Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Is progress inevitable?
I've run into some people from the secular side who have a curious idea that "progress is inevitable." Things are just going to progress (meaning get better.) Where does this strange idea come from?
One thought is from science. Science, practically alone among human activities, does in fact have a directional trend. The scientific method (if honestly followed, an increasingly strained assumption) has self correcting tendencies. Scientific descriptions of nature do tend to more and more closely approach reality. Science does progress and the backtracks tend to be temporary.
We are surrounded by science and its results. I'm sitting at a computer that would have been inconceivable forty years ago. My job as a pathologist requires use of antibodies that are basically manufactured at our will.
Does this atmosphere of scientific progress make us assume that other areas of our life just automatically progress along too?
Another source of the progress myth is Marxism and its spinoffs. I'm no expert, but it seems like Marx supposed that social progress is also inevitable and predicted its direction. Of course he was wrong in most of his predictions, but that hasn't stopped his idea of social progress from taking hold.
Religion, politics, human relationships, economic systems, and philosophy don't have the kinds of mechanisms that science has to measure progress. Most agree when a scientific theory needs to be replaced; there is new data. But who agrees on political progress? Is it progressive to increase taxes or to decrease them? Is it progressive to label some forms of free speech "hate speech" and prosecute? Is it progressive to reinterpret phrases in the Bible completely differently from previously to suit modern taste? Is it progressive to move away from traditional family structure (which we all recognize had its flaws) toward a completely free flowing individualistic whatever I want goes unstructure? If you assume that "progress is inevitable" you may be forced to answer yes to some of these.
As a Christian, I think I am obliged to NOT think that human progress is inevitable. Our culture has forgotten an important truth about humans, that we are not perfectable. Any human good contains within it a small potential seed of evil. Things will change, but it is not guaranteed that any human system will improve.
As a PhD scientist, I even have experimental evidence: 6 million Jews killed by Nazi's, 20-40 million Russians killed by Stalin, 30-70 million Chinese killed by Mao, Rwanda genocide of 800,000 in a few days, etc.
What do you think?
One thought is from science. Science, practically alone among human activities, does in fact have a directional trend. The scientific method (if honestly followed, an increasingly strained assumption) has self correcting tendencies. Scientific descriptions of nature do tend to more and more closely approach reality. Science does progress and the backtracks tend to be temporary.
We are surrounded by science and its results. I'm sitting at a computer that would have been inconceivable forty years ago. My job as a pathologist requires use of antibodies that are basically manufactured at our will.
Does this atmosphere of scientific progress make us assume that other areas of our life just automatically progress along too?
Another source of the progress myth is Marxism and its spinoffs. I'm no expert, but it seems like Marx supposed that social progress is also inevitable and predicted its direction. Of course he was wrong in most of his predictions, but that hasn't stopped his idea of social progress from taking hold.
Religion, politics, human relationships, economic systems, and philosophy don't have the kinds of mechanisms that science has to measure progress. Most agree when a scientific theory needs to be replaced; there is new data. But who agrees on political progress? Is it progressive to increase taxes or to decrease them? Is it progressive to label some forms of free speech "hate speech" and prosecute? Is it progressive to reinterpret phrases in the Bible completely differently from previously to suit modern taste? Is it progressive to move away from traditional family structure (which we all recognize had its flaws) toward a completely free flowing individualistic whatever I want goes unstructure? If you assume that "progress is inevitable" you may be forced to answer yes to some of these.
As a Christian, I think I am obliged to NOT think that human progress is inevitable. Our culture has forgotten an important truth about humans, that we are not perfectable. Any human good contains within it a small potential seed of evil. Things will change, but it is not guaranteed that any human system will improve.
As a PhD scientist, I even have experimental evidence: 6 million Jews killed by Nazi's, 20-40 million Russians killed by Stalin, 30-70 million Chinese killed by Mao, Rwanda genocide of 800,000 in a few days, etc.
What do you think?
