Faith and Science for Life on Earth

Modern science has had a great impact upon life and humanity. Up to the present time an optimistic view of science has prevailed: the development of science and its practical component, technology is regarded as having improved human life. Science and technology are expected to overcome destructive forces and bring security; to overcome disease through development of modern medical science and technology; to overcome hunger through the increased production of food; and to improve the overall quality of life. Today, however, these claims are being questioned in many quarters.
   To understand the nature of the advances in science and technology is no longer simple. It is not merely a question of instrumentality or usefulness, but involves the questions of value and power. Science and technology cannot be seen in isolation, but must be seen in the context of social systems. Furthermore, they should be seen in the context of technocracy--the system of society in which science and technology play the predominant role. Technocratic power and its technocratic elite rule the society, controlling its centre. Modern science and technology thus become an integral part of power in the society, the state and the market.
   Let us look critically at the reality of science and technology from the faith perspective. Modern science provided a new foundation for human epistemology: unless something is scientific, it cannot be regarded as true. There are many variations of this modern dictum, mainly Cartesian or Kantian. It has had profound impacts upon faith and theology: no religious statement can be true unless it meets the test of the modern scientific dictum. Modern reason has come to dominate historical reason, and historical reason has dismantled the religious texts, especially the Bible, because the Biblical statements do not meet the criteria of modern scientific reason. Thus traditional theological statements about faith have been dismissed as ambiguous.
   Therefore, in order to make a ‘true’ theological statement, one must meet the criteria of reason. The decision of theologians—from modern theologians to creation scientists—to meet this challenge of modernity on its own terms has influenced the nature of modern theology tremendously. As this trend has dominated the Western theological community, the discipline of theology has joined all the other academic disciplines in ‘Cartesian captivity.’
   Let us take a look at three aspects of science and technology from the faith perspective, based on its fundamental relation to human beings and all life on earth. What does science and technology mean for human and other earthly life?
 
Cogito ergo sum: In relation to human and other life as Subject(s)
Modern science presupposes the human being as a rational subject who can make a true, universal, a priori judgment that is the same all the time and everywhere. What is not rational is not valid. Faith, on the other hand, while recognizing a rational aspect of the human subject, also affirms the integral subjecthood of the human being. Especially, faith affirms the spiritual self as the centre of human selfhood.
    Modern science does not recognize the community as subject: the human subject must be an individual, whose quality is judged according to the ability to think and act rationally. Faith recognizes the human community as a body – a living entity consisting of the collective subject.
   Modern science assigns rationality exclusively to humans. Other existence has no rational subjecthood, or no subject. This represents an extreme human-centrism. Faith, on the contrary, recognizes life as a whole—all living things—to be subject(s). Faith recognizes the subjecthood of all living creatures in both individual and collective terms.
   Due to its captivity to modern scientific rationality, faith has developed a theology that is rational—manifested, for example, in theological individualism and theological human-centrism. Theology has been strongly influenced by the reductionist view of the human subject, and has lost much of its semantics of spirituality and mystery of life due to the influence of modern rationality.
 
In relation to epistemology: reduction, objectification, and unlimited abstraction
 Modern scientific epistemology uses a reductionist approach to know the object, atomizing it to its smallest irreducible element in order to achieve rational validity and certainty. The Cartesian cogito and the Kantian analysis have exemplified this kind of methodology. Faith rather knows all things in a wholistic way; and recognizes the subject-object relation as not completely separate but mutually participatory.
   In modern science, the object is so completely objectified that it does not constitute the essence of knowledge. The objectification of all things to be known means that the knower ‘conquers’ the known. Faith knows the known as its partner. The knower is also known to the known, for all things are part and parcel of life as a whole, including so-called inanimate things.
   Modern epistemology reaches its peak in cybernetics. Already scientific thinking, as in mathematics, can stretch its imagination infinitely. Cybernetics is a technological expression of modern science that opens up the world of virtual space and time. Therefore, modern epistemology allows its knowing subject to roam in unlimited space and time without limits. Faith knows and acts in concrete, fundamental life. God is not virtual reality, nor separate from the living reality.
 
In relation to power: the symbiosis of modern science and technology with the powers-that-be
In the context of globalization – the symbiosis of science and technology with the powers and principalities of the market – there emerge several problems related to the context of life on earth. Modern science itself ‘conquers’ its object on an epistemological level. Its basic structure is oriented to the domination of the subject over the object. That is, modern scientific rationality inherently wields epistemological control over the object to be known.
   Faith is alien to the rationality of domination. Faith seeks to love all beings for the sake of life. Faith rejects any absolute truth, religious or scientific, that would dictate ‘the truth.’ Faith calls all talents and abilities to be stewards to life in the cosmos. In our Confucian culture, wisdom of life is the priority, and all scientific and technological talents are to serve life, not to dominate it.
   When modern science and technology converge with the dominant political and economic powers, not only do they become instruments of control, but their innate nature converges with the human greed for power and domination. Modern science is an epistemological dictatorship. It is no wonder that we find the powerful institutions of transnational corporations and big industrial states housing modern sciences and technology.
   Faith seeks the liberation of all living creatures into partnership with God, freed from ‘Babylonian’ captivity. The empires have harnessed science and technology for domination and conquest. Modern empires have harnessed modern science and technology to dominate and conquer all other powers. Modern wars have been a great political impetus for scientific and technological advancement. Faith recognizes only love, justice and peace in God’s care for the whole of life.
 
Science and technology in the life of people
The advances of modern science and technology have been claimed as a ‘gospel’ for the people in terms of the eradication of hunger and poverty, and eradication of diseases, which destroy life on a massive scale. This claim has been used to justify economic growth, which requires scientific and technological research and development. But we must seriously question this claim. Hunger, poverty and disease have not in fact been eradicated in spite of the immense growth of the industrial economy and the accompanying scientific and technological advancement. Scrutiny of this claim is required, especially in the case of biotechnology.
   Inherently, modern science and technology are not democratic in their nature or their use. There is neither popular control over modern science and technology, nor do they follow democratic processes. One of the key assumptions of the WCC-sponsored MIT conference on Faith and Science was that the specialized character of scientific knowledge and technological know-how excludes democratic access and participation. In addition, the global regimes on patents and intellectual property rights prevent the free flow of scientific knowledge and technology.
   Science and technology also exclude people in general, for most are not trained as scientists or technologists, and thus they have no control over these agencies. Consequently the people become objects to be dominated by the technocratic agencies, such as the bureaucratic and military establishments and the transnational corporations.
   Faith serves the people as subjects for life in justice and peace. It is not possible for faith to accept the notion of ‘neutrality’ of scientific knowledge and technological instrumentality.
   The experience of Asia is that in the process of modernization and industrialization the people have suffered a great deal. That suffering demands scrutiny of the role of science and technology in the modern history of Asia.
 
Science and technology for life as a whole
Western modern science and technology have penetrated into the Asian civilization with a corrosive impact (Arnold Toynbee, The West and the World), dismantling the ‘organic’ civilizational tissue of life of the people. Theo van Leeuwen[1] claims that modern science and technology have enabled the rise of the totalitarian powers that have caused such immense suffering of people. In the recent history of Asia and the third world, the industrialization project was carried out by military technocrats. In Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and so on, the modernization project was supervised by military elites with close connections to US military and political power. And this process has been closely linked to penetration by the transnational corporations of modern industry.
   The project of modernization and industrialization has brought not only the erosion of traditional civilizations and cultures, but also the destruction of the Asian life ecology. This damage cannot be estimated quantitatively; we can only note that it is limitless and without a foreseeable end.
   At the heart of the modernization and industrialization of Asia – consisting mainly of the penetration of Western modernity – science and technology have had a destructive impact on Asia in various areas: the military (militarization), industry, media, the biotech industry, and informatics. This situation must be seen in the context of the global extension and adaptation of Western technocracy.
 
The impact of cybernetics upon life on earth
By cybernetics we mean the comprehensive nexus of mathematics, artificial intelligence, informatics and technetronics that constitutes the virtual world. The internet is a manifestation of cybernetics in the communications network. This world of cybernetics—the virtual world, the most advanced form of modern science and technology at the present time—is radically different from the mechanical world. Its space and time are organized in a way that is completely detached from the Newtonian absolute space and absolute time. The cybernetic world floats on its own without relation to the actual world. I would like to point out seven different areas where the convergence of cybernetics with the actual world creates a great impact.
   Ecological destruction as a consequence of industrialization has already been mentioned. When cybernetics is applied to industrial production, the dynamics of the automated mechanical processes are transformed by increasing accelerations of speed and limitless expansion of space. The biotech industry has integrated cybernetics as an integral dimension, for the production of genetic modifications and the promotion of eugenics, for example. This result is increased pressure on the ecology of life, placing it under grave threat of degradation and destruction.
    The military hegemonic power in present-day global geo-politics has integrated cybernetics into its military science and technology. The virtual cybernetic process determines military strategy and tactics, as we see in today’s unimaginably destructive weapons systems and devastating wars. The current US war on Iraq is a prime example; some regard this war as omnicidal. The military training in the virtual world is directly transferred to virtual actions in the battlefield, which bring about colossal destruction of the life, human and natural.
   In the global economic system as well, the corporate technocracy utilizes cybernetics—for example, in the casino economy with its financial system based on speculation. Today global financial transactions cannot work without cybernetics. In the global market the transnational corporate agencies expand their power and maximize their profits through reliance upon cybernetics for production and transactions. This unbalanced global economic system in which corporate powers expand without restriction, has brought increasing hunger and poverty in the world.
   The political technocracy likewise is a convergence of cybernetics with politics. For example, political surveillance is carried out efficiently by means of cybernetic technology. Political information and communication are controlled through cybernetics, which obviously is detrimental to people’s participation. Cybernetic technology constitutes a big problem for political democracy, as its convergence with politics is eroding the national sovereignty of nation states. Thus the use of cybernetics in political technocracy presents a problem not only for national sovereignty but also for the sovereignty of the people, as intelligence and surveillance operations by the state and corporate agencies encroach on political life.
   Social contradictions are intensified and become more complex as all social relations are organized in accordance with the virtual world of cybernetics. Individuals in society act anonymously and social relations are organized in virtual space without actual interactions. The people who live in this virtual society are detached from the actual world. This ‘cybernetization’ of society accelerates the logic of social Darwinism, which will result in the creation of a violent vortex of contradictions and conflicts in the actual world as well as in virtual space. Cybernetic social control and surveillance is an example of this contradiction.
   Colonization of the mind, consciousness, perceptions and spiritual sense: The organization of communications in cybernetic terms colonizes cultural life, eroding and destroying national cultural identities and cultural values through cybernetic cultural interactions. As cultures are turned into commodities in the global market, the disintegration of peoples’ actual cultural life is accelerated, leaving in its place a wasteland of cultural impoverishment. Virtualization of the cultural activities such as in music, imaging and video detaches cultural experiences from actuality of the life, thus emptying the vitality of life in cultural experiences of the community.
   Subjugation of the spirit: The pervasive encroachment of the cybernetic world into the life of the community affects people’s religious life. Life is originally a spiritual entity with mystery in its depths. But just as modern science dismissed the religious dimension of life as ambiguous, cybernetic space is turning and reducing the actual religious world into a virtual word. The spiritual semantics of the religious community are in serious danger of becoming empty semiotics.
 
In conclusion
Is it possible to tame science and technology? To control the power of cybernetics? To transform the dynamics of cybernetics to serve people and the rest of life on earth? We have been dealing with the issue of ‘faith and science’ based on the presupposition that science and technology are intrinsically good, and that their value is dependent upon their use. Neutrality and utility have been key concepts in understanding science and technology and in making ethical judgments. Here, we have taken the position that modern science and technology are inherently problematic, and that the critical issue is the symbiosis of modern science and technology with the powers and principalities.
    What is faith in this situation? Does faith have any alternative vision for life and the people of the earth? What is this vision? We believe that the wisdom of the Christian faith and other faiths of the people carry visions of an integrity of life on earth for all living beings, free from domination by the principalities and powers.
 
 
Professor Kim Yong-Bock is Chancellor of the Advanced Institute for the Study of Life, Seoul, Korea.
[1] Christianity in World History