Sepertinya semua fantasi teknologi baru tak ada yang menjadi kenyataan. Seperti mimpi Leonardo da Vinci ini dan karpet terbang:)

 

Religion and the need of RI’s technological culture  

By: Budi Hartanto

A controversy arises when we talk about the relationship between religion, science and technology. For example there is general supposition that religion is anti-science. What makes this assumption very common to all the people? So many events written in history showed that religions had always been so hostile to a certain kind of novelty. We can recall such events as the burning of Mohamad Ibn Rushd’s (averoes) books on Aristotelian philosophy in 12th century, the case of outstanding Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, and the controversy of Darwin’s theory of evolution. These events mark the very image of religion.

But if religion is anti-science, how can it survive the modern age? It is, in my opinion, because religion accommodates every new invention in technology. We virtually haven’t heard anti-technological disposition in religion. Even in the Koran we find many verses (ayat) explaining about technological development in human civilization. We know the stories of Noah who build an ark, David and his iron cloth (armor), and Iskandar Dzulkarnen who melted a copper and an iron to create a large metal wall to protect people who almost do not understand any speeches.

In contemporary philosophy, we found so many philosophers who commented on religion. Jacques Derrida is one of the leading postmodern philosophers who reflected on religions. In Faith and Knowledge (2002), he described the meaning of religion and the abstract relation between religion and technology.

According to Derrida “religions today allies it self with tele-technoscience, to which it reacts with all its forces”. Apparently religion is not critical to technology, it allies it self with technology, tele-technoscience. But this relationship according Derrida is ambiguous. He explained that in the context of tele-technoscience human body is disappear, as we know human body is very important in religion (Giovanna Borradori, 2005). From Derridean analysis we can make a statement that actually religion resides its trajectory with material science, with technology. It is technology that supports religion, not the miracles and the superstitious mind.

So religion is rational in the sense that it accommodates every new invention in technology. Although science received so many critics from religion for example in biology: cloning, genetic engineering, etc., but technology apparently free from critic.

In the discourse of philosophy of technology there is a tendency to reexamine the ethics and the life of technology. And it started with existentialism. Pessimism overwhelms existentialism when we talk about technology. Heidegger, for example, said in his book The Question Concerning Technology (1977), “What is dangerous is not technology. There is no demonry of technology, but rather there is the mystery of its essence.” Technology in certain sense is the unseen threat of freedom and authenticity. Another existentialist philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, has made no hesitation to explain that technology existentially is antihuman, technology alienates man from its essence and eliminate the virtue of the sacred. In Gabriel Marcel philosophical reflection, ‘technical man’ in high technological civilization is not the ideal man of the future. (Bernard A. Gendreau, 2001).

Of course technique here is not something without values. Marcel apparently wants to explain that highest human essence is not in its technical dimension; beyond of that, it is his existentialistic, sacred, and authentic being.

Thus in my opinion technology is not something free from critic. Critic here doesn’t mean opposing technology; critic is very common in philosophy of science and technology, it is like critic of literature. Here I am not pretending to defy the development of technology; I just want to say that technological artifacts are not everything.

In the context of high technology Indonesia is a consumer country. That means we use many high technological artifacts from the outside world. I think it is wise to select technology in the term of Indonesians personality and mentality. It is not wise to receive all technology from outside world without considering the vision of cultural and particularly religious wisdom.

Indonesia has very diverse culture, and Islam is a majority. Shaping the culture of technology is imperative in order to survive in global and technological civilization. But what kind of technological culture should we find here?

Firstly, in my opinion the culture of technology is a culture that needs to comprehend a technical essence of its technological artifacts. Not only in technical term, for example, the science and technology behind the artifact. But the most important is its instrumentality: which grasp all to gather the meaning and the purpose of technology it self.

Secondly, technological culture depends on the vision of national culture and religious wisdom regarding the development of technology. To receive all technology without reflecting on our culture and personality is not good decision.

The philosopher of technology, Don Ihde said in his book Technology and the Lifeworld (1991) that technology is multistable, in other word it is relativistic, which implies that every culture geographically has its own technological vision and trajectory. Technology is not universal.

To build technological culture is necessary in the context of fast development of technological civilization. I think we all agree that we do not want to be alienated technologically in the future. So what thing should we accomplish here? We need good science education as infrastructure to strengthen our technology. Science education is the most important thing concerning the infrastructure of high technology. Optical instruments and other scientific instruments need to be widely socialized, particularly in every public school to introduce the technological world which is now becoming ’the very paradigm of institutionalized rationality’. Because modern technology based on science, managing science education is vital to build the Indonesian’s technological culture. In conclusion, we need to strengthen science education as infrastructure of high technology without forgetting the knowledge of our own religious and cultural personality.