’, which means
“the glorification of a subject to a divine level” or in simpler terms, the definition of “Playing
God” is the act of an individual behaving as someone who is supremely important (Apotheosis
2018). Apotheosis is growing more common as society advances, alongside science and
education, because more people are holding on to the belief that it is our purpose, being the
superior to the rest of the beings on Earth, behind the defense that says, “If changing our world
(and its works) is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image.” (de
Grey, nd). In relation to ethics, which is one of the main branches in philosophy concerned with
the study of morals and values (Philosophy Intro, 2018), the concept of “Playing God” is viewed
as an immoral role to partake in for the reason that it messes with the natural order of life which
often leads cruel results in terms of animal re-creation. The significance of this study, in relation
to ethics, is to decide on whether or not the act of playing God in terms of the recreation of
extinct animals is moral.
The high rate of recent animal extinctions in the world is causing the scientists to worry
(Extinct Animal, nd). As a result, there have been numerous experiments conducted throughout
the years regarding the revival of extinct animals through the process called de-extinction. De-
extinction is “the process of creating an organism which is either a member of, or resembles an
extinct species, or breeding a population of such organisms” (De-Extinction, 2018). The concept
of Apotheosis is deeply intertwined with the process of de-extinction because it automatically
means that people, mainly scientists, will be involved in the re-creation of the lives of species
that once existed and therefore they will be “Playing God”. The morality at question is whether
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or not it is necessary to involve ourselves with the natural order of life in terms of the
‘resurrection’ of the dead, species-wise.
It is no question that the concept of de-extinction will be accepted by society in the near
hundred years. Due to the drastic change in the earth’s condition which were partially inflicted
by human beings, such as climate change and the heavy pollution, people are afraid and are
under the impression that the clock is counting down regarding life on earth (Top Ten, nd). “De-
extinction was now within reach”, was the general agreement of some scientists through the
cloning of extinct animal genes (Martin, Raul, and Sergey, 2018) but the ethicalness of the mere
possibility is still in question. The necessity of de-extinction does not seem to fit Charles
Darwin’s concept of Survival of the Fittest, because in application to the theory, the main reason
why these animals became extinct is because they failed to adapt to the changes and therefore
would have suffered a great lot if e...
