“You Shall Be Like God”: Technology from Sub-creation to Displacing the Creator Part 3
Modernism and Postmodernism: Shifting our Views of Reality
The Modern Era
The era known as the Modern Era is a somewhat broad and ill-defined term that roughly dates from the time of the Reformation and Renaissance through the early 20th Century. This era saw a rise in trust in human reason and its ability to grasp ultimate truth. This era included both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, as well as the later Industrial Revolution.
From a philosophical perspective, the Enlightenment gave the impression that the physical world can be “disenchanted” through scientific exploration. Max Weber wrote about how “scientific progress” ushered in a “disenchantment of the world.”[1] By this, Weber doesn’t just mean that the idea of fairies and goblins was discarded. Rather, prior to the Modern Era there was an overarching belief that God was working in and through the world. The world was seen as moved by God and sometimes other creatures – angelic, demonic, or otherwise. Now, however, the world came to be understood as working purely by mechanical principles; therefore, if we can just understand those mechanical principles, we can understand the very workings of the world.
For some, this led to a “God of the Gaps” approach. According to this approach, whenever a phenomenon could not be explained, it was asserted that God made that happen. But as science was able to explain more and more, the gaps shrank, and the “God Hypothesis” seemed less and less necessary. For Christians, there was a great danger, because by trying to find a place for God in the mechanistic world, they were trying to fit God into their theory rather than having God’s lordship drive their understanding of the world.
It is not surprise that this led many to a rejection of God and the rise of atheism. For many, Darwin’s Origin of Species finally closed the last gap and provided a naturalistic explanation for the source of life.[2]
The rejection of God has led to splitting the physical from the spiritual, the natural from the supernatural. The Enlightenment and modernism exalted the physical and pushed the supernatural to the fringes of life.[3] This led to many Christians to treating faith in God as something that has little to do with this life. Society’s approach said, if you are concerned in the afterlife and believe in that sort of thing, then you might want religion for that. But, for everyday life, there was little need for God.
“Science” has declared that natural science is the only true source of knowledge, including that of God. [4] By the early 20th century, the philosophical movement known as “logical positivism” argued that all religious language was meaningless. While logical positivism ultimately imploded, the damage was done, and many stopped looking for truth in religion. The discipline of Apologetics, which seeks to defend Christianity on the ground rules defined by the sciences, arose in response to this.
As philosophy and science have progressed from the Enlightenment on, they have moved more and more away from a Christian worldview and therefore they have become more relativistic and pragmatic.[5] While there still are the hard sciences that search to understand how things work in the world, applied science has come to the forefront of society. Consider the contemporary university, most students are there not to learn about morals, God, or ultimate reality, but to learn a trade. Most question the value of any concept if it is not immediately practical.
For our world today, technology is what really matters. We prize technology above almost everything else. Neil Postman argued in 1992 that technology has taken over our thought by defining our language. Postman wrote: “Technology imperiously commandeers our most important terminology. In[DH1] redefines ‘freedom,’ ‘truth.’ ‘intelligence,’ ‘fact,’ ‘wisdom,’ ‘memory,’ ‘history.’” [6]
Postmodernism: Man as Creator
As a result of our faith in technology, our society has largely rejected God as the Creator. Even many Christians hold to forms of evolution that push God’s creative work to the side. Now the bold next step has taken place. We are now replacing God as creator and seeking to put ourselves into this place. While Modernism downplayed God as creator, Postmodernism elevates man as the new creator.
C. S. Lewis recognized this shift was happening. In his book, That Hideous Strength, he connects our present desire for technological advancement and control with the Tower of Babel.[7] In this book, Lewis imagines a modern, British attempt to use science and technology to throw off our creaturely constraints and take a God-like role of creating a perfect world. Lewis actually points directly to the Tower of Babel with his title, which comes from David Lyndsay’s 1555 poem, Ane Dialog betuix Experience and ane Courteour in which he refers to the Tower of Babel as so large that “The shadow of that hideous strength, Six miles and more it is of length.” Lyndsay’s Middle Scottish term “Strength” refers not to physical power but to a castle or fortress. Therefore, the phrase was calling the Tower of Babel a hideous fortress tower. Thus, Lewis was pointing out that our growing faith in technology is creating a new Tower of Babel.[8]
Today, of course, we have moved into the era of Postmodernism, though some now say that we are in post-postmodernism or even post-post-postmodernism. In this greater postmodern era, there is a new belief in mankind as creators. After modernism pushed God out of the creator role, now postmodernism has put man in place of God as creator.
Strictly speaking, Postmodernism arose out of linguistic theory, first arguing that we cannot know an author’s true meaning because we might understand the words but define them differently. This idea was then pushed to argue we cannot know reality because we are caught in our own linguistic world. However, we now find that people argue that they can define their own reality. The best example is in transgenderism, where an individual’s proclamation that they are male or female is defended as their reality. Not only that, but now everyone else is supposed to honor and accept that reality. Have you noticed what has happened? In the Bible we are told that God created by speaking, but today people try to create reality through speech.
In the next post I will look at some ways to assess technologies.
[1] Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 129–56.
[2] Technically, Darwinism doesn’t account for the source of life, but how different life forms developed. Nevertheless, many attribute this to Darwinism.
[3] Gene Edward Veith, Post Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 38.
[4] Veith, Post Christian, chap. 3.
[5] Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1976), chap. 7.
[6] Neil Postman, Technopoly : The Surrender of Culture to Technology /, 1st ed. (New York : Knopf, 1992), 8.
[7] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grownups (New York: Macmillan, 1965).
[8] Peter Schakel, “That ‘Hideous Strength’ in Lewis and Orwell: A Comparison and Contrast.,” Mythlore 13.4 (1987): 36–40.
[DH1]It? I didn't want to just change it since it is in a quote.