One of the criticisms of the medieval period and the role of the Church is this relationship of science and religion – the Church supposedly placing a higher priority on voodoo than on actual scientific inquiry, blocking discoveries that threatened the established religious dogma, etc.
The most famous example, false as it is, is that of Copernicus and
Galileo. This episode is mocked by the moderns, just as other
examples – regardless of the facts or lack thereof – are mocked.
“How could such people believe such things?”
“Look at the Church standing in the way of science!”
“Whenever science and religion butt heads, science is always
proven right.”
I
wonder what people will say in a hundred years or more from now of our
generation. Haven’t we thrown away science and replaced it with the
religion of a virus, a religion of critical theory, a religion of money growing
on trees? Can any of these be thought of as anything other than a
religion (in the worst sense of the word)?
We
look back with scorn at the book burnings, getting rid of ideas of which the
establishment disapproves. But what is it that Facebook, YouTube,
and Twitter are doing that is different? Are these not the modern
version of the same thing, today’s book burnings?
What
of witch hunts and burning witches at the stake? One looks at the career
ending cancel culture and sees that little has changed.
And let’s not start on the issue of child
sacrifice. We rightly look on such practices of the ancient world
with horror: sacrificing a child in order to bring on a better world for the
adult. We have a modern word for the same thing:
abortion. It just that today the numbers are infinitely larger.
One
of the big criticisms of God is the idea that this world cannot be the product
of a good God. Now, it isn’t any of the above modern practices that
are at issue – it isn’t abortion, cancel culture, or the hell brought on by
lockdowns and money printing that cause us to call into question the existence
of God. It is that we don’t live in some version of utopia: no child
left behind, no one hungry, no one sick, no one poor, no one dying. That
sort of thing.
But I wonder: this world is not good
compared to what world? We have water, food, oxygen, natural
resources that allow for an ever-improving standard of living in the right
circumstances (private property and free markets). Man has been
given reason – a rational faculty. We have been given everything
necessary to sustain and enhance human life. Have you tried living
on Venus or Mars?
All
of this leads me to wonder: the more we progress in the way that the left means
that term, the more we return to the worst of humanity. If there is
one concrete feature of the left, it is that tradition is ignored, even mocked.
In
order to progress, one must understand what one is progressing from
and toward what one is progressing to. Both the past (cultural
tradition) and the future (toward what end) must be clearly understood and
defined. Otherwise “progress” means nothing more than “every day is
a new day.” One can never go wrong under such circumstances as there
is not standard – either from the past or the future. Here again,
another concrete feature of the left; they can never be wrong.
Not learning from our
past does nothing but bring us back to the same past. Sure, we
enhance the past with our modern technology. I think for this we are
worse off – we are more easily found, tracked, and traced. We are
more efficiently killed. The meaning of life is much more easily
taken from us.
http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-couple-of-items.html