PureInsight | September 4, 2001
What the West Has Lost
Socrates, a Greek, lived in the 5th century B.C. His philosophy stressed
self-knowledge over physics and geometry. In fact, he said that the worst
thing that could happen to a person would be to do something bad and then
NOT get punished for it. He instinctively knew that karma had to be paid
for. Later Greeks, such as Plato and Aristotle, were much more concerned
with ethics and the proper actions of a person than with scientific
knowledge for its own sake. For Plato, scientific knowledge, especially geometry, was
merely a precursor for studying the higher philosophy so as to lay a
foundation in good reasoning. Aristotle called metaphysics the 'highest'
knowledge, as it would be knowing what Gods knew. The Greeks, therefore,
stressed moral control and the fact that ethics was paramount in the human
world rather than technology or experimental science.
Pascal, a Frenchman who lived in the 1600s, was famed for many mathematical
and physical advances. But he gave all of these up to pursue a personal
relationship with the Christian God as he realized that the state of one's
soul is more important than the pressure of air. He knew that our
conclusions about nature are necessarily limited by our experience and that
knowledge is a process of old hypotheses being supplanted by new ones.
Science, for Pascal, led merely to skepticism and continual doubts, so that
acceptance of God's revelation is the only way to attain certain knowledge.
For all his rational prowess and proficiency, he considered it very
reasonable to believe is things such as Gods, prophecies and miracles. For
Pascal, man could be nothing but miserable without God. Contrast this with
our current society that tries to use genetics and stem cells to 'perfect'
us and remove all illnesses. Pascal did not see science as the salvation of
Man because he knew that our reason was not up to the task.
Many of the famous scientists of the past were also cultivators of a sort.
For instance, Newton, while doing his brilliant analyses, believed that he
was discovering how God thought. He also gave up science and tried to
discover the hidden prophecies in the Christian Bible. The great
mathematician, Descartes, who perfected analytic geometry, was another who
found that he could not establish any sure form of knowledge without the
help of God, the only being who, Descartes held, would not deceive him.
Finally, the great German thinker, Kant, held that the ends never justify
the means and that it was wrong to treat another human being as a means to
an end.
What Science Tells Us Today
With the preceding section, I tried to show that the history of Western
science is really based on xinxing cultivation and an awareness of the
limitations of human knowledge. But in our current age, all this has been
lost, as scientists, in their competition for government funding, turn away
from all soul searching and admonitions from their conscience. Two areas of
research will illustrate this. First, the cosmologists who believe in the
'big bang' theory (which has many problems see: www.metaresearch.org) have a
skeptic's pessimistic view of the long term future of the universe. They now
hold that all matter in the universe is flying apart faster than ever and
that the only fate of the universe is to fade away into a cold 'heat death'
which will be incapable of sustaining any life. What a horrible prospect!
The scientists give us no hope, nothing to live for! All is futile and the
inevitable demise cannot be avoided! Another similar case is the artificial
intelligence researcher who believes that humans are merely an evolutionary
stage between mammals and cyber-robotic-bionic 'life' that has been
mechanically and computationally enhanced. Is this the future man should
seek, where mere physical and mental manipulation is stressed instead of
ethics and conscience? When men have no diseases because they are mostly
machines, will their mental pursuits be merely video games, gambling,
violent sports, depraved sex and driving fast cars? Will the lessons of the
past, as taught by such cultural icons as Confucius and Shakespeare be
irrelevant in a brave new cyber or genetically engineered world? There can
never be a scientific cure for the failings of society; people need to know
that it is their hearts of kindness and consideration for others that need
to be improved, not technology devoid of morality. Although many people are
currently misled by the supposed promise of stem cell research and its
alleged compassion, why don't they question all the other false promises made by
science these last decades? People need to see, as Pascal did, that our
knowledge is fleeting and can never provide us with perfect comfort and not
to take it so seriously as to worship it. And lastly, how can the
cosmologists and the AI researchers claim to speak for the true voice of
humanity, since they disparage it as being not worth or at least incapable
of preserving?
The Fa of the Cosmos
Fortunately, we today have Falun Dafa to cure our doubts and make known what
humanity needs to save itself. By stressing that gong is only as high as
xinxing, which is the exact OPPOSITE of what 'science' teaches today, i.e.,
that we can have all the technology we want without maintaining human
ethical standards. Truly, the great Shan (compassion) of the Cosmos has
revealed itself to humanity in a time of great confusion. How wonderful it
is to believe in this, Zhen-Shan-Ren, instead of the cosmologists' miserable
fate or the phony 'snake-oil' of the genetic engineers! Falun Dafa has truly
revitalized the noble Western tradition of attaining knowledge so as to
improve oneself ethically. Thank you Mr. Li Hongzhi!
