Thanks for the comment! I’d even say that we’ve lived through the earliest of these tech-induced upheavals already. Take the invention of contraception, for instance. The traditional moral framework offered by religion to govern childbearing, gender dynamics, sexual relationships and more has been more or less upended. The questioning of controlling how and women get pregnant—and who gets fo have that control— just doesn’t register in Old/New Testament thinking, because the tech which has raised these questions didn’t exist. We’re now facing profound questions to which there aren’t clear answers as our capabilities have outstripped our understanding. ‘When does life begin?’ would be a crucial one. Our scientific advancements have allowed us to grasp the development of the embryo across all its stages, but at what magical moment does this multicellular organism become ‘human’? That’s a moral question, not a scientific one.
Ancient peoples never needed to have these debates. It can be very difficult to take their insights and apply them to this new moral landscape we find ourselves in. But I remain hopeful that we can do it, with more than a little help from above.
Nice article. The moral upheavals that are coming in the future are big. We might even live long enough to experience them ourselves
Thanks for the comment! I’d even say that we’ve lived through the earliest of these tech-induced upheavals already. Take the invention of contraception, for instance. The traditional moral framework offered by religion to govern childbearing, gender dynamics, sexual relationships and more has been more or less upended. The questioning of controlling how and women get pregnant—and who gets fo have that control— just doesn’t register in Old/New Testament thinking, because the tech which has raised these questions didn’t exist. We’re now facing profound questions to which there aren’t clear answers as our capabilities have outstripped our understanding. ‘When does life begin?’ would be a crucial one. Our scientific advancements have allowed us to grasp the development of the embryo across all its stages, but at what magical moment does this multicellular organism become ‘human’? That’s a moral question, not a scientific one.
Ancient peoples never needed to have these debates. It can be very difficult to take their insights and apply them to this new moral landscape we find ourselves in. But I remain hopeful that we can do it, with more than a little help from above.
Yeap, maybe a new religion with a more modern and scientific foundation will spring up and take over, since it's about time.
Good news. The only sin it will embrace is sloth. It will tell us to generate our own images.