{"id":130,"date":"2023-11-09T11:54:39","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T16:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/?p=130"},"modified":"2023-11-09T11:54:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T16:54:39","slug":"i-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2023\/11\/09\/i-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"I Fear!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Fear!<\/strong><\/p>\n

S. M. Gollmer<\/strong><\/p>\n

I fear!\u00a0 There is talk everywhere of existential threats.\u00a0 How will we survive global warming, atomic wars, economic collapse, pandemics, and ascendant artificial intelligence?\u00a0 Each is traced back to humanity\u2019s scientific and technological achievements of the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 Not rising to the level of global threat, natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, and drought, invoke fear on the local level.\u00a0 Ironically, the threats rising from humanity\u2019s efforts are byproducts of our attempt to control the natural world.\u00a0 Becoming masters of both space and time, we have deluded ourselves into thinking science and technology will provide solutions to these threats and ones arising in the future.<\/p>\n

I fear not the existential threats themselves, but the impact of ideologies using such threats to drive society to their version of a solution.\u00a0 There is an assumption that action only occurs when the urgency of the situation is obvious.\u00a0 By proclaiming the direst outcomes for a threat, some can pierce through the background noise and be heard.\u00a0 However, these same individuals, convinced of the urgency of their cause, push for solutions promising equally dramatic results.\u00a0 What is often overlooked is these promising solutions are likely the product of market hype, and thus over promise and under perform.<\/p>\n

Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher and self-identified Christian Anarchist, proclaimed the dangers of technique<\/em>.\u00a0 He defines it as follows, \u201cIn our technological society, technique<\/em> is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity\u201d (The Technological Society<\/em>, p. xxv).\u00a0 The consequence of technique<\/em> is that when solutions are devised, they involve more technology, better technology, efficient technology, \u2026\u00a0 The solution to global warming is more efficient energy production from carbon free sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels.\u00a0 Very few are promoting nuclear energy because its perceived byproducts are too dangerous.\u00a0 However, there are always consequences for adopting a particular technology.\u00a0 We are only now beginning to see some negative aspects for wind and solar.\u00a0 If these byproducts are deemed too costly, we will turn to the next technological development to solve the latest existential problem.<\/p>\n

I fear!\u00a0 Not the existential crisis, but where we put our trust in the face of existential crisis.\u00a0 Two millennia ago, Jesus was asked about the End of the Age.\u00a0 Their existential crises were, \u201cFor nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places\u201d (Matthew 24:7).\u00a0 These crises fall into two categories: moral evil (due to human action) and natural evil.\u00a0 Our modern fears fall into the same two categories.\u00a0 We are in the 21st<\/sup> Century and I am looking towards the 22nd<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 Do I trust humanity to find a solution to the latest existential crises?\u00a0 No, I chose to place my trust in the Creator of the cosmos and Redeemer of my soul in whom I fear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Considered the most expensive natural disaster in US history, Hurricane Katrina (2005) resulted in 1,833 deaths and caused $186.3 billion in damage.\u00a0 The deadliest hurricane-type event on record is the Bhola cyclone of 1970.\u00a0 Making landfall in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) it killed between 300,000 to 500,000 people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I Fear! S. M. Gollmer I fear!\u00a0 There is talk everywhere of existential threats.\u00a0 How will we survive global warming, atomic wars, economic collapse, pandemics, and ascendant artificial intelligence?\u00a0 Each is traced back to humanity\u2019s scientific and technological achievements of the 20th Century.\u00a0 Not rising to the level of global threat, natural disasters, such as… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}