This didn't make me sad so much as somber and thoughtful when it popped up the other day.
It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people."
Powerful words, as we move from the era where we understood the world through spirituality, and continue progressing toward understanding before explaining. In recent years, people have moved away from this same spirituality, and come to question the importance of morality without the pressures once imposed by spiritual rewards and punnishments.
I think that we sense this void of morality, innately, and that is what drive the religious into dogmatic fervor, decrying the wrongs of the modern era, and fighting them with all their heart.
I fear a great many people don't grasp the vital importance of morality to society... and if we lack a higher authority to govern it, then morality becomes something we must choose to adopt, without desire for reward, or fear of punnishment. It's frightening for us to trust others like that. People will inevitably exploit this, as they have.
What would come of us then, if we forsook religion and mysticism entirely? Could we have the society and world we not have without dogma? If our culture lacks a supernatural enforcer who holds people accountable, can people hold themselves to high enough standards of morality that our society can persist and continue to rise, or will the order and world we've built disintigrate along with it?
That is where I fear humanity is heading. The next few centuries will be the most trying test of human integrity and evolution yet.