God, Religion, Science and Technology
TOM TALKS TECH
After reading and writing about science and technology for many decades, and recovering from three recent heart attacks, I was browsing through the Bible the other day looking for loopholes.
I started, as one must, with The Book of Genesis, which describes how God made the man and the woman, and gave them two unique gifts: a big brain relative to body size (dinosaurs had bodies that weighed tons and brains that weighed ounces), and hands able to grasp and manipulate objects.
And with these gifts, it seems God uniquely set humans up among all other creatures to exercise our curiosity (that is, to do Science), and manipulate our surroundings (the enterprise of Technology) with our acquired knowledge.
Then the story (written, you will recall, by people who loved God) goes all cattywampus. Graced by God with a big brain, boiling over with curiosity, living next to The Tree of Knowledge, God tells Adam and Eve not to exercise their curiosity. “Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge, or YOU’LL REGRET IT!”
Now, I know the text says “Knowledge of Good and Evil,” but all knowledge is value-laden. Unlike data or information which are facts for their own sake, knowledge puts the burden of ethics or appropriate action on someone.
Information will confirm that a Mr. Bert and a Mr. Ernie live 123 Sesame St. But if I now find out that place is on fire, and Bert and Ernie are trapped inside. This is knowledge and I have to respond in some way.
I can sound an alarm, or I can risk my own life to rush in and save them. Or I can say, “Heck with them. Never did like those guys.” But like it or not, this knowledge has involved me in the event.
So then why would God give Adam and Eve and all of us a brain and curiosity and then forbid us to use them. And, of course, the punishment in that case was horrible beyond measure. Adam, Eve and all of us were cast out of the Garden of Eden to sweat for our daily bread, suffer to bring children into the world, then grow old, get sick and die.
We are told it was the slithering, deceiving Serpent, the devil, the one with no limbs, the moving alimentary canal that exists only to satisfy his appetites, he it was that brought us to our downfall. But was the Serpent the devil or in fact the true and real God, urging us to use the gift of our curiosity?
We have brains, let’s use them. Not just to collect and assemble bits of information and data, but to think through it all to benefit the thinker, as well as the community in which s/he lives.
Following this very disturbing story we come next to the people of Babel desiring to build a tower to reach up to God. Is God happy to see them use their dexterous hands and ingenuity to engineer their way up to him?
No way, Renee.
He inflicts on them the “confusion of tongues” so the Babylonian builders can no longer communicate with each other. Which then sets one group against another, and marks the beginning of civil discord and civil war.
So, again, is God the devil, and vice versa? Whose side is whom on? Is this why there has been such a lack of understanding between the scientific/engineering communities and faith communities?
Consider the price we have paid for this confounding story. Even in our own time, physicists design nuclear weapons, and engineers build missiles to deliver them. And to pay for this we have gutted our health care, education, public infrastructure, the common good and common decency.
And this is where our belief system, at least in the Western world, has brought us: worshipping a God who gave us a brain to seek knowledge, then inflicted unimaginable suffering on us for doing just that. And cursed us with civil discord for using our common tools to approach him.
Now what?
© 2022 Thomas Mahon
