© 2006 Olga López
© 2006 Urantia Association of Spain
It seems evident, when reviewing the history of humanity, that humankind has gone through a series of distinct stages. These stages, however, have not been initiated and surpassed simultaneously by all the peoples of the world. Could we affirm that today, at the beginning of the 21st century, there is not a single people in the world that is still in the first of the three states enunciated by the French philosopher Comte in the 19th century[1]? Clearly, generalizations are very dangerous. We always tend to project our culture, our worldview, onto peoples who do not live that culture and whose evolution has followed paths very far from the rationality that has come to be called “Western.”
The world is a mosaic of peoples situated at different technical, cultural, and religious levels. Since it is impossible to encompass this entire mosaic within a common framework, from now on I will always refer to Western culture, thought, and values, which (of course) includes Christianity.
In our Western society, we have been living in times of disbelief for years, a process that began during the Enlightenment and whose consequences we continue to observe in our time. The influence of Christianity in all spheres of society until then was so great that religion, or rather its exclusive owner, the Church, not only dictated what could be believed and what could not, what was dogma of faith (and therefore neither debatable nor debatable) and what was heresy. It also had the power to decide which scientific theories could be true because they were in accordance with Holy Scripture. And not only that: medieval and Renaissance scientists themselves did not hesitate to include God or his celestial powers in trying to explain physical phenomena such as the movement of celestial bodies. The existence of God was often the starting point of much scientific reasoning.
As science developed under the tutelage of religion, it was burdened by a heavy burden: the weight of Christian dogma. It took centuries for science to lift this enormous stone and begin to move with any degree of autonomy.
Unfortunately, human beings are freeing themselves from one slavery to thoughtlessly embrace another. In this process of progressive humanism that began in the Enlightenment, God ceased to be a postulate and became a chimera, a consolation for weak minds. From then on, unconditional faith in a Supreme Being was replaced by unconditional faith in science as a source of answers capable of giving meaning to our existence. There were even those who replaced it with a nihilistic pessimism.
The appreciation of science has been placed at the expense of religion. Little by little, religion has been losing its role as a source of meaning, as the answers offered by institutionalized churches do not fully satisfy humankind’s desire for truth. These (and I am referring above all to the three monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) have fossilized truth, encasing it in dogmas and doctrine. And fossilized truth is a dead truth.
But can science alone answer all the questions human beings ask? Can it provide a foundation for ethics and for life in society?
This overvaluation of science has led to materialism, the belief that there is nothing but matter and that it is governed by natural laws and chance. Today, there are scientific fundamentalists (misnamed “skeptics”) who consider religion a vestige of the past and that it is absurd, in the 21st century, to be religious. For the materialist, religion is a useless crutch with which it is unnecessary to navigate life. If God cannot be isolated in a test tube, if we cannot see him with a telescope, then he simply does not exist, and therefore, our explanation of the world must exclude even the possibility of his existence.
And what about morality? Stripped of its religious foundation, it was also permeated by the prevailing materialism. The resulting morality is a hedonistic (and selfish) morality that associates happiness with material well-being. There is nothing more than what there is, and we must serenely accept it in all its fatality. The best we can do is live our lives in the best possible way, trying to enjoy the pleasures to the fullest, for the grave will be our final resting place, and there will be nothing else.
But there is still a slavery far greater than that of science, which strongly conditions and determines our life in society, and that is the slavery of MONEY. Money determines our worth and how we live. The “traditional” God has been called into question; money is the true god for many people. Money is sought not as a means but as an end in itself. We seek to have a lot of money to buy material goods, to have power over as many people as possible. How many times have we heard that “everyone has a price”?
Where, then, are the “humanist” values of altruism and love for one’s neighbor? How do we view it when someone gives in return for nothing? How many times have we heard kindness equated with stupidity? Anyone who gives without expecting anything back is, at best, a fool who hasn’t understood that giving loses what they have in the most stupid way.
Thus, human beings have been (and continue to be) enslaved, conditioned, and influenced to a greater or lesser extent by religion, science, and money. But I believe that these forms of slavery are not really such, if each of these elements is considered in its proper meaning, and each one acts in its respective sphere.
Religion as the foundation of morality
If we take the nonexistence of God to its ultimate consequences, all we find is emptiness, the most absolute despair. What’s the point of doing good, of loving one’s fellow human beings, if all those lofty feelings we’ve experienced are destined to perish with our physical body? What’s the point of learning from the cradle to the grave if we’re then to be food for worms? What’s the point of giving without expecting anything in return? Aren’t we told that any transaction should be aimed at obtaining the maximum benefit?
Do we really believe that we act in good ways because we fear the punishment that awaits us if we act wrongly? If we consider the number of people who act wrongly and not only are they not punished but who seem to be doing well, it doesn’t seem like this is the reason why we should act right, why we should guide our behavior by love for our neighbor.
No, there must undoubtedly be something more. And it’s not far off: it’s within all of us. Within each of us lies an impulse that pushes us toward good. Every normal person knows when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing. And this isn’t due to the action of some phantom manipulating us inside the machine that is our body. We have a will, we are endowed with free will; we are not puppets whose strings are capriciously pulled by a higher being.
Freedom is our most precious gift as human beings. Freedom to choose, freedom to believe, freedom to act. Understanding (of course) that freedom and responsibility are inextricably linked concepts.
Until now, we have referred to religion as an institution that defends a body of doctrine as “the Truth.” But what would happen if we considered religion as “a personal and non-transferable experience between oneself and God”? Without dogma, but with something more than pure feeling. Without blind faith, but rather one that has been previously considered by reason and intellect. The existence of a Higher Being, a Creator of all (and, therefore, ours as well), is unprovable, but that does not mean we should reject the idea and live our lives with our backs to it. We can start from this “first principle,” also considering that we have been created free to the point that we are allowed to deny our Creator and base our moral values on him.
If we start from the premise that everything that exists (whether living or inert matter) has been created by a Higher Intelligence with a purpose (even if we cannot fully discern this purpose), it seems that the harmony of the cosmos begins to make sense. But even more so, if all human beings have been created by a Higher Being, this automatically gives us a sense of brotherhood that should be the basis of our moral principles. If “the other” ceases to be a stranger and becomes a brother, the attitude toward them must necessarily be different. They cease to be a “thing” and become “another self,” with the same rights as I have as a person. A stronger bond is created with other human beings than simply belonging to what we call “humanity.”
Science, even if it provides important answers, cannot be the sole source of meaning. Science addresses material realities and attempts to explain them, but it cannot tell us anything about spiritual realities. Science alone cannot deny the existence of these realities or of God. We cannot ask it for what it cannot offer us. On the other hand, it would be absurd to seek explanations in religion (understood as we have specified above) that exist and that we must seek in science.
This does not diminish the importance of science; on the contrary, thanks to it, we have been able to better understand the world around us and the cosmos in which it is immersed. But we must keep in mind that the knowledge that science provides us is not definitive: theories once accepted can become obsolete with new discoveries. Scientific progress is cumulative: over time, new phenomena are discovered that are not satisfied by the theories of the time, and new theories are created that better explain the detected phenomena. Scientists attempt to discover the mechanisms underlying physical phenomena; scientific theories are approximations to how these mechanisms work.
It is true that there are phenomena that are scientifically inexplicable, and that they are something more than fraud and superstition. But scientists should try to apply the scientific method to them instead of simply attacking them. What is not scientifically explainable today may become so in the not-too-distant future, but it is essential to have an open mind, free from prejudice. After all, the truth can be found anywhere.
If there is one enemy that science must combat, it is not religion (understood as personal religious experience) but superstition. Religion and science are in distinct, though reconcilable, realms if one knows how to discern their respective scopes. However, what can we say about superstition? It is everywhere because religion has lost its place in society, but what hasn’t been lost is people’s desire to believe in something beyond them, beyond their control. This includes the belief in a destiny written in the stars, in the lines on the palm of their hand, in tarot cards, in psychic telephone lines, in “energy” stones, in so many things that are constantly offered to us through the media, without even having to leave our homes. People view their existence with great uncertainty, which they try to resolve with divinatory methods or supposedly ancient rituals.
If religion as a personal experience were to fill the gap created by the prevailing materialism in our society, interest in other types of responses to the apparent meaninglessness of human life would be considerably reduced and could be redirected toward the search for scientific answers.
Since religion, as a personal experience, is the source of our moral values, considering that “the other” is no longer a stranger but a brother, a fellow traveler on the long road of existence, money also takes on another meaning. Ethics begins to govern economic transactions. We discover that not everything has a price, and people even less so. If selfishness begins to be replaced by altruism, if we consider money to be an idol of clay and not the God who governs all our social behavior, money ceases to be the End toward which all our actions are directed and becomes what it should always have been: a simple means. As such, it is neither good nor bad; in any case, its goodness or badness will depend on how we use it.
What would happen if the strategy of maximum profit were replaced by the strategy of the greatest good? Well, it might well be that there would be fewer “scandalously rich” people, but there would almost certainly also be fewer “utterly poor” people. It might be that, instead of seeking economic benefit for its own sake, we would seek to help the most disadvantaged so they could earn a living for themselves in the future. That is, giving fishing rods instead of fish. At no point should this be taken as charity: we are not talking about paternalism or giving money to soothe the uneasy consciences of our self-satisfied Westerners; we are talking about dispensing justice and doing to others what we would have them do to us. Who would like to be given a handout, rather than given the resources to dig themselves out of the hole? The fact that money circulates with ethical considerations implies that the dignity of all people should not be trampled on. Every human being, as such, deserves respect.
If we were truly aware that we are both free and responsible for our actions; if we considered that this is so not only for ourselves but for all other human beings; if we start from the premise that we are brothers and sisters, having been created by a Superior Being, First Cause and Creator of all that exists; if the resulting feeling of brotherhood impels us to conduct ourselves in all areas (including the economic) according to the golden rule of the Kantian categorical imperative[2]; if we direct our attention not to the designs of a capricious fate but to the search for truth, in which science can provide us with invaluable help, would we not live in the best of all possible worlds?
I am convinced that this would be the case.
Comte’s “law of the three states” states that humanity progresses through three stages: the first is the theological state, characterized by human beings seeking explanations for phenomena in the supernatural, in the power of the gods. As humanity advances, it moves to the second state, the metaphysical, in which one attempts to ground reality in abstract concepts, in transcendent entities. The dead end that comes with referring to metaphysical concepts can only be avoided in the third state, the positive state, where the only valid starting point for all sciences are observed facts, as they are the only reliable basis for all our knowledge, whether scientific or social. ↩︎
This is one of Kant’s formulations of his categorical imperative: “Act in such a way that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always as an end at the same time and never merely as a means.” ↩︎