Comments by bermane

Comment #65640 by bermane on August 25, 2007 at 9:22 am

There is a tendency in human behavior that has to be unraveled from our DNA. It accounts for the Christian fundamentalists' disingenuity--the amazing fantasy of the end times--a child's fantasy of hide-and-seek; for radical Islamists' mindless self-destruction, for the ravaging of this world to make way for the next. The key behavior seems to be the need to be loyal, the need to submit to some higher authority, the desire to belong even if in the process we are ourselves annihilated.
Think of it: how could a living, breathing, exulting-in-being-alive creature chose to destroy itself, to hunger for some vague promise of a life beyond this life, essentially want to be dead when life is here and now? Why listen to an imam or a priest or rabbi or even a civic leader who invites you to die for his god when your own coursing blood tells you to embrace life? Because these leaders have told us that our sacrifice is what some higher authority wants of us, that it serves the purpose only some greater person or higher authority can see, which we cannot. Who is fool enough to trade the here-and-now for oblivion unless that behavior of self-annihilation serves some evolutionary purpose, echoes something we must have needed to do to advance the species out on the savannahs of our ancestry. The ultimate answer must be that we put loyalty, belonging, obedience before survival because at one time it served some purpose. Find the trigger of the behavior--God, paradise--send millions to their deaths, and imagine the JimJonesian cynicism of saying, in effect, 'Go forth and die so that I and my own kind survive and prosper.' Now we begin to see that there is some behavioral aspect to this, something like ants or bees, where the lesser entity paves the way to a better world for their betters with a line of their own corpses. Dehumanization.
I feel I fail to make my case, but it is worth some give-and-take to figure out how to purge humankind of this insane behavior on all sides, so that leaders asking for such sacrifice are themselves brought down before sons, daughters, mothers and fathers get in line to annihilate themselves and their own.
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2. The Only One in Step

Comment #14807 by bermane on December 25, 2006 at 10:26 am

I am a believer: I find comfort in the certainty of natural selection and the astonishing order of the physical world as it unfolds to our still dewy scientific curiosity. I see man as a part of Nature (yes, pantheist, materialist, fan of Alexander Pope--guilty) and man's behavior as an adaptation to his environment--an environment which he more than any other animal is able to modify to perpetuate his survival on earth. If we look at man this way--an intelligent animal thriving in a broad environmental niche--then it may be annoying but not unexpected that his awareness of the physical world around him babbles along in the comfortable runnels of superstition, stereotype, and a kind of full-stomach complacency. If the two scholars you mention can't see beyond their own noses, then they are being very human. After all, who in their right mind would burn petroleum products, partake of endangered prey, even procreate given the appalling state of the world. Yet we do all these things in the heat of the moment, yielding to hunger, sex--being alive. You call us all to imagine our proper relation to the world, to look at it with the light of reason. But here we see two men of multitudes who are perfectly comfy, thank you, and want to be rocked in their complacency. Should scientists function at this barely sentient level? Are they not called to some higher level of consciousness? Of course they are. But if we all lived up to the best we were capable of, we would have advanced light years beyond this blinkered, cannibalistic, self-mutilating thing we call modern life. That we stall, and sputter, and go around in circles in our beliefs, behavior; that one generation builds little higher than the last--these are signs of our humanness. A humanness bent on self-perpetuation at any cost to any rival, guided by a consciousness which is no more than a frail chemical surface-tension over a flood of irreconcilable urges and instincts.
So, Dr. Dawkins, don't be mad at your benighted scientific brethren. Instead, chalk it off to their comfy lives where nothing need be examined too carefully, nothing questioned if complacency fills their belly. They believe as they do because it feels good. Superficial? Yes. But eminently human. Here is Morrow Mayo writing in The New Republic in December 25, 1929,"Aimee Rises from the Sea":
"Sister [Aimee Semple McPherson, an evangelist of the time] substituted the cheerfulness of the play-room for the gloom of the morgue. . . . The gospel she created was and is an ideal bed-time story. It has a pretty color, a sweet taste, and is easy.
"Mrs. McPherson describes the Holy City literally the jeweled walls, pearly gates, golden streets, milk and honey. She says she is not sure--she is not sure, mind you--but she has a pretty good idea that Heaven will resemble a cross between Pasadena, California, and Washington, D.C. That will give an idea of what may be expected at [her] Angelus Temple. The atmosphere bubbles over with love, joy, enthusiasm; the Temple is full of flowers, music, golden trumpets, red robes, angels, incense, nonsense and sex appeal. The service may be described as supernatural whoopee."

That's it! Do not deny your fellow man his feel-good, angst-dulling flim-flam, Dr. Dawkins. Just tip-toe around. And don't rock the Ship-of-Fools.