Dr.
Michio Kaku, a popular Theoretical Physicist from the City University of New
York, remarked in a May 2011 interview that the human society on planet Earth
was steadily progressing from a “Type Zero Civilization” – the old world of
tribal, sectarian conflict embroiled in war because of cultural barriers – to a
“Type One Civilization”: a globally integrated, “multicultural, scientific,
tolerant society.” If we can communicate with someone across the world in an
instant, initiate trans-national economic programs such as the European Union,
and speak a near-global language (English), then Kaku believes we are on our
way to a truly global society – in his mind, a scientific utopia in which
rationality and tolerance trumps the bitter exclusivity of religion, and war
becomes but a memory.
At first glance it’s difficult to
determine the proper reaction to this revelation: should we be filled with hope
for a potential future in which everything that marked the human race as fallen
– conflict, strife, corruption, greed, vanity – could be eradicated in a
completely transformative scientific revolution? Or should we be troubled at
the thought of man’s brilliance unleashed, determined to “fix” the world? I
suppose it depends on the sort of tools required for such a task.
It is a question as old as the human
conscience, as old as the ability to peer beyond ourselves and see that
something is wrong with the state of things. Perhaps we were too content in our
old world of savagery and passion – perhaps we were not determined enough, like
the brightest scientists of the modern age, to not only understand the workings
of the world but also seek to improve it. Perhaps even when the course of human
existence was changed in the moment of the Incarnation, when the one true God
became flesh, we were not yet disturbed or moved enough to change things. But
that would be operating under the assumption that man, in all his ambition and
brilliance, can endeavor to change the human condition.
In accordance with the online
knowledge forum Big Think, several
scientists were asked to envision a world without religion. Robert Wright,
author of Evolution of God, offered
that the moral progress “required to save the world” could exist without
religion, but was quick to say that the perfect society need not shed religious
ideas per se – merely that any
religion allowed to exist must be perfectly tolerant of other beliefs. The
famed evolutionary biologist (and self-avowed enemy of religion) Richard
Dawkins commented, in his customarily sardonic way, that in the godless world
“we could get on with our science as science
and not have to worry about whether we are giving offense to people who get
their beliefs from holy books rather than from evidence.” Dawkins also pointed
out that our public discourse would move away from anything dependent upon
absolutist criteria, but rather those criteria that are based on suffering.
This latter idea is not a pleasant one, particularly if it indicates a movement
away from an absolute moral code. Nevertheless, Dawkins perceives this movement
not as an abolition of morality, but rather a redefinition.
According to these brilliant men, we
could still achieve a healthy and moral world should the dangerous evils of
Islam, Christianity, and other world religions happen to fall away. In fact, according
to Kaku we might even have a better shot at it were all the cultural barriers
to disintegrate. If only the human race could rally together and forget those
things that divide us; if only we could be like the truly enlightened men who
understand the inevitable triumph of scientific reasoning. Of course, it only
takes a single person to reject the utopian philosophy and embrace his own, to
make himself a god over other men, for the system to fall into chaos. We need only
look to such individuals – Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and countless others – who
have proven the incurable illness in man’s soul.
In listening to the theoretical musings
of the world’s smartest men, I sometimes feel as if I had fallen backwards in
time, rather than forwards. It would appear that we are trying to recapture the
philosophy of the Enlightenment – that man is the undisputed master and
corrector of his world, capable of self-perfection. And what of the
philosophical shifts that occurred in that movement’s wake? The rational
naturalists gave way to the Romantics, who wrestled with the heart as well as
the head, who began to observe a beauty in the world and a tragedy in the human
spirit. The rise of Industrialism gave us hope in the machine, and a chance at
betterment at progress – until the machine was twisted into weaponry and used
to slaughter men. Since the rise and fall of our two great wars and the ruinous
aftermath, we are still locked in philosophical struggle to understand why, in
the words of Dr. Janusz Bardach, “man is wolf to man.” Were we to deny the
crippled state of man’s conscience, of his inexplicable aversion to the moral,
his amazing capacity to abuse his own life and the lives of others, or his
clinging to hatred and rejection of compassion, we would become fools indeed.
But then again, “Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Cor.
1:20).
As the believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ, we have a distinct advantage. We know that man’s condition is not that
of the material which the enlightened have endeavored to mend, but that of a
spiritual fabric unraveled and unworthy before the Holy God. Not only this, but
we know the one true cure, the one thing that fixes the broken man and makes
him whole. This beautiful knowledge is no secret to us, though it may be a
mystery, and we are not burdened but rather privileged with the task of setting
it loose upon the world. Perhaps this issue, like all other issues of the earth,
comes back to faith – do we believe that God can fix man’s condition? Perhaps
we will never see the laying down of arms in the world of men, but we are
promised that sight in the Kingdom of God. That is a braver, newer, and more
wonderful world than we could ever hope to imagine.
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