Religion is the main brake on the development of technological progress

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today you could be arrested for catching Pokémon in a church. And tomorrow it will only get worse. And that's why.

As you hopefully still remember, on May 11, 2017, the Verkh-Isetsky District Court of Yekaterinburg sentenced blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky to 3 years and 6 months in prison for catching conditional Pokemon in a church. In this regard, the society again raised questions about the relationship between the church and modern realities. Somewhat unexpected for the 21st century, the discussion "Does Pikachu violate the sanctity of the temple space", of course, is inferior in intensity to the debates of the scholastics of the past about how many angels can be accommodated on the tip of a needle, but it still invigorates. Especially when you think about what will happen next.

Because the faster progress goes, the harder it is for religions to keep up, which for the most part were invented a long time ago, when there was not even Wikipedia, and, say, the version that little fairies pour rain on the earth from large chamber pots. was perceived as quite realistic. Now, the complex of human knowledge about the world is so contrary to the content of any sacred scriptures that priests and theologians are forced to engage in complex balancing act in order to somehow resolve this conflict. They talk about the complex symbolism of religious texts, about the superiority of the spiritual gaze over the worldly reason, and about the fact that only vulgar people demand a literal meaning from complex mystical revelations. But, of course, little by little we have to surrender the lines. It took only five hundred years for the Sun, for example, to be recognized as the center of the solar system by almost all confessions. And the multiplicity of worlds, coupled with the vastness of the Universe - too. And more on the little things.

And it will only get worse. The upcoming inventions and technologies that humanity awaits with such passion will further widen the gap. And, alas, such areas will be affected in which religions will absolutely not be able to retreat, because these technologies will categorically contradict the most important religious norms. See for yourself what hopelessness is expected.

Teleportation

In the ideal future, with its help, it will be possible to more or less instantly move to any point in the Universe, and this possibility, even now, does not seem entirely fantastic. It is theoretically quite possible to write down all the particles of the body at a certain moment and in a certain state, after which it is theoretically quite possible to create a complete copy of them beyond the distant lands. A creature that has arisen on the receiving side will have all the parameters of the teleportable, an identical complex of knowledge, mind and memory, and will be aware of the continuity of its “I”, since all mental and emotional baggage has a completely material embodiment in the form of connections in our brain. That is, the sent copy will turn out to be the same person completely and completely, who will remember how he entered the teleportator and was instantly transported to another galaxy with convenience. But the fact is that in order to avoid any unhealthy confusion with doubles, the original will have to be destroyed at the time of transition. Disassemble into the same particles - spare parts for future shipments. And, accordingly, Christians will be prohibited from using this type of transport, since, entering the teleportator, they will commit inevitable suicide - the most terrible thing that a person can create in the Christian value system. Therefore, churches will have to fight teleportation - and much more actively than they currently fight with contraception. After all, during the abortion of a fertilized egg, the Lord receives even an undeveloped, albeit unsuitable for paradise, but some kind of functional soul, but the appearance in hellish penates of a huge number of damned souls of the Creator's suicides will in no way please.

Meeting with aliens

People have different attitudes to the idea of finally meeting brothers (even if not brothers, but at least second cousins in mind). Some are afraid that, upon contact with a more developed civilization, our own will suffer the fate of savages who met white colonizers: we will be exterminated and taught to brush our teeth, and all at the same time. Others - optimists - believe that the mind will inevitably feel sympathy for another mind, no matter how different their carriers may be, and that any civilization that has learned to fly between the stars will have a huge supply of altruism and peacefulness.

The Christian churches will find themselves in a completely unbearable situation, since it will be impossible to determine whether the Alpha Centauri fell into sin. Are they descendants of Adam and Eve, especially if they are, for example, a crystalline life form? Do they have original sin? Did Christ die on the cross and for the Alpha Centauri too? Or is he, as Stanislav Lem once assumed, is forced to appear in his own time on each of the countless planets and undergo endless deaths in the most unpleasant way for a given form of life? And in general, is the Lord of Israel the Lord of Alpha Centauri too? In general, they have not yet found neighbors in space, and thank God!

Space exploration

However, even without aliens, religious organizations have enough problems with space. Just imagine: we built a colony on planet U in galaxy X. We sent our heroic pioneers there with shovels, seeds and milking robots. And then came the time of Armageddon and the end of the world, which are described in great detail: the iron locust, horsemen of the Apocalypse, bitter rivers, the battle of good and evil in the Megiddo valley, Jesus descends to earth, the dead rise, fire is pouring from heaven, death is trampled, the fate of the world is completed, the devil and sinners are forever imprisoned to suffer in hell, the righteous eternally rejoice on this occasion in paradise. And now - attention, question! And what, the guys from the planet W will avoid participating in the all-planetary fun and will not be subject to the Last Judgment? Or will they be teleported to Megiddo as scheduled? And nothing funny! The opinion that a person is not supposed to leave the jurisdiction of Jehovah, so as not to lose the right to resurrection and eternal life, is regularly heard from the lips of, for example, Protestant priests.

It took only five hundred years for the Sun to be recognized as the center of the solar system by almost all confessions

If they don't order from the sky

It is always pleasant to think about what will happen tomorrow, but the current technological progress gives churchmen a lot of reasons for indignation and demands to return everything as it was.

• Fasting on white nights

  When Muhammad explained to his fellow tribesmen the rules of fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, he did not take into account the fact that our planet is round. The second great migration of peoples led to the fact that many Muslims left the equatorial territories, finding themselves in a difficult situation: when Ramadan coincided with the periods of white nights, believers could not eat and drink at all. For the prophet clearly indicated that it is possible to approach water and food when it gets so dark that a black thread cannot be distinguished from a white thread. As a result, the Muslim community of Norway a couple of years ago even sent a request to theologians of Mecca to allow them to live in Ramadan at the time of the holy city. The request was not granted. Get out, like, whatever you want.

• Surrogacy

  Catholics, who always vigorously support any action leading to an increase in their flock, generally have a positive attitude towards surrogacy. But our Orthodox Church has embarked on the path of combating this evil. For the third year already, the clergy have been demanding to ban this disagreeable deed - to stop "the exploitation of the female body and, in fact, the sale of it, the transformation of a woman into a temporary slave."It is especially pleasant to hear this from representatives of an organization that for many centuries was the largest slave owner in the country after the state itself.

• Catholics and Genetics

  But Catholics are fierce opponents of working with human genetic material, stem cells, cloning and transhumanism in general. The Vatican is trying to control the work of all genetic laboratories that it can reach. He succeeds especially well in countries with a large number of Catholics among citizens, primarily in Switzerland, France and Italy. Genetic correction of embryos is a nightmare of any pontiff, for a person is created in the image and likeness of God and changing his body is going against the Divine plan. True, attempts to find out whether our Creator really has an appendix, a rectum, or, say, a liver, raises even greater accusations of blasphemy.

Getting rid of diseases

In principle, it is already clear how medicine will develop in the future. The lion's share of all diseases will be exterminated through manipulation of genetic material: the correction of the genome of each child in the future is as inevitable as the mastery of man by fire was once inevitable. Whether we like it or not, in the end the birth of any person will be accomplished by not even artificial conception, but by assembling his DNA from the genes of his parents - with cleaning and debugging the genome. Perfectly healthy children, insured against serious diseases, with a long life expectancy, physically and intellectually developed, will become the only possible norm in the not too distant future.

But at the same time, the church already has very serious problems with children born with the help of simple IVF. The fact is that the Christian concept assumes that any person is sinful from the beginning, since the sin of Adam and Eve is passed on to all subsequent generations and each of us was conceived in lust and vice (there was only one immaculate conception on the planet, as we know, officially). Children from the test tube were obtained immaculately conceived in violation of all norms. Although dad may have also exploited the sin of lust by donating seed with the help of special magazines (although sometimes seed is obtained with the help of unpleasant medical manipulations). But there can be no complaints about my mother: it is difficult to imagine a less voluptuous procedure than in vitro fertilization. The Catholic Church eventually gave birth to explanations that original sin is not associated only with parental sex, it is passed on with the sinful genes of Adam and Eve from generation to generation. This decision was made in the 80s of the last century.

So, in the near future this problem can be solved. Genes, as we now know, are practically a Lego set. They are similar in all terrestrial organisms, and if desired, it will soon be possible to assemble the most real person, without resorting to biomaterials obtained from homo sapiens at all, but by pulling them from all other living creatures - butterflies there, birds, fish and thistles. And here you are: a man canonically sinless!

It is not surprising that the Catholic theologian Clive Staples Lewis has already begun to lay straws on this unpleasant place, hinting that all animals also had their own fall, even earlier than human. And yes, plants do too. Not to mention germs. We do not know the details, but it is enough to look at their lifestyle to be convinced of this.

And nevertheless, any manipulation of the human genome causes terrible aggression in most confessions. Both directly and indirectly, it is in this area of knowledge that religious groups insert especially large sticks into too nimble wheels.

New technologies categorically contradict the most important religious norms

If they don't order from the sky

• Blood transfusion

  The Bible has repeatedly said that the soul of any creature is in its blood, therefore blood in food should be prohibited. Muslims and Jews adhere to the rule, Christians for the most part don't give a damn about it. But among the Protestant churches there are those who take the Old Testament very seriously. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses do not recognize transfusion of blood and its components, they refuse it even under the threat of death. Therefore, every year around the world, a dozen criminal cases are brought up against Jehovah's Witnesses parents who prevent the treatment of their minor children.

• Alcohol-based medicines and Islam

  As you know, the very first drop of wine destroys a Muslim - at least, the prophet insisted on this. Therefore, in clinics adhering to halal norms, alcohol-containing preparations are prohibited, including simple disinfectants. There is even a special branch of Islamic pharmaceuticals that comes up with non-alcoholic alternatives to alcohol-containing medicinal products.

• Evolution theory

  Catholics have already recognized the theory of "divine evolution", Orthodoxy does not have a unanimous opinion on this issue (although there are many opponents of evolution among Orthodox leaders - suffice it to recall the newly-minted deputy Vitaly Milonov, who demands that the teaching of "monkey heresy" be prohibited in schools), but the Protestants en masse their creationists, that is, they are obliged to sacredly believe that the Lord created all animals in one day six thousand years ago and did not plan any changes or development for them. Therefore, in half of the US states, teaching the theory of evolution in schools is either prohibited or allowed, but with the parallel compulsory acquaintance of schoolchildren with the ideas of creationism.

• Euthanasia

• Help a terminally ill and dying person in pain to die easily and painlessly? While humanity was at war, the church interfered little in this matter, and misericordias (knives for the merciful finishing of the seriously wounded) glittered happily in the fields after the battles. Today, all Christian churches zealously stand guard over the interests of the soul, which is purified by suffering and must be saved from the most terrible sin - suicide. Secular ethics also does not have an unambiguous answer to this difficult question: is it possible to help the outgoing person or is it necessary to prolong his torment by all means?

Any manipulation of the human genome causes terrible aggression in most confessions

Personality change

Today, neurocorrection is a field of psychology that specializes in attempts to improve the condition of people with serious mental problems. Neurocorrection of the future will be carried out not by psychologists, but by specialists who can influence the work of neurons. Neurobiology is one of the most rapidly developing branches of knowledge, literally every year revolutions take place here, even if they are not very clear for citizens far from these spheres. The creation in the 90s of the XX century of MRI machines, machines that can see brain activity, took us to another era (although we have not yet noticed this). It is safe to predict that in the coming decades, people will learn to change personality by reconfiguring neural connections in the brain, or even uploading the necessary information copied from another brain into it. The very first steps are already being taken here *.

And we will tell a lot about them sometime. About the fact that scientists can already read a little mind, transfer images to the subjects directly to the brain, and so on. It's just that now the topic of the article is different, we will not be distracted even by such a charm.

Of course, at first these technologies will be aimed at helping the mentally ill, but in the future, the range of applications will certainly expand. Who would refuse to get rid of depression and acquire, for example, mathematical abilities in a few sessions of sitting in a neurocorrective helmet? And, of course, all this is a direct encroachment on the ancient church patrimony: the healing of souls. Worse, it is a transformation of the soul, a direct intervention in God's will, performed rudely and cynically, without prayers, dialogues with higher powers and meditation. In addition, the neuroscience scoundrels take on the task of explaining things that the church would rather keep unexplained. The origin of religious ecstasy, affection, feelings of purification, grace, all signs given by higher powers, and other secrets of the spirit, they classify and dissect as cockroaches.

Immortality

And, of course, the main dream of humanity, immortality, and physical immortality, is an absolutely impossible thing within almost any of the existing religions. For everything they promise is on the other side of the door. As Stendhal said, "All religions are based on the fact that most people are afraid of death, and the minority is cleverly using this fear."

If there is no death, there will be no God. That is, then he may actually appear. And he really will be like us in everything, because he will be us - an intelligent, eternal and almost omnipotent being. However, so far even the most optimistic physiologists admit that the horse hasn’t been lying around here yet: it will be very, very long time before we can cope with the habit of our bodies to die. It will take several hundred years for sure. True, geneticists have already found genes for immortality in jellyfish, freshwater polyps and naked mole rats …