In preparing to write this article, I immediately reflected on the fact that having just completed my MA in Theological Leadership through the Center for Theological Leadership Training in the Cayman Islands, that I will not be able to attend my graduation due to the Covid-19 restrictions that are in place. While this is sad, I also reflected on the fact that I likewise had been unable to return to Australia for my sister’s funeral earlier this year, nor was I able to enjoy a visit from my daughter and her family who live in England. Our world has changed in many ways and some of those changes will continue for the foreseeable future, perhaps indefinitely. Then I realized how very fortunate are those who live here in the United States. Not to trivialize the hundreds of thousands who have died of this disease, but thankful that we have the hospitals, doctors, ventilators, and all the other essential equipment to give aid and comfort to those afflicted, and dignity to those who finally succumbed with their last, struggling breath. Such is not the case beyond the Western nations where in places such as Africa and India, no such luxuries are available, at least not in the required quantities. In India where we have colleagues and loved ones who have died, oxygen supplies are depleted, ventilators are few, and supplies of personal protective gear is also very limited, and that is in the larger cities. Out in the rural areas, no such amenities are to be found, and if you are a victim of Covid-19 then chances are you will die, lying on a makeshift bed in the heat and humidity. No medicine or vaccine, nothing to bring comfort and some measure of dignity to your passing.
When the Bubonic Plague struck Eurasia and North Africa in the fourteenth century, estimated deaths of up to two hundred million people would strike without regard to class or status, prince or pauper, priest, artisan, artist, or intellectual. The social, political, and economic landscape of Europe would see a dramatic change, one that would lead to the emergence of a middle class, and the science and technology that would begin to bring Man out of darkness and into the light of a new world. Of course, nothing is ever only for the good, and I believe that changes which we will see emerging now, will also show the inevitable pros and cons. To discuss this, I will approach the subject on three fronts, Social, Technological, and Faith.
Even before Covid-19 we have seen dramatic changes in society, at least from my perspective here in the West. The sexual revolution of the sixties, and the amended feminist movement that was enlivened, changed our attitudes about relationships, marriage, family, and so much else including our parenting skills. Consumerism, and the desire to have more, gave rise to an inward-looking attitude that would lead to the so-called “me” generation. A growing permissiveness gave rise to vulgarity, sexual perversion, and violence that is available to all ages via the internet. Murder hardly makes the news unless it involves a mass shooting, and the regular, weekend gang shootings in Chicago and other major cities have become accepted, unless some child is caught in the crossfire. Human trafficking and drug use continue to break hearts and lives, and there seems little that we can, or are prepared to do to really address it. Young children are given choices regarding their gender identity as parents choose to be ‘friends’ as opposed to the parents they should be. Amid this, our politicians are more concerned with their re-election, and the money they will need to garner from lobbyist to fund their need. Amazing that one can come into power with a $150,000 a year paycheck and quickly become millionaires.
Another attribute of our society that is accelerating the slippery slope down which we seem to be moving, is our justice system which, following Christopher Columbus Langdell’s term as Dean of Harvard Law School (1870-1895), established the case method of instruction. Langdell was heavily influenced by the work of the noted English judge, scholar of the eighteenth century, Sir William Blackstone. What appears to have emerged over time has seen the abandonment of any moral or legal absolutes in favor of finding a basis in prior case law to accommodate the demands of the culture of the day. At what point do we say, “enough!” Surely there must be some higher standard to which we are all held, lest there shall become no standard at all.
So, what might our social landscape look like in the post-Covid world. Sadly, I do not see a significant change for the better, even though for some it will be a call to an amendment of life where family takes priority over working to obtain that new house, car, or whatever other accessory we might think will make us happy, which of course such things cannot. Perhaps in seeking plastic surgery to change our outward appearance to cheat the aging process, we will instead look inward to realize that our body is merely a temporary housing for our spirit which, for so many is largely ignored. For those readers with a faith tradition and an understanding of scripture, there are no surprises here. The prediction that we would fall away from the life we are called to is very clear in scripture, as Matthew cautions to “enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction.” It is simply easier to follow our own desires, than to adhere to a moral and ethical lifestyle that honors the body, mind, and spirit with which we have been endowed.
Technology and science have not only provided a saving grace for so many in this time of pandemic, the path of technology and science over the past century has been nothing short of spectacular. I have had the privilege of knowing people who grew up in mud brick houses and yet lived to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Moreover, I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet, get to know, and work with Captain Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 crew. Driving around the Kennedy Space Center with him, we both marveled at the fact that my cell phone had more computing power than the vessel which would carry him and the team two and fifty thousand miles to the moon, land, take off again, and return safely to earth! Advances in medicine have us on the verge of major break throughs in gene therapy, artificial limbs, 3D printing of organs, and more. Let us hope that our brilliance in these fields stops short of going down the path of cloning entire humanoids, as surely such capability can not be far off, if not already here.
As we consider the progress of science and technology from say, the sixteenth century until now, it is important to reflect on the changes that have occurred in how we view nature, and the majesty of our universe, our planet, and the unique miracle that is us. In the seventeenth century, scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, together with colleagues like Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Kelvin, and others saw an orderliness to what they observed in nature which led them to the belief that the God of the bible, and the creation story of Genesis, intersected with scientific evidence, and seemed to affirm a creative intelligence in the mysteries of the universe, and the magnificence of the human beings who occupy it. Such enthusiasm for the explanation of life, would suddenly pivot with the advent of Charles Darwin’s, “On the Origin of the Species.” Darwin’s work, which he approached from a scientific standpoint, was commendable in many respects, but it lacked critical information, which would not come to light until much later as we came to understand the complex structure of the cell, and the information encoded in DNA, which is necessary for the development of proteins, and the protein machines, which are critical for any biological mechanism to exist. Such protein building blocks must be formed, to create all the various parts and processes of the human body… skin, bones, organs, glands, fluids, etc. What would come, following the surge of enthusiasm for Darwin’s theory, was the scientific materialism in which scientists such as La Place, would write about celestial mechanics and the emerging focus on undirected natural occurrences. Good-bye God!
In contrast and following the Neo-Darwinist crowd, comes one of the great, modern proponents of the Intelligent Design movement, Dr. Stephen Meyer. a PhD. Philosophy of Science graduate at Cambridge, Meyer has written extensively on subjects such as irreducible complexity, the Cambrian Explosion, and the mathematical improbability that life as we know it could have self-formed in an undirected manner. Without delving too deeply into the math which Meyer covers extensively in his book “Return of the God Hypothesis” the actual math, suffice it to say, that the mathematical possibility of even a simple protein of say, 150 amino acids long, self forming in a functional, as opposed to a non-functional manner – a critical distinction, is a number greater than the number of atoms in our milky way, and would require a timeframe longer than the age of the universe. Why such improbability? Because of the information coding of the nucleotides along the spines of the DNA helix, which Watson and Crick would so elegantly illustrate in 1953, in which the four types of bases, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine… must be arranged in a specific order for the possibility of a protein being made, which, as I said are the essential building blocks necessary for tissue and organs to exist. This goes way beyond the adage that if an infinite number of monkeys with and infinite number of typewriters had an infinite amount of time, one would produce a Shakespearean play!
A 2009 survey performed by the Pew Research Center on members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, showed that 51% of its members believe in some form of deity or higher power. Specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit, or higher power. Yet to read the press, watch television, or specifically, read a science journal, you would be hard pressed to find any indication that there might be an alternative to the materialist argument for the existence of the universe, and us as the inhabitants! It seems that this side of the scientific community is so heavily invested in the materialist perspective that they would rather consider the possibility of aliens seeding our planet, than consider that the growing understanding of the finite values and laws of physics which, if altered even slightly would make our universe uninhabitable, should lead us to consider the possibility of an external force, or mover. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character would say, “when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Cosmology has no viable explanation of how our universe came into being, nor can physics satisfactorily explain the critical fine tuning of its laws and constants.
I have great hope for science and technology to continue to deliver inspired and hopeful developments for the betterment of Mankind, and our planet. Of course, as we have seen in the past, any scientific or technological development carries with it the potential for misuse, but I believe, absent the radical behavior of some rogue state, that we will move down a positive path. It is my expectation that the next See change in science will be the solving of Fusion reaction which will mean the production of unlimited, safe electrical power to fuel the rapid move we are seeing away from the fossil fuels which have supported our development to date. Companies such as Lockheed Martin and other companies around the world are working vigorously to produce a successful containment vessel and a working prototype of a fusion reactor. Lockheed Martin has filed a patent for a Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor (CFR), and the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division has filed a CFR patent (October 2019) which is purported to be a superior design to Lockheed’s. Let us hope that one or the other can scale up to a commercially functional unit.
On the question of Faith, as I have earlier introduced, our Western societies are rapidly becoming more secular, as liberal interests are fighting on so many fronts to exclude God from the schoolhouse to the public square. Fewer and fewer people want any form of restriction placed upon their lifestyle. It was only a few short years ago that my wife and I were in England visiting our daughter, and we decide to attend mass at the beautiful Winchester cathedral. There were not enough of us in attendance to even fill the choir stalls. Such magnificent edifices today are little more than tourist attractions, and younger generations are finding less and less relevance in the way scriptural truths are presented and offered as the solution to most of what is destroying us and society from the inside out. I truly believe that if Covid has done anything to bolster faith traditions, it is the forced reality that we must seek new and different ways to reach people. I also believe that we must take a more ecumenical approach to removing the petty barriers which separate our faith communities, while remaining true to the fundamental principles of the faith once delivered to the apostles. Religion is a construct of Man which means we are prone to messing it up. God comes to us in Spirit, and it is our spirit which our faith traditions must lift through truthful engagement. To do that I believe we must strive to connect what science is showing us of the probability of Intelligent Design, and the reality that there is indeed a Creator who loves us, and leaves us to choose Him, and the life he would wish for us to enjoy. Fifty one percent of scientists, as Pew revealed, cannot all be wrong!
About the author. Graeme Woodbrook is an Australian born United States citizen. He has recently attained his MA Theological Leadership which adds to his MBA Finance which he earned in 1981. He is an active blogger through his site www,trybelieving.com, and he published his first book, “Why God - Why Now” which is available on Amazon. He is married to wife Sharyn who share five daughters and eleven grandchildren. They live in Tampa, Florida.
