Monday, January 9, 2006

The 2006 Edge Question

Joe Carter directs our attention to this year's Edge Question, a project of a group called The World Question Center. Many of the world's leading scientific thinkers were asked to write their thoughts on this topic:

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

Carter summarizes the results of the essays submitted by some of the 119 respondents. It is an enlightening read. If there is one theme that runs through the essays it seems to be that science demands that we must stop believing in God and accept the dreary existential consequences.

It's an interesting modern phenomena that the materialist, thinking, like some modern day Prometheus, that he's liberating himself from the shackles of intellectual tyranny when he throws God aside, is in fact committing cultural suicide. He's depriving himself and the culture which embraces his materialism of any basis for genuine meaning, morality, and human dignity. Read the excerpts Carter provides and you'll see what I mean.