In the January 2008 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, Chris Toumey at the University of South Carolina NanonCenter has written a short piece about God and nanotechnology entitled Atom and Eve (this link will only work for those who have access to the journal).

Toumey argues that discussions about the ethics of nanotechnology, particularly those involving persons of a variety of religious persuasions, tend to be centered around such long-range topics as transhumanism and cyberimmortality, but that there are more interesting (and more immediate) areas of nanotechnology ethics that remain relatively unexamined. Existing discussions tend to narrowly define “nanotechnology in terms of enhancement and the delivery of eternal life.” According to Toumey, “this is an unnecessarily troublesome way to view nanotechnology. It focuses on long-term visions like cyberimmortality while overlooking short-term developments such as nano-enabled drug-delivery systems.”

The technlogy pages of the New York Times picked up this article. The author at the Times disagrees with Toumey, arguing that the “fact is that the most interesting spiritual questions raised by nanotechnology stem from the most speculative applications.”

Sounds like some clear thinking in this area – as in all points of contact between relgion, science and technology – is badly needed.