From the article and To your question . . . The entire field of biology? No. However, people have all sorts of concerns in issues that are related to biology and there are intense conversations on things such as antibiotics, commercial farming, gene editing, cloning, geological manipulation, population manipulation, on and on it can go. I mean, there's literally a subfield of ethics devoted to these conversations. And lastly, there are tons of conversations around the exact topic of the original article. Wikipedia has a nice primer to jump off of if you're curious.No one quoted in the article said that, and there was plenty of opportunity to quote someone who did if such a person could be found. This journalist is just trying to create a controversy where none exists.
"Landau says that, on Facebook, TNC’s longleaf project has been accused of “playing the hand of God”. She dismisses the criticism. “There’s so little nature left that we haven’t already had a heavy hand in,” she says."
"It’s the experimental nature of assisted migration that makes some scientists wary about the risks involved. In 2009, the ecologists Anthony Ricciardi and David Simberloff published an op-ed contending that the strategy was “likely to produce myriad unintended and unpredictable consequences” and could profoundly interrupt the established ecosystems and food webs where the new trees are planted. Assisted migration, they said, was tantamount to “ecological gambling”."
Hey, is the entire field of biology just "playing God?" Does anyone other than dumb science journalists or young earth creationists ever think that?
I think the term "Playing God" used to hold more weight, because it was encapsulating a big, weighty, concept into two words. Unfortunately, it's used to death to where it's kind of lost its meaning, like if you say the word "calculator" over and over and over and suddenly it doesn't sound like an english word even though you know what it means. Population management concepts are often really interesting arguments to read about and assisted colonization in particular seems to be a very urgent topic, which just adds to the interest. Most people, when first asked, often think they don't have any opinion on the subject. But once you get them talking about things such as hunting and fishing, wildlife conflicts with livestock, wildlife conflicts with humans in urban and suburban settings, etc., they often realize they have some strong opinions on the matter and it doesn't take long to really start getting philosophical about humans, nature, control, lack of it, responsibility, lack of it, the whole nine yards.