“Technosticism” is what happens when technology and science lead us from our own neural pathways, via fiber-optic networks, through electrical pulses, to here. It’s all kind of mysterious, so maybe there is a god.
This title is easy to love, because unlike most of our frequent, freakishly, binary titles on Helium, this one does not suggest that promoting atheism or agnosticism is good or bad.
That is refreshing.
Technology promotes agnosticism and even atheism
Now to the answer, of course, technology promotes agnosticism and even atheism. If we are the ones who engineer, develop, and understand it, we see natural laws that do not require that we invoke a god at work in the actual world.
That said, few of us have a clue how our television makes that fat man shout, or how cars zoom magically across paved surfaces, or even how water goes from a raindrop to a river, to a hop plant to a beer can, to subsequently be peed back into raindrops.
However, just as science and technology evolve, so does religion. It will not be a stretch, and many would say it is already well underway, that people simply re-define what God is. The god who created earth as the center of the Universe, and humans as the most important organism at that center, has retired long ago with Copernicus. It’s nice to think that He, Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo watch us through an even more advanced telescope than the NGST. All while they kick back around the Barbie with some Brewskis, (although Bruno may be an ardent vegan by now, given his aversion to roasted flesh) just watching as everything evolves.
Some would say we are more intelligent than humans 20,000 years ago, but that means some of us put our intelligence toward technology, while most of us just forgot how to read the night sky, track the trail of our prey (unless it’s internet porn), and we simply go along with the frenzied pace of new gadgets without realizing we are wholly dependent upon them. Most could not survive so well as Neanderthals if our remote is misplaced, or our handheld, the bleepin’ thing just fell in the toilet again.
More indication of tolerance of agnosticism
Literate people today are beginning to see much more indication of tolerance of agnosticism, and even the backlash toward fundamental religions can be read as an indicator that we are once more growing smaller in significance to the vastness of the Multiverse. Our gods either have to grow along with us, or we leave them behind.
Many scientists, which once were linked with philosophers; known as Natural philosophers in the good ole days before brain-numbing remotes, often were Deists. They thought that Natural laws, the creation, and the Creator were all somehow One.
The sixties came along when pot was outlawed for racist reasons. Memory was affected, although some can’t recall exactly why; a dropped out and tuned in generation rediscovered all of this and called it “New Age.”
Recent fields of Ecopsychology, Sociobiology, and other sciences have realized that indeed natural laws do call for us to realize our inherent inter-dependence, and admit that old testament style gods do not satisfy our belief in our empirical findings of reality.
Quantum physics is as close to mysterious, weird, and incomprehensible as old age gods, however, so there is always hope for quantum, (very minute) leaps of faith.
Memes, like genes, grow and spread in fits and starts. Next time you hear screeching heads going off about hellfire, you will witness the fits, and can muse about the starts. Consider how to start people toward thinking rationally, or how to start opening minds with a new tech can opener of truly intelligent design.
Human beings and their views, like cans of beans, are not going to be preserved for long once the can is opened, and the contents are set upon our plates. But what can science and technology provide us that faith and religion have not? Imagine whirled peas.
