I’m not sure the current situation supports that kind of optimism. Look at some of the natural forces being contended with; Climate, disease, human reproduction leading to overpopulation and famine, other natural human behaviors leading to division and war.

Human technology affects some of these things. It controls none of them.

Are there any prospects that human technology will ever control the climate? Human overpopulation? Famine? Pestilence? War? Where is the support for any of that?

You can’t credibly suggest centralized control of human reproduction in any but the most totalitarian dictatorships.

Human overpopulation is steadily overtaking the best techniques human technology can provide for growing food, at the same time it is destroying arable farmland and generally degrading the enviornment available to grow food in.

Contagious diseases and infections are steadily gaining immunity to the best medicines humans can devise against them.

The world is as politically divided as it has ever been. The prospects for war are as great as they’ve ever been.

These are all aspects of natural forces. Human behavior being included as a natural force of course, which it is.

I think you’ve got the easy end of the argument. You just need to cast doubt on that first very positive statement. Wheras the other side, basically, has to solve all the world’s current problems. Then it can talk about “controlling man and his destiny.”