The notion of an all-powerful Divinity is capable of developing a fear apart from any law code. If you, the worshipper, behave too much like G-d, or attempt to find out too much about the Heavens, you will undoubtedly perish, for no man can see Him and live.
The lesson of Prometheus is a grim reminder of this fact, Christianity’s Son in the Flesh underwent unspeakable suffering on account of his divinity, and the Bible’s shortest-lived person in early history—Enoch—was by no measure of coincidence the man who “walked with G-d, and was no more, for G-d took him”.
From the age of storytelling and oral tradition we move to the age of research. Has the notion that you can die by glimpsing G-d gone away? Not at all. G-d has morphed from being the ineffable into the infinite depths of knowledge. Are there many people—religious and otherwise—who believe that science might be growing too powerful and that humanity can seize G-d’s creative role for itself? Is the fear of a second genesis parallel to the fear of glimpsing G-d and immediately dying?
Yes and yes. But should we avoid science altogether and render unto G-d the things that are G-d’s? Given the promise throughout many religious canons that mankind would rule over the earth and liberate it, most certainly not.
There is also an aspect of sacrifice in seeing the divinity the same way there is in science. For the sake of knowledge, whether it is knowledge of the world around us or of what is in the Heavens, people have given their lives.
The Talmud gives the four men who walked in the mystical garden of Pardeis, a symbol of hidden knowledge—one dies, one goes insane, one turns away from G-d, and only one survives. In the same manner in which these people gave their lives to glimpse the Divine, other humans, also serving as test subjects, have enabled the scientific realm to expand into new dimensions. Not surprisingly, one of these new dimensions is genetics—the same science of creation used by the Divinity to bring life into existence.
What needs to be applied again is Galileo’s idea of G-d imparting knowledge onto mankind for the sake of its being used, not for the sake of being forgotten. The notion of “playing G-d” with science is an identical paradigm comparable to using the knowledge gained by religious figures who have sacrificed themselves to gain the keys to heaven and to let humanity use them.
Religion and science—especially the science (or art) of creation—are both capable of being dangerous tools that shift world history. Both are also capable of being misused very heavily. The notion of creating humanity anew that G-d used in the flood—is identical to the vision sought by Hitler, who wanted to create a new humanity in a darker, though similar, fashion.
Before shying away from things because they will come too close to the divinity, the modern man has learned—and rightly so—to embrace the full aspect of G-d that manifests itself in all humans. Oddly, this paragon is very well emphasized by Divine, the “filthiest person alive” in the infamous film “Pink Flamingos”, who, upon being inquired if she believes in G-d, responds without any hesitation, “I am G-d”.
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