The Growing War Against Teleology - Some Personal Thoughts

The Growing War Against Teleology 

By Stephen Alexander Beach 

NPR released an article in 2023 which may seem shocking to the average person going about their daily life. With a little digging, though, one can see that it is actually just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the experimental technologies being researched today. The article talks about a biotech company called “Conception” that is working on turning stem cells into repurposed eggs that can be used in IVF procedures, opening the possibility of being a parent to all. 

"I personally think what we're doing will probably change many aspects of society as we know it," says Hurtado, the company's chief scientific officer. "It's really exciting to be working on a technology that can change the lives of millions of humans."

When seeing something like this cross the news headlines, at first glance, a Catholic in today’s world may be confused at the seemingly paradoxical trends of our secular culture. On the one hand, for example, there is the push for abortion “rights,” in which men and women can end the life of their child in the womb. Likewise, there is a growing movement towards “the right to die” in many US states, and certainly in Europe and Canada. And yet, on the other hand, in this article and in other places, we see a push to create life by any means necessary, even going to the most extreme and novel means. Upon further reflection, though, it is clear to see that these trends are actually part of the same beast. They are of the same poisonous roots which grow in the subsoil of our culture’s unconscious. In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II identified what this desire is that seems to pervade the Western world regarding human life. He called it a “promethean attitude” to seize control over both life and death. In so many words, both trends represent the same desire to play the role of God in the modern world. We want to control how lifes comes into being, to control its quality throughout, and to control its time of death. 

It is most likely the case that this urge has always existed in the fallen heart of mankind, indeed the sin of pride has driven its victims to want to recreate reality in their own distorted image many a time. This, of course, is the driven madness of Satan, but we also see it in examples like the Tower of Babel. What is unique today though, in my opinion, is that the natural and biological barriers which God set up, and which have forced man to curb such desires, are no longer such sturdy bulwarks as once before. We now have technology at our disposal which is allowing us to transcend these barriers that once so rigidly defined the human mysteries such as: Family, sex, conception, birth, man, woman, human interaction, and death. There is a teleology that God built into the world which guided us toward the proper end and usage of things. And while many barriers still remain, we have gotten a taste of what it would be like to play God. 

Just think of how technology of the last several decades has revolutionized the human experience in all of these dimensions. The invention of contraceptives have changed the nature of the sexual act. In society’s mind, sex is no longer directly tied to the conception of a child. And in putting conception aside as a totally separate aspect of sex, the sexual act has also transformed into whatever consenting adults decide to do together for pleasure. Combine this reality with the fact that online pornography has allowed every type of sexual fetish and indulgence to be projected into every pocket in which a smart phone sits, it is not that surprising that there is such sexual confusion that the age-old categories of male and female are beginning to collapse into pure subjectivity. 

“IVG could create eggs from one of Hurtado's cells that could then be fertilized with sperm from his partner. A surrogate mother could then carry the resulting embryo through to the birth of a baby genetically related to both men.”

Likewise, what is the definition of family if procreation, male, and female have all been disconnected from one another? Technologies like In-Vitro Fertilization, surrogacy, and abortion have allowed for all types of irregular situations to be considered “families”. This article also represents another step in that process. Why do we even need “two” parents in the creation of a child. Why not one? Add the developing technology of artificial wombs into this mix, and why is a mother even needed? In the near future, could not the government could play the role of the family? When it comes to human interaction, media technology revolutionized how human beings interact with one another. Almost everything can be done virtually or online now. And do not forget death. Why be subject to a death which is out of one’s control. There are many easy ways now to end someone’s life at the time and place of their choosing, from injections to suicide pods. 

While, of course, Catholics are not anti-technology, it is important that we recognize the power for good and for evil that technology brings with it. Unless we hold the line, and defend the teleology that God built into creation, then every aspect of the human experience is going to be up for grabs. These boundaries were placed there for our good and protection. Imagine what it would be like to be created with no parents at all, but to be part of a government project? The human vocation is love because God is love, and so to transcend these teleological barriers is to remove love as the origin, identity, and destiny of the individual. 

“Hurtado quickly returns the cells to the incubator and pulls out a rectangular dish. "These are some of our mini-ovaries," he says. "These are a few weeks old now."”

It is going to become increasingly difficult for a culture of total control and manipulation of the human experience to coexist with a traditional Christian culture rooted in God’s design and teleology. If someone took some quotes from this article and swapped them with similar lines in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World the difference would not be very noticeable. 

"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred-that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit, "that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention."  

To conclude, it is important that, as Catholics in the world today, we bring ethics to bear on the development of new technologies, or we may have opened Pandora’s box and let loose a demon that will never be controlled. 

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Stephen Alexander Beach is a PhD student at the University of South Africa in philosophy, and is currently researching topics in Aristotelian Metaphysics. 

He also runs the Great Perennial Questions blog at www.greatperennialquestions.blogspot.com. His book, The Drama of Metaphysics: An Exploration Into the Psychological Power of Worldviews was published in 2022 by En Route Books and Media, and can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Drama-Metaphysics-Exploration-Psychological-Worldviews/dp/1956715460/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=