Man and Machine: A Biblical Look at Present and Future Technology with C. S. Lewis Lesson 4

1. Man and Machine: A Biblical Look at Present and Future Technology with C. S. LewisLesson 4 Chesterfield Presbyterian Church January 30, 2011 Andrew Shaw andrew.shaw@att.net

2. Man and Machine: Outline • Man and Machine: Theology of Technology • Man is Master of the Machine • Man Uses the Machine to Master Others (part 2) • Man is Mastered by the Machine • Man is “Nothing But” a Machine • Man Must Become a Machine

3. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master Others 1. To Master (rebel against) God Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) Playing God 2. To Master Nature The Curse (Gen. 3:18-19) Pollution, Waste 3. To Master His Neighbor Denying Imago Dei (Gen. 1:26-28) Social Darwinism and Eugenics Victor & Frankenstein (1818) Mary Shelly, 1797-1851

4. C. Man Uses the Machine to “Master” God What does it mean to “play God?” Assault on Reality: Striving for Omnipotence Virtual reality, augmented reality, denying reality Creating our own reality (synthetic life) 2. Aspiration for Immortality: Striving for Eternality “We can live forever.” We decide who lives and for how long. 3. Assumption of Knowledge: Striving for Omniscience “Our knowledge is complete and sufficient.” “Our knowledge is inerrant.” 4. Presumption of Grace: Striving for Redemption “We can save ourselves.” “We can achieve perfection.” Tree of Life (Gen. 2:9)

5. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master His Neighbor 1. Man is Imago Dei 2. Denying Imago Dei Evolution • Neo-Darwinism • Social Darwinism • Eugenics in the United States • Eugenics in WW2 Germany • Eugenics in China Today In reality…if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power too make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. Abolition of Man

6. C. Man is Imago Dei • A. We are spiritual beings (because God is Spirit). • We have a conscience – sense of justice, i.e., right and wrong; fairness. • We can do what is right (moral), i.e., be holy. • We can do what is wrong (immoral), i.e., sin. • We worship. • We are immortal: we will exist forever (in either heaven or hell).

7. C. Man is Imago Dei • B. We are rational beings (because God is Omniscient, and the source of logic and order). • We search for Truth, meaning, and purpose: philosophy. • We gather and accumulate knowledge; we explore, from the subatomic level to the astronomical level: science. • We exercise power (dominion) over creation, e.g., technology, the arts, government, culture. • We demonstrate wisdom: ethics and law.

8. C. Man is Imago Dei • C. We are creative beings: imagination! (because God is a Creator). • We create culture: music, art, dance, poetry, literature, theater, sports. • We create ideas: philosophy. • We create order: ethics, government, law. • We create technology: science. • We create cures: medicine. • We create wealth: business. AbioCor Artificial Heart

9. C. Man is Imago Dei • D. We are relational beings (because God is Triune, and always faithful to His covenant promises). • We LOVE (because God is love). • We can be altruistic, i.e., be good for non-personal gain. • We communicate via language. • We enter into relationships, associations, clubs, contracts, groups, teams, partnerships, marriages. • We are designed to live in community.

10. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master Others • Eugenics - “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.” Eugenics Records Office Cold Spring Harbor, NY 1910-1941 (1921) Funded by Mary Harriman, Rockefeller Family, and Carnegie Institution until 1939

11. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master Others • In what ways is eugenics a Technique, a Technology? (Ellul: rationalistic, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, autonomous) • How is eugenics “playing God?” (striving for omnipotence, eternality, omniscience, redemption) • In what ways were politics, the media, science, and religious institutions complicit in the eugenics movement in the United States and the subsequent holocaust in WW2 Germany? • How is eugenics related to abortion, racism, infanticide, euthanasia, genocide, et al. • Could eugenics happen again in the United States? • Is eugenics happening anywhere in the world today? • What should our role as Christians/Church be today?

12. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master Others Evolution Definitions… • “Everyday” meaning; variation, things change over time. • Biological (organic) v. geological v. cosmological • Microevolution (text) - change within a “species.” • Microevolution (mine) - change within a “kind” or “type.” • Macroevolution (text) - change from one species to another; speciation. • Macroevolution (mine) - change from one type to another. • Neo-Darwinism – modern synthesis of natural selection and genetics; descent with modification from common ancestor(s) via natural selection. • Naturalism (Scientism, Materialism, Atheism) – the philosophy and/or Worldview; everything has a physical (“scientific”) explanation. • Theistic Evolution – God used macroevolution/Neo-Darwinism. • Social Darwinism – application of Naturalism to other disciplines, e.g., Criminology, Economics, Education, Business, Sociology.

13. C. Eugenics – Brief History With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination… Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. Descent of Man, 1871 At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. Charles Darwin 1809-1882

14. C. Eugenics – Brief History "What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.” (1905) "I do not join in the belief that the African is our equal in brain or in heart. [...] and I believe that if we can, in any fair way, possess ourselves of his services, we have an equal right to utilize them to our advantage.” (1857) "... average Negroes possess too little intellect, self-reliance, and self-control to make it possible for them to sustain the burden of any respectable form of civilization without a large measure of external guidance and support." (1873) Francis Galton 1822-1911 (Darwin’s cousin)

15. C. Eugenics in the United States Unfit human trait… pauperism Breed out… Selected parents… 1910

16. C. Eugenics in the United States The unfit should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasia institutions supplied with proper gasses.Dr. Alexis Carrel (Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1912) “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to executedegenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court Chief Justice from 1902-1932 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1841-1935

17. C. Eugenics in the United States • Immigration Act of 1924 • Sought to limit influx from southern & eastern Europe, who were “biologically inferiorand jeopardized the blood of the nation.” • “America has always prided itself upon having for its basic stock the so-called Nordic race…we should ban from our shores all races…who are physically, mentally, morally and spiritually undesirable and who constitute a menace to our civilization.” Secretary of Labor, James Davis • Not fully reversed until the Immigration Act of 1965! • Other famous eugenics proponents: • HG Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson • Bertrand Russell, Emil Zola, John Maynard Keynes • Aldous Huxley, George Bernard Shaw, Plato • Alexander Graham Bell, Luther Burbank by Margaret Sanger 1926

18. C. Eugenics in the United States Looking to Hitler “ The report persistently comes from Berlin that congenital feeblemindedness, insanity, epilepsy, and some other serious conditions that are inheritable are to be stamped out among the German people. Adolf Hitler is having broad and scientific plans formed for this. If carried out effectively, it will make him the leader in the greatest national movement for human betterment the world has ever seen. The world’s two great needs are cooperation in industry for social good and biological race betterment through eugenics.” (1933)

19. C. Eugenics in the United States “I Have a Goodly Heritage” (Ps. 16:6) Fitter Family Award Fitter Family Contest Anthropometry

20. C. Eugenics in the United States Kansas Better Baby Contest Indiana, 1907 Eugenics Board, North Carolina

21. C. Eugenics in the United States

22. C. Eugenics in the United States “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” 1922 “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. The minister's work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation [of Eugenicists] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” 1939 *Founder of Planned Parenthood, 1921,1942; (850 clinics in U.S., $1 billion budget) Margaret Sanger* 1879-1966

23. C. Eugenics in WWII Germany “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” Ernst Haeckel 1834-1919 “anthropods,” 1898

24. C. Eugenics in WWII Germany I must emphasize this is not a matter of poisoning. The child simply dies of a certain congestion in the lungs, it does not die of poisoning. Hermann Pfannmuller (Nazi Physician, on Abortion) The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland... it suits the purpose of the cool calculating Jew who would use this means of introducing a process of bastardization in the very centre of the European Continent and, by infecting the white race with the blood of an inferior stock, would destroy the foundations of its independent existence.“ Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925 1889-1945

25. C. Eugenics in WW II Germany “The terrible results of a woman drunkard.” It shows that over 83 years, she had 894 descendants, of whom 40 were indigent, 67 criminals, 7 murderers, 181 prostitutes, and 142 beggars. “436 (about 50%) were asocial, and caused 5 million Marks of harm.” Volk und Rasse (people & race) August, 1936 “someone with a genetic illness costs the state on average 50,000 Marks by the time he reaches 60 years of age, which must be paid for by healthy citizens.”

26. C. Eugenics in WW II Germany But it’s science… 1. Freezing 2. High altitude 3. Malaria 4. Mustard gas 5. Burnings 6. Poisonings 7. Making sea water potable 8. Sterilizations 9. Transplantations 10. Intentional infections

27. Eugenics in the United States • Tuskegee (Ala.) Syphilis Study (1932-1972) 300 sharecroppers - placebo • Willowbrook (Mass.) Hepatitis Study (1950’s) mentally disabled children fed contaminated fecal solution • Jewish Chronic Disease Studies (1960’s) chronically ill injected with live cancer cells • San Antonio Contraceptive Study (1970’s) homeless given “contraceptives” But it’s Science…

28. C. Eugenics in China Today “Less births better births develop China vigorously.” (1987) “Eugenics causes happiness.” (1987) “Carry out family planning; Implement the basic national policy.” (1986)

29. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master Others • In what ways is eugenics a Technique, a Technology? (Ellul: rationalistic, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, autonomous) • How is eugenics “playing God?” (striving for omnipotence, eternality, omniscience, redemption) • In what ways were politics, the media, science, and religious institutions complicit in the eugenics movement in the United States and the subsequent holocaust in WW2 Germany? • How is eugenics related to abortion, racism, infanticide, euthanasia, genocide, et al. • Could eugenics happen again in the United States? • Is eugenics happening anywhere in the world today? • What should our role as Christians/Church be today?

30. C. Man Uses the Machine to Master Others • The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40) • Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16)