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Human gene technology or human gene engineering is a diverse and rapidly developing sphere of research and advanced medical technology. It includes stem cell research, genetic testing, therapeutic or reproductive cloning. Since genes are something like the blueprints of organisms, genetic engineering is a challenge to our understanding of human nature. Thus, from the early days of genetic research, projects have been watched carefully and often suspiciously by ethicists. Among this new caste of bioethicists dealing with these problems theologians have played a prominent role. Not surprisingly: as fundamental questions are raised with regard to whether human beings should be allowed to manipulate their own species, a religious dimension of human actions seems to be touched. Is genetic engineering by definition playing God? And if so, why is it fundamentally different from other areas where human ingenuity profoundly affects our lives?

The volume examines questions pertaining to the complex relationship between the ethics of gene technology (moniker: genethics) and religion. It does so in a critical and multidisciplinary way, and with reference to several of the major world religions. The volume contains contributions by philosophers, by scholars of divinity, and by bioethicists with Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist background.

In this introduction, use has been made of unpublished abstracts which were submitted for the conference by the following authors: J. Childress, H.T. Engelhardt Jr., S.N.M. Nor, P. Ratanakul, and C. Rehmann-Sutter. Note that this text, in part, contains literal quotes from these abstracts as well as from the authors’ articles contained in this volume; for ease of reading, these quotes have not been set in quotation marks.