A recent Saturday Essay in The Wall Street Journal carried this provocative
heading: “The Future of Brain Implants: How soon can we expect to see brain
implants for perfect memory, enhanced vision, hypernormal focus or an
expert golf swing?”
The article asks: “Science fiction? Perhaps not for very much longer. Brain
implants today are where laser eye surgery was several decades ago.They are
not risk-free and make sense only for a narrowly defined set of patients – but
they are a sign of things to come.”
Amid the realm of possibilities are medical and technological advances
that are both exciting and daunting – life enhancing and life threatening. We
teeter a dangerous cusp between miracle worker and Frankenstein.
For perspective, consider what French brothers, writers and philosophers
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt wrote in their Journals in 1869: “At Magny’s
dinner: They said that Bethelot had predicted that in a hundred years of
physical and chemical science man would learn to know the atom and that
with this knowledge he would be able, at his will, to dim, extinguish or relight
the sun like a Carcel lamp.
“Claude Bernard, for his part, is said to have announced that with a
hundred years more of physiological knowledge we would be able to make
organic law ourselves – to manufacture human life, in competition with the
Creator.
“For our part, we did not raise any objection to this talk, but we do believe
that at that particular stage of scientific development, the good Lord, with a
flowing white beard, will arrive on earth with his chain of keys and will say
to humanity, just as they do at the Art Gallery at five o’clock, ‘Gentlemen, it’s
closing time.’”
(BMH)
can an atheist go to heaven?
Many religious people would say flatly, “no.” But I think most New Church
people would take a more nuanced stance: namely, that atheists can go to
heaven – just not as atheists.
It is the presence of the Lord there that makes it heaven, so it wouldn’t be
heaven to someone who rejects the Lord. It isn’t that the Lord shuts atheists
out, but that they shut Him out. To the atheist, the whole idea of heaven is a
fantasy; it’s not that they can’t go there, but that for them “there” doesn’t exist.
But very few of us (except little children) go straight from this world to
heaven when we die. We’ll all have a lot of things to learn, and unlearn, with
varying degrees of difficulty. Those who have embraced atheism will have to
unlearn that, and learn to love God. How difficult this will be depends upon
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