Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Humanity in the Absence of A Creator - Modernism
Marshall Berman, in his work Why modernism still matters, makes the claim that humanity's identify is a process of modern science, art, technology, economics, politics "making all things new". He juxtaposes this idea against the biblical reference in Revelations 21:5 - And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He *said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” This idea of separation of humanity from the creator, and making humanity the creator is the modernist view of the world. The issue at hand is the quest of humanity to control and understand the existence of humanity. A life long pursuit to gain understanding of one's existence is a noble pursuit. A life long pursuit to become the creator of one's existence in the absence of the knowledge of a creator becomes dangerous. "YOUR THOUGHTS"
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POST BY: Dr. Ryan, Professor, School of Advanced Military Studies
ReplyDeleteThe modern project as exemplified by Sir Francis Bacon sought to replace God not with man but with Mother Nature. Instead of building cathedrals in His name, cathedrals of nature, such as the Natural History Museum in London and University College in Toronto, were erected in honor of Her. But the invention of Nature goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, who first distinguished between humans and Nature, as if we were apart from, rather than a part of Nature. This distinction was continued within the Abrahamic religions, which saw Humans as different in kind from other animals, plants, and bacteria. I disagree that modernity makes man the creator. I would say that modernity makes nature the creator, with man as the controller of nature through the invention of technology, which can be manipulated instrumentally to fulfill human desires. As scientists have developed theories explaining the operation of the natural world, they have tried to minimise their assumptions. They have not needed to make an assumption of the existence of God to explain the operation of the four fundamental forces of physics, the laws of chemistry, the origin of life, the evolution of species, or the emergence of consciousness (such as the latter is understood at all). Therefore, from the modern view, invoking the existence of God is unhelpful, since it does not provide an explanation (a God as original cause is infinitely complex, more complex than its creation, and therefore does not count as an explanation). An interventionist God is excedingly unlikely, since this would require the existence of miracles (supernatural phenomena), which are by definition events that any rational, skeptical inquirer would discount (this argument has been advanced by many, including Bertrand Russell). A modern scientist should be open to the possibility of a creator, but would require a very heavy burden of publicly observable proof before they would accept this possibility, a standard of proof that no religion claims to meet. Most scientists are happy for others to hold religious beliefs, so long as they confine these expressions to metaphysical, rather than physical claims (unfortunately religious texts also contain many physical claims that have been falsified by science). As I see it, the dangers of Modernity do not come from its marginalisation of religion to the realm of metaphysics. Rather, the modern project can dehumanise interpersonal relationships, ignore negative externalities of human commerce, and destroy our natural resources for short term human ends. This is what Marxists, Critical theorists, post-structuralists, and ecologists criticize the Western modern project for. And even though these critical reactions have failed to construct a viable alternative to modern Western capitalism, their critiques do contain some merit..
Dexter wrote: "I don’t think you have to have a central creator when you study humanities but you should acknowledge one when you study the in western / Middle Eastern belief systems. What most humanities study miss the understanding western and eastern philosophies to include their religions to include the indigenous’ systems as well. Finally they should explain logic and reasoning from both eastern and western view points."
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