Using examples from history, Noble argues that Western technology and religion are not at odds but actually complement each other’s development.

Noble shows that Western technology is has a foundation in both Christian doctrine and ancient mythic thought, and that there is actually no fundamental conflict between science and religion. Scientific enlightenment and religious belief are essentially compatible, he argues, though radical new developments such as cloning may at times lead to conflict

Arguing against the widely held belief that technology and religion are at war with each other, David F. Noble’s groundbreaking book reveals the religious roots and spirit of Western technology. It links the technological enthusiasms of the present day with the ancient and enduring Christian expectation of recovering humankind’s lost divinity. Covering a period of a thousand years, Noble traces the evolution of the Western idea of technological development from the ninth century, when the useful arts became connected to the concept of redemption, up to the twentieth, when humans began to exercise God-like knowledge and powers.

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Date: Mon Dec 8 1997

From: David Noble At: 207.172.104.77

Ready when you are. :)

Good evening, Dr. Noble. Throughout history, the secular and the religious, and especially technology and religion, have been considered adversaries or at least uneasy countrymen. But your thesis in "THE RELIGION OF TECHNOLOGY" is that they have really always been merged. How exactly have they been inseparable?

It is true that in the popular imagination, science and technology on one hand, and religion on the other, have appeared as adversarial opposed, and in fact, as opposites. But in fact, over the last thousand years, they have been inextricable intertwined. Technology is being suffused and inspired by religious belief. This integration began roughly in the 19th century, so far as historians can tell. At that moment, what we now call technology and what was then called the mechanical arts, first became implicated in the Christian project of redemption. Before that time, the mechanical arts were seen as irrelevant to redemption. So we’re talking about a phenomenon that’s roughly a thousand years old.

Would the space program be the logical -- or perhaps extreme -- culmination of this, with spacecraft literally being launched in the direction of the heavens?

Well, manned space flight is indeed a perfect example of this intersection between technology and religion. The early dreams of manned space flight in the 17th century, John Wilkins, Johan Keppler, and others dreamed of such flights, to the moon and elsewhere, and they were religiously inspired. The pursuit was to try to locate paradise and space flight was understood as an ascent of mortals toward God. In my book, I have a chapter on manned space flight and NASA entitled "The Ascent of the Saints." We could view space flight as a sort of technological Rapture. For example, Constantine Tsiolkovsky, the pioneer of the science of rocketry, was a disciple of the Orthodox Christian Mystic Nicolai Federov who believed that mankind’s destiny was to achieve dominion over the universe and reunification with God and manned space flight was seen as a means to this ends.

You also note in your book that Werner Von Braun came to the United States with the idea of achieving divinity through the space program. Why did he not offer this divinity to the Germans -- did he see Hitler as a kind of antichrist?

Werner Von Braun, the lapsed Nazi, who was the main force behind the US manned space flight program became a born-again Christian shortly after arriving in the United States and remained an outspoken evangelical Christian for the rest of his life. He viewed manned space flight as a millennial new beginning for mankind and wrote that mankind had to go into space to spread the gospel. He called the first manned space flight project in 1956, Project Adam, to symbolize this. And Project Adam was later renamed Project Mercury by NASA (which was set up in 1957). Von Braun was by no means unique in this regard.

Both his superior, General Medaris, at Huntsville, Alabama, and his successor, William Lucas, were devout. The former became a Catholic priest and the latter a lay Baptist minister who viewed satellites as a means of spreading the gospel. The founder of the SETI program, and the only two-time NASA administrator, James Fletcher, was a very active Latter Day Saint (Mormon), the first Chief of Operations of NASA, Hugh Dryden, was lay Methodist minister of the year. By far the most religious contingent in NASA have been the astronauts themselves who have carried literally thousands of Christian bibles, banners, and flags into space. A red Bible still sits on the seat of the Rover on the moon.

Is this still the case at NASA today? Lately, the space program is almost seen as mundane, sometimes, a means of achieving almost ordinary, workmanlike tasks in space. Has the program gotten duller precisely because of losing some of its religious fervor? Does anyone involved still expect to find God in space?

I think the agenda of NASA, which has been trying desperately to kindle some enchantment with space. Their agenda has been to suggest even more strenuously that mankind’s knowledge of, and reunification with, the Creator, is NASA’s mission. The movie CONTACT suggests the precisely this mission and is a thinly-veiled propaganda for NASA. Rather than the religiousity ebbing, I would say it’s intensifying. Today’s shuttle astronauts are no less religious than their predecessors. There are Bible study classes throughout NASA installations including the astronauts office in Houston, and Mission Control.

When you get a chance, I’d like to explain about the term redemption. I want to make clear what I mean by that.

Yes, please, Dr. Noble, explain just what you mean by redemption. Especially in relation to how you see scientists typically "driven by dreams of supernatural redemption." Meanwhile, everybody, I’ll be opening the chatroom doors, so we may have a moment of lag-time.

I want to make it clear that when I use the word "religion," I’m not speaking metaphorically, but literally. In particular, I’m refering to the core beliefs of Christianity. Christianity blurs the distinction between man and God. The story goes something like this: Mankind was created in an image likeness to God, which means that mankind participated in divinity. This meant that Adam enjoyed immortality, a share in divine knowledge, dominion over creation, and a role in creation. With the Fall, this divine likeness was obscured. The symbolism of Christ is the promise of a recovery of that original divinity and it is this that I’m referring to as "redemption" -- a recovery, a restoration, of mankind’s divine being and powers. It is toward this end that over the last thousand years Western technology has been directed.

Would Christian guilt be part of this quest for redemption -- guilt for the Fall, guilt in each of us for our frustrating lack of divinity, and possibly guilt for technology itself?

My concern is with ideology. Our shared collective imagination, rather than with our individual psychology, and the reasons for people’s religious beliefs are too diverse to generalize about.

I’d like to talk about artificial intelligence, cyberspace, and genetic engineering, if I could.

From the time of the merging between technology and religion, your book suggests, this partnership was a powerful force for good, indeed moving us toward greater humanity and divinity. But somewhere along the line, you say, this started to go wrong. Just when and how did the partnership start heading in wrong direction. Were weapons of warfare one of the problems?

Are the internet and true Christianity compatible -- or is cyberspace too chaotic and profane to ever aspire to the divine?

I would say that the religious impulse has contributed to the relief of man’s estate, as Francis Bacon put it, but was never an unalloyed good. The otherworldliness of the project sacrificed mortal needs to the pursuit of a transcendence of the mortal condition. Today this is especially worrisome. Many among the most ardent promoters of such technologies as artificial intelligence, cyberspace, virtual reality, and genetic engineering betray a disregard and disdain for mortal needs and indeed, an impatience with life. I see this as a menace.

The most noteworthy example, perhaps, in our own day, is that Guru of the Information Age, Kevin Kelley, founder of Wired magazine. Kelley is himself a born-again Christian who is very active in Bible study. His book, called "OUT OF CONTROL," is a primer for men as Gods. Says Kelley, the Hebrew God Yahweh, lost control of his creation, namely man, and we, as Gods, will lose control over our creations, our technologies, but that is the way it is with us Gods. No need to worry, this outlook is the epitome of social irresponsibility, dignified by the quest for divinity.

That question has been raised and answered in a marvelous forthcoming book by Margaret Wertheim entitled "THE PEARLY GATES OF CYBERSPACE." Wertheim argues, as I do in my book, that cyberspace is indeed a realm in which people are seeking what used to be called paradise. But unlike the medieval cosmology of someone like Dante, who also traveled to the other world, cyberspace has no moral mapping. There is no direction, no basis for assessing thoughts or actions. Therefore, cyberspace can have no religious meaning.

Dr. Noble, you say the Kelly is a born again Christian and studies the Bible, which implies a certain faith in the Divinity of Christ but if what you say he says in his book is true, that’s a complete contradiction. It’s saying man is divine and "as a god." This doesn’t seem very consistent.

And indeed, it isn’t. In many quarters, Kelly’s beliefs would seem blasphemous, but it is precisely this hubris that is the hallmark of the Western technological endeavor.

Then Kelly is not really a practicing "Christian" at all if those are his beliefs.

Kelley’s philosophies would be truly Christian, wouldn’t they, if he were really the second coming -- the true embodiment of Christ? Once upon a time, of course, it was Christ who aspired to the Godhead.

What is the most irresponsible aspect of philosophies such as Kelley’s -- the belief that we are gods ourselves, or the belief that we will lost control of our creations? Are the fertility sciences and genetic engineering irresponsible because they attempt to do what only God should do, or because they are very capable of going out of control (septuplets, octuplets, mutants, etc.)?

The two are really one. The injunction of the story of Genesis, that mankind should not be Gods, is based upon the expectation that men playing Gods will mess it up. That’s what it’s about. The inevitability of this prospect was illuminated most profoundly and decisively by Mary Shelley in her book "FRANKENSTEIN, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS." So the human quest to be Gods is itself a recipe for disaster. Now the genetic engineers take a slightly different tack and suggest that mankind should be a co-creator with God, a kind of junior partner in creation.

For example, Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, the largest technological endeavor since Apollo, is himself an outspoken born-again Christian and subscribes to this view. The problem here is a complacency based upon the assumption that mankind is carrying out its assigned role in the divine agenda and therefore can do no wrong.

What do you mean by "cyberspace?" The internet, or that non-existent fiction created by William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, and other fiction writers? The "cyberspace" they envision -- a fully realized world in which an individual can immerse her-self is not quite here yet -- although we’re getting closer to actually producing it. The internet is merely a means of getting and spreading information.

Cyberspace is the immaterial realm now in the making suggested by William Gibson and other writers such as Marge Piercy is a realm in which people can aspire to a disembodied existence and a God-like omnipresence and omniscience. I believe that this is the appeal. Many of the developers and promoters of cyberspace and virtual reality have exulted in this prospect. So what I’m talking about with cyberspace, internet, email, these are anticipations of this disembodied realm, which for many people, holds out the promise of a radically restructured existence. Perhaps best suggested in the phrase "the lightness of being." This is a realm stripped of the weight not only of our decaying and doomed corpreality, but also the myriad burdens of our social beings. In a word, it is an escapist paradise.

As Kelly himself explained at a conference in San Francisco, described by Margaret Wertheim, Jaron Lanier entered his virtual reality in much the same way that Christ entered our world. This parallel stunned other participants who also questioned Kelly’s Christianity and the question was raised "Isn’t there a difference between Christ’s purpose, according to Christians, to redeem mankind, and Lanier’s?" Nevertheless, Kelly believes himself and has told me in conversation that he is a devout Christian and I would have to ask Ellen Datlow to take it up himself.

Selfishly, we’ll ask one more question, and then we should let you go Dr. Noble, since we’ve gone well past the hour. The question is, how can you ever stop mankind from aspiring to the divinity in an almost godless way -- to bigger and better, to more and more and more. Isn’t it where all human exploration and invention comes from? Isn’t it one with the sex urge and procreation? How do you stop it or temper it?

Human invention and fecundity do not derive necessarily from this wish to be like Gods, although some might see our potency as a gift of God. Not being a religious person myself, I don’t see any reason why human being’s remarkable prowess need be diminished by an abandonment of such grandiose other-worldly expectations. Indeed, it is the aim of my book to suggest that we should turn that remarkable capability toward more worldly ends, placing human survival above human salvation. Human beings cannot live without myths, so I am not calling for an existence without myths, I am suggesting that the myth we have inherited needs to be profoundly reworked. That is the real challenge.

For social historian Noble (history, York Univ., Toronto), Western culture’s persistent enchantment with technology finds its roots in religious imagination. Despite their varied guises and pursuits, science and technology suggest nothing more than our "enduring, other-worldly quest for transcendence and salvation." The pearl of great value is Noble’s contention that science and technology aren’t guilty of amorality: that was never the intent. Rather, he claims, new technologies aren’t about meeting human need; they transcend it. Salvation through technology "has become the unspoken orthodoxy." Such is the new Gnosticism. This is a dense, fascinating study of technology and Christianity. Not satisfied with easy equivalencies, Noble challenges the idea of post-Enlightenment science as a secular brave new world and quietly offers that what we’re really hoping for is our reentry into Eden. Recommended for science and religion collections. Sandra Collins, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Lib.

A most significant work that deserves a wide readership...A groundbreaking account of the religious roots of Western technology...For Noble, the "religion of technology" is not a metaphor but a fact of life...Noble shows how major Western technological advances have routinely been invested with religious significance. -- Howard P. Segal, Nature

David Noble takes on the two most powerful belief systems of our times -- religion and technology -- attempting to show that they are, in fact, one. -- Jeni Miller, The Nation

Perhaps the most persistent view of the relationship between science and religion in modern culture is one of conflict. Noble, professor of history at York University, Toronto, sets out in this book to resolve that view by demonstrating the compatibility of science and religion. Noble begins by indicating the intimate relationships between science and religion in both preoccupation and language: "Artificial Intelligence advocates wax eloquent about the possibilities of machine-based immortality and resurrection." In his first section, titled "Technology and Transcendence," Noble narrates the history of Western religious response to the mechanical arts to show the ways in which the focus on the divine likeness of humankind became an end for both religious and scientific activity to achieve. Here he points to alchemists like Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa, scientists like Isaac Newton and natural theologians like Joseph Priestley as examples of scientists and religionists who combined science and religion in quest of human perfectibility. In a second section, "Technologies of Transcendence," Noble examines the contemporary conversation between science and religion and points to some of the darker sides of the quest for transcendence and perfection through science in the advent of atomic weapons and genetic engineering. Through clear and precise writing, Noble provides a lucid guide through the history of the relationship between science and religion. (Sept.)

Noble (History of Science/York Univ., Canada) argues that the apparent dichotomy between science and religion, between the physical and the spiritual, is an artifact of recent history. He examines nearly 2,000 years of Western history to support his thesis. Noble (A World Without Woman, 1992) cites two early impulses behind the urge to advance in science and technology: the conviction that apocalypse is imminent, and the belief that increasing human knowledge helps recover knowledge lost in Eden. For example, Columbus’s writings show that he believed the Orinoco to be one of the rivers of Paradise and expected the End Times to come within a century or so. Indeed, the metaphor of a return to Eden runs through the writings of advocates of science, exploration, and technology from the earliest days. Isaac Newton’s religious studies, which seem such a puzzle to moderns, grew out of his belief that, by understanding the divine creation, man fulfills God’s plan in preparing for the millennium by perfecting himself. Priestley, Faraday, Clerk-Maxwell, and other giants of Anglo-American science shared his millenarianism. Evolution, which decoupled science from religion, led to a restatement of the millenarian vision as a secular quest for perfection, one that underlies scientific enterprise from NASA to the Human Genome Project. But, says Noble, without the religious underpinnings from which it arose, the quest for perfection leads to technical progress for its own sake--and to Hiroshima, Chernobyl, and other horrors yet to be unveiled. Only by demystifying science and by depriving its practitioners of their quasi-priestly status can we rehumanize it and turn it again to real human needs. Densely argued and supported, but well within the grasp of the non technical reader, Noble’s thesis is fascinating and in many ways convincing. An important document--and inevitably a controversial one--in the current debates on the role of science in society.