Category Archives: Religion

Alien Life Explored, New Life Created.

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Man is today stepping into the position of a managerial position of life. Bio-mechanics will allow us to not only influence the way in which we and other animals develop as a species but has opened the door to an entirely new world – the world of creation. Playing with genes and proteins of existing animals is quite a feat but, as the New York Times demonstrates, man will soon embark on a journey to literally create an entirely new form of life. What, I wonder, will this life form be?

I have long pondered the possibilities of the very notion of life. Can life consist of non-biological substances? Can a life form exist in a form of a gas? These questions are endless and deal with an equally astounding number of problems regarding the very definition of what we call life. How we define life will naturally change as we continue to strive towards the unknown. Just as our understanding of the universe expanded with increasingly complex experiments in quantum mechanics, so too will our understanding of consciousness and even the universe itself begin to change as scientists continue to tinker in the lab.

The article linked above points out the dilemma we face with respect to these troublesome questions. It does so by alluding to the role of science fiction as a means for men and women to consider their beliefs about the issue and to gain perspective on where those beliefs can perhaps, one day, lead us. The use of aliens as a point of contrast to life on Earth is an easy way to explore the possibilities of life without being restricted to the limitations we have come to expect from life on our planet.

One aspect I would like to add to the topic is one I explored in my earlier post, The Largest Tribe, in which I discussed the role of technology as a means for man the evolutionary fate of life on Earth. Part of man’s endeavor I link to the supernatural which heavily influences the way in which we define human nature. I posited that man strives to be like god by becoming an engineer of life. He yearns to be the creator, the origin of the natural which would then place him above the natural.

 

Leibniz and I.

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I have a curious idea that humanity has a way of positioning itself to become more like god. Most peculiar to me is the role of technology and the way in which it is used by man. Unlike “Richard Feynman”, I am not concerned about particles and other elements of the physical universe. Nor do I concern myself with the frivolousness of the veil of Maya which allows us to experience the world as though it were in constant flux.

Leibniz, on the other hand, was very much concerned with particles. In his thesis entitled The Monadology, the philosopher described how he believed the world to be: a static and finite set of matter. How does Leibniz account for differences between the world as he defines it and for the appearance of change within it? Leibniz describes the monads as a quasi-particles that maintain a connection to a higher power. These monads strive to be like god which causes them to shift in observable appearance. To Leibniz, the world is a definable set of matter with no change in the orientation of the matter that composes the objects we see. However, it appears to be the very opposite (of having change and an infinite possibility).

This is similar to those toys that have many rows of small metal rods in a rectangular shape that you can use to create impressions of physical objects. You press you hand against the metal rods, pushing an impression of your hand into the device. Much in the same way, Leibniz’s universe is like the toy which takes upon itself the impression of god. The monads strive to take a form similar to god, which causes our static world to contain room for some sort of change. (The particles do not move around but, rather, change in this unique characteristic.)

I am, admittedly , a creationist – I believe that man create god. By creating an idea of something so far above and beyond the realm of possibility and devoting oneself to this impossible fiction, we give our own creation immense power. We surrender our will and the responsibility of our actions to a being we might as well have crudely drawn on a sheet of paper. (A fictional character in the ether of the universe is after-all  just as real and all-knowing as one I drew with squiggly lines.)

Because we are afraid of being ourselves and of having to take responsibility for our actions, we create something that cannot be wrong. Mankind created god in order to have someone to blame for both the great and the dammed; because an infallible being will lead the way for all people to behave a certain way without the need to justify itself; and because human beings are aware of their puniness and minuteness but are too scared to admit it. Man is a sad, scared, stupid, unreasonable, and needing for something to make him feel better about himself and that is where a god steps in.

By examining the many cultures of the past and present, we can clearly notice that the religious and mythological beliefs represented the morals and values of the respective peoples. Tales of god-like beings spread across continents and survived centuries for functional reasons. Religion was used as a way to influence the behavior of other people according to what the culture required. For instance, the worship of a river was a direct acknowledgment of the dependence on the water the river brings. It was, and remains to be, a form of control despite the lack of necessity for such a belief system in today’s time.

This form of control is a method used by cowards who are too feeble or too misguided to defend their reasoning with pure reason alone. They turn to the majestic as a means to skip over the need for an argument entirely. Why engage in debate about whether abortion is right or wrong if you can simply cite a holy book that you claim is without fault. Voodoo, astrology, and healing crystals have as much say in reality as “god” does.

Cowardice is the fuel that keeps religion burning. Fear of the unknown, of the absurd, of death, of the other all cause anxiety for man. With god as the explanation  for all things, there is no accountability and, in turn, no longer a fear of doing what could be considered wrong.  We naturally create moral guidelines for others in everyday life when we make our own decisions but religion today has gone out of control. The tall walls that maintained society in years past have turned into jail cells that keep people from exploring new ideas and developing the ideals to accompany the developing world.

Entering a new era requires a new system of ethics, a new set of answers to the questions people will encounter throughout their lives. Religion has only answers for generations that are long lost and serves no purpose for us today.

The Largest Tribe

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Evolution is a unique characteristic of living things. The forcefulness of its pull has no limit in the way it can shape the structures of biological ecosystems. To evolve, as it were, is a requirement of organic life – a necessity that arises from the natural order of life, death, and the need to ensure the continuation of the Earth’s gene pool.

One could point out how evolution resembles a function – a telos of the very nature of organic life. One could then postulate that this necessity comes from a religious origin; that this was “implanted” into organisms or that it was designed by a divinity. Clearly, evolution is not a manufactured product of thought but, rather, a fundamentally organic process.

Moreover, to say that evolution is a function of life is not the same as saying the purpose of, for example, a mouth is to chew. The mouth is the result of evolution – a byproduct of the process of natural selection whereby organisms with a feature similar to that of a mouth passed on their genes to a greater extent that those that did not. This physical attribute allowed for far greater reproductive success but does not have a purpose. Nor was the mouth “designed” to do anything in particular. We could, after all, inject all nutrients directly into our stomach or, even, our blood bypassing the need for a mouth.

However, there is no way to bypass evolution. The need to survive comes out from the dynamic disposition of the universe (insert yin-yang joke here). Even modern-day man, with all his unprecedented capacity for cooperation and his unparalleled intelligence, is at risk of death and, therefore, is still subject to the dictatorship of evolutionary need to procreate and further dilute the genetic pool.

Humans are, to a great extent, – but not entirely – different from all other biological life because we utilize external agents as tools in our survival. Unlike the flower or the bee, man has begun to absolve the ever-present dread of death through the manipulation of the organic and inorganic world. The Earth’s ecosystems have become our playground. Man has unknowingly sent entire species to mass extinction and actively prevented others from the very same fate – a fate that results from the evolutionary domain that all life rests within. We choose to will evolution as we please – as it benefits us.

This unabated control of the external world is by virtue of man’s creativity. He creates marvelous, intricate, and stupendous objects from basic materials and has propelled himself into a setting of biological incongruity. Man’s relationship to the external world has become far more intimate and multi-faceted than we have seen in any other organism before.

It is my belief that mankind has surrendered its evolutionary objectives to technological advancements which are then controlled by the collective will of men. The human species will continue to participate in natural selection but both selectively and unwillingly. We can literally look into a microscope to see how we are evolving and decide, based on the facts, whether the end result is, based on opinion, either good or bad. We can also force ourselves to evolve much in the same fashion. We have entered the realm of artificial selection – a biased approach to selectively intruding on the evolution of ourselves and of all living things.