The delusion that science will lead us to a happy future has exploded.
Andrew Greeley is amazed at how human consciousness has changed since his time in the academic world. ”When I was a graduate student in the sixties the serene confidence we had in the explanatory power of science would not have been questioned, I think, by either my fellow students, or by my teachers. Within a decade, however came the beginning of the dramatic change. We were conscious even within the scientific enterprise itself that every answer generates new more complex and difficult questions. But we also understand now that science cannot explain everything. Particularly the great mysteries: Why anything exists at all, and why there is the titanic struggle between good and evil in the universe, the human race, and in each of us. These are mysteries that can never be explained away.”
Coming to terms with the mysteries that cannot be explained away
As this generation sees man’s impact on his environment, the global economic crisis, the water crisis and the disappearance of so many animal species it is clear that these mysteries can never be resolved by science. In October 2010 it was revealed that one out of every five of the world’s vertebrates are threatened with extinction and that in the same month 600,000 names were cut from the world’s plant inventory – gone forever! Our frail biosphere is in deep trouble. It is more than an intellectual and scientific problem we have. To all who are not morally blind it is obvious that something is terribly out of kilter and it is right there in front of us every night on the evening television news.
There’s got to be a change of the inner world to save the outer world.
We have been to the moon and back a number of times and worn out a couple of space shuttles taking multiple trips to outer space. We have created high tech telescopes to enable us to look ever deeper into the cosmos, and have sent high tech space probes further into the universe than ever before.
We have even experienced what Carl Sagan called the blue spot phenomenon which happens when we have gone so far into space that on looking back with high powered lenses, the earth is little more than a blue dot smaller than a pixel on your computer screen. Space exploration has shown us the uniqueness of life as we know it here on earth: It has also shown that there is nowhere else to go in the foreseeable future.