If you consider yourself as a citizen of the world, then the bible as it relates to humanity’s worth and endeavors is intensely unpatriotic. Not only does it rebuke humans at almost every turn, but it is also quite disparage full of the world we live in. Often it resorts to calling our beautiful planet cursed.
Upon reading their book I conclude that Christians must think that we are all as evil as some of them are. But like the character Galactus the destroyer of worlds, the mistake in the universe which they detect is in fact themselves. Their mistake is that they start every dialogue unwilling to be convinced of anything other than what they currently believe.
It is true that Jesus Christ as described in the gospels was an inspirational figure, but there were many great men before Jesus. And there were great books published after the publication of the bible.
How blind do you have to be to ignore two millennia’s worth of great ideas? It is surely the blindness of dogma that can be that opaque to facts.
Religious people who take their “sacred” texts literally would be comparable to people who were alive millennia ago, had these people taken the cave drawings which they had found , with their half human and half animal figures as literal representations of the way people looked 40,000 years ago. Literal interpretation of the bible is insane.
We have come a long way as a species but the burden of superstition is still upon us. It is what we must shed. We have to detach this weight that keeps us lumbering, now forwards and then backwards, never consistently pursuing a focused agenda of technological development as a species. For every Nation on Earth today which is innovative and developed there are several to match it which are slow in developing. These second and third world nations are those which stand the greatest risk of turning into mad, theocratic or rogue Nations.
To ensure that they maintain a course of development it is better that the first world concentrates less on exporting its Judeo-Christian Theo-philosophy and more on relevant investments in real and economically viable areas. As leaders in the world today, the first world nations should choose to propel the rest of the world, but in the direction of objective and sound economic advice and growth opportunities.
Science teaches us that the dawn of reality was chaotic from the start. This means that there was no pattern of creation. Certain aspects of reality simply were not formed or ordered atop of other aspects. It all emerged in a moment of incomprehensible violence. Therefore there was no God. There was no six nor seven nor eight day creation. We made that. We made up that causa sui. We made God.
The presence of our species as an intelligence unique in a universe of non-sentient organisms is indeed exceptional. But it is not miraculous. It is explicable. WE now possess the understanding to explain ourselves. The ability of our brains is not incompatible with that of other creatures in the world. The difference is a matter of degree. We are evolved to use our brains primarily as a means of survival. It gives us tools called ideas which we then turn into other resources such as food and shelter. We have the dextrous limbs fashioned by millennia of tool use. Everything we need in order to understand ourselves as a species is all around us. The foreign and absurd idea is in fact not evolution but the unproven and superstitious deism of religion.
Fossil evidence has shown us that we did not just appear out of nothingness. It took deep and geological time to evolve modern humans and the other hominids. WE survived while the others did not because we were better adapted than they were to the environment. No miraculous intervention was necessary to secure the survival of our species. We are here now because we have what it takes. As humans we are more adaptive than most every other large mammal on the planet. But this is no cause to make us arrogant enough to go our way on this planet while disregarding all the diversity and interconnectedness in all the different ecosystems. Evolution may not always be immediately convincing to some people, but once it makes its point, it’s always followed by a resounding “I told you so.”
As powerful as our species is we have our place. Losing that place will spell dire consequences. It is noteworthy that no organism exists without a niche. Lets take care of our planet as well as each other. It’s the only one we have.
dexterwaweru 