Faith versus Logic, the Battle continues.

This is the dichotomy in this country that I cannot ever wrap my mind around. It quite literally leaves my head spinning. As a hard wired, logical thinker the idea of an invisible, all-powerful, father figure is the epitome of ill-logical thinking. It is the mental warm milk that we serve our children to helpd them sleep peacefully. Not the hard reality that we, as thinking creatures, should ever allow to dominate our consciousness.

Reflect on this. Only one out of four Americans believes life on earth today has evolved through natural selection. Three-quarters of Americans, in other words, still do not accept what Darwin established 150 years ago. Just under half of all Americans believe the natural world was created in its present form by God in six days as described in Genesis. They believe, incredibly, that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

See what I mean? These three quarters of Americans exist in the same reality that I do. They have access to the same information on the internet and in books. So what makes them believe what they believe? Fear? Culture? Community? Parenting? Stupidity? There is no simple answer.

The most interesting theory is this one, that religion was a helpful evolutionary by-product. The idea that belief in God is dictated by evolution is almost too ironic to imagine. It would however explain sufficiently why there is such extreme differences in the believers versus the non-believers. I would argue that in this day and age being of the non-believing persuasion is more evolutionarily beneficial because of the fact that it allows us to be more flexible and capable of identifying strong ideas and adopting them without it endangering our fragile belief systems.

I have one more thought on this subject. After watching the television coverage of the mad rush of consumers to get the best bargains on the day after Thanksgiving, I was struck by how similar it looked to seeing animals stampede after seeing a potential predator. It makes me wonder just how evoled we truly are. Personally the idea of standing in those lines for several hours is completely out of the question. As is knocking down a fellow human being for a laptop.

With those images in mind maybe it is not so difficult to imagine why people sit on hard wooden pews on a beautiful Sunday morning waiting for God to bless them.

Or why we can be so easily manipulated by our government into embracing a refrendum which allows for the wholesale slaughter of other human beings.

Or why advertisers can get us to salivate over products for which we have no earthly use.

Maybe, ultimately, we are still just herd animals waiting for our leaders to tell us when to flee, or attack, or to eat, or to buy. That is the saddest thing to believe about beings with so much potential.

Well I have to go now because one of my favorite shows is coming on and I don't want to miss it.

Gryphen out.