Wicked Things Written on the Sky

It is widely believed by historians of philosophy that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ushered in the 20th Century with his infamous phrase, “God is dead…” [1]

Nietzsche himself died in 1900. 

Obviously atheism didn’t begin in the 19th Century with Nietzsche. His thought was the culmination of a long line of thinkers which reached back into the 16th and 17th Centuries [2].

The European Enlightenment (as it was called) promised grand and wonderful things when human reason finally divorced itself from the shackles of faith [3]. Using the newly found tools of the “scientific method,” (via Francis Bacon & Benedict Spinoza); a humanistic morality which was becoming increasingly devoid of God (via Nietzsche); as well as the burgeoning industrial revolution with its new technologies, the 20th Century was set take mankind to new heights never before dreamt of – a utopia of sorts. 

Some who were wise, however, could see that “wicked things were written on the sky” [4]. The next century (the 20^th) would either be wonderful or it would be a nightmare. Enter H.G. Wells novel, A Modern Utopia (1905), the book which inspired Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in, Brave New World (1932), and later, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949). 

Both of these novels predicted a future in which mankind would be destroyed either by external oppression by some future despot using technology (the “big-brother” of Orwell), or through technologies and new inventions which would make us lazy and erode our capacity to think (Huxley) [5]. In both instances, technology would somehow be used to lead to our undoing. 

If there is no God (or at least since "He died" in the 19^th century) humans must put their hopes for the future in something. 

Enter the Enlightenment 2.0 – 21^st Century Edition – human reason, science and technology will surely help us solve all of the world’s problems. 

How are we doing 19 years into this century? Not very well. 

Do we ever learn? Usually not. 

Neil Postman makes one [of many] brilliant observation in, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992). 

"Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information. If a nuclear catastrophe occurs, it shall not be because of inadequate information. Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information. If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorizes a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information. Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing to do with any of these problems. And the computer is useless in addressing them" [6].

The scientific, atheistic and materialistic worldview is utterly incapable of ensuring civilization. It can’t be trusted. Why? Because the last century has been one gigantic experiment of what it is capable and incapable of. Here is a very brief history.

Although most people today think of the Titanic as the award-winning movie of 1997, in 1912 it was the symbol of the hopes of thousands of people around the world. For the wealthy it represented the pinnacle of technology and the triumph of science. To the poor, it represented a chance for a new life in America – itself a symbol of hope for millions of immigrants. On the evening of April 15, 1912 the huge ship struck an iceberg ripping open a huge section of the hull. In 2 hours, 40 minutes it was on the bottom of the Atlantic. 1,514 lives were lost. The world was in shock. 

The sinking of the Titanic was the first of several shocks the world of the early 20^th Century would receive. Just two short years later, (July, 1914) for the first time in history, the entire world would be engulfed in the First World War - the Great War, as it was called. In 1918 when the war ended and the Armistice was signed, over 10 million Allied & Central command soldiers were dead, not including civilians. The results of WWI set in motion the gears which led to WWII when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 [7]. 

WW I also had a profound effect on some of the greatest artists (Picasso, M. Duchamp, etc…) and literary minds of the 20^th century. Among them was J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings series came right out of his gruesome experiences of fighting in the trenches on the Western Front. John Garth, a modern Tolkien biographer, in a moment of incredible insight stated: 

This biographical study arose from a single observation: how strange it is that J.R.R. Tolkein should have embarked upon his monumental mythology in the midst of the First World War, the crisis that disenchanted and shaped the modern era" [8].

“The crisis that disenchanted and shaped the modern era…”

The Battle of the Somme was one of the costliest battles of World War I. The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly Conference on 15 November 1916, was 485,000 British and French casualties and 630,000 German. 

As Friedrich Steinbreche, a German officer wrote, "Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word." 

What exactly can we learn from this? Can we even learn from history at all? 

I believe that we can and we must.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

 Are people, in the 21^st Century, still clinging to 19^th Century ideals which lead to the disillusionment of so many in the 20th Century? I assert that we certainly are! We are clinging to at least three of them [perhaps more], and we are once again setting ourselves up for even greater disillusionment or worse, and no one can predict the ultimate consequences. 

(1). BELIEF IN THE INNATE GOODNESS OF HUMANITY (Is human nature basically good?) 

“The belief in the innate goodness of man had its roots in the 18th Century when it appeared to many that man was born good and free but was everywhere distorted, corrupted, and enslaved by bad institutions and conventions. As Rousseau said, Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains. 

As historian Carol Quigley keenly observed: "Obviously, if man is innately good and needs but to be freed from social restrictions, he is capable of tremendous achievements in this world of time, and does not need to postpone his hopes of personal salvation into eternity”[9].

If the 20th Century and our own experience has taught us anything, it is the truth that humanity is NOT innately good – it has a fallen nature. As Malcolm Muggeridge so aptly pointed out: "The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time, the most intellectually resisted fact." 

People automatically don’t do the right thing and despite all of their valiant efforts [10], atheists & materialists fail to ground absolute goodness in reality. Similarly, if there is no God – no absolute standard, then there is no ultimate grounding for right and wrong (morality). If there is no God (in reality) then (in reality), there is no difference between Mother Theresa and Saddam Hussein.

(2). SECULARISM & SECULAR HUMANISM (Is ‘religion’ just a hangover from our past?) 

Secularists have a strictly materialistic & mechanistic view of human nature and because of this they utterly fail to account for man’s religious nature which they will never eradicate nor will they understand with the methods of the sciences. For most of human history people have had the desire to worship. Man is homo-religiosus (“one who worships”). This is certainly not to say that all religions are the same or that they are all equally true, but merely to point out that the desire to worship and for transcendence is part of what it means to be truly human [11].

The ultimate question is which religion is true? Which religion corresponds to reality? If the laws of logic apply to all of reality then they also apply to religious claims as well. Only one can be true. 

(3). FAITH IN SCIENCE (Will “science” solve our problems?)

“Science” is touted by many today as the only true view of reality and an inoculation against the claims of religious masses who still live in ignorance & stupidity. These are the ones who still believe that “science” will answer all of our burning questions and solve all of humanity’s problems. 

Lest we forget, we have the 20^th Century as a case study for this idea. It is intimately familiar to us. We have lived through much of it, and it is analogous to all of human history because of the simple fact that human nature remains the same. Many are still trusting that “science” and the scientific worldview is the only way forward and they are wrong. 

Why are things not improving now in the first decade of the 21^st Century – the most well-informed, well-educated and scientifically minded centuries to date? We are now living several centuries after the so-called "Enlightenment" and it has still not delivered on its promises. 

Why are there still mass killings, and shootings, poverty, crime, wars, suicide, etc… etc…?

Surely the sciences and technology have brought us much good (curing diseases, saving lives, etc…), but they are ill-equipped to solve our greatest problems which are spiritual & moral in nature. Science cannot address issues of the human heart and the human will. 

Many critics will surely point to religious extremism and the turmoil happening in the Middle East as the prime example that “religion” is at the core of the world’s problems. But, they fail to make vital distinctions between contradictory religious truth claims (especially in the Theistic religions of Judaism, Islam & Christianity). 

Only in Christianity – whose message is the redemption and reconciliation of fallen human nature (in the imago Dei) is there hope for the world. There simply is no unity, order or peace apart from Christ. He is the only way 

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed [Messiah], saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His rather and terrify them in His fury saying, 'As for me, I have set My King on Zion, My holy hill (Psalm 2:1-6)

ENDNOTES

[1]  See, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” in Walter Kaufmann, Editor & Translator, The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1982). 

[2]  For an excellent book on the philosophical battles which ensued between various German thinkers on the role of reason during the era of the Enlightenment see, Fredrick C. Beiser’s, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); for a Christian analysis of the Enlightenment see, James Collins, A History of Modern European Philosophy (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1954). 

[3] Interestingly, the modern Internet & Wikipedia had its birth in the Enlightenment with the idea of the Encyclopédie which was published in France 1751-1772. 

[4]  To borrow line from Chesterton’s poem “The Ballad of the White Horse” – a poem about England’s Saxon king, Alfred the Great. 

[5] I am indebted to Neil Postman for this observation in his excellent book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). Postman’s thesis is that Huxley was right. History has proven that he was correct.

[6] Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p.119. 

[7] And of course, WW2 ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killing thousands in just a matter of seconds, and hundreds of thousands afterwards. 

[8]  John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), xiii. 

[9]  Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1966), pp. 24-5.

[10]  One of the latest is Sam Harris’s, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (New York: The Free Press, 2010). 

[11] For an excellent study on the relationship between science and human nature I strongly recommend Brendan Purcell’s excellent work, From Big Bang to Big Mystery: Human Origins in the Light of Creation and Evolution (Hyde Park, New York: New York City Press, 2012).