Professor G. J. V. Nossal, professor of medical biology at the University of Melbourne, posed the following question during the 1970 Melbourne Oration and Lecture Series: “In view of the massive problems of over-population, the threat of nuclear disaster, the continuance of racial misunderstanding, and the progressive deterioration of the environment, can anyone but a mindless fool be optimistic about man’s future?”
A good question. It is becoming increasingly obvious that man is doomed unless he solves some of his problems. He teeters on the brink of a nuclear precipice, holding in his hands the means of wiping out all human life. And through his pollution of the atmosphere and the waters he may kill himself off anyway, without waiting for a nuclear war.
Closely examined, most of man’s problems reduce to himself, and his insatiable desire to have more of the good things of life seems to be at their root. He pollutes his environment, for example, not because he likes to see it all messed up, but because it increases his business profits or in some way makes life easier for him.
If man can be reformed, of course, everything may change. That is why Professor Nossal, despite the gloomy picture he painted, is not in the least pessimistic. He thinks men will get better. Indeed, he cites Dr. J. Bronowski of the Salk Institute for the view that science has already made a start toward improvement: “Bronowski goes on to claim that the great ethical force of science has been the dissemination of the idea that truth is a thing which will, in some way, help us all.”
Nossal gives his own view in these words: “Science has shown that cheats do not prosper. There is only one way of achieving fame in science, and that is by adopting the most rigid, uncompromising and objective honesty in the gathering and reporting of one’s results.
No one gains credit from an unrepeatable experiment. Thus reverence for truth is one of the few universal attributes of research men. Science has shown that truth works, honesty works. I fancy this has percolated widely into our social system.”
At this point many people would ask, Has it? In the first place, it is not at all obvious that any respect for truth and honesty in the modern community is a byproduct of scientific research. After all, “honesty is the best policy” is a proverb with a respectable antiquity. The scientific reverence for truth, which is undoubted, may have helped some people see this. But it is surely going too far when scientists claim the credit for discovering it.
Then, in the second place, it is more than dubious whether the thought that truth and honesty work has percolated very widely into our social system. People today are not noticeably more honest than their ancestors (witness the wide incidence of shoplifting). Nor are they more truthful, as many an advertising campaign makes clear. In the academic community it seems generally agreed that student cheating at exams is not diminishing.
In the third place, as long as we are on the level of “cheats do not prosper,” or “honesty is the best policy” we have not really arrived at truth or honesty. It is of the essence of real honesty that the way of truth is to be followed, whether it is good policy or not.
The fact is that truth and honesty were recognized by our forebears as Christian virtues. And they not only recognized them but also made a determined attempt to put them into practice! The respect for truth and honesty that we see now is no more than the carrying on of part of the tradition we have received.
The modern trend away from the faith of our fathers has caused an erosion of the values for which those fathers stood. This is apparently not only in the case of truth and honesty but with a host of other virtues as well. We are living on the spiritual capital of our fathers, as has often been pointed out.
Science can tell us how to make an airplane. But it is not science that determines whether we will use it to bring medical help to people in remote places or to drop bombs on our enemies. Science can tell us how to harness nuclear energy. But it is not science that determines whether we will use this tremendous power for the causes of peace or for those of war. Science may tell us how we can stop environmental pollution, but it is not science that determines whether we will resolutely take the necessary steps.
Over against the optimism that may be felt by some scientific men we must set a Christian pessimism. Those whose faith is grounded in the Bible have always recognized that there is such a thing as original sin, use what terminology you will. The trouble is not with the world in which we find ourselves, and not with science and technology, which give us the power to unlock such tremendous resources. The trouble is in the heart of man.
That is why the Christian faith has always demanded much more than a minor moral reform. It looks for a radical renewal of the whole man, so radical indeed that it can be described in terms of a new birth, of death to an old way of life and a resurrection to a new one. It is a putting off of the old man and a putting on the new, a conversion that alters the whole bent of the life.
In the face of a scientific optimism that puts its trust in unregenerate man’s quest for scientific information, the Christian resolutely says, “This is not enough. A scientific devil is no real improvement on an unscientific one! If this is the best that science can say, then we are indeed shut up to pessimism.”
But the Christian cannot simply be written off as a pessimist. In the face of that naïve optimism which ignores the way man is made and assumes he can be taught to put some other interest before himself, he remains skeptical. But Christianity centers on a cross. There the Son of God laid down his perfect life to put away men’s sins. And there a new power entered the human race.
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” wrote Paul (Phil. 4:13). Right now, in the latter third of the twentieth century, men are proving the truth of the words.
The Christian is a realist. He does not trust man’s unaided strength. But he is also an optimist, one whose optimism is grounded not on what man can do but on what God can.
