Is it ethical for man to create life? If in the future he is able -- through genetics, medicine or mechanical augmentation -- should man improve himself? Should he determine his own evolution?
Life Ethics
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It would be unethical for humanity not to improve itself. Everyday we create life in a biological way. If mankind has the knowledge to make adjustments that betters itself then it is no different than fighting disease or enabling the diabled. May the goals always be tempered with wisdom & logic.
docdeal
I agree fully. Rather than leave human evolution to natural selection alone, we should lead our own future development. Some religious fundamentalists feel that only god should guide the hand of man, but I think this is silly. We should become what we wish to become.  SC
But always be Skeptical, I don't want to end up like the citiziens of Rapture
It mostly depends on the life created, and for what purpose.
Creating an intelligent being (of some level of "intelligence" - might only be rat intelligence; for instance) that is going to suffer in its service to humanity is not moral. I'm thinking along the lines of advanced AIs here: if we build mechanical servants that have the capacity to dislike the life they lead, then that my friends is slavery.
On the other hand, what if we build beings that are designed to like the life we give them. What if our mechanical servant gains pleasure, in the same sense that we gain satisfaction from eating when hungry, from being told what to do? This might seem all well and good, but what happens when you stop giving it orders?
As for augmentation, whilst I don't see any implicit moral issues, there is the question of whether or not it is a good idea in the first place. Once you can "engineer away" problems, then humanity will have turned to evolution and said "screw survival of the fittest, we'll MAKE them fit". Subsequently humanity will depend more and more upon these changes. On the other hand, this change will be fairly gradual, so it's probably not such a big deal. The point stands though that there will come a point at which human survival is only capable through augmentation. Not augmenting will force the ratchet of evolution to keep turning, but then we leave ourselves with the moral issue of letting people die instead of saving them...
In short, moral or not it's probably going to be required some day as the human race seeks to preserve all those who are born, rather than letting natural selection...erm... select.