Imagine, for a moment, living in 1687 when Isaac Newton published The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (or Pincipia, for short). After the publication of the book, you would have risen in the morning and gone to work never knowing that the most influential scientific book ever written had just been published. Those living during that time could not have imagined that Principia would revolutionize the world in which we live.
Are there developments in science today that will greatly impact the world hundreds of years from now? Will people living 300 years into the future (2308) look back on our time and identify developments in science that brought about major change? Quite possibly. I can think of at least one positive example and one negative example.
On the positive side there’s the Human Genome Project, a multi-billion dollar effort to map the human genome that was completed in April, 2003. Because of this Project, science is pursuing genetics research that has the potential to bring about significant change to the well-being of humanity. People living 300 years from now may look back on our time and wonder if we realized the significance of the Project. On the morning the project was completed in 2003, we probably woke up and went about our work as if nothing had changed.
Now for the negative. There is currently a subtle movement in science that is not recognizable to many, yet it has long-term ramifications. It is changing the goal of science from discovering absolute truth to discovering relative truth.
Absolute truth refers to universal, necessary, and certain knowledge about the world. It is the standard to which scientists aspired for generations. Relative truth, on the other hand, is the idea that truth is context and culturally dependent. That is, there are different truths for different folks living in different situations. Now, to a certain extent I accept relative truth. Even my doctoral dissertation was in the area of phenomenology, a philosophy which basically asserts that truth exists in people’s subjective interpretations of lived experiences. But relative truth should not be allowed to replace objective truth as the goal of science. Efforts to promote this change is putting science on the slippery slope of moral relativism
Moral relativism is the belief that what is right or wrong in a moral sense is dependent on contextual circumstances (i.e., social, historical, cultural, and personal circumstances). Clearly it is important to make moral judgments based on context; for instance, if someone kills another person, it is important to know if that killing took place on the battlefield or in a bank. But I would argue that each legitimate moral judgment ultimately ends up in an absolute truth (i.e., the soldier is not guilty of murder whereas the back robber is guilty of murder). Yet when we take away absolute truth and leave only relative truth, everything goes haywire. Science is not exempt from the resulting confusion.
Science’s rejection of absolute truth has already had unfortunate consequences, especially in psychology. The oligarchy of psychology, otherwise known as the American Psychological Society (APA), recently sanctioned (in 2001) immoral practices such as gay marriage and other gender bending practices. What is particularly irksome is that all this happened in the name of scientific progress! “Progress by what standards?” you may ask. Progress by the standard of “If it feels good and doesn’t harm anyone else, then do it.” (a.k.a. moral relativism). In other words, according to the APA, there are no longer any absolute truths about what comprises healthy sexual relationships. “Anything goes as long as it makes you feel good and it does not hurt others.”
Relativism was once popular among the Sophists in ancient Greece. We are thus experiencing a return to the old ways, and it feels like a bad dream. So how did we get to this point? The answer is simple. The scientific community has been infiltrated by secular humanists that reject God. If there is no God, there can be no absolute truth because absolute truth requires a final arbiter of truth. In other words, without a final arbiter who conveys truth and knowledge of things as they really are, there can be no absolute truth. The more secular humanists push their atheistic agenda, the more they are driving the final arbiter of truth out of science. Moral relativism is gaining popularity today because it is filling the void left by the forced exit of the final arbiter of truth from the sciences.
The only antidote I can think of is bringing God back into science, much like existed during the 17th century Scientific Revolution. (Note that I am not calling for a return of religious influence into science that existed during the Medieval Dark Ages.) If secular humanism is allowed to proceed unchecked, relativism will grow and the goal of science will look very different 300 years from now.
If that happens, people living 300 years from now will say, “Gee, I wonder what it was like to live during 2008 when relativism began to replace absolute truth?” If we could speak, we might say, “I just woke up in the morning and went to work as if nothing had changed.” If we fail to challenge the rising tide of secular humanism and pretend as though nothing is happening, history could very well turn out this way.
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