Science and the Meaning of Progress

 Science and the meaning of progress


Before the arrival of modern astronomy and the natural sciences, humans believed that they had a special place in the universe, and each person, born into the christian faith, had a special connection to the universe, more specifically to its creator God. Although God was omnipotent and omniscient, he was at the same time deeply concerned with human affairs, moreover, our religion taught us that we could even communicate with him, plead with him. and live our life according to his will. It wasn't god who created man in his image, but man who created god in his image.Not only that, but God sent his only son to earth to give humans a way to redeem themselves from sin. Subtract from that god, and you lose the connection between  God, the universe, and humans, the highly personal connection which was allocated to each person in virtue of being created by him. Now the universe was a cold, indifferent place, and there was nobody up there to talk with. This realization is something humans are still having to come to terms with. questions like: “do we have a soul”, “what is consciousness”, “what happens to us after we die”, “do we have a purpose in life”, etc. are existential questions which we had the answer to before the scientific revolution. They were all explainable, to some degree through the myth of of our christian religion. Now they are left blank and we face the complete absence of any values at all, we face nihilism. The big question we have to answer now, is:how do we square the progress of humanity, the need to be open minded, the relentless corrosion of of our societal fabric, with the the need to have a set of immutable values to live by, a need to have a place to call home, the need to feel special in the eyes of some supernatural being. This chasm between relentless, progressive scientific and technological progress, and the need to have a fixed moral code or at least a belief in some form of purpose in life (for me morals and the meaning of life are deeply inextricably connected) is almost impossible to reconcile. without someone above, some paternal figure guiding and observing us, we feel lost. We have come to accept that there is no cyclical or limited nature to our human civilization in the same way as seasons are cyclical, there is no second home for us, there is no paradise, there is no myth to explain natural phenomena or human actions, there is no myth to deceive ourselves with anymore, we are faced with the brutal prospects of becoming obsolete. What will future civilizations care for our deeds in the here and now? What future civilizations care about even our most revered democratic institutions thousands of years from now. what significance do my actions have on a grand scale? None at all! As soon as we accepted this materialist, mechanical universe we accept that what we do is only relevant to the present, that all we have is the present life and nothing more. As an intelligent species endowed with consciousness, we are all born truth seekers, but built into that truth seeking is a limiting belief which is that there is a truth, and that that truth exists out there and can be found. Truth existed as an immortal form outside of our world but still accessible to us. But now we believe that there is no truth in the sense of Truth with a capital “T”. There are true things, true statements within our language and logic but no such a thing as TRUTH. As far as science is concerned everything can be questioned. Something is only true because it hasn't been refuted yet. Moreover scientific analysis shows us that humans are not in fact designed to be  truth seeking, But that consciousness was designed for survival and adaptation which means all of our judgements about the world might be false. We cannot go back and live according to some myth anymore, we have already opened pandora's box, we have already left Plato's cave, we have already eaten from the tree of knowledge - there is no going back, to go back would be folly, mere madness. So what hopes do we have for the human species? How long will it last until it is replaced by another more advanced form of intelligence. Do we have any choice but to reject all forms of tradition as irrational remnants of our primitive past and wholeheartedly embrace progress? Even to embrace progress at all costs? What would that mean for us? Would it mean that so many things we hold dear and fought for will be trivial, that possibly suffering will be meaningless?

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