Techno-Science and Religious Sin: Orthodox Theology and Heidegger [Book Review]

This paper places certain religious ideas of Eastern Christianity about our relationship to nature critically against techno-scientific thinking and practice. Specifically, the two focal issues of the discussion are the concept of religious sin, on the one hand, and the peculiarly modern fusion of science and technology, resulting in the novel phenomenon of techno-science, on the other. Two corresponding theses are advanced: that of sin as an epistemic, and not as a moral, error, and that of the “Eucharistic” viz., celebratory relation with God. The paper then proceeds to trace significant parallels that may be discerned between the Orthodox theological view and Heidegger’s position on technology, and metaphysics more generally, culminating in the suggestion that the way out of the ‘danger’ of technology as techno-science must be found in art or religion