QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE: THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

 

Prof.Dr. Vladimir Katasonov

(Moscow, Russia)

 

 “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish” (Lk.15:28-30).

 

Abstract: The paper discusses the theological aspects of the following questions, boundary for modern science and technology: Can we hope to conquer a death technologically ? How is modern science changing our attitude to nature and neighbour ? Does modern science bring us closer to God and teach us to love Him ?

Keywords: scientific progress, death, prophecy, human creativity, method of science, science and moral, God’s existence.

 

I. INTRODUCTION    

 The progress of modern scientific technologies changes impetuously the image of the world where we live. On the one hand, the world becomes for us more and more close, available and comfortable, but on the other hand, we open in it more and more the new dimentions of the misterious and the infinite. In XX-th century man began the process of reconstruction of its own body:  transplantations of organs, medical assisted procreation, therapeutic cloning. At the same time the process of the genetical reconstruction of all the biosphere is developping progressively. The resolution of the problem of the uniting of man and computer stands on the agenda of science, the creation of new technogenic forms of life, unprecedented for all past human history. In this connection more and more sharply the question arises about anthropological and theological perspectives, in which we should consider this progress. At this point one can formulate the following key questions:

Question 1: Can we hope to conquer a death technologically ? To manage, at first, the death of the livings and then to resolve (technologically) the problem of the resurrection of the dead generations ? Such civilization project was proposed in particular, in the work of Russian religious philosopher N.F.Fedorov (1829-1903). And then the question arises: Whether the death, really, is tied with the human original sin and its overcoming demands God’s interference in the creation (Incarnation, Redemption, Advent), or one can manage it by pure human and technological means ?

Question 2: Whether the essential human abilities and inclinations are changing thanks to the development of modern biotechnologies, computer technologies and psychology ? Whether the technological progress will make man more kind, can convince him to love his neighbour ?

Question 3: The modern physical cosmology can be interpreted in the sense very similar to the Biblical understanding of the emergence of Universe (Big Bang, the antropic principle). In the physical theories we find the special “gaps” through which God could interfere in the world (e.g. in the theory of chaos). Can we be sure that such theories will teach man to be believer, convince him in God’s existence and teach him to love God ?

        It is necessary to realize clearly that our assessements of modern technological progress and, therefore, of the opportunities of the dialogue between science and religion, are, in the end, conditioned by the responses on these questions.We discuss in this paper some aspects of these questions.

 

II. SCIENTIFIC RESURRECTION OF THE DEADS

        Can we hope to conquer a death with the help of science, technologically ?.. To garantee the immortality to the living and resurrect all the deads ?.. Notwithstanding the all successes of science and technology, changing substantially our life, these radical questions stay, likely, on the border of modern civilization project. At the same time these questions are the ones of principle for the theological considerations of scientific progress: a death is according to Christian theology the punishment for the sin of disobediance to God. Then, the question is posed so: can the mankind to overcome God’s damnation by his own forces, technologically and inside the history ? Or this overcoming is possible only transcendently, through the Second Coming of Christ ?.. For the theological assessement of science and technics this question is one determining their significance in our civilization.

         The attempt to consider the project of immanent (inside history) victory over death was made by Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Fedorov (1829 - 1903). Fedorov’s teaching[1] stands on two premises:

1.   the faith in Christian revelation and

2.   the will to justify history (and science as well).

Christianity brought a good news about the victory over death and presented the “beginning of Resurrection” - Jesus Christ. But resurrection of all the deads didn’t follow Christ’s one... According to Fedorov, God entrusted the mankind with this task of general resurrection in history and this aim is the main content of that. It is in this perspective only, Russian philosopher emphasized, that history and scientific progress find their sense. Science and civilization either turn into “the competition in the production of trinkets, transforming in the battle and war” (Fedorov 1982, 215), or seek to find solution of the mainest common cause: the total “regulation of nature”, the domination over the natural chaos, bringing evil and destruction. The resurrection of the deads - “the resurrection of fathers” - is to be the final stage of this regulation of nature. To turn the mankind to the resolving of this problem it is necessary to overcome actual non-fraternal state of humanity, to overcome enmity and divisions. All this is yet, according to Fedorov, the minority of mankind. Mankind becomes adult when it turns seriously to the common cause, to the problem of cosmic[2] regulation of nature. In contrast to the traditional understanding iof Christianity Fedorov insists on the unification of moral culture and scientific - technological progress. “The perfect virtue, - Fedorov wrote, - consists in the unification of morality with science and art” (Fedorov 1982, 165). The realization of the project of  “resurrection of fathers” means the genuine victory of Christianity: “The resurrection is... a perfect triumph of the moral law over the natural necessity” (Fedorov 1982, 198). For Fedorov Christianity is not a teaching, but the act itself of  redemption and resurrection. But this act must be  done by man himself in history. It was began by Christ, but it must be finished by mankind. The general resurrection must be not the act of miracle - the Second Coming and the Last Judgement - but the act of knowledge and work.

         In this sense Fedorov gives his own interpretation of the profecy about the Last Judgement. “Being the minority, mankind... can wait only the trascendental resurrection by the supernatural way, done not by us but from oputside, come not through our will but rather against it; it is the resurrection of anger, of last judgement and conviction of ones (sinners) on the eternal torments and others (righteous) on the contemplation of these torments” (Fedorov 1982, 497).  In Fedorov’s opinion this understanding of the end of history is incompatible with the infinite charity of God, “Who wants to save everybody”. Because of that, Russian philosopher proposes to understand conditionally this prophecy, “...as the prophet Jonah’s one, and generally as every prophecy, because all the ones have an educational object, means the reformation of those, to whom it is appealed, and it can’t condemn on the irreparable ruin, and besides those who didn’t born yet” (Fedorov 1982, 497).

        From this point of view Fedorov critisizes the traditional conceptions of the eternal beatitude. So, Dante’s paradise is imperfect, at first, because it wasn’t done by man himself but was prepared for him before. “Beatitude consists first of all and above all in creation”, - Fedorov insists (Fedorov 1982, 501). Because of that, man’s task consists in the conversion in paradise of all the Earth, all the Universe. Fedorov doesn’t like, as well, that in accordance with the medieval views on vita activa and vita contemplativa, in Dante’s paradise the contemplators take the highest place. But “only the contemplation, being transformed in act, could create the paradise and to turn the mind’s wings into the body’s ones” (Fedorov 1982, 501). The traditional “quietist” views on the eternal life Fedorov considers as the prejudices unworthy of man and his Creator.

          Such is Fedorov’s philosophy of the “common cause”. Notwithstanding its utopianness, it is unique in the sense that it gives absolute theological justification to science and technological progress. But it has the “weak point”. Fedorov appeals the mankind must get out of the state of minority, to stop waste its forces and abilities, the resources of nature for the production of “trinkets”, “wars” etc. But it is just the radical problem: how to do this ? How to make the people to perform this turn, to become adult ?.. Could science itself help to this process ?.. Thereby we pass to the second part.

 

III. SCIENCE AND MORAL

         Can scientific and technological progress make man more moral and make him to love more his neighbour ?.. It is known that from the answer on similar question J.-J.Rousseau’s philosophical and literary career began in 1750. His answer was definitely negative: “...Our souls became corrupted as our sciences and arts were going to their perfectness” (Rousseau, 14). According to Rousseau, this rule was confirmed by the way of all the history. The same was always: both in Athens, and in China, and in medieval Byzantine. The last example is especially instructive, stressed the philosopher. It is just from Constantinopole, this hereditor of the old culture, that the erudition came in the Western Europe and it is just the history of the medieval Byzantine that gave the most awful examples of the most shameful treasons, killings and poisonings... All this was not by chance, insisted Rousseau. Because our sciences are indebted to our vices their origins: “...astronomy was born out of superstitions; eloquence out of  ambition, hatred, flattery and lie; geometry out of stinginess; physics out of the idle curiosity - and all of them, including moral, - out of human pride” (Rousseau, 19). The High Wisdom Himself, having covered all the existence by the shroud of mystery, tryed to prevent us from the needless explorations... “People, you must know once and for all, that nature wanted to preserve you from knowledge, as a mother who snatches the dangerous thing out of  baby’s hands; that all the mysteries she hides from us are the troubles which she protect us from; the difficulties of learning are not the least of its beneficences. Men are corrupted; they could be worse yet, if they had misfortune to have been born as the learned” (Rousseau, 19).

        Such fevered critics of science and arts by Rousseau was only the first signs. It is interesting today because it arose almost at dawn of the modern science. What was after ? In European culture the big tradition, lasting till nowadays, went out of this critics. Sometimes this tradition hides in shadow but, in general, more and more grows as our scientific - technological civilization develops. Paradoxically, we can’t get out of this critisized civilization, we can’t live today in our towns, drive our cars and use Internet without knowledge, given us by the criticized science. But at the same time, we can’t accept this civilization and this science copletely, because they inevitably bear something really inhuman and immoral...

            However, the measure of this inhumanity is understood by different ways. The mean position is expressed by the argument: “Science and technics are neither bad nor good in themselves. Only their use can be good or bad. All depends on what the task science is used for”. E.g., such is the position of K.Jaspers in his book “The origins and goal of history” (Jaspers 1983). But he acknowledges as well, that it’s impossible to get rid of the back effect: science and technics, created by man, influence on himself. And to become free of this influence is impossible... But the question arises: in what direction does this influence go ?.. Here rather alarming observations are collected. In the second half of XX century philosophers and historians of science understood deeper the essence of the experimental method in natural sciences. It became more clear that the “questionning of nature” in experiment is not in the least a natural putting a question to nature, but rather, the “extorting” of answers from it. Such a questioning reminds, rather, the interrogations in KGB, when the asking “directs” one, who is being asked, by notes of a type: “Answer more clear !” “Say “yes” or “not” only !” “Look in my eyes !..” Today we know well that such a “methodology” let get all the “truth” you need... Don’t the matters stand like this in our natural sciences ?.. And more else: Don’t the cultivation of such a questionning and intuition of scientific truth, depended on  it, influence badly our moral and attitude to man ?..

            In what a great measure our cognition is burdened by the apriori statements we were taught by Kant. After Kant we understand already better the status of the physical principle, “law of nature”: it is not so much the expression of nature itself, but inevitably the necessary thesis, without which our reason just can’t think. So, e.g., the law of inertia is not the proposition proved sometime by someone, but only the other expression of the principle of sufficient reason. We ask the question: by what are these apriori conditioned ? After Burtt, Duhem, Koyre, Kuhn, Polanyi, Toulmin, Holton, Feyerabend, Lakatos we understand better that “mechanism” thanks to which the different socio - cultural factors, including the religious ones, influence science. What are those which moulded our science ? The analysis of sciences leads to the anxious results. May be, Heidegger expressed in the most striking form this anxiety of man of XX century concerning his own science (See Heidegger 1954). Modern science and the technologies tied with it seek to present all the existent in the form of the “provided” (Gestelle), ready for use.  Heidegger gives the example: Yet in our civilization not the electiric power station is situated on Rhine, but, rather, Rhine exists just as a provider of the hydraulic pressure for the hidraulic power station, generating electricity. But the most dangerous is that the similar attitude spreads to human being as well: one considers very often men as an “available staff” and a “force”...

        Modern rapid development of the computer technics, which changed the face of the civilization, puts new problems. Personal computers widened practically boundlessly the calculating abilities of man, provided him the efficient processing of large amounts of information and the governing of complex technological systems. At the same time, the computer technologies, according their own nature, are only  a mechanism of thought. Developping the “PC-world” man has to adapt himself to it, “to tell, to think by the language of machine”. This “machinization”, uncontrolled development of these technologies leads to the serious cosequences for human psychology, to dis - humanization of work, to human alienation. The “virtual realities” of the computer world prove very often to be only the illusions, closing man in a cage of mirages created by himself.

        It it not by chance that the ecological critics of science, scientific technologies and our technological civilization as a whole is very insistent now. The question put already on the agenda about more “soft” forms of technologies, more adapted to interaction with the integral systems, the living and first of all, with man. Practically, the question about the alternative civilization is being discussed. At this point the modern innovatory interdisciplenary researches of the bonds of biology, psychology, sociology and religion play the great role. E.g., those are the researches about the ties of altruistic behavior and its biological “reflections” (Post 2000), gratitude and health (Emmons 2001), as well as the general problem of the correlation of spirituality and health (Sered 2001). In such researches one can make out outlines of other possible modus vivendi different from the modern general one, other relations of man with environment and neighbour - the relations, taking into account the experience of religion. We are only in the beginning of the way leading to more human, more moral science. Will we have the time to approach them ?..

 

IV. SCIENTIFIC THEORIES AND GOD’S EXISTENCE

       Does modern science tells us anything about God’s existence or it is by nature “agnostic” ? - We think, that in this form the question hasn’t sense. Practically, we have always to specify it. To whom does science tell ? How do we understand here the word God ? What do we mean saying nature of science ? There is also a general feature of answers on this question. It is curious  that all the theological discussions, concerning different scientific theories, gave never the final preponderence to one of the arguing sides: scientific theories were used usually both pro and contra God’s existence. It was so - and remains - with the theory of evolution: it is used equally both by the extreme materialists and those believers, who see in fact of evolution the argument against deism, the scientific testimony of Providence’s presence in history. It is the same with Big Bang Cosmology: at the same time both too “hot” theologians and enough obstinate atheists, opposing the theories of the oscillating Universe, rest upon it. The famous Antropic principle proves something only for those who want to see in it this proof. But for others it is an occation to propose new hypothesis, new models of the Universe, in particular, those describing opportunity of natural (without God !) existence of whole the spectrum of Universes, among which our “fine tuned” one is only one of the possible. The infinite complexity of set of the strange attractors in modern theory of chaos is a “gap” for God’s actions only for those, who want see it there. Atheists, on the contrary, are prone to see in that unlimited complexity new infinite opportunity of selforganization of the matter independed of God...

            The impression emerges that God doesn’t want “impose” Himself on people by the compulsory force of logical proofs. These “proofs” remain those of God’s existence only for believers. The opportunity remains always for unbelievers to interprete them naturally... All happens as in Gospel’s parable about the rich man and the poor Lazarus, which ends by the words: “ If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be pesuaded if someone rises from the dead” (Lk.16:31).

         Likely, Kant expressed the situation by the best way: God remains for theoretic reason only the ideal, only the hypothesis, only the regulative idea, which reason seeks, by which it is guided, but the existence of which reason can’t prove. To this one can add that if yet scientific reason recognized existence of God, Logos governing the world, then,  all the same, this God differs very much from God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A modern researcher writes: “A Being who “fine tunes” the universe (if such there be) is consonant with the Creator God  of the Christian tradition. Consonance is here more than logical consistency, but much less than proof” (McMullin 1988, 71). Within the framework of practical reason, by virtue of fundamental nature of the moral law, thesis of God’s existence acquires a character of postulate, necessary for the moral system. It is because of that the modern researches of ties of behavioristic sciences and religion have, to our mind, such a great significance for the dialogue of science and religion. Nevertheless here, as well, religious conclusions are only possible. Science brings man to God, but the final choice remains to human freedom.

 

REFERENCES

1.    Emmons R. 2001, “Making a Science of Virtue”, Research News and Opportunities in Science and Theology, Vol.1, No.5.

2.    Fedorov N.F. 1982, Works, Moscow, Publish. House ‘Misl” (in Russian).

3.    Hagemeister M. 1989, Nikolaj Fedorov. Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung, München.

4.    Heidegger M. 1954, Die Frage nach der Technik, in: Die Kunste im technischen Zeitalter, München.

5.    Jaspers K. 1983, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, München, R.Piper&Co.

6.    McMullin E. 1988, Natural Science and Belief in a Creator: Historical Notes, in: Physics, philosophy and theology: A common quest for understanding, ed. by R.J.Russell, W.R. Stoeger,S.J., G.V.Coyne,S.J., Vatican City State.

7.    Post S.G. Regarding the Other: Altruistic Love as Religious Ideal and Scientific Project, Science & Spirit, Vol.11, is.1.

8.    Rousseau J.-J. 1969, Treatises, Moscow, Publish.House “Nauka” (in Russian).

9.    Sered S. 2001, Harvard Launches Religion and Health Initiative, Research News and Opportunities in Science and Theology, Vol.1, No.6.

 

NOTES