The Internet Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize

Recently, while driving home from the office, I chanced upon a radio interview that had as its main concern the internet. Specifically, whether or not it was a good idea for the internet to be nominated for consideration as a possible recipient of the Noble Peace Prize. Oddly enough, there is an advocacy group called the Internet for Peace championing this cause. Frankly, I could care less about the topic. What I found intriguing however, were the arguments leveled by opponents over the abject silliness of the proposition.

It was declared that the internet is a thing. A thing has no thought, will or volition and can initiate nothing by itself. It required careful purposeful design that can be used for a variety of activities both good and bad. It can be an agent for peaceful change or a tool for terrorist recruitment and therefore of itself it has no innate moral compass. It is simply a tool in the hands of a moral agent that can act out nefarious plots or noble causes. Rather than celebrating the thing, it was charged, we ought to celebrate the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for their ingenuity and long range vision that first made the internet possible. It was suggested that if the internet were to honoured at all, the honour should at least be conferred on the designers and visionaries.

Does this sound familiar? It should! This the classic biblical argument posed by the Bible and Christian theologians for the existence of God. In fact, Paul makes this very point in the back half of Romans 1:18 ff. The very definition of idolatry is to give honour and worship to that which is created forgetting and neglecting the creator who put it there in the first place.  This was not a Christian talk show and I have no idea as to the spiritual state of the participants on that show. I did find it interesting that there was no problem arguing logically for intelligent design when it came to something as cosmically trivial as the internet. I strongly doubt the same consideration would have been granted had we been discussing the God of the Bible.

Soli Deo Gloria