Science, Technology and the Economy... Amen

Science, Technology and the Economy... Amen

Christianity talks of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the God of Christianity. Three names, three people, one being in one God. It seems simple to someone that is used to it, that is raised in that tradition. That is deceptive because anyone with real faith and real experience or understanding of Christianity, or any living religion, knows that it is complex, mysterious and filled with things that are unknown and unknowable. What is the will of God, and how can we know it? And then, what about following it? The Trinity? Three persons in one being, in one God? These are just the beginning of the questions. Questions that after two millennia of being worked on by some of the best minds are still unclear and lacking definitive answers.

At one point I came across a feminist interpretation of the Trinity that exchanged the traditional terms for three more gender neutral ones: Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. While this interpretation definitely has validity and connection to the truth and mystery of the Trinity, it is missing something that made me resist it as anything more than one possible alternative way to think about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My hangup: it is very impersonal. To say that the Sustainer works in mysterious ways seems to fall so flat compacted to the Spirit works in mysterious ways. Saying that the redeemer struggled in the garden and suffered on the cross has much less meaning, at least to me, than saying that the Son-- who is the person Jesus-- struggled and suffered. This interpretation misses the personal aspects of the traditional wording. It is interesting and enlightening, but it can't replace the standard. At least not for me.

However, I may be part of a group that is not typical these days. I want the personal just as much, if not more, than the objective. But I think most people are different, at least when it comes to truth. Most people want the impersonal because people and the personal are imperfect and inconsistent, to say the least. As a society, we seem to prefer the impersonal and abstract because we trust in things that are thought to be objective, like data and systems. This is why we put so much faith in computers, and as a society we will soon put more faith in AI than we can in a personal God, or even in any person.

We will move, if we haven't already, from the personal Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, though the rather impersonal Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer interpretation, into a new Trinity. It is the Trinity of Science, Technology and the Economy. Science creates the world we live in. (But we like to think of it as uncovering what is and was always there already.) Technology shapes and manipulates it to our fit our will and liking as much as it can. (Those with faith in the Trinity conveniently ignore or logically discount--usually by throwing blame-- what the God can't change, or the spin it, like any good faithful follower does.) And the Economy sustains the other two so they can continue their work. The good work; the work of God.

To be fair, this is not the way that real, well educated people-- especially real scientists-- see these things. This is really a manifestation of scientism. But I think it is widespread and it is spreading wider. It is most definitely a religion, a system of though that is based on faith. It is the religion of the new Trinity that bills itself as humanistic but is controlled by cold science: facts and data analyzed objectively, often by computers. It pretends to be realistic and materialistic, submitting to the facts and data, but it is actually more concerned with manipulating the material world and forging a reality of its own imagining. When that fails it spins the facts and creates illusions to cover over what doesn't fit its vision-- as does every good religion. And it is a religion. It is the religion of the new Trinity: Science, Technology and the Economy. Amen.

Essential Passages from Scripture:
In the beginning was Technology, and Technology was with Science, and Technology was Science. Technology was in the beginning with Science. All things came into being through Technology, and without it not one thing came into being. What has come into being through Technology was (a comfortable) life, and this life was the light of all people. This light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

When the day of Prosperity had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from the markets there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Individual accounts, like platinum cards with high credit limits, appeared among them, and an account rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Economy and began to spend in many amounts and currencies, as the Economy gave them ability.