(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - This is according to Abdullah Nasri, academic board member of Allameh Tabatabaee University, speaking at a forum titled “Religion and Technology” that was held on July 10 in the Research Center for Human Sciences and Cultural Studies.
Presenting his article on the “Relationship between Religion and Technology in view of Allameh Jafari”, he first referred to some fundamental questions concerning technology, including: whether technology has an essential nature from an epistemological point of view; what are the characteristics of modern technology; whether technology is a neutral issue or has certain effects and outcomes; whether it gives man a deterministic view or he can take it in his control, and if he can, what are the ways out of its harmful consequences.
“In Allameh Jafari’s view, technology is not neutral and has instead certain effects on man’s individual and social life,” he added.
“Allameh defines technology as a set of materials, phenomena and types of mechanical industries with no signs of manly justice, pain and pleasure; it is both the cause and effect of a certain culture as well as legal and ethical rules, and unfortunately is often used by man to justify his faults and failures.”
Mr. Nasri further pointed to Jaspers’s definition of technique as using materials in man’s favor, adding: “Allameh Jafari maintains that the negative effects of technology are mostly rooted, not in technology itself, but in man’s selfishness and ambitions.”
“Unlike some scholars, Allameh puts a lot of emphasis on the effects of technology on man’s life and offers some practical solutions to find a way out of its negative aspects.”
“Some scholars believe that modern science emerged due to man’s quantitative and mathematical outlook toward the world as well as his desire for superiority over nature; however, Allameh Jafari ascribes the main source of man’s miseries to the restrictive view toward man,” he went on to say.
Referring to the Declaration of Vancouver issued in Canada some years ago, he remarked: “Allameh Jafari criticized the declaration for seeking the origin of disorders in the development of some scientific aspects, believing that science is all enlightening and can never be harmful to man; it is the social and ethical figures’ limited outlook toward man that is the main cause of his misfortunes, according to Allameh.”
The forum on “Religion and Technology” was held on July 10 in the Research Center for Human Sciences and Cultural Studies with the presence of Abdullah Nasri, Mohammad Reza Asadi, Hamid Reza Ayatollahi and Bijan Abdul-Karimi presenting their speeches on the topic.
/106
