Sunday, October 30, 2016

The killer ape theory

-People have been fighting barbaric and cruel wars since the beginning of history. Is this fact not evidence enough that we are bellicose by nature? Don't critizise people who go to war, to kill, rape and destroy. They simply do what they are created to do. We follow orders, also from completely mad men, because it's written in our genetic code to follow orders from strong leaders.

-Even if belicosity is in our DNA, shouldn't we try to overcome this flaw, just like when we try to find cures to inborn diseases, or give eyeglasses to our children if they are nearsighted? 

Moreover, archaeologists and anthropologists are not in agreement on the claim that humans always have been at war with each other. Many of them can show evidence that warfare began when we became farmers and permanent residents. They claim that states and warfare did not exist 20 000 years ago. Our actions and our way of being is much more influenced by culture than by nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_ape_theory

http://www.fifthestate.org/archive/381-summer-fall-2009/killer-ape-theory-disproved/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/new-study-of-prehistoric-skeletons-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/survey-of-earliest-human-settlements-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/


Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Scientific woo-woo

Materialism, the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements, is nowadays an outdated worldview. If we don't really know what matter is, then materialism makes no sense. Matter consists of vibrating, mysterious something. Matter is mysterious stuff that has been made tangible.

The word materialism can also mean to consider material possessions as more important than spiritual values. However, what is a spiritual value?

Originally the term spirit meant an "animating or vital principle in man and animals". (What the spirit factually is can be seen when you look at a corpse; the difference between a living wacky person and the same person when he is dead.) The Latin word spiritus is related to spirare, to breathe.

In a Biblical context the term means to be driven by the Holy Spirit.

(I have always felt that I've been driven by many different kinds of spirits, stupid spirits, crazy spirits, lazy spirits, evil spirits.)

Nowadays have spirituality and religion been separated. Spirituality has become more focused on the search for the true self, the soul, without following the rules and regulations laid out by churches or religious institutions. Religious people follow prescribed teachings. Spiritual people invent their own religions and belief systems.

What is the true self? If it's not your body and not your mind (Spirit?) with its ego, beliefs, stories, opinions, values, memories, plans, misunderstandings, follies and ideas, what is it? Which part of you is reincarnating? (or going to heaven?)

When someone has a near-death experience and observes himself or herself on an operating table, who is this someone? Is this the true self, the soul, or is this an illusion?

Nobody knows nothing about these things, though they may be deeply convinced that they do. All people are speculating their heads off. We are all out there, I believe. We are all space cowboys.

But I am not an agnostic. A label is just a label, a word, and I have nowadays stopped labeling myself.

All explanations, materialistic, scientific, spiritual, religious and ideological, are woo-woo to me. If the scientists only would speak about what they had evidence for I would be on their side, but they don't. They talk about multiple universes, the probability that there are life on other planets, that no part of you lives on after death, that life is essentially meaningless, that synchronistic phenomenons are delusions...

What is matter, really? What does it consist of? What is energy? What is dark matter? What is conciousness? What is a dream? Are there more universes than this? What is light? What is an electrone? Etcetera, etcetera.

Nobody knows.