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"Science Without Humanity"
I Timothy 6:3-21
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
February 24, 2002
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
During this time of Lent, we focus on our faith and our suffering and the world’s suffering in preparation for Easter. To that end, we are now in the second of a series of sermons focusing on the seven deadly social sins according to Mahatma Gandhi. Although he was not a Christian, Gandhi embodied the ethics of Jesus more than most people. He was once asked what he thought about western civilization and he said he thought it was a good idea. He also said that if we are to be civilized, we need to overcome our propensity towards wealth without work, science without humanity, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, politics without principles and worship without sacrifice.
When people who have been steeped in church life think of the seven deadly sins, they think of pride, anger, lust, envy, sloth, greed and gluttony. I personally participate in many of those on a regular basis. These are often contrasted with seven heavenly virtues: faith, hope love, fortitude, justice temperance and prudence. I also participate in many of those. I’m not about to admit which ones I favor from either list, lest I be quoted out of context by the sin police. Interestingly, these seven sins and virtues are not listed as such in the Bible. The closest we come to this is I Timothy 6. The sins were codified in early catholic teaching and modified slightly in literature. The virtues were the work of 13th century theologian St. Thomas Acquinas.
Our culture knows about these sins, if even unconsciously. From Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana to the psychological thriller movie Seven of a few years back, to scholarly examinations of the seven dwarfs and the seven castaways on Gilligan’s Island, we as a society know about those seven deadly sins which Christian tradition has bequeathed to us.
Our task today and during this season of Lent is to look further into the sins that keep us from God and from one another. Gandhi was very purposeful about his beliefs and his life commitments. He was an immense person of faith who believed regardless of the tradition you came from, that you had to be true to the pursuit of truth. In that pursuit, you would find God, for God is truth. And God is not something that is solely personal.
The life of faith is also something that happens in community. That is why the seven deadly social sins are so important. They create a context out of which we can rid ourselves of narcissism and embrace the longings of our human family. That’s what the life of faith is all about—it’s about seeing the image of God in your sister or brother and realizing that you are connected in a powerful if not cosmic way.
The seven social sins all stem from narcissism. They all assume we are not in communityà that we can make it on our own while in fact the opposite is true.
When you start ridding yourself of these seven deadly sins, then you are taking a huge step in healing yourself and healing this society. Who knows, we might find our discarded soul just sitting there on the side of the road ahead of us. That soul just might be revived and strengthened by this journey.
All that having been said, today we will look at Science without humanity.
Now, science is not a bad thing, he says to the relief of the plethora of scientists in this congregation. Far from it. It is a wonderful thing that has helped to advance our civilization and save our lives. Who can argue with the fact that thanks to science, our life expectancy has almost doubled in the past century. There is talk now of the high probability that many of our children, barring war, will live commonly live into their hundreds. I have tremendous respect and gratitude for scientists and all that they have accomplished.
As Emerson said, "The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide" (Journals). What Gandhi was getting at, was the science that displaced or disregarded humanity.
The role of religion is to put a human face to the world. To put God’s face in the world. It is to put humanity back into science. Martin Luther King said it best, "Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power. Religion gives man wisdom, which is control" (Strength to Love). If we do not have a clear enough sense of religion, we lose the sense of control and science becomes an end to itself. The end of pure science is logically to take humanity out of the equation. Science must have humanity.
Technology becomes the paradigm of pure science. 2001 a Space Odyssy has as its theme the fear of technology. The Matrix has a similar theme. So does Terminator I and II. They all have themes of technology becoming the end all and eliminating humanity in the process. While these are just movies, of course, there is still the fear out there as we get more and more dependent upon technology, we think less and less about humanity. Think of the number of people who have lost their jobs and livelihoods because a machine can do things cheaper and more efficiently. This sounds like wealth without work, doesn’t it? All of these seven deadly social sins are related.
Examples of Science with out humanity would include nuclear weaponry. Remember, Gandhi said this was one of the seven sins shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are now in an era of "smart bombs"—the kind that can blow away targets from miles away, guided by computer technology. I remember watching in awe as Norman Schwartzkopf explained how the patriot missiles had hit their grainy targets in Iraq. We all marveled at the technology. It helped us to forget that lives were lost. Science without humanity.
My sister works as a nurse for the Indian Health Service in the sprawling Navajo Reservation. Much of modern technology has not reached the reservation. Many of the homes do not have phones. She lived for a year in a town that did not have Internet capability. She had to drive 30 miles to get her e-mail. She moved. She teaches breast-feeding to the Navajo women, but they soon abandon it because WIC comes with formula for the low-income Navajo. It needs to be pre-mixed because the ground water is too filled with uranium. Remember this is the area in which they do the underground nuclear testing. The Navajo live with this all the time—the results of science without the benefits of science. Science without humanity.
Even General Omar Bradley said in a 1948 speech, "We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount."
One of the nice things about doing a series like this at UBC is that people start giving me suggestions, articles, examples and resources. Gayla Marty gave me an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education which spoke about the scandalous Tuskegee study of African-American men with untreated syphilis, how institutionalized students at Willowbrook State School on Staten Island were used as nonconsenting human guinea pigs to test a hepatitis vaccine; how elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn were injected with cancer cells. Need we even talk here about the Nazi doctors who experimented on concentration camp inmates? Science without humanity.
How about biological warfare? It is pure science, seeing how molecules can implant viruses to break down the machine of the body. But from agent orange to anthrax it has nonetheless reeked havoc upon the crops and the people who follow.
Think about how our machines and our industrialism has destroyed our natural resources. Think about how in the name of science we can burn up immense amounts of fuel and natural resources without any thought of replacing them. In the early 80’s we saw the dismantling of government dollars going toward alternative energy sources. Funding for solar, wind, biomass and other renewable energy sources were cut while nuclear power was increased. The [present administration’s energy policy rolls back efforts to ease our dependence upon fossil fuels. Who really believes that Yucca Mountain, on a fault line in Nevada is a safe place to bury nuclear waste for the next 50,000 years? Science without humanity.
Acid rain falls into this category as does global warming and any kind of pollution. We are consuming at a rate which is squandering our world. If we continue on this road, I fear that we will not have a world to leave to our children. At least it will not be as clean, and perhaps there will be more diseases brought by the sad fact of undervaluing our land. Science without humanity.
The antidote to this, of course, is not no science, but science with humanity. It is the science that makes humanity persevere and our world become a safer and healthier place to live.
Alfred North Whitehead said, "religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal but the expressions of these principles requires continual development" (Science and the Western World).
Think about this:
The technology that fueled the Protestant reformation in the 14 and 1500’s was the advent of the printing press. All of a sudden people could have information at their hands. They could read the Bible for themselves. And it was in everyone’s hands, not just the hands of the official church. People started realizing that what they had been taught was wrong and they formed new religious groups in order to be true to God as revealed in scripture. That’s where the Baptists came from as a part of the radical reformation.
Leonard Sweet in his Book Aqua Church says that the new technology which is changing the way we look at information and facts today is the internet. Sweet argues that if we are to reach people in a postmodern culture, we must utilize the internet. We’re doing that a bit right now at UBC. There is a challenge here to make the most of science. But the church’s role is to remind science that it was created for humanity and not the other way around. Many of our social scientists already do this and do it quite well.
Myrna McInenly suggested I see the movie John Q before preaching this sermon. Ever since I attended a conference in Berkeley in January on religion and film, I look at movies in a new way. If you see this movie starring Denzel Washington, look at the plethora of religious symbols. And contrast this with the mess that is health care in the US. The film starts out with the good guys and the bad guys. Denzel is a good guy whose son needs a heart transplant. As a result of bad decisions, low ethics on the part of his employers, the insurance companies and hospital administrators, Denzel is told his son cannot have a heart transplant because he doesn’t have the money. One frustrated character said that there are three classes of people the white collar, the blue collar and the no collar. As you might know from the previews, Denzel takes matters into his own hands and people on all sides of the story gain new insight. Good guys become bad guys and bad guys become good guys. What we realize is that they are all caught up in a dysfunctional system that needs to be fixed. And I think the point of the film is that we are called as people of faith to bring humanity back to the scientific community, and to the world. And sometimes, that means crossing the line of what is decent and acceptable. Because that’s just what Jesus did.
Jesus never denied anyone healing and compassion. Humanity always came before the rule of law to Jesus. He healed on the Sabbath. He touched lepers whom the scientific community of his day shunned., He welcomed into his family those whom religion and society had deemed unclean and he called us to do the same.
The not so subtle message of John Q is that we have wonderful advances in science which are not available to most of humanity. Our often-neglected role as Christians is to remind ourselves and those who make policy decisions that we are all made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore all of humanity needs to benefit from science, not just first world people. Africans with HIV ought to be able to benefit from the science that has saved the lives of many US people with HIV/AIDS.
Sisters and brothers, the point of religion is to bring about the reign of God which is a system of compassion , of justice, of community, of love. Our task, or at least one of them, is to restore humanity to the world.
Let us not let science usurp humanity. Let us work with scientists who are humane and just and give them the support they need.
Let us not let our greed blur our sense of God.
Let us rather embrace all of the God-given knowledge we have and use it to be in service to one another.
That is the way of humanity.
And that is the way of Jesus, the master physician who never withheld a healing from anybody—who lived and died and rose again so that we might follow his example.