Abstract
There are a variety of intrinsic concerns about the ethics of crop biotechnology, These concerns stem from a number of separable but loosely linked assumptions about the religious and moral status of the natural world and about the relationship that mankind should have with that world. Assumptions of this kind, some of which appear to be widely held, cannot be proved right or wrong, but they should be analysed in order to clarify the concepts and principles on which they depend. Some of the key questions are: Should religious believers see modern biotechnology as a blasphemous affront to God or a creative opportunity to work with him? Can any moral guidelines be provided by what happens in Nature? Can any charges of intrinsic moral wrongness be brought against crop biotechnology which are not equally applicable to traditional methods of selective breeding?
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