The Christian engineer

Insofar as the theoretical scientist sees how his discoveries can be applied, he has a relation toward engineering; and the Christian, of course, has not only the moral one I mentioned, but is also aware of being the person who can suggest ways of making our lives better, and still more, the person who can indicate to those who would change things what restraints reality puts on their pursuit of their goals.

But what of the person who applies science to this alteration of the world: what of the technologist? I once contributed a chapter to a book on Christianity and technology; and much of the book was concerned with the supposed anti-Christian nature of technology, and how we can combat it. I think this attitude misses the point, and is itself anti-Christian.

The fear of technology--expressed in the antipathy we find toward computers, more than anything else, perhaps--has two sources, I think. First, there is the worry that perhaps the scientists are right and all we are are machines like computers, and therefore computers will some day "take over," and secondly, we are being made the slaves of these machines, and they are making us do all sorts of things.

As to the first, I, as a philosopher-scientist, see how foolish this 2001-induced terror is. It is simply amazing the things that very competent scientists don't see because of the focus they have. To say that a biological organism is a machine ignores the obvious fact that the organism exists at a high energy level which is physically and chemically unstable, and spontaneously maintains this energy level. Now if the level is unstable physically, how can it be maintained from within? You have a stable instability, speaking physico-chemically, which is a contradiction in terms.

And to be able to see what the relation is among two items which are connected means that the relating-function (whatever it is) has to do itself over in one single act (has to be doubly itself, so that it can observe what it is doing); and this is simply impossible for a form of energy--though we do it all the time.

No, computers can't think, and they aren't alive; it isn't that they're basically thinking but at a primitive level (and therefore with greater sophistication, they'll get better than we are); it's that they're very sophisticated already, much more so in some narrowly defined respects than we are, but on an entirely different plane from thinking, and there is no way they can even approach what we do when we think, because that is spiritual, and infinitely beyond energy.

I can almost hear you say as you read this, "Yes, but that's what all the people said before the great scientific advances; and how are you so sure?" Let me point out that you think this because of the faith that has been drilled into you of the "infinite progress of knowledge" that what can't be done simply can't be done now, which implies, when all is said and done, that we're really not finite, and there is nothing that is ultimately impossible for us if we can just figure out the way.

Now it is that attitude that is anti-Christian "technologism"; it has nothing to do with technology itself; it is simply an act of faith that we are not finite. And the remedy? Christian faith, which refuses to submit to the negative argument that "we can't do it" always means "we can't do it now but it's possible we'll do it tomorrow." There is and can be no evidence to support this argument; it is a pure dogma of this-worldly atheism, an act of the blindest faith.

The person who has this faith (and I know, because many of my students have it), when he is confronted with the evidence--of which there is a good deal--that human thought is a spiritual act and cannot be described with numbers the way a form of energy can, will not accept the evidence, not because he has any to rebut it, not because I haven't shown what the scientific data is on this point and how it skirts the real issue, but because I would presume to say that it implies that we can never build a computer than can think--and he will not allow that there is something that cannot in principle be done by us.

This skepticism, this worry that if you make a statement that X cannot be done or that X is absolutely true, then you just might be wrong, that we can never really know anything absolutely for sure, is of course something that contradicts itself. How can you be so sure that we can know nothing with absolute certainty? I have had students doubt the statement "There is something," even when I pointed out that the doubt itself isn't nothing--so that there is no point of view from which that statement could be false--because there would then be at least the point of view, which is something.

But even so, they are so filled with the faith that we can't really know anything with absolute certainty--they are so absolutely certain of this--that they will entertain absolute nonsense to maintain it.

This particular skepticism is the reverse of the coin of the American atheist's technologistic faith, that we can do anything: "The difficult we do right away; the impossible takes a little longer." You can't believe in the impossible-in-practice if you believe that anything is absolutely true. But of course, this faith, which is based on the skepticism (the fear that you might be wrong if you made an "absolutely true" statement) leads to the fear of technology; because if anything can be done, then it just might be, and the machines might take over after all.

But the Christian has changed his way of thinking. He knows he is finite, and is not devastated by it; he can accept that he can't do everything, but by the same token that he can do--and know--some things; and he can look at evidence and see where it leads and come to conclusions that he can be (finitely) confident of, and can recognize his own human limitations on his activity, and not be worried that he is going to wreck himself.

The psalmist wrote millennia ago, "Unless YHWH guards the city, the watchmen's vigilance is a waste of time." The worry that we are going to mess things up is nothing new. True, they had swords and boiling oil then, and seiges and starving people into submission, and we have nuclear weapons; but only the scale is different; the principle is the same. Either we are running and therefore ruining things, or our Master is running the universe; he is watching the city--yes, even now. What are we worried about?

The main difference between the "practical" atheist and the Christian engineer--which, includes, of course, anyone who applies theoretical knowledge--is that the atheist believes that he is the one in control; and if he knows anything, he knows how tenuous that control is, and he worries. The Christian believes that the Master of the Universe is in control, and that, while we can ruin the world if we deliberately choose to do so, or if we refuse to take reasonable precautions, still He will not leave us victims of our ignorance, still less leave the world a victim to it.

That is, just as the Master will help you toward damnation if that is what you want, and will not save you if you deliberately "remain ignorant" and do the things that would damn you that you might have qualms about if you knew--God is not mocked--still, God is not either indifferent or a spider waiting to pounce once we have touched his web. He will help each of us gain the eternal life we want, to the extent to which we want to share it; and all of our ignorance, and even our perversity, will contribute, in the last analysis, toward the goal we wish to attain. This is our faith, is it not?

Well then, why are we worried that it is we who will ruin our environment; that we must be nervous and fearful that we will wreck our world and enslave future generations to a horrendous technology that we cannot control and will control us? Where is your faith? If God can save you from your sins, can he not save you from your computers? If God will lead you to the realms of glory while you struggle with him day after day, will he leave the world to the idiocy of the unenlightened (who just happen to have preempted the word "enlightened" as if you could be "enlightened" without the Light of the World)? If he is asleep in the stern of the boat, it does not mean that he is not creating the storm, and that he's going to let the boat sink.

So the Christian has nothing to fear from technology; it will not enslave us, unless we want it to; and those of us who know this and pray to keep us from the pigheaded silliness of those who will not because they cannot see, will prevail.

We won't seem to. This, I think, is the burden of Revelation. The Church, and Christians in general, will always be failing; and their failure will be their success, just as the success of their Master was the failure of the cross. But we should not let the wood of the cross blind us to the Body upon it; that failure is success. We won't "win," perhaps, because the battle is so one-sided that the "enemy" is defeated before it even starts; they just look as if they've won. This is your faith, after all; believe it.

Given that faith, then the Christian layman can look at technology for what it is: a tool that can be used to make our life more livable, and our world more itself. It will change the face of the earth--of course. That is what we are here for, isn't it, to transform the world? Not to adapt ourselves to the environment, but to make the environment over unto our own image and likeness, and the image and likeness of the Crucified so that we and our environment on the last day will be Resurrected.

Because the hope of the Christian layman is the faith that this world--as it now exists--will pass away, but the world will not pass away; and the eternal environment we will inhabit will be the one we have chosen, when the Master "makes everything new." Just as our bodies now are seeds and the Resurrected body is the plant which will grow from that seed, so the world in history is the seed of the New Jerusalem, which is the same old world, transmuted into what we have chosen it to be, and glowing with the light of the Lamb.

The Christian engineer is the one who contributes to the eternal universe. How could what he does be insignificant? To make even a shoe sole for the eternal universe! An eternal shoe sole which will be the delight of God and all who see it for ever and all the endless ages!

And people say that for engineers to be "really Christian" they have to read at Mass, or join in a group discussing the Bishops' latest Pastoral.

There is nothing wrong, I say again, with reading at Mass or discussing the latest Pastoral; but the engineer--or any Christian--must not be bamboozled into thinking that his Christian perfection lies in this direction and not in Christianizing what he is doing, which means shifting his attitude toward what he is doing and seeing it as it really is, "in the light of eternity," as they used to say.

The Christian engineer's attitude is different from that of many who discuss Pastorals, because they are the worriers, who must "remake" things and "correct the evils" in the world; they are the moral ones. The Christian knows that the Master is running the universe, and can devote himself wholeheartedly to his eternal shoe sole, leaving it to others who have talents and interest in that direction to combat abortion and clear the slums.

The Christian engineer's attitude is not one of "remaking" the universe, exactly, but of cooperating with it: of studying it, first, to see what it can be and what it "wants" to be--where it tends to head itself--and of submitting to this internal purposiveness of the material he is dealing with and helping it achieve its potential as easily as it can, consistently with its own nature, the nature of the things around it, and its relation to our lives. Like the Creator, he lifts it beyond what it can do by itself, putting the stamp of his mind upon it; but like the Creator, who builds grace upon nature and does not force grace into nature, he lifts it beyond itself in the way in which and to the extent to which its own natural tendencies lean. The sole of the shoe he is making looks to the foot and how the foot adjusts itself to the different directions the person walks and runs; and the sole will then suggest ways of being designed so that it can help keep the walker and runner in balance and the foot from slipping, no matter how the runner turns or leans. Instead of saying what the foot "ought" to do, he looks to what the running foot wants to do, and designs the sole so that it acts as if the person were barefoot, but his bare feet were protected. Isn't that what a shoe is? A protection for the foot that enables the foot to act without damage from outside? It is not a prison for the foot. God designed the first sole, made out of skin--the Christian improves on God's original, given the new conditions we use our feet in; and as Christian, he is, of course, God re-designing the foot's covering. And when he is through, if he is successful, the people who wear his shoe will not even notice they have anything on their feet; but will simply be aware that motions they used to make are now easier and more comfortable.

The Christian engineer will also, because of his attitude, be able to look at all aspects of whatever it is he is working on and transforming, so see that they all function together. When IBM came out with its first Selectric typewriter that had the interchangeable ball-shaped typehead that moved across the page instead of moving the paper by the typing-point, part of its advertising was to show a picture of the typewriter, which had a low-cut, entirely new, curved shape, and say, "The beauty is just a bonus." The beauty of an instrument we use, however, is part of its reality; the objects we use should speak to us of their function and how it can make our lives more pleasant and enjoyable. But this has to be designed into them: the old typewriters looked massive and awkward, as if it took strong fingers to make them do anything; the new ones speak of ease of operation--and of course, now check your spelling and grammar, and by the time you are reading this, God knows what they do: it may be that they just take dictation. But whatever they do, they should do it so that they cooperate with you in your actions, and they should look as if they want to cooperate with you, not that you can make them do things if you're clever enough to cheat them into helping. It is this cooperativeness that is designed into them by the engineer.

I have had experience with many computer programs designed to help with tasks of writing and filing and so on; programs very efficient, once you could figure out how to use them. But the directions (the "documentation") was from the point of view of the programmer, and gave all sorts of details of how the program was constructed, and was very short on how you were to use it. The Christian engineer not only, then, looks to the material he is working on, and cooperates with its latent tendencies; he looks to the people who are going to use whatever it is he designs, and adopts their point of view, and shows them how they can make the best use of what he has provided for them. He does not leave them orphans.

Now of course, a given engineer might not have the talent to do all of these various tasks: make the material into an efficient tool, make the tool beautiful and speaking of its function in human existence, and making the instructions readable and to the point. To the extent that he is Christian, he recognizes his own limitations, and is willing to seek and submit to help in the areas where his competence is low. Why should he care if the project is "mine alone" or "ours"? He is not what is important: the eternal environment is what he is interested in.

The secret in Christian engineering, then, is in attitude and the way you see things, not what you do. Technologism will turn into true technology, not by "overcoming evil," but by submitting to the material universe and helping it; we will then discover that it will help us, and the fear of domination by machinery will yield to a world in which machinery--and who knows, even new living forms, new animals--will do for us the kinds of acts that are now so mechanical and demeaning, and leave us the time to pursue more human endeavors.

If this sounds utopian, it is, of course; it is the situation that will prevail in the New Jerusalem, and not before. In this life, there will always be failure and danger and struggle. But this should not let us get lost in the attempt to correct the evils, so that we do not take the small steps toward the goal that can in the present age and under present conditions be taken.