The Purpose of Our Technologies

Authors: John Stonestreet and Dr. Timothy Padgett

Thanks to new technology from Neuralink, a woman fully paralyzed for over 20 years can write her name. Because a quarter-sized chip, called the Link, was surgically implanted in her brain, Audrey Crewes can control a computer cursor using only her mind. According to Elon Musk, who founded Neuralink, helping individuals with paralysis is only the beginning. He predicts, one day, the blind will be able to see and the mute to communicate. 

Therein lies the challenge of emerging technologies. What is promised, especially through advances in medical technologies, is astounding and nearly irresistible. And, of course, we have good reason to believe the promises. 

Already, advances in medical technology have eradicated plagues and ailments that were once common. In the 1950s, polio cases ran into the tens of thousands. Today polio is virtually nonexistent. Before 1981, very little could be done for a baby in utero. Today, full surgeries are performed on babies in the womb, and other technologies make it possible to save newborns that, in earlier times, would almost certainly have died.  

And yet, with these promises are great peril. We cannot view gene editing technologies like CRISPR, or artificial reproductive technologies such as IVF, or even smartphones with indifference. When our technologies outpace our ethics, what we “can do” becomes what we “should do.” Anything new is automatically “good.”  

We ought not underestimate human ability. God Himself once said of an especially industrious group of image bearers: “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6). His words were both a warning and an evaluation.  

Because fallen humans can innovate for good or for evil (or, at times, for both), bioethics must distinguish between augmentation and restoration. It’s notable that when Jesus healed, it was restorative. He did not augment human ability. He gave the blind man back his sight. He did not give him X-ray vision. He healed the legs of the lame man. He did not give him wings. 

Restoration is what happened to Audrey Crewes. A neural implant restored an ability that was lost. Augmentation would be a neural implant that allowed someone to download a book into their brain or google search using only their curiosity. 

A neural-controlled exoskeleton that allowed the lame to walk could also enable someone to dominate Olympic powerlifting. But that kind of strength would be an incredible asset for a soldier or disaster-relief worker. Where is this line between can and should? 

All technology is ethical, particularly when it affects our bodies. Moral theologian Christian Brugger said:  

There are God-given limits, and if the limits are transgressed, people don’t flourish. And one of those limits is respect for our bodily nature, which implies at the very least that we shouldn’t metamorphose that nature into some grandiose more-than-human reality. They [Christian scientists] hear in the transhumanist imperative a whisper of original sin, which is pride: “Do it and you’ll be like God.”  

That was the first temptation. But the same creation account tells us that, in a very real sense, humans are to be like God. We are made in His image.  

There is a difference, however, between imaging God and “playing God.” When we are like God in our actions and intentions, we point the rest of creation to Him. It is not imaging God to act as if we are Him. 

Humans create, but not out of nothing. We take care of God’s world, but it still belongs to Him. Our place is not to decide what human nature is or ought to be, and much misery has come from thinking we can and should. We were created to tend His Garden, subdue His earth, and to continue His creative work by forming and filling His Creation. 

What T.S. Eliot once said about education also applies to technology. To properly determine what we should and should not do with something, we ought to first determine what that something is for. In his book Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Gilbert Meilaender described the importance of purpose and intent for bioethics. We are most tempted, Meilaender argued, by the freedom promised by technology. We must, however, know what freedom is:  

The only freedom worth having, a freedom that does not finally trivialize our choices, is a freedom that acknowledges its limits and does not seek to be godlike. That freedom, a truly human freedom, will acknowledge the duality of our nature and the limits to which it gives rise. 

In other words, humans are most free, not when they can do and be whatever comes into their minds. We are most free when we can do and be what we were created to do and be. Only when our technologies serve our created purposes are they good and restorative.