Why do some Christians say it wrong to "play God" in medicine?

It seems to me that anything that is like what God does must be inherently good, because that is what God is.

There are many medical processes that ‘seem’ to be good, but are often not - esp. in the long term.

• antibiotics
• Cancer treatment- radiation and chemo
• Vaccines

Are areas where men have chosen to replace the perfectly capable immune system God provided, with artificial and decidedly inferior processes.

Is this playing God? Do they think they know better than God? Vaccines do not replace natural immunity from getting the disease or infection anything like the system God provided.

CDC Jan 19/22 report states, according to Dr. John Campbell, that vaccine immunity is no better than natural immunity, there are minimal horrible side effects, and natural immunity lasts much longer.

We must consider good health practices essential to having a fully functioning immune system. If we eat rubbish food we are harming our bodies ability to respond and resist infection. The Christian cannot live off hamburgers and coke and then pray for healing when they get sick! God holds people accountable for their life choices and they must accept the consequences.

Cancer treatments that rely on traditional hospital processes are inferior to bolstering the immune system to fight the disease naturally. How many times have we heard of people being declared clear, only to have it reoccur because they didn’t properly kill it the first time?

What ‘seems good’ is often not where money, power and control are the influencing factors driving us toward making our own solutions to our problems. We find a system that is spiralling out of control with superbugs and drug resistant infections with no hope for a viable solution. We’ve gone our own way and are paying the price for our supposed wisdom. We’ve played God for a long time now, the devil’s deception driven by pride and arrogance are the seeds for saying, ‘we can do better than God’.

We either believe that God says when death comes or we try to extend life against the odds. He gives it and He takes it away is how the bible explains it. In the meantime, we do our best to live well, eat wisely, love our fellow man and be thankful and generous with our blessings.

We are given an example of medical vs God.

She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. Mk 5:26

If we are honest, nothing has really changed, but it has become more complex, deceptive and costly.

We might be careful to give praise to our doctors and nurses who help with our injuries from accidents. This has nothing to do with ‘playing God’, but is aligned with principles of helping our neighbour when his ox is in the ditch.

The media is part of the problem of promoting the ‘system’, they certainly won’t be promoting the principles aligned with God’s instruction. They are part of the system of deception and misinformation. Christians should be on to this.

It’s easy to label things ‘sinful’, not trusting God is sinful- that covers everything we do. God has already addressed the problem of sin in His son, Jesus. What He hasn’t done is take away the consequences for bad decisions and poor choices. We have to live with those the best we can. Yet we still have a choice - God’s way or man’s way. Often one “seems’ easier but the results will be quite different as the woman in Mark’s account shows.

Man has since the beginning wanted to circumvent God's plan for all things - tower of Babel comes to mind. Many medical processes might 'seem' like a good idea without harm or side-effects, but the chances are they will fall very short - making bigger problems along the way.

Incidentally, fever is God's way of dealing with infection etc. Medicine wants to reduce the fever and give fluids. Both of these are now beginning to be seen as bad practise. The body is quite able to moderate temperature to 40-41 degrees and will produce a hormone to retain fluids. Adding fluids and reducing temperature do not solve the problem and adding antibiotics only make it worse. God knows best - He made us. We've survived for 1000's of years without high-tech medicines, only aided by natural immunity and common sense - which sadly is not very common anymore.

I may be wrong, but I understood the phrase "playing God" medically to mean taking life and death decisions about a patient. When a medical professional decides, for example, that a patient should not live any longer (without that patient requesting death), they are acting as if they had a divine right to end a person's life - invoking medical reasons. Even an atheistic medical professional could do that, so that people who believe in God would view him or her as "playing God" though the medical professional would not, claiming it was "for the best".

In medical circles, more and more areas give rise to the question as to whether medical professionals are "playing God" or not. They are supposed to do everything reasonably possible to save a person's life, and always to "do the patient no harm." When a patient in a coma on a life support machine has had years of such treatment, and a decision is taken, involving relatives, to switch it off, nobody makes the accusation of "playing God", but sometimes such a patient, about to be consigned to death, suddenly recovers! Artificially keeping a patient alive errs on the safe side of this issue, but there are limits.

However, I knew it wouldn't be long before someone invoked use of vaccines as an example of "playing God". This is where I suggest that individuals trying to prevent people accepting vaccines are the ones who are "playing God". They have decided that vaccines are immoral, or ungodly, or cause many deaths, and so they start persuading people not to have them when a pandemic strikes. I have examples of this, showing how misinformation and disinformation from religious people persuaded hundreds of thousands to refuse vaccinations - one hundred years ago - and the same sort of nonsense is being spread about today. Back then, a campaign was waged by some religious people against smallpox vaccination, saying it was "of the devil" and promoted by governments / pharmacists to make money, and that more deaths resulted from vaccinations than were prevented by not catching whatever plague was on the go. Yet smallpox was eliminated due to a global vaccination programme. What anti-vaxers today ever admit to that, saying what a jolly good thing it was? Here are some examples of misinformation and disinformation:

"Vaccination never prevented anything and never will, and is the most barbarous practice... We are in the last days; and the devil is slowly losing his hold, making a strenuous effort meanwhile to do all the damage he can, and to his credit can such evils be placed... Use your rights as American citizens to forever abolish the devilish practice of vaccinations."

"The public is not generally aware of how large an industry is the manufacture of serums, anti-toxins and vaccines, or that big business controls the whole industry... the boards of health endeavor to start an epidemic of smallpox, diphtheria, or typhoid that they may reap a golden harvest by inoculating an unthinking community for the very purpose of disposing of this manufactured filth."

"Thinking people would rather have smallpox than vaccination, because the latter sows seeds of syphilis, cancers, eczema, erysipelas, scrofula, consumption, even leprosy and many other loathsome affections. Hence the practice of vaccinations is a crime, an outrage, and a delusion."

Those claims were made 100 years ago but they would sit well with current claims about modern vaccines. I suggest that the people propagating such untruths 100 years ago, and their modern equivalents, are the ones "playing God", because some people will actually die unnecessarily by heeding their claims. Individuals must make their own decisions about what medical treatments they should, and should not have, and the complicated ethics involved in this are explained in an excellent Stack answer here, under the answer from bobflux, second answer down. https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/87152/is-it-ethical-to-convince-someone-to-get-vaccinated/87158#87158

What is wrong with playing God in medicine?

Playing God often refers to men doing actions that all considered best left in God’s hand, be it in a medical domain, scientific research field or other ethnic subject matters that may involving human rights of life and death.

In one way, playing god reminds me of what Pope John Paul II used to say often in his discourse and lectures as there is a tendency in modern times for some to ”live as if God does not exist”. Thus the sense of Christian morality can be seen as falling towards something sinful.

By living ‘as if God did not exist,’ man not only loses sight of the mystery of God, but also of the mystery of the world and the mystery of his own being (Evangelium Vitae, 22).

The “deepest roots” (EV 21) of the clash between what Pope John Paul II calls the “culture of life” and the “culture of death?”

Playing God refers to assuming powers of decision, intervention or control metaphorically reserved to God. Acts described as playing God may include, for example, deciding who should live or die in a situation where not everyone can be saved, the use and development of biotechnologies such as synthetic biology, and in vitro fertilization. Usually the expression is used pejoratively and to criticize or argue against the supposedly God-like actions.

Description

Playing God is a broad concept, which is encompassed by both theological and scientific topics. When the term is used, it can be used to refer to people who try to exercise great authority and power. It is usually pejorative and suggests arrogance, misappropriation of power, or tampering with matters in which humans should not meddle.

Etymology

"Playing God" generally refers to someone using their power to make decisions regarding the fate of another's life or many lives. Theologian Paul Ramsey is noted for saying, "Men ought not to play God before they learn to be men, and after they have learned to be men they will not play God." The religious framework of approach to this phrase refers to said religion's deity having a set plan for mankind, therefore man's hubris may lead to the misuse of technology related to sacred life or nature. Other famous literary texts that allude to a man and God complex include Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells and You Shall Be Gods by Erich Fromm. The notion of god-like knowledge or power in humans goes back at least to the story of forbidden fruit in Genesis 3:4–5 whose traditional English translation includes the words "ye shall be as gods".

The term Playing God is often used in the medical field.

A popular term for the usurping by physicians or by the health care system—the role of a higher power or God—e.g., rationing limited medical resources in underserved areas or underinsured populations, deciding who is entitled to a limited number of organs for transplantation, or terminating life support in the terminally ill or in a persistent vegetative state Genetics A popular term for the ethical issues regarding manipulation of the human genome and whether gene therapy usurps God’s omnipotence Medspeak A generic term for the role that doctors, especially surgeons, play in saving lives. - Playing God