progress noun 1 movement while travelling in any direction. 2 course • followed the progress of the trial. 3 movement towards a destination, goal or state of completion • make slow progress. 4 advances or development. 5 old use a journey made in state by a sovereign, etc. verb (progresses, progressed, progressing) 1 intrans to move forwards or onwards; to proceed towards a goal. 2 intrans to advance or develop. 3 intrans to improve. 4 to put (something planned) into operation; to expedite. in progress taking place; in the course of being done.Lately i've been reading alot about history, the church and eschatology {study of the end of the world} and interesting things have popped up. I know history is so boring right? Well due to the strong opposition i've been having on my other blog, defending the faith that i profess and the validity of one Almighty God that is different from the other Gods of other religions, i have been forced to do some research and find out for myself as well as give concrete evidence to the relevance of God and indeed the fact that God is not a passive figure in history, in fact he drives it.
ETYMOLOGY: 15c: from Latin progredi, progressus to move forward.
The European Enlightenment heritage views progress as the sense that all experience is future-directed with the specific, calculated purpose of improving or bettering the world, society, and the individual.
Isaac Newton in the 1600's came up with the idea of a mechanistic universe which implied that the universe could be understood without recourse to religion or God, even though Newton himself believed that God created the universe and set it in motion. Eventually, this would lead Europeans to attempt to explain other areas of phenomena with the same mechanistic model—economics, politics, ethics. All of these explanations permitted religion and the divine to be removed from the debate and made the world of material and human phenomena rational, predictable, and manipulable.
This idea of progress as a constant improvement with no certain goal in sight, no end and the obvious assumption that God has no influence on its progress, can be seen in many of the things around us today. In technology there is the constant relentless efforts to improve the speed, accuracy of all machines and the imagination of men are being realised in the brightest and starkest ways. Nothing seems to be impossible these days and people think they can go on without God. Its just like the tower of babel, they were so advanced that they had their sites on the heavens and God had to strike them and confuse them so that their progress will be set back substantially.
I dont mean to sound so academic but i thought i would share just a bit of some discoveries i made. I'm looking for a good book on world history if anyone knows where i can get one let me know especially if it has something to do with God's intevention on history.
main source: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/PROGRESS.HTM
~shalom~