Danger devolution ahead! Do you care? Do you... believe?

Question

For those who don't read blogs.... sigh...
Under an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to evolve a brain good enough for a collective cell amalgam (a being) to be aware of its existence... and its ephemerity. This brain hosts a mind, a pilot if you wish, that receives the reponsibility to steer the cell community away from harm and make it reproduce and thrive. A mind makes the brain care consciously about survival and legacy... Until one becomes religious, that is...

The same way as a spoiled heir will dilapidate his father's fortune, the ungrateful mind will dilapidate its sustaining body. By despising the flesh, the religious actually despises and even vexes the whole complex organic community that supports it. Since it is the same community that evolved the brain in the first place, it would not be unreasonable to think that it can also devolve it easily in the long run (granted a long long run) if the mind becomes counterproductive to survival. As a matter of fact, flesh di

discrimination empowers the cell community to erode the mind's existence, its consciousness, civilization and ultimately destroy it.

Denying the symbiosis between the virtual and the matter is betraying the body's community.

We (minds) like to think of ourselves as masters, but we are only virtual byproduct creatures of the universal life movement, and thus vulnerable to it. We must realize that the cell community is the hardware. We (minds) are only software. If our Operating System develops bugs... guess what? There'll be a "Top-Of-The-Food-Chain" 2.0... Sooner or later.

So, believers, are you ready to make your great-great-great-grand-chidren devolve?

As a Post Data:
I speculate (which is not believing but appraising a possibility) that the universal life movement as I wrote in the past paragraph could be assimilated to the the Panspermia Theory. I don't want to affirm that life exists everywhere. I want to say that the Urey-Miller experiment shows that basic lifeless compounds

tend to react to certain stimuli met in primordial environments (geological, marine and atmospheric) like the ones found on early Earth.
I personally think that the odds for SENTIENT life elsewhere are thin, but that basic life should be widespread. Intelligence (as Evolved Consciousness Software) should be much more unlikely because the cicumstances that led to its appearances may not be as widespread as the ones that the hominids met about 3 million years ago.

Sorry Jack... Please answer again...

Answer 1

I do lean towards the Panspermia Theory, but it might turn out that the "seeds" needed our early earth chemistry "primordeal environments" to become what they did, therefore a combination of two theories. I believe that our minds are magnificent, but are nowhere near fully evolved. I just wish that I could live long enough to see what they (our minds) will become. The unleashing of our minds is directly linked to modern life and the luxury of not having to spend every waking moment gathering food and staying alive. I truly think that early man had the same going for himself mentally as we do today, we just have more time to spend exercising the gray matter. I feel that the religious hate their bodies and deny their minds and spend their lives perversely hoping to die and looking forward to death. To me this goes against nature and it's one of the reasons that I've had to shuck off my sacrosanct skin and embrace fully my atheism. I will not burden my child or future grandchildren with anything like religion to hold them back in any way. Evolution of the mind is far too important, IMHO.

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AD

Answer 2

We evolved to the point where we could think. We understood the things that helped us to survive. We were at the apex of evolution, at the top point of development thus far, and could have gone farther still, but then, just as we have reached that wondrous point, along came RELIGION, which instructed us to hate the flesh.and so we
went
down
down
down
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D

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plop. we continue to slide, or we figure out what is going on with our species?

devolution at its greatest. damn depressing thought, but right on.

Answer 3

Make a distinction between spirit and matter. This will help you understand the different avenues leading to spiritual knowledge. To understand matter we have material means, and to comprehend the spirit we have spiritual means.

Matter is understood through mind or intellect working upon data given through different senses. The spirit, however, can be understood only through the spirit itself. This highest form of understanding, in which the spirit enjoys self-knowledge without using any instrument or medium, is difficult to attain. The best way to approach the spirit is through the heart, as it is direct. This is in contrast to the mind-approach that is founded on sensations, proceeding through inference and proofs to arrive at conclusions.

The heart, which in its own way feels the unity of life, seeks fulfilment in love, sacrifice and service. The focus is on giving, rather than on taking. The heart derives its driving power from the innermost spiritual urge, expressing itself through immediate intuitions. The heart has no need for proofs or intellectual corroborations that the mind seeks while dealing with material objects.

In its objective handling of the material world, the mind is saturated with experiences of multiplicity and separateness. So it feeds egocentric tendencies that divide humanity, making it selfish and possessive. But the heart, feeling in its inner experiences the glow of love, has glimpses of unity of spirit. Hence it seeks expression through self-giving tendencies that unite humanity, making it selfless and generous.

Unsurprisingly, there is conflict between the inner voice and the deliverances of the intellect based upon apparent and superficial aspects of life. Between the two extremes of a life harassed by wants and a life completely wants-free, you could arrive at a practical mode in which there is harmony between the mind and heart. When there is such harmony, the mind does not dictate the ends of life; it only helps realise those ends that are given by the heart. It does not lay down conditions to be fulfilled before an utterance of the heart is adopted for translation into practical life. In other words, the mind surrenders its role of judge, accepting unquestioningly the dictates of the heart.

The mind is a treasure-trove of learning, but the heart is rich in spiritual wisdom. The so called conflict between religion and science arises only when there is no appreciation of the relative importance of these two types of knowledge. It is futile to try to glean knowledge of true values by exercise of the mind alone. In most persons the mind accepts ends from the promptings of wants, but this means denial of the life of spirit. Only when the mind accepts its ends and values from the deepest promptings of the heart does it contribute to the life of the spirit.

The mind ought to work in tandem with the heart, subordinating factual knowledge to intuitive perceptions. The mind has a place in practical life, but its role begins after the heart has had its say. Spiritual understanding is born of harmony between mind and heart. Harmony of mind and heart does not require the mixing up of their functions; it is the most important condition of the integral, undivided life of spiritual understanding.

Answer 4

I'm not all that sure there is intelligent life HERE...define intelligent.

Answer 5

Are we not men?