I have never dreamed of flying through space. I have never longed to travel faster than the speed of light. I am not impressed by UFO sightings or the prospect of meeting aliens. I am not interested in altering the genomes of any of my descendants. I’m not interested in refusing to grow old or refusing to die. I’m writing this on a great computer, but I’m not sure I enjoy my computer any more than I used to enjoy the effect of a freshly sharpened pencil on a crisp white sheet of paper, or the feeling of making my way. through the smooth pages of a gigantic encyclopedia, or the fun of recording favorite songs from the radio onto a stuttering cassette tape or watching a classic movie on a flickering, buzzing VHS bought at a trunk sale. The fact is that progress is ambivalent, it is not always 100% good and while it creates the new it destroys the old. We may one day enjoy the thrill of a shiny new self-driving car, but we’ll certainly look back with longing for the thrill of driving ourselves. Even when we get excited about technological change, we miss out on many of the things that technological change erases.

Progress is a two-way street. What science promises with one hand, it takes away with the other. A cure for one thing could induce a condition for something else. All medicines have side effects. All medical treatment is a balancing act between ills, as the present pandemic has clearly shown. Which is fine as long as the patient’s interests remain paramount. However, when medical treatment is based on money, it raises ethical dilemmas. And since science and private money now always seem to go hand in hand, it’s a good time to ask: Will the interests of patients take a backseat to corporate priorities? New Tech’s recent rise in wealth does not bode well for the masses. When Bezos says that his clients always come first, this is only until he wins them over and eliminates the competition, then the profits return to the first position. Profit and a growing GDP are the modern foundations of hope: hope of wealth, hope of new goods, hope that one day science will save us.

There is some evidence that technological change is being used for the general good, but much more that it is being used as a springboard for very rich. Just when the prospect of free mobile communication and free Internet access was within our grasp, would-be billionaires stepped in and turned these things into models for exorbitant profits. When an epidemic occurs, the first thing we ask might be “Who can we save?” but this is quickly followed by “How much money can we make?” The Covid year proved that we are less interested in saving lives than in saving big business. As we unlock the mysteries of the known universe, entrepreneurs are listening to the sound of cash registers. This would be fine if the profits were They will be used to reduce national debts, or to improve public services, or to save endangered species, but there is little or no evidence for this.

How does this affect our spirit, our human essence, our life experience in general? I think the impact is net negative. We are back at that point in civilization when men thought that by building a tower high enough in the clouds, they would be able to glimpse the sky. The Tower of Babel was the result of vain ambition rather than a desire to house the masses, and its ultimate failure set science back for centuries. This raises the specter of an inverse link between money and morality.

Our modern Babel is a rocket ship for billionaires obsessively in search of new thrills and, don’t get me wrong, crossing new frontiers is a laudable goal. We’re all curious about weightlessness and the curvature of the earth, and Branson is about to satisfy that curiosity, at least for some. While some of us reach across the back of the sofa for the odd £175k to pay for a ticket, millions more are curious not about weightlessness and the curvature of the earth, but about feeding and clothing themselves and getting a good education for their children. which is still beyond the ability of even the most seasoned politicians to deliver. While climate change wreaks havoc on urban developments on Earth, Musk’s plans to build settlements on Mars have been greeted with enthusiasm; however, what good is a mansion on Mars when affordable housing on Earth is still in short supply? Is science becoming an elitist exercise, designing products for the few while dashing the hopes of the many? To take this to the extreme, consider a group of scientists, funded by billionaires, who discover a formula for eternal life: who would benefit? Would the formula be extended to the whole world? Or, slightly more likely, if one day we relied on space rockets to escape our poisoned planet (poisoned by bad business decisions), how many of us would be allowed on board? There are thousands of other scenarios: driverless cars, home robots, genetic modification: who will be able to afford these technologies?

A real sky must include everyone or no one at all, because otherwise it’s kind of a solitary sky. Only God’s salvation is for everyone. The only escape rocket we need is piloted by Jesus. The Bible tells us that “Hope in the Lord will renew our strength” (Isaiah 4:31) and “the God of hope will fill us with joy and peace” (Romans 15:13). There is nothing to say that we cannot use science and money to help us along the way because science comes from God (Psalms 111:2), as well as wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18), but science gets out of hand. of God. and hijacked by selfish financial interests is not only wrong but dangerous.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell existential: in regards to science everything matters but nothing makes sense.

Science cares about everything because science cares about everything observable, but nothing makes sense because beyond matter there is nothing. Matter and money have become inextricably linked and between them they have built a new article of faith: that nothing matters outside of money. Thus our hopes for peace and joy rest on the acquisition of goods in which we find short-lived gratification, while the real question of the general happiness of our species (and its final salvation in eternity) is left to be. side as unreal, unattainable, even mythical.

In godly faith, the opposite is true. Nothing matters but everything makes sense.

Nothing solid matters to the religious mind, be it the curvature of the earth or the arrival of ET, because to the religious mind matter is like nothing; it is dust. But it all makes sense to the religious mind because we know that beyond our mortal life there is an eternity of peace in the presence of the Divine, who gives hope to all. Believing in God therefore restores hope and is, in fact, the only real basis for hope. Those who put their trust only in anything else will ultimately be disappointed.

So how does belief in God inspire hope? If I am a parent who cannot buy shoes for my children but I know that God is there for me, the absence of shoes no longer matters. I explain to my children that running barefoot through the streets can connect them more viscerally with the world, enjoy creation more fully, and find greater meaning in their lives. The sun, the stars, the moon, are still unattainable, but that’s okay because unattainable things thrive in art, romance, and dreams, all of which make life wonderful. Meanwhile, the combination of science and money leads to an insatiable desire to make capital and manufacture luxury items for endlessly burgeoning bank balances. But the empty dreams of owning a superyacht, a racing car, or even a rocket ship will only satisfy the bodily senses for a brief period before being discarded along with all the other worn-out toys of the past. Meanwhile, kids who run barefoot feel cheated if their shoes aren’t branded by a designer.