my burg

"Man cannot be the image either of nature or of the machine. Man is the image and likeness of God." Below is an excerpt from The Fate of Man in the Modern World (1935) , by Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). [ University of Michigan, 1935; pp 25-35.] Writing in 1935 Berdyaev is analyzing the direction of western Europe since the turn of the twentieth century. In view are the great war (World War I), the advance of communism, and the rise of national-socialism in Germany. He views the twentieth century as being that point in history where humanism dies. He notes that the existence of God (theism) had been widely rejected and now man as a special creation no longer made sense. Classical humanism is losing its influence. Humanity is going into one of two directions: the bestial (identification with nature) and the technological (identification with the machine). By "bestialism" Berdyaev means a philosophy or practice of life that is brutish, animalistic, that is, dr...

According to a TIME magazine article in 2015 , "The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according  to a new study from Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly  digitalized lifestyle on the brain."  The article goes on to cite a dubious upside to this: "On the positive side, the report says our ability to  multitask has drastically improved in the mobile age."   I fear, for myself and for others, that this also affects our study of God's word.  A brief passage, or a devotional moment (aka a "devo"), cannot replace more  prolonged meditation and application of God's word.  Psalm 1 tells us that the way to flourish and bear fruit in the Lord is to meditate on his Law "day and night", and to be rooted in the Scriptures like a tree near a life-giving stream of water. To do otherwise is to let our lives beco...

Here are a few more quotes in line with my post earlier today... "Technology is good, as a means for the human spirit and for human ends.  But technocracy, that is to say, technology so understood and so worshipped as to exclude any superior wisdom and any other understanding than that of calculable phenomena, leaves in human life nothing but relationships of force, or at best those of pleasure, and necessarily ends up in a philosophy of domination.  A technocratic society is but a totalitarian one ."  ( Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads , 1943 , quoted in The Year of Our Lord 1943) "The severance of ethics from fixed values and standards, ardently promoted by John Dewey and the naturalists, has brought moral chaos.  Theological sanctions discarded, the modern man covets only social, and sometimes only individual, approval of his behavior .  The sense of ethical imperative is evaporating from one range of life after another.  The obligation...

"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he  was going.  By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same  promise.  For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God."    (Hebrews 11:8-10 ESV)  We are at that time of the year in our town, a university community, that folks begin moving away.  Perhaps everyone in transition can identify  with these words about Abraham: "and he went out, not knowing where he was going" (11:8).   There are new living arrangements to make, new situations to learn, new  friends to make, and new challenges to master.  The vital thing that sustained Abraham, as he packed up to move out in faith and obedience, was that he was "looking forward to the city that ...

Here are five more benefits, randomly selected, of growing older... 8)  Health is not something you take for granted anymore .  Once you did anything you wanted, and didn't even think about asking your body about it.  Now, you're not only aware of your body, you have to ask permission of the various parts to get going in the morning.  But still you're thankful to be moving about.  As they say, it's better to be seen than viewed.  9)  You realize that technology in media, while very helpful, is greatly over-rated in truly enhancing life.  Smart phones don't make you smart, they just give you access to things that could make you smart if you looked at them longer than 4 seconds.  10)  You realize you need less stuff and wonder why you kept so much of what you now have.  Except books.  You don't regret having good books.  The advantage to youth is that you have more energy to get rid of stuff quicker.   ...

"O LORD, how manifold are your works!  In wisdom have you made them all;  the earth is full of your creatures."   (Psalm 104:24 ESV) It is exciting to see Google and Chipotle running tests in our community for using drones to deliver burritos. See Roanoke Times article here .   It is really quite a feat, and really fun that our university is on the cutting-edge.  And yet -- think about this-- it has taken us humans thousands of years to develop the technology to be able to do this. We have to produce the materials, build the drone, write the code -- probably millions of lines of code -- and utilize the skill of lots of engineers, just to deliver a burrito to one location and fly back.   But every year I notice many birds, small birds -- many smaller than most drones -- flying about finding food, collecting, taking it to the nest, feeding their young, and repeating this many hours every day for several weeks.  And then... they train their ...

"I am no medievalist. I rejoice in the marvelous widening of our knowledge of this mysterious universe; I delight in the technical achievements of our day. This is God's world, and neither its good things nor its wonders should he despised by those upon whom they have been bestowed. Moreover, I cherish within my soul a vague yet glorious hope of a time when material achievements, instead of making man the victim of his machines, may be used for the expression of some wondrous thought. There may come a time when God will send to the world the fire of genius, which he has taken from it in our time; a time when he will send something far greater -- a humble heart finding in his worship the highest use of all knowledge and power. There will come a time when men will wonder at their obsession with these material things, when they will see that their inventions are in themselves as valueless as the ugly little bits of metal type in a printer's composing room, and that their true...

Wow. I read "Among The Disrupted," by  Leon Wieseltier, a very insightful essay on the state of humans, information, and technology.  Some excerpts... What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. Economists are our experts on happiness! Where wisdom once was, quantification will now be. Quantification is the most overwhelming influence upon the contemporary American understanding of, well, everything. It is enabled by the idolatry of data, which has itself been enabled by the almost unimaginable data-generating capabilities of the new technology. The distinction between knowledge and information is a thing of the past, and there is no greater disgrace than to be a thing of the past. The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions...

"Acedia" n. "spiritual or mental sloth; apathy." From Gr. "listlessness; without care." (From The New Oxford American Dictionary )  "As acedia, boredom is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It deserves the honor. You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way through Don Giovanni or a trip to the Grand Canyon or an afternoon with your dearest friend or a sunset. There are doubtless those who nodded off at the coronation of Napoleon or the trial of Joan of Arc or when Shakespeare appeared at the Globe in Hamlet or Lincoln delivered himself of a few remarks at Gettysburg. The odds are that the Sermon on the Mount had more than a few of the congregation twitchy and glassy-eyed. To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excite...

Niebuhr's definition of liberal Protestantism may be applied to today's revisionist Christianity : “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”   (Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America , 1937) The "love of God" can be used in the Bible in different ways : "God loves with a love of benevolence (John 3:16) and with a love of delight (Zeph 3:17)." (Thomas Manton) C. S. Lewis on applied science, which we could call "technology" : "There is something which unites magic and applied science [ =technology ] while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages.  For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.  For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men; the solution is a techni...

I am enjoying From the Garden to the City , by John Dyer, which is a readable, yet thoughtful, biblical theology of technology.  Here are some quotes... “One of the most dangerous things you can believe in this world is that technology is neutral.” "When technology has distracted us to the point that we no longer examine it, it gains the greatest opportunity to enslave u s."  “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” (quoting John Culkin) "...a simple, encompassing definition of technology: 'the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for  practical purposes.'" "Technology, then, is the means by which we transform the world as it is into the world that we desire. What we often fail to  notice is that it is not only the world that gets transformed by technology. We, too, are transformed." "In this sense, technology sits between us and the world, changing and molding both at once. The world feels the s...

Here's a quote sent to me from my friend Harry...   "One of the most disastrous illusions of the internet age is that  an amateur plus Google is equivalent to a scholar. A search  engine offers information, more or less relevant according to the  skill of the searcher. But it does not sift that information; it  does not sort fact from fancy, wheat from chaff. It does not  explain which facts are relevant and which are beside the point.  It does not weigh the merits of competing arguments and tell the  user where the balance of evidence lies. A bright amateur armed  with the internet may at best be better informed than he would  otherwise have been, and he may occasionally catch a real scholar  in a factual error. But it will not turn him into a scholar  himself. There is no such thing as effortless erudition." (- Dr. Timothy McGrew,  Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan U )    

Here are some excerpts from a Friday Five interview with John Dyer on this topic:  ...tools and technology are not neutral because while we use them to transform the world, they transform us in turn. And they don't just transform our bodies. They also transform business and culture. I'm not so concerned with whether or not technology offers us a "net plus" as I am with helping us recognize that technology always brings a "net change." ... Focusing all our time on whether technology is "bad" or "good" tends to blind us from all of these other very significant changes that technology brings. A parallel trend [ the affect of abundance ] appears to be happening with information. We now have access to the greatest sermons, research, and Biblical tools humans have ever created, and yet we spend most of our time updating Facebook and watching funny cats on YouTube. In other words, we have trouble distinguishing between easy-to-consume inf...