Isaac Asimov, the Humanist-Atheist without hope
By Elizabeth Prata
My summer reading this school break included an Isaac Asimov book I picked up at a thrift store. When I was in high school I read a lot of science fiction. I had decided to return to the genre. I hadn’t read any sci-fi in 40 years. Asimov is one of the fathers of science fiction, and one of the most prolific.
He was born in Russia in 1920. He emigrated as a boy and then attended an annex of Columbia University majoring in chemistry, and became a writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. Asimov was considered one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein (“Stranger In A Strange Land”) and Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey”), even during his own lifetime, a feat of fame. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. That’s why he is considered prolific.
Asimov coined the term ‘robotics,’ a combination of the words mechanics and hydraulics. He also wrote the Three Laws of Robotics, which are:
First Law
Isaac Asimov
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
One of the books Asimov wrote was a compilation of short stories called “Nine Tomorrows” published in 1959. They are 9 short stores (plus a poem) set in the future. That’s the one I picked up.
I enjoyed Asimov when I first read him as a teen and young adult. I appreciated his easy writing and his engaging stories. But reading him again as an adult I was blown away by his brilliance. A detective story using things for clues that hadn’t been invented yet. Time travel. Space travel layovers. Genetic Modification- of humans. How successive iterations of computer programming forces a creativity decline and derivative thinking arise. Mutual Assured Destruction.
He was a supremely intelligent man. Seeing many of his ‘tomorrows’ become ‘todays’ and even ‘yesterdays’ after the initial writing 70+ years ago is amazing. Now we do have artificial intelligence, robotics on a level Asimov would have understood, and space travel. He wrote 100 of his books even before the US moon landing in 1969.
Sin begins in the mind. Our faith begins in the mind. I admire people who use their mind for Christ. To have an ability to understand complex ideas and relate them to a layman so they can be absorbed by anyone. The Bible is complex. The war between the world and the kingdom is complex. The scientific people at the Institute for Creation Research and The Math3ma Institute are intellects for the faith. I admire that they use their mind for Jesus and His glory. And by contrast it is such a waste to have a mind such as Asimov’s used for satan. Isaac Asimov was an atheist and a firm humanist.
Though I enjoyed most of his stories in “Nine Tomorrows” there was one I rejected. “The Last Question” explored entropy in the universe, (“the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. Entropy is the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder“), man’s reason for existence, the end of all things, and that knowledge was the supreme treasure of the universe, then comes annihilation and peace.
It is an atheistic, humanist view. It is also a hopeless view.
How sad. Reading Asimov now on this side of salvation shows me the utter sadness when a person possesses such a hopeless outlook.
So many things in life remind me of the sadness of the life of a lost person. The more I grow in His likeness the more I think about the Great Gulf Fixed which no man may cross. There is only lost or found. Darkness or light. Hell or heaven.
And I think of hell enlarging its mouth to receive a great many- the myriads upon myriads of unholy angels who will receive the just punishment for their demonic deeds. The millions of those who dwelled in sin all their life and will also receive the just punishment of their deeds. All that flesh. All those minds. What a waste.
I think of this kind of thing more and more. The tragedy of sin, the waste of a mind that could be glorifying God and thanking Him for its intellect. Asimov denied the Creator. When he passed away in 1992, the Institute for Creation Research wrote a piece called “Asimov Meets His Creator” in which we see this quote from Asimov-
ASIMOV’S VIEW ON DEATH
“Although the time of death is approaching for me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell, or [what would be considerably worse] going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and by removing from me all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.”
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine January 1992
The linked ICR piece is worth reading.
Asimov’s expectations were not met. Asimov discovered that knowledge in and of itself is not the chief end of man. God is the chief end of man by glorifying Him. Heaven IS considerably better than anything one can imagine, and hell is real and considerably worse. Nothingness is not in the future for any person born on this earth or even those not born but perish due to miscarriage or abortion.
It’s heaven (for babies and the repentant) and hell for those who reject and whose default is to continue in sin. Christians rightly do not fear death but the unsaved should. They do not know…
“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God’s enemies.” ~Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards
The unsaved should fear death very much, and moreover, FEAR GOD.
