Vision
New Age
The New Age movement is still alive and thriving, fed by the human desire to re-enchant our secular age. So reports Benjamin Breen in an April 7 post at Aeon (“Into the mystic”). The New Age movement has deep roots, going back to the 19th century as a protest against the emergence of scientific and secular thinking. It was given new and more broadly-based expression in the 60s and 70s, and has established its presence along and within a wide swath of American life: “Today, New Age aesthetics and modes of thought have filtered into mainstream society, influencing everything from the rise of alternative medicine (a $34 billion industry, by one recent estimate) to the triumph of yoga in the suburbs.” The most recent surge of New Age thinking has come in response to the decline of emphasis on matters transcendent and spiritual within the churches of the land. While a good bit of New Age thinking can seem borderline loony, still, it demonstrates the reality of the human heart and our need for “magic” or mystical experiences, ways of being and knowing that take us beyond the regions of reason and logic into the regions of faith. The Church should be proficient in this. But, for the most part, we are not, preferring to appeal to people through baser means and technologies – entertainment, marketing, self-improvement – than to a calling of life in the Kingdom and glory of God. 

http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-high-tech-resurgence-of-new-age-beliefs/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=f97f2b9463-Daily_newsletter_April_7_20154_7_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-f97f2b9463-68631581

Disciplines
Reasoning
Adam Adatto Sandel offers a realistic and refreshing assessment of how reason works and maintains worldviews of various sorts (“Reasonable Prejudice,” Hedgehog Review, Spring, 2015). Reason works from, within, and unto presuppositions, or what Dr. Sandel refers to as prejudices. He is correct, of course. But the real value of this article is that he shows us how to reason with people from different perspectives by reasoning within their perspective and prejudices, reflecting on how they actually live in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of their worldview. He observes, “The task of thought is to align our subjective representations of the world with the world as it really is.” Our worldview – “life perspective” – “conditions everything we understand, including our particular attempts to elucidate the perspective itself.” His use of a speech by Frederick Douglass illustrates the power of exposing false or inaccurate presuppositions by pointing to the way people actually live – “appealing to life activities instead of only to principles” – much as we see Jesus doing in Matthew 12.22-29. Good counsel for proponents of a Christian worldview.

Brain science
In two books, The Hidden Persuaders (1957) and The People Shapers (1977), Vance Packard warned against various sciences and technologies – including subliminal suggestion – which could or were being used to manipulate human behavior. His books were widely read and he was regarded as an important social critic and defender of human dignity and liberty. If he were still alive (he died in 1996) he might be banging out some words on the work of brain scientists who are seeking to discover how to manipulate brain activity via wifi. A report in the current issue of Science explains progress to date (“Wireless magnetothermal deep brain stimulation,” 27 March 2015). I gather that certain brain cells can be targeted, bathed in chemicals, then pulsed via wifi so that their normal patterns of functioning can be altered. The stimulation thus far is pretty basic – just a bit of heat increase indicating other-than-normal neuron firing – but we’re just at the beginning. Now that we’re learning to do this, we’re not likely to stop until we produce specific kinds of stimuli, resulting in specific (directed?) behaviors. I can see where this is headed. I get my annual required-by-federal-health-care-law vaccination against whatever, which includes, I’m advised, some mumbo-jumbo chemical cocktail that’s “good for me” what with my advancing dotage, but which actually lubes up my brain cells for an evening of mind-altering via my FCC-controlled Comcast modem. I don’t notice anything at the moment. In the morning, however, I feel this strainge desire to pop some Christian rock music into the Bose, send a donation to PBS, and change to the RSV for my devotions. I scratch my head a bit, but then my wifi pulses, I say to myself, “It’s all good,” and it’s on with my day. Oh wait – didn’t we send a check to PBS just last week?

Outcomes
Genetic engineering
New concerns are being raised about human genetic engineering. According to Gretchen Vogel, writing in the 20 March 2015 issue of Science, the concern now is not whether it could be done, or even if it should. Genetic engineering – “editing” – of the genome of human embryos is already being done, but strictly for “experimental” purposes unrelated to pregnancy. The concern is whether the ethics surrounding the practice are sufficiently clear and a consensus sufficiently firm to ensure the practice will only be used to give defective children (embryos) a better chance at life. The answer seems to be, No one knows. Some regulations are already in place, but researchers doubt they are adequate for addressing the possibilities involved in the question of whether or not “to design human babies.” I’m betting they’re not, and that no ethical consensus on the practice will be reached any time soon. But I’m also betting scientists somewhere will go ahead with the procedure anyway, and that their results will be less than they’d hoped, but not sufficiently discouraging to bring about a moratorium on the practice (“Embryo engineering alarm”).