ABSTRACT
While everybody agrees that technical development is critical to humanity’s future, there are also fears that it could increase human suffering or even accidentally cause great harm. Among the various emerging biotechnologies, genetic and neuroscientific revolutions may transform the human species in a significant manner. The chapter describes the origin and methodology of the four-day workshop that gathered bioethics experts from six major world religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism to discuss these questions. It analyzes the uneasy relationship between science and ethics and answers the objections that the scientific enterprise can flourish without bioethical input. It then looks at how religious contributions can enrich the ethics of these critical issues by examining the meaning of selfhood, human nature and the relationships between body and soul, mind and brain. Religious traditions can provide valuable insight regarding human identity. They also question the desirability of creating a new species or performing an upgrade of humans with such innovations.
