Ignorance or Insecurity?

The more one learns about the physical universe of the large and the small, the inert and the alive, the more wondrous it becomes. That all this should simply be is itself amazing. That we now can get a decent idea of the hows and whys through our investigations only adds to the awe.

I think that it is sad that so many in this country don’t appear to have the education, experience, or proclivity to see beyond their immediate level of experience. Their faith overrides the knowledge we have learned as a species about our environment and beyond.

It is clear that viruses, bacteria, and insects become resistant or change in response to the environment humans present them. Bacteria species will become resistant to antibiotics we use to combat them over time. The HIV virus has responded to our treatment to AIDS and made many of our treatments less effective over time. And there are now insecticide resistant insects that we created using chemical pest controls.

We have known about this for many decades.

These are clear examples of evolution.

And yet so many people don’t accept the concept of evolution. They can’t or don’t want to grasp the concept. I believe that they find the concept threatening. They can’t see the wonder of us and everything else being here from such simple processes as variation, opportunity and chance.

It is the same when looking at the really big -- the universe. The concept of measuring something by the distance light can travel over time seems to be very hard for them to believe. It makes us insignificant. The terms of “I,” “you,” and “they” loses so much of their impact.

Dr. Carl Sagan drives the point home with his commentary about the pale blue dot in a last photograph taken by the Voyager space craft before it headed beyond the outer planets. It is a very small dot and we are the small creatures upon it.

The next time you see a leaf fall from a tree, realize it took 13.7 billion years for that to happen. And you saw it. That is humbling!

To give the power of the forces of our lives to an unknowable entity is an act of conceit. It makes us believe that we are more important than we are. It denies who and what we are. It denies what everything around us is. To assign all of creation to an unknown entity is to copout from the real wonder of this place. It is a shrug to reality.

Yes, we as life may be unique. At least for this solar system we are.

We take life, ours and all other life, pretty much for granted. We work hard and passing judgment as to what is good and what is bad. The problem is that there is only life.

It is a tough universe out there and in order to survive all creatures have had to find ways to make a living. Good and bad generally are a point of view relative to the individuals and the events, not a Large Scale Moral Question. It is when the actions of one species knowingly threaten the existence and well being of a number of species that one could ask about the morality of certain actions.

A comet destroying the reptilian mega-fauna on the earth, was that an immoral act? Was it a random event or did what we like to call a deity send the comet on its way so that mammals including us could take over? Was that the plan? Did God say that the dinosaurs weren’t doing anything with the earth so why not make room for us? Is God disappointed in his choice after seeing the mess we are making of the place?

If there is a God, then he didn’t make us smart enough. We don’t seem to be able to control ourselves and stop trying to destroy what was so reasonably balanced before we got fire. And now many of us seem to expect God to step in and save us.

On one level, we could look at the universe and say that it is all God’s work. We could lean on that belief and make decisions thinking that He/She/It cares about us. We will be disappointed when our pleading prayers go unanswered, or at least we don’t get the answer we want. We are selfish creatures to believe that He/She/It cares.

It is probably better to make the gods optional in our lives, but live with a moral code that understands we are all in this together. All of us, from humans to dogs and cats to bees and spiders to snakes and mice and fish to elm trees and scrub brush to carrots and broccoli. All life on this planet is in this together. This is our spot, our blue dot of life. At the moment nowhere else appears to have it.

And what we do affects everything and everybody else, so we must do it carefully.

                And we don’t care about ourselves or what is around us.

We are killing our planet. We will never get it to go back to what it was when we appeared on the scene. It is all going to come crashing down upon us through our greed, ignorance, arrogance, and short sighted stupidity.

I wish I were wrong.

But I have serious doubts that I am.