TechnoBaal?

Posted on December 26, 2006 in Morals & Ethics Pontiff Watch

Would Jesus own a computer? Would Elijah call down a power surge?

The Pope got on world television yesterday and implored his audience “to worship God and not technology“. It’s the old “don’t be a materialist/don’t be greedy” line that has led some to declare themselves blasphemers because they use computers. Others have begun to propose throwbacks to ancient means of communication such as carrier pigeons.

What most of these are missing is that this is a call to avoid materialism, which is a philosophy that demands that we only give the homage due to the real to that which is material. Indeed jeff greco firmly sets himself up in the materialist camp when he declares

technology is making our lives a hell of a lot better than it is making it worse. One of the things I’m most thankful for is that I live in an age of astonishing technological progress, and that I get to be a witness – and perhaps a bit of a participant – to all that’s been developing.

I don’t believe that you need to be an atheist to act materialist. I think, for example, of all those plastic Jesuses that used to grace the dashboard or the Virgin Mary who popped up in a corn tortilla or the recent reappearance of the Nepalese Buddha Boy. When we face the prospect of the insubstantial, we grasp for the physical to affirm our belief. Observe the declaration at Classical Values:

Technology and science have helped us live longer, eat better, housed, clothed, and entertained us as well.

What has the Maker done for us lately? Well, given us the brains and culture to make all the technology stuff happen.

There is a very important place for the spiritual (the practice of science and especially technology is very spiritual – honesty and truth are required every step of the way – you can’t lie to Mother Nature). However, the Pope ought to embrace (co-opt) science and technology. His fight against it is not only in vain. It is stupid.

Such thoughts can be marked as the opposite of Faith which does not seek for proof of the will of God in human affairs.

As an agnostic, I, of course, don’t go hunting around for a God or for proof that there is no God. I am very much like a person of faith in that I don’t see the need for any certainty beyond the material. Nor do I use the material as an instrument for detecting the incorporeal. I am comfortable with the possibility that there is no moral authority intrinsic in the workings of the universe and yet I will continue to endeavor to be, before other things, a good person.

As such, computer user that I am, I do not reverence technology any more than I reverence plastic Jesuses. Life wasn’t all that much harder without computers: we tended to interact more with our neighbors and weren’t so charged up to make superfortunes in a hurry. What technology has done, in the absence of moral guidance, has allowed some people to propagate some of the worst about what is human.

We should not put computers and their conveniences before being human beings. It is important to remember that there are faces peering at the other end of the fiber optic cables. Morality, I think is founded on the concept that you are human and so am I. We make an exchange of goodness and keep that market active in the trading of shares.