Primitive minds!

In the grand scheme of the universe, and the scale of our evolutionary time line, humans are young. Extremely young. Infants, struggling to stand on our own two feet. We know almost nothing of what there is to know. We can comprehend only a smidgen of what there is to comprehend. Our minds still struggle to accept the reality of our existence, our insignificance. We must evoke magical beings to fill our understanding, rather than accept that we simply don't know yet, and in fact may never know. Concepts like this, like never being able to have an answer, don't sit well with our young minds. They make us uncomfortable. They make us reach for a way to understand, no matter what it is.

We are the first intelligent life to have evolved on this small rotating rock. We have only needed to understand things within our grasp. Medium sized objects moving at slow speeds. But now, our technology has opened the universe up for us. We know of things far faster, far grander, and far smaller than what we have previously needed to understand. Our minds are not yet ready to comprehend these things. So we stick with what we know. We keep our faith in ideas that we are able to understand. Evidence is irrelevant. We can only understand what our young minds allow. Our brains, although extremely complex, are the first such brains capable of this level of thought. It has taken a long time to get here, by our perspective, but a short time in reality. We have a long way to go.

Many generations from now, we will more readily accept reality for what it is. We will no longer fill gaps in our knowledge with anything we can, just because there is a gap. In this time I can foresee, there will be no religion. There will be no need for it. Our minds will be mature. We will have evolved the capacity to understand things out of our reach. Religion, superstition, and magic will be a distant memory. Lost in history. Laughed at, mocked, ridiculed.

Until that time, there is nothing we can do. The truth is simply not compatible with our primitive minds.

Beware of Islam

The recent "victory" claimed by the United States government, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, seems a good thing at first. However, it's really just another poke in the eye of this back and forth between the western world and Islam, (or maybe between Christianity and Islam?) A retaliation is sure to follow, that's just the way it works. So while the American people are celebrating in the street, I'd be running for cover.

The government has always avoided calling this war what it really is. It's not a war on Islam, oh no, it's a war on terror. What exactly is “terror?” Is it a country? An organisation? Well, no! In truth it is a religion. The most evil and cruel of all the ridiculous faiths out there. What person in a civilised society would claim to own a women? What civilised man would have his own daughter killed for wanting to marry someone who doesn't believe in the same fictitious god as her? What “culture” would enforce the penalty of death for apostasy (rejecting one's faith)? Of all the religions this is surely the worst, the most violent, the most oppressive.

So what now? We sit back and wait for a reply? Wait for a revenge attack that will no doubt come? Maybe that's all we can do. You can't reason with such strength of conviction, such is the power of childhood indoctrination. They seem no more able convince their own minds of the truth than we are to convince them. The free thinkers of the world can merely sit back and watch the chaos unfold, helpless to intervene. If we do say something, we apparently “offend” their precious beliefs and risk our own lives. It seems Islam has no concept of free speech. I suppose all we can hope for is that our intelligence services can intercept the forthcoming attacks. Good luck to them, they have quite a job on their hands, and will do for many years to come.