Mirror Question 1: What does it mean to be human?

The success of science and modern technology presents a challenge to traditional faith. The almost universal response to this challenge, from both the secular and the religious domains, has been to regard religion and science as separate things. But this places spiritual truth in some parallel spiritual universe decoupled from the physical world we live in. The result is that, as the fruits of science and technology come to dominate more and more of people’s lives, the need by the church to maintain a spirituality decoupled from the physical world has forced it farther and farther into the cultural margins of our society; a sort of self-imposed exile. So it is no wonder then that the church has become less and less capable of offering meaning in society.

But to offer meaning in the world today, the church must first confront the question, “What does it mean to be human?” Of all of the mirror questions that science and religion share, this is the one that all of those questions seem to be converging to; and one neither the faithful nor the atheist gets to opt-out of having to answer.

So to inaugurate the content of this blog, here are a few examples of how this convergence plays out.

• Celebrity tech figures such as Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking have predicted dire consequences for the coming world of artificial intelligence. Elon, in particular, envisions a world of Terminator robots.

Thankfully, Elon’s scenario can’t happen. There are sound technological reasons these fears are unfounded, but that is a discussion for a later post. But that doesn’t mean the coming future of machine intelligence, coupled with advanced robotics, is not going to present an existential threat to humanity.

After all, what is a person’s worth in relation to society, if there are now machines capable of doing whatever that human could do but far better and more efficiently? If there is ever to be a place for religion in society, as it moves forward into an increasingly technology-driven world, this is the question it has to be able to answer.

• In a world free of religion, there still needs to be a shared cultural narrative for what is morally and ethically right or wrong. Some argue that it’s possible to create a system of morals and ethics based on rational choice alone. But for a process of rational choice to work, there needs to be a fixed moral yardstick to measure from; that is, some kind of shared objective external standard that each member of society can look to and work from.

That necessary moral yardstick is precisely the answer that society gives to the question, “What does it mean to be human?” Things are judged morally right to the extent that they enhance, support, enable, and etc., those things that make us human. Things are judged morally wrong to the extent that they detract, diminish, corrupt, or otherwise destroy the things that make us human.

• How many times, in public forums, have atheists debated Christian apologists? I must confess, I find these exercises painfully useless. It’s impossible to have a rational debate on any topic if you haven’t first defined your terms. In none of these debates, does either side make an effort to define what they mean by God. And without that definition, all you can do is argue in circles.

But the questions, “What is God’s nature?” and “What does it mean to be human?” are just the different sides of the same coin. The answer to one is the complement to the answer to the other. So before you’ll ever see any kind of useful debate on religion versus science, both sides are going to have to offer their best definitions of these terms and find some agreement to act as a starting point for the debates.

• The question, “What does it mean to be human?” at its most foundational level can’t be addressed without also addressing the questions of, “What is choice?”; “What is intelligence?”; and, “What is life?” And addressing these questions, in any substantive fashion, brings faith crashing head-on into physics; at which point the fiction that science and religion are two different things must dissolve.