The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155384   Message #3661087
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
17-Sep-14 - 05:56 AM
Thread Name: BS: Special thread on Evolution & religion
Subject: RE: BS: Special thread on Evolution & religion
It is reasonable to ask what those indicators are.

Essentially it comes down to two things : 1) Understanding the mythological / folkloric origins of the very concept of God and 2) Understanding the utter redundancy of the concept in the light of ongoing scientific discovery. Also, it's about the incompatibility of the concept within the sheer diversity of 'supernatural' options on offer - the old 'They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong' equation. I remember an old very non-PC cartoon featuring a psychiatric ward full of delusional messiahs. The caption, spoken from one orderly to another, was : "They can't ALL be Jesus."

As ever, objectivism is the key. The human predeliction for mythological invention and storytelling is NOT evidence of God, Gods, UFOs, Ghosts, Fairies, Monsters, Angels, Demons, Men in Black etc. rather evidence of our equal capacity for a) inventiveness and b) delusion. Basically, we invented God in our ignorance and science has shown us the error of our ways as it reveals to us the origins of the universe, our solar system, our planet, the evolution of life and, ultimately, ourselves.

Then comes our culture, our myths, our dreams, our religions, our wild imaginings born from the very depths of awe, wonder & terror from the dawn of human consciousness that gave rise to cognition and language. And there we were, unique in all of nature; the very cosmos contemplating itself and asking itself : 'What the fuck???' and coming up with a myriad of different certainties all of which claim monopoly on the truth.

50,000 years or so down the line, Science asks the same question, though it doesn't make shit up to fill in the blanks, much less does it put ourselves at the centre of it all. As it said on The Sky at the Night recently, humanity has only been truly intelligent for 100 years - the nature of that intelligence is a) peer reviewed and b) ever-evolving. Who knows where we'll be in another hundred?

Fear not ye faithful Godly believers! Chances are we'll fuck it up and be plunged back into an apocalyptic pagan / Abrahamic nightmare of rancid tribalism in which our Gods and Demons will rule supreme once more. Sounds like a fair few of you are already there, cozying in for the long dark night of the human soul when Planet Earth will be cold and silent once more...

Still, at least the wildlife might get a chance to recover. Every cloud, as they say...