Monday, November 13, 2006

Human Biology -


Humanity is a failure if evolution is our primary force. I mean, biology is sufficient to maintain the survival of animals and plants, and actually they are reliant on it to survive, but this same biology when applied to human beings is the source of our gradual destruction. In other words, if we took it upon ourselves to behave in the same exact way as do plants and animals, which destroy each other in order to maintain their own survival, we would be morally disgusted, G-d willing. If evolution's "survival of the fittest" was made the center of the human paradigm, we would either be dead or completely unhappy. This shows that first there is a difference between humans and animal and plant life, and second that that difference is qualitative in nature, not quantitative; the difference between animal/plant life and human life does not fall on a spectrum, we are essentially different from them. What occurs in the animal kingdom and is required for life to continue, such as when ants invade another colony of ants and kill and dominate that colony, is seen as morally neutral, but when such a thing occurs in the human kingdom, this thing as recognized as one of the dark disasters of human history. Even the evolutionist must hold the view that he is grotesquely disgusted by such historical occurrences, but to hold such a view would go against his view that humans are the products of biology no more and no less than are bacteria. Bacteria wipe out other bacteria every single day, but in human terms this would be called "genocide" and is recorded in the human memory. Bacteria, plants, and animals do not record past events in type of memory bank; when one bacteria wipe out another bacteria, the bacteria kingdom continues on as if nothing occurred - this is because their sole purpose of existence is their own procreation, anything that gets in the way of this is merely a lifeless and valueless (and worthless) obstacle. The difference between humans and other life forms is that we have a built in perception of quality and value, we understand that other humans contain value and that killing them violates that inherent value, and therefore we are agitated by the concept of killing others even if their death is beneficial for the natural order of things. We rather violate the order than violate the value of human life, this is why we try to find ways to feed the whole world rather than to say that the death of some few million people will balance out the economic system of the world. Historical figures whom have enacted systems in which a person kills an entire group of people because he sees them as useless is acting upon a morally reprehensible drive, but if it were applied to the animal, plant, or bacteria kingdom it would completely acceptable and even necessary for the survival of that species. An evolutionist feels this way by the very merit of his being a human being; being a human trumps his being an evolutionist whether or not he opines that evolution is his primary essence. Therefore, human biology does exist, but it is qualitatively different than animal biology; the primary evolutionary force of humanity is to improve the quality of human life, while the primary evolutionary force of animals is to survive. Even apes, whom are the closest animals to human beings in the entire animal kingdom, do not care about improving life, i.e., they do not perceive morality. They perceive kindness and maybe even a primitive version of love, but to say that they perceive an existential understanding of morality that extends to their fellow ape is impossible. They are nothing more than extremely intricate bacteria. One human folly is to attribute human characteristics to animals simply because we have them. The problem with doing is that we do not feel like we have a reason to protect animals unless they are exactly like us, and therefore, in the name of protecting them, we raise them to our level or lower ourselves to theirs, and this is the most disgusting and degrading things that we can do to ourselves - to liken ourselves to the animals, even if our cause is noble, ensures that we will be like them. Rather, we can still protect them regardless of their lower nature than ours, for example, even though children are more primitive than adults, do adults not find it moral to protect children? Clearly they do.

Also, consider this - how can the belief in G-d develop as a biological function? What would be the function of belief in G-d, and why has only humanity developed with this specific attribute? If we go by the evolutionary argument, which says that a species with a trait not beneficial to its survival dies out, we must conclude that religion and spirituality are traits that help to keep humanity around because we are still around. This means that human biology is largely spiritual; just like an animal is basically entirely physical, a human is physical and spiritual. We cannot say that G-d's existence is a biological trait taking form as a mental development that exists only in the minds of men as some massive evolutionary placebo, for such a belief indicates that evolution, which evolutionists declare is a mindless process, cannot create a trait which tricks the being which possess it. If we declare that evolution indeed "tricks" beings into doing things which make them survive, we are attributing intelligence to evolution and are left with the striking impression than there is actually an intelligence behind the smoke screen of existence. The other option would be to believe that the human brain itself has this power.

Taking a slightly different path right now, what about prayer? How can evolution create an intelligent and intricate being such as the human being to believe in a G-d that does not exist as a means to survival, and then endow the human being with its ability to develop its own evolutionary processes, such as the invention of prayer, which it uses to communicate with this non-existent Being? Surely in the way that animals affect their physical surroundings, humans affect their spiritual surroundings, but to hold this view is to hold the view that spiritual surroundings exist, just as we must hold that physical surroundings also exist. Also, assuming that prayer works, which many, including myself, works, we have to attribute essentially endless and infinite abilities to the mind.

For example, if I pray for something, and not necessarily to receive something, but a more intricate prayer involving an occurrence or the delay of an occurrence, for example, and that thing occurs, can I attribute it to coincidence? Some say yes, but after prayer has worked successfully time after time, can I still say that several coincidences have occurred in repeated succession? I can offer a rebuttal to this by saying that my own biased perception has allowed me to believe that my prayer has actually been answered, but in reality I am simply manipulating a natural event in my own mind to conform to my biases. But there is still a rebuttal for that, because I can pray for things that have absolutely nothing to do with my preconceived mental biases, such as that praying for a needed thing to occur at a certain time, a thing which lies outside my realm of control, or is based on a person's making a certain decision, also something entirely out of my realm of control. If I pray that a person gets a sum of money that he or she needs soon, and I don't pray specifically how he or she should get that money, and then in a short period of time that person (whom did not know of my prayer) receives that sum of money in some way and THEN informs me, then that prayer has been answered positively.

This has nothing to do with coincidence (which would be an unfathomably low rate of probability) or with mental bias (because the event occurred away from both our knowledge) and it justifies the view that an ever-present Consciousness exists that listens and responds to utterances made to Him. If you don't believe that prayers work, and you are skeptical, then take a step of courage, concentrate, identify something that you really need, and ask G-d for it to be delivered to you, and then go on your normal path. If G-d desired you to have it then you will. If you get it, can you explain biology or the human mentality or the wonders of the space-time continuum to have produced this "coincidence?" Try it because you have everything to gain.

Why would the best sages of the Jewish tradition (and the Christian and the Muslim, etc...) spent valuable effort and time delving into the questions of prayer and other spiritual matters in order to refine their and others' ability to connect with G-d? Why is that spiritually connected people of all ages have sensed a reality outside of themselves and have pursued an active relationship with it? If we add it all up, it is only until recently in human history where atheism became an active paradigm in human thought and it is therefore atheists that hold the world's most marginal viewpoints. So much quality wisdom and illuminating perspectives of human nature have stemmed from the wisdom of the Torah and other monotheist paradigms - what has atheism offered to humanity? Atheism veers away from anything that is of any value to humanity, yet adherents to that paradigm hold that they are trying to bring the world into a new era, but atheism is incapable of bringing anything good to the human race or to anyone/anything.


To assert the point more clearly, we do not live in a vaccuum where nothing outside of ourselves exists - G-d is real.