Tag Archives: science and morality

Science and Will

Science is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

Science gave us antibiotics. We use them to vanquish horrible diseases and save lives. We overuse them and create superbugs.

Scientific advances gave us the automobile, which allows us undreamed of independence. It also leads to increased isolation of the elderly, the young, the handicapped, and the poor, who have less access to automobiles.

Science deals with physical processes. What we do with those physical processes and the decisions we make that lead to good or evil are determined by our morality, by our faith in what we cannot always prove.

Some would say that education and reason are the tools for deciding what is right. But none of us has perfect knowledge. At some point along the continuum, we have to jump off into faith.

And even the best of us react first in our own interest if what we value is threatened. All of us act unreasonably at times as far as the common good is concerned.

We often know what we should do. What we lack is the will to do it. Some process other than the material has to transform our will and give us the ability not just to know right, but to do it.

Love more than any other force I know has the power to transform the will to act for the good of all, not just for ourselves.