Recent trends in society suggest that people are paying more attention to
ethics and moral values.
Continuing concern over the war in Iraq and news of the Virginia Tech
shooting have greatly unsettled many. So it's no surprise that people
have started to examine the human experience more carefully, looking at
the foundations of modern Western thought.
For centuries, religion lay at the heart of Western identity. But
religion became irrelevant to many leading thinkers during the last
century and a half, thanks largely to advances in science, technology
and medicine. Lately, however, there's been discussion about how our
species may be moving toward a wiser
accommodation of both the
religious and the scientific perspectives. The 2007 Books of
Distinction (BOD) program, funded by the John Templeton Foundation,
calls attention to twenty-one books in the categories of religion,
science and social science/philanthropy that attempt a harmonization.
With concern for the current state of affairs, Vision.org offers a related five-part series, plus in-depth
coverage of current social issues and insights into the philosophical, moral and ethical values in society today.
The Vision series examines some of the background and impact of six
ideas that have influenced and now govern the thinking of most people.
Introducing conceptual frameworks that have removed God from His role
in everyday life, David Hulme comes to the disturbing conclusion that
"some of the most significant 19th-century underpinnings of Western
civilization are the product of flawed thinking, bringing with them
catastrophic results. Even if people have only a muddled concept of
them, these ideas have caused many to live in a kind of quiet despair,
suspecting that life is meaningless."
In the first article, "Origin of a Specious Theory," Hulme discusses
two ideas that come from Charles Darwin--the theory of evolution and
its associated mechanism of natural selection.
Next is the theory and practice of dialectical materialism as conceived
by Karl Marx, who may have influenced modern history more than any
other intellectual. In Part Two, "A Dark Fellow from Trier," Hulme
takes a closer look at what may have influenced his theories.
Part Three, "A Dream Gone Wrong," examines the ideas of the father of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and how his concepts helped shape the
mental framework of just about everyone, whether they have read his
works or not.
The final two "dominant ideas," relativism and positivism, are
associated with physics and the scientific method. We get a glimpse of
two philosophical approaches that gained prominence largely as a result
of 20th-century developments in science in Part Four, "Positively No
Absolutes?"
Part Five, "Turning the Intellectual Tide," is the final installment in
the
series and reviews these ideas that set science and religion at
seemingly hopeless odds against each other, thereby eliminating any
reasonable basis for a moral and ethical society.
Hulme searches out and reveals a biblical perspective on the issues. He
asks whether faith and reason can coexist, concluding that contrary to
the message conveyed in the recent past, they are not mutually
exclusive. Further, he proposes that a world in which human beings can
survive physically depends not only on
science and religion
communicating honestly to better respond to society's problems, but on
our establishing a moral and ethical framework on the basis of a
meaningful convergence between the two.
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