| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Gandalf Grey" |
| Date: |
09 Oct 2006 11:09:16 AM |
| Object: |
Is Evolution Selecting Out Religion? |
Is Evolution selecting out Religion?
By W. Christopher Epler
Created Oct 7 2006 - 9:10am
Over the millennia, moments of truth have confronted Darwin's Origin of the
Species. Sink of swim moments, such as a nose horn that's counter
productively large, or a climate change that's under oxygenated or
excessively warm, etc., etc., etc.
For millions of grown up human beings, even reading that first version of
Origin of the Species (almost a rough draft) carried with it the intuition
that this book is talking about reality. Kudos to Darwin, of course, but
that's really an irrelevance. Who cares WHO wrote the book (plus many other
contemporary minds were seeing identical things); the point is "though a
glass darkly" is still SEEING THROUGH THE GLASS. Darwin was writing about
reality.
One vast pattern in this glimpse into the soul of nature is that when
certain things are sufficiently out of harmony with the n-dimensional
process of evolution, they are "selected out". Meaning: Bye, Bye; so long;
extinction time!
The void of extinction is unimaginable. It's a pit so deep that you never
hear a splash when a species (or whatever) falls into it. The one thing you
can take to the bank is that no life forms ever crawl back out of that
abyss. Why should they? They aren't needed anymore and they stopped being
able to pay their own natural way. They simply "aren't" and nature continues
to nature uninterruptedly.
Many (most?) humans are horrified of a nature which is their true and
transitory creator. It tortures them to think of themselves as human "beans"
is a soup of legumes (human beans, supreme beans, green beans, etc.). The
thought of being so enmeshed in nature that ultimately they are
identity-less has inspired them to invent hide out alternatives.
Psychology has millions of variation of this theme, but institutionalized
religion has been for millennia the grand and glorious one up reality to
nature. But if nature = reality, one wonders where this happy hunting ground
could be. How do you one up reality.
Self evidently, you don't. You don't one up anything for that matter, since
there isn't any "you", at least not in the sense of that ego/self/identity
thing which is a mere construction of thought. Indeed, the thinking about
point of view IS human identity.
Philosophically, this is all reasonably obvious. Nature is totality and it's
not "one up able" by separate selves or priests or sheiks or popes or men in
dresses -- the oddly favorite attire of most professional religious types.
So if religion is a happy hide out that simply doesn't exist (and is
populated only by delusional "creatures"), one wonders how much longer
nature is going to allow it to hang around, i.e., when is reality/nature
going to select it out.
Arguably, 99% of the human agony and sorrow now torturing our planet
(starting with the ad nauseam Israeli / Palestinian conflict) is the acting
out of religious fanaticism. Indeed, ALL religion increasing resembles some
form of religious fanaticism.
Something like Buddhism is profoundly frying other fish and really shouldn't
be grouped with the Armageddon nut cases, but wherever there is murder in
the name of God (Christian, Islamic, Judaic, etc.) you can be sure you are
dealing with religious fanaticism. It's almost as if there is a certain
righteous stench about these people. And if they aren't directly fighting,
they are escaping into some form of Catholic Denial, i.e., the Catholic
Church has made it a science during these last six Bush/Republican years to
not acknowledge the obscenely immoral antics of what one would think they
should be seeing as the 3rd millennia anti-Christ. Such "above it all"
indifference to the Bush Family evils is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the teachings
of Jesus Christ, but this doesn't seem to bother the dress men.
But back to natural selection, i.e., reality. It is increasingly postulated
by men and women of science that "religion" (certainly, religious
fanaticism, which is the rule, not the exception) can no longer be tolerated
by the vast, survival processes of evolution and even though the
fundamentalists may take us to the brink, more sophisticated natural
processes will find a way to select religion out of the planetary game.
Of course, the price of this selecting out may well be the end of humans,
since we seem to be the only species that so abandonly kills in the name of
God.
However, from the perspective of the Earth in general, this might well be
like healing itself from a deadly cancer.
May we leave this gentle truth with the religious fanatics? We need the
Earth (and Nature) infinitely more than the Earth needs us. Trust us, the
beat will go on with or without religious books and buildings.
Indeed, in the big, big picture sense of things, if the whole human
enterprise does result in an Armageddon like self destruction, this will be
like a planetary sneeze.
We don't "have" a problem. We ARE the problem. And we are very
"select-out-able".
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
.
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| User: "ike milligan" |
|
| Title: Re: Is Evolution Selecting Out Religion? |
09 Oct 2006 12:38:55 PM |
|
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"Gandalf Grey" <gandalfgrey@infectedmail.com> wrote in message
news:452a741c$0$5937$9a6e19ea@news.newshosting.com...
Is Evolution selecting out Religion?
By W. Christopher Epler
Created Oct 7 2006 - 9:10am
Over the millennia, moments of truth have confronted Darwin's Origin of
the
Species. Sink of swim moments, such as a nose horn that's counter
productively large, or a climate change that's under oxygenated or
excessively warm, etc., etc., etc.
For millions of grown up human beings, even reading that first version of
Origin of the Species (almost a rough draft) carried with it the intuition
that this book is talking about reality. Kudos to Darwin, of course, but
that's really an irrelevance. Who cares WHO wrote the book (plus many
other
contemporary minds were seeing identical things); the point is "though a
glass darkly" is still SEEING THROUGH THE GLASS. Darwin was writing about
reality.
One vast pattern in this glimpse into the soul of nature is that when
certain things are sufficiently out of harmony with the n-dimensional
process of evolution, they are "selected out". Meaning: Bye, Bye; so long;
extinction time!
Natural selection does not depend on extinction of a species. It is
favorable phenotypes that are selected among species. The final process of
speciation is murky. It seems from what I have read hat isolated populations
inbreed and the genes become incompatible with hybridization wtih the parent
species or its descendents.
The void of extinction is unimaginable. It's a pit so deep that you never
hear a splash when a species (or whatever) falls into it. The one thing
you
can take to the bank is that no life forms ever crawl back out of that
abyss. Why should they? They aren't needed anymore and they stopped being
able to pay their own natural way. They simply "aren't" and nature
continues
to nature uninterruptedly.
It is wrong to assume that species that become extinct are not needed.
Extinction can occur due to temporary conditions, and the niche filled by
the extinct species may take millenia to be filled by evolutionary
modifications of another speicies, when the conditions return. For instance
the rain forests could be temporarily reduced, but if they grow back, the
species that became extinct as a result will no longer be able to fill the
ecological niches. Moreover, needed for what? Some of the plants becoming
extinct could have been discovered to have useful properties, and could have
been cutlivated in a symbiotic relationship with humnas if ony they had been
discovered in time to harvest them.
<snipped the rest as illogical and cryptic, not to mention semi-illiterate>
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