“Roddenberry’s Star Trek gave us the United Federation of Planets, a meta-government that spanned human space. He envisioned humanity as ultimately perfectible. While perfection remained out of reach, the notion that it was even achievable seems, perhaps, hopelessly naïve and idealistic.” (http://sci-fi.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Star_Trek_-_Gene_Roddenberry)
Naïve it may be, but even today, the Second Gospel of Science Fiction is predicated on the firm belief that Humanity will be able to create a general society that is peaceful, poverty-free and refuses to embrace divisive religion. This Gospel wants nothing to do with God. It assumes that Humanity’s baser instincts are essentially tamable and that with basic research, technological development, philosophy, sociology and psychology as our tools, we will be able to create ourselves as a “new humanity”.
The Humanist Manifesto is a series of documents signed by tens of thousands of people who have set out to do just this. (http://www.americanhumanist.org/3/HumandItsAspirations.htm). Isaac Asimov was a signatory of the Manifesto II and his works clearly proclaim the idea that we can perfect ourselves and need no outside help – especially supernatural outside help. Others who have the same beliefs use their fiction (first and foremost) to entertain, but certainly somewhere down the list of “why did I write this story?” they harbor a desire to promote their belief in the ultimate perfectibility of Humanity.
My contention is that Humanity is NOT perfectible. The Bible notes this – some of the observations are made by verifiable historical figures whose wisdom has been passed down through the ages: “…the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives.” (Ecclesiastes 9:3) and “They are corrupt and have committed abominable injustice. There is no one who does good…every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 52: 1-3) are both examples of simple observation.
Some might contend that Humanity is no longer the same organism David observed 4000 years ago. A quick scan of msn.com or a newspaper; a talk with a retired person or an inner city classroom teacher or an organic dairy farmer in rural Wisconsin will present anecdotal evidence that “things haven’t gotten better since (FILL IN THE BLANK WITH A YEAR), they’ve gotten worse!”
They aren’t going to get any better as long as we leave ourselves in charge of the renovation. We cannot manifest our way out of a technologically more advanced slide into deeper and deeper sin. Satan will continue to take marvelous inventions and through his Human agents, pervert them to something ugly (“60% of all website visits are sexual in nature” MSNBC Survey 2000, http://www.blazinggrace.org/pornstatistics.htm). Any Democrat will be happy to relate to you the horrors of the war in Iraq; any Republican will be happy to relate to you the horrors of Vietnam. Some atheists might point out that 9,000,000 Muslims and Jews were slaughtered during the Crusades and 300,000 during the Spanish Inquisition in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth; some Christians might point out the supposed 61,911,000 in the old Soviet Union or the alleged 35,236,000 in China who were murdered in the name of communism by atheist regimes.
The manifesting has not gone well thus far.
We ain’t getting’ better, folks. Putting Christ on the bridge of the Enterprise won’t solve our problems either. We simply can’t “get better”. We aren’t ultimately perfectible – not on our own. Only when we surrender our broken spirits to Jesus – not the Christ of the Crusaders or the Republicans, but to the Messiah of this world can we become perfect IN Him.
Now I KNOW that’s going to irritate some of you…but this all the room I have today…
2 comments:
Perhaps you're right that humanity is essentially incapable of creating a peaceful, just and poverty-free society. I suspect even Rodenberry would agree that PERFECTION wasn't achievable.
But one thing we do know because we've seen it happen is that human societies are capable of making improvements, even drastic ones, and sometimes in fairly short periods of time. Take, for example, the civil rights movement in the United States. The position of a black person in the United States is vastly better today in terms of rights, opportunities and most other measures than it was 40 or 50 years ago.
Certainly the situation of nonwhites (or poor whites either for that matter) isnt perfect or anywhere near it. One would have little trouble in making a long list of inequities that persist. But its an indisputable fact that great improvements can be made---because its already happened.
The only question is: how far, given sufficient time and effort, can we go in improving our societies?
Only one way to find out. Work hard at that old humanist goal---to leave the world a better place than you found it in whatever way you can, big or small.
No disagreement here. I'm a firm believer in leaving the world a better place than I found it, and do so whenever and however I can.
Funny thing, though. At a holiday party I wound up cornered by an SF fan who wanted to tell me all about this cool book she'd just read. I won't name the book or author, because I haven't read it myself and can't verify this fan's interpretation, but what she loved about this book was that in it the author laid out a plan for creating this perfectly peaceful and utopian society. The way it was done was by loading up a spaceship with babies and robots, and sending them off to another planet where the kids would be raised by the robots, "and whenever one of them committed rape or did anything violent or greedy or sexist or anything like that, they just killed him right on the spot, just like that. So in just a couple of generations they had this wonderful society without violence or money or oppression or any of that kind of stuff."
In her defense, the fan had been drinking, is not normally an idiot.
My point is that thus far in human history, everyone who has set out with the conscious intent of engineering a better world has eventually come to the conclusion that the process can be greatly sped up by the simple expedient of killing everyone who stands in the way of The Great Plan. So thanks, but I'd much prefer plain old human randomness and imperfection over any attempt to create an improved scientific world state, no matter benign, altruistic, or enlightened the architects of such a plan might claim to be.
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