Techno-Religions and Silicon Prophets: Will the 21st century be shaped by hi-tech gurus or by religious zealots – or are they the same thing?

What is the current status of religions and ideologies in the world, and what will be the likely impact of 21st-century technological breakthroughs on religion and ideology? Will traditional religions and ideologies—from Christianity and Islam to Liberalism and Socialism—manage to survive the technological and economic revolutions of the 21st century? What would be the place of Islam, for example, in a world of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence? The talk addresses these questions, and argues that the future belongs to techno-religions, which promise salvation through technology, and which are already gathering believers in places such as Silicon Valley.

About the Author  

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari lectures at the Department of History, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in World History, medieval history and military history. His current research focuses on macro-historical questions: What is the relation between history and biology? Is there justice in history? Did people become happier as history unfolded? 

His most recent book is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. The book surveys the entire length of human history, from the evolution of Homo sapiens in the Stone Age up to the political and technological revolutions of the Silicon Age. It has become an international bestseller, and has been translated into close to 30 languages worldwide.

For more details see www.ynharari.com

Professor Harari is a good friend of mine and a professor in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He's been teaching a history class, an introductory history class for undergrads for quite a few years and at some point he decided that it would be a good idea to compile the lecture notes to a book so that the life of his students will be a little bit more easy.

And then what happened later was completely unplanned.

It was the first, the top bestseller in the nonfiction books for a few months.

Then translations to foreign languages came.

The book has been translated to 30 languages.

It's being sold now in Europe, most of the European countries, and in Canada with great success.

And fortunately, that was our chance to bring Yuval here to visit us also and to give the talk at Google.

It's a pleasure to be here also, not only to visit Rana and Ariel, but also to be in Silicon Valley, which for me is a kind of special place as a historian.

As a historian, I focus mainly on the history of ideas, ideology, mythology, religion.

And I think that the most interesting place in the world today, in religious terms, is Silicon Valley.

Not the Middle East, not Syria or Afghanistan or Israel or Jerusalem, but Silicon Valley.

This is where the new religions that will take over the world are being formulated.

And this will also be the topic of my talk for the next hour or so about the new religions of the 21st century.

But in order to understand the future of religion, we first have to say a few words about its past and its present.

And I would like to start with asking what is the, or describing what is the main religion or ideology, world view, of the world today in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century.

And I think we can say that the dominant ideology of the world at present is liberal humanism, or in short, liberalism.

Liberalism is a worldview, an ideology, that thinks that the source of all authority and all meaning in the universe is the individual human, the individual of the species Homo sapiens.

First of all, it believes in the individual.

It thinks that every Homo sapiens is an individual, which literally means it cannot be divided.

The meaning of the term individual is that you cannot divide it.

The idea is, yes, of course you can divide the human body or the human brain.

But within each individual, there is kind of a seed of light, a spark, that cannot be divided further.

Within each of us, there is this inner voice.

And this inner voice in each and every 1 of us is the source of all the meaning and all the authority in the world.

Whenever we face a difficult question, a difficult dilemma, choice in life, as individuals or as collectives, liberalism tells us, listen to yourself.

Try to hear this inner voice within yourself, and it will tell you what to do.

And listen to that, not to anything else.

The second main idea or hypothesis of liberalism is that this inner voice within ourself comes out of a space of complete freedom.

Yes, there are influences, constraints from outside, physical, social, biological.

But if we go deep enough within ourselves, we will come eventually to a space of complete freedom.

And from this space, we need to make our big decisions in life.

Thirdly, based on these 2 ideas or 2 assumptions, liberalism assumes that only I can really know myself.

Nobody else, no outside person, no outside system can really know who I am.

Because again, Who I am really is this inner voice which enjoys complete freedom.

Based on these ideas, the main value of liberalism, which gives it its name, is liberty, freedom.

We need to preserve the freedom of the individual to think, to feel, and to act according to what he or she thinks and feels.

Because again, this is the supreme source of authority and meaning in the world.

Now all this may sound very abstract and very theoretical, so I would like to give a few concrete examples of what liberalism means in practice to our lives as individuals and as collectives.

If you think about the field of politics, so what is liberal politics?

What is liberalism translated into political terms?

You get a democracy with elections and so forth.

If we want to know who should rule this country, what kind of economic policies to adopt, what kind of foreign policy to adopt to make war or to make peace, who should we turn to in order to get answers, we should turn to the inner voices of each individuals.

So we have elections, and on election day, everybody goes by himself or by herself.

And at least theoretically, I try to connect to myself to listen, what is my deepest feelings?

What are my deepest personal thoughts about this issue, and I vote accordingly.

And this is how we know who should rule the country, whether to make peace or war, and so forth.

So this is liberal politics, which argues that the voter knows best.

There is no source of authority higher than the voter.

You get the same ideas also in the economic field.

Liberal economics is the view that the customer is always right.

There is no higher authority than the authority of the individual customer.

How do we know if a product is a good product?

There is no higher authority that can say, yes, they didn't buy it, but it's still good.

And we are organizing a committee of the wisest people on the planet.

We take Nobel laureates in physics and chemistry and literature and peace and whatever, and they come together for 5 years with a lot of money, a lot of helpers, and they design the perfect car.

And after 5 years, you start producing this perfect car, engineered, invented by the wisest people on the planet.

It means that this car is not a good car, according to the tenets of liberal economics.

Or it's part of that marketing department.

Or perhaps, but eventually you cannot blame the customer.

Oh, We produced a perfect car, and we did a perfect PR campaign, but the customers, they are stupid.

They don't understand what is good for them.

You have really wise people sitting in Moscow.

They plan the car which they think is best.

And everybody, at least if they are fortunate, get this car.

And if they don't like it, it's their problem.

In liberal economics, the highest authority in economics is the customer.

You got the same ideas in the field of art and aesthetics.

Many times in history, many periods, many cultures, people had ideas, what is art and what is beauty?

And they thought that there are some objective definitions, objective yardsticks to determine whether something is art and whether something is good art.

And then comes along liberal art and liberal aesthetics in the 19th, 20th century.

And just as in politics, the voter knows best.

And in economics, the customer is always right.

So in liberal art, also, the customer or the viewer, he or she is the highest authority.

According to liberal art, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, in the feelings of the person watching or seeing the painting, the architecture, the play, whatever it is.

In 1917, in a very, very famous gesture, Marcel Duchamp took a urinal, said this is art, called it fountain, signed his name, Marcel Duchamp, put it in a museum in Paris, said this is art.

And ever since then, in every introductory course to art, to art history in university, they bring this image, and the argument starts.

And eventually, if you're liberals, you will reach the conclusion that art is whatever I define to be art.

And Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Whatever I think is beautiful, it's beautiful.

And nobody out there can come to me and say, you think it's beautiful, but it's not.

If you think that this is art, beautiful art, and you're willing to pay millions of dollars for it, and it costs millions of dollars today, this fountain, then it's art.

The same ideas also apply to the field of ethics.

How do you know if an action is good or evil, if it's ethical or unethical.

Well, suppose I live in the Middle Ages, and I fall in love with another guy.

And I go to the priest and tell him in confession this and this happened.

So the priest will say, this is very evil what you have done.

Because God thinks it's evil, because scriptures say it's evil, because I, the priest, say this is evil.

And then I say to the priest, but I feel very good about it.

So the priest would say, but we don't care what you feel.

You don't determine what is good or evil by what you feel.

Then come liberalism in the modern age and say, no.

The highest authority in the field of ethics is also the feelings of individuals.

If you feel good about it, if everybody feel good about it, then there is absolutely no reason in the world why it should be evil or bad.

What happens if a particular action causes some people to feel good and other people to feel bad?

This is when you have arguments within liberal ethics.

Say, for example, an extra-marital affair.

But if my spouse finds out, he will feel bad about it.

And probably I will also feel bad about it.

And if we say we divorce as a result and we have children, they will feel bad about it.

So what is more important, my good feelings at a particular time, or the bad feelings of my spouse or my children?

Different people have different views on this question.

But as long as they are liberal, the argument will be done in terms of feelings.

The question will be, what feeling is more important?

Even very religious people today understand this.

And if you think about the terrorist attacks in France on the Shaoli Abdo.

After the attack, all kinds of organizations, Muslim organizations, and even non-Muslim organizations, began to say things like, but look, this newspaper, it was not doing something very wholesome because it was causing millions of devout Muslims around the world to feel bad.

It didn't take into account their feelings.

Now it's very interesting that they use this argument because Even those who try to say it's not good to draw a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, they don't say it's not good because Allah forbade it or because it's wrong according to the Quran.

They say it's not good because it hurts the feelings of people.

So even those arguments are praised in liberal terms of feelings.

And finally, just to give a last example, from the field of education.

The main idea of liberal education is that the student or the pupil is the highest authority, not the teacher, not the professor.

In liberal education, the main thing you try to teach your pupils or your students is to think for themselves.

You go from kindergarten to the university, And you ask the teacher, you ask the professor, what are you trying to teach?

And he or she will say, well, I try to teach history or mathematics or physics.

But above all, I try to teach my students to think for themselves.

Not all the universities or schools manage to do it.

But this is the general ideal accepted by all liberal institutions of education.

Now when we look at the world of today in 2015, we can say that the liberal package dominates most of the world.

This liberal package contains human rights, which are these walls, defenses, established to protect the inner freedom of each individual.

This package contains belief in individualism, in liberal democracy, in free market economy.

And I think we can say that not everybody accepts this particular package, but it is the dominant ideological package of the world today.

And there is very little viable alternatives, or real alternatives, to this package at present.

Over the last few years, we have seen a lot of social protests in different places in the world.

But the vast majority of the protests were done in the name of the liberal values, not against them.

People are coming to the governments and saying you don't live up to the liberal ideals.

We want the politics to be more democratic.

We want economics, the economy, to be more free.

The vast majority of social protests did not have any alternative to this package.

They simply wanted it to be implemented better than it is being implemented today.

Another potential source for an alternative, which more and more people speak about, is China, the rising superpower of the 21st century.

However, even though China is definitely an economic giant, it is still an ideological dwarf.

In terms of ideology or religion, China has very little to offer the world, at least at present.

In theory, officially, it is still a communist country, but it is very far from being communist in practice.

And it has no alternative idea to either its official communism or to the liberal package of how else to run human society in terms of values.

Maybe in the next decade, 2 decades, 3 decades, that we will see the rise of a completely new ideology in China.

China is extremely good in business, in making money, in making products.

But ideologically, it seems to be bankrupt.

The third main alternative to the liberal package is radical Islam or radical religious in general, but very often we focus on radical Islam.

However, even though radical fundamentalist Islamic movements oppose the liberal package, they don't really have any relevant alternative that can be offered and implemented in the 21st century.

The reason is that most of their ideas are out of date by centuries, by hundreds of years.

The 21st century challenges humankind in new ways.

We are facing enormous opportunities, enormous new opportunities, and enormous new dangers that we need to confront.

And radical Islam has very little relevant things to say about these new challenges and new dangers?

To give just a few examples, perhaps the most important question in 21st century economics is what do we need people for in the economy?

In a situation when it is likely that computers will be able to do more and more things better and better than Homo sapiens, this becomes a real question for the first time in history.

The most basic economic value of humans is being put in doubt.

And nobody really has an idea how the job market would look like in 40 years or 50 years, and what humans will still be necessary for, or at least most humans, what will they do.

If there is a young man or woman today, say 20 years old, going to college and asking himself or herself, what should I study today so that in 30 years I will have a good job?

We don't have a clue how the job market would look in 30 or 40 years.

And again, it's not even clear that it's not that there will be different jobs.

It's not even clear that there will be any jobs for most humans.

Another very big challenge and opportunity is concerned biotechnology.

The possibility of extending human life and human health indefinitely, with 80 being the new 40.

What will this do to society, to sexual relations, to family structures?

Another very big question which emanates from this field of biotechnology is the possibility of, for the first time in history, real biological gaps opening between the rich and the poor.

Previously in history, there were always gaps between rich and poor.

But these gaps were social, economic, legal, not biological.

There was no real biological difference between the king and the peasant.

They had the same basic physical, cognitive, and emotional abilities.

Now with the advent of biotechnology, we are facing a possibility.

But there is a possibility of real biological gaps opening and Homo sapiens splitting into different biological castes or even different species.

These are the kinds of problems that we need to confront in the 21st century.

And the problem of radical Islam and radical Christianity, Judaism, and so forth, is that they have nothing relevant to say about these questions.

They have no answers to these questions because they don't even understand the questions.

If you read even very wise books written thousands of years ago, the people who wrote these books knew nothing about genetics, knew nothing about nanotechnology or computers.

So how can you expect to get answers to these questions from people who didn't know anything about the subjects in question?

Now it's true that if you count heads, if you count people, there are many more people today on the planet that are interested in God and scriptures than in nanotechnology or genetics or who understand these subjects.

It's not that you need a lot of people to make historical changes.

Very often, historical changes are made by relatively few numbers of people.

If we go back to the last big technological and economic revolution that swept the world, the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, it was led, it was done by very few people.

Most people in the 19th century knew far more and were interested far more in the Bible and the Quran than in steam engines or railroads or coal mines.

The same thing we see today we saw also in the 19th century.

It was also full of religious fundamentalist movements.

For example, in the Islamic world, you had in Sudan the Mahdi in the late 19th century, which established a religious theocracy and also beheaded people and fought wars and so forth, caused a lot of stir in Victorian England when the followers of the Mahadi beheaded, executed General Charles Gordon, a famous British commander.

Nobody almost remembers the Mahadi today.

Similarly, in India, you had a religious revival led by Dayananda Saraswati, whose main idea, the main message Dayananda Saraswati had to the 19th century, to India in the 19th century, is that all the answers to all the questions are in the Vedas.

In the holy scriptures of Hinduism, the Vedas are never wrong.

If you have any difficulty, open the Vedas or ask the Brahmins.

In the Christian world, you also saw such movements.

Pope Pius IX, the Catholic pope, he, in the middle of the 19th century, had this new idea that the Pope is never wrong.

The Catholic dogma that the Pope, the papal infallibility it's called, the Pope is never wrong when it comes to questions of ethics, morality, and so forth.

It goes back only to the middle of the 19th century.

And then millions of people followed Pope Pius IX.

In China, the biggest war of the 19th century was not the Napoleonic War, was not the American Civil War.

By far, The biggest war of the 19th century was

not the Napoleonic War, was not the American Civil War.

By far, the biggest war of the 19th century was the Taiping Rebellion, which started in 1850 when this person, Hong Xiuquan, he had a vision.

God revealed himself to Hong and told Hong a secret, that Hong was actually the younger brother of Jesus Christ.

And he had a divine mission to establish the kingdom of heavenly peace on Earth, starting with China.

Millions of people followed him, and they did not establish any peace.

They waged the most terrible war of the 19th century with at least 20 million dead.

So you had your full share of religious fundamentalism also back in the 19th century.

Nobody almost today remembers these people or these movements, they did not change the world.

While these people in Sudan or in India or in China were concerned about scriptures and God and heaven and so forth, a few engineers and a few technicians and bankers and financiers in Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham, they changed the world.

They shaped the world in which we live today.

Now, there was 1 ideological or religious movement which began in the 19th century, which did manage to change the world, and which is far more important.

And when we think back about the 19th century, and we ask ourselves, what was the big ideology, the big ethical ideas that came from this period, we think not about Pope Pius IX or the Mahdi.

In 1800, there was hardly any socialists or communists, very few.

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