[extropy-chat] Thinking is doing with Cyborg Technology

[spike]

>  Joseph Bloch
...
> ... but naturally it ended with the usual vague-but-ominous
> "there are places mankind was not meant to tread" crap.
> 
> Joseph

Please let us examine this closely and question everything
we think we know.  I see exactly what you are referring to
but I want to make sure I understand it.  I came from a
memetic background where this "mankind is not meant to
tread" notion is absent, but I recognize that mine is an 
unusual background.  The early Seventh Day Adventists
heard this a lot; they were accused of going into areas
that humans were not meant to study.  SDA pioneer John Harvey 
Kellogg, with his radium inhalers, advocacy of exercise, low calorie
diet, etc. was an early life extension proponent who suggested
that the human lifespan could be extended beyond 90 years.  
He lived to almost 92 and perished while exercising.  

When accused of playing god, the brethren pointed out that
when mankind fell from grace, god took away both the tree
of life and the tree of knowledge from the Garden of Eden.
The line of reasoning then follows that it is physically
impossible for humans to discover a technology that god
did not intend for humans to master.  So we cannot play 
god, even if we want to.  The notion follows that god 
specifically and unambiguously spelled out exactly what 
humans were not to do.  If any activity is not on that 
list, then that activity is fair game.  Just as Kellogg
did some really wacky medical experiments (anticipating
organ transplants for instance, which carried a major
squick factor at the time) a modern Seventh Day Adventist
hospital is a good place to go if you want to do something
edgy today, such as a head transplant, or cross species
organ transplant.

This whole "turf upon which mankind is not meant to tread"
meme may kill us.  I want to understand where it comes
from.  With that information, we might have a chance of
defeating it.  So who decides what technologies mankind
is not meant to have?  On what grounds?  

spike