You write that cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the main driving force of change. What do you mean?This is an idea that I borrowed from Carl Woese, who is a very famous biologist. The idea is that you can divide the history of life into three periods. First, the early period where all genes were freely exchanged between different cells, so that the living world consisted of primitive cells and genes, which are really the same thing as viruses, traveling around exchanged from cell to cell. That's what we call horizontal gene transfer. Evolution was then collective. Anything useful that was invented by one cell could be shared wit h all the others, so evolution went very fast.
Sometime about half a billion years later, things changed because the creatures started to become selfish and refused to share their genes with their neighbors. They kept the genes for themselves, and that's what we call the invention of species. A species is a collection of creatures that does not breed outside the species. As soon as life became divided up into species, evolution became Darwinian. It was then competition between species. Each invention only benefited the species that invented it. Everybody else had to compete separately. Evolution then went much slower for a couple of billion years. That's what I call the Darwinian interlude.
Now, since humans came along, that has changed again. Now we're back in an epoch when genes c an be horizontally transferred. We learned how to move genes around from one creature to another. That's what we call gene splicing. So humans can easily take genes from one animal, put them into a virus or a bacterium and multiply them into a large population, and then put them back into another creature. You can very easily spread desirable qualities from one species to another. That's now the new era of what I call open-source genetics, an analogy to open-source software in the computer business. It means that genes are shared between species. Species in the end will fade out. They will become merged. I think that's a hopeful future, but it's also going to be dangerous, of course. And all sorts of unintended consequences will no doubt come to plague us. But it seems to be happening anyway.
Labels: atheism, evolution, freeman dyson
Comments (0) | Links to this post | EMAIL THIS POST=>
As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.
The study of Christianity’s slipping image is explored in a new book, entitled unChristian, by David Kinnaman, the president of The Barna Group. The study is a result of collaboration between Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Project.
The study shows that 16- to 29-year-olds exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade, many of the Barna measures of the Christian image have shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people. For instance, a decade ago the vast majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including young people, felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society. Currently, however, just 16% of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a "good impression" of Christianity.
One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals. Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing and intensifying among young non-Christians. The new study shows that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. This means that today’s young non-Christians are eight times less likely to experience positive associations toward evangelicals than were non-Christians of the Boomer generation (25%)...
Labels: atheism, barna, mario tosto, youth and religion
Comments (0) | Links to this post | EMAIL THIS POST=>
I was a minister for over 25 years, very serious about thoughtful Christianity, a graduate of Emory University with undergrad study in psychology and grad study in religion/theology. Studied anthropology and mythology along the way, because I was fascinated with origins, and because I had a lingering suspicion even in those days that much of what I believed was probably myth. I was a person who chose to believe in the face of dogged unbelief. I struggled with intellectual concerns with Christianity from the day I was "born again" - but my conversion experience was so emotionally gratifying and gave me such acceptance in a tight-knit community that I chose to turn off or "closet" my reasonable objections and simply believe the unbelievable.
And, that is one of the reasons I actually "deconverted" or came out of the closet...I grew tired, after 25 years - of seeing emotion and acceptance be awarded to the converted for choosing to believe something that has no basis in reality. I could no longer live with my own sense of compromised integrity and intellectual dishonesty.READ THE REST BY CLICKING HERE Comments (0) | Links to this post | EMAIL THIS POST=>
Labels: apostasy, atheism, christian science, christian theology, losing my religion, theology
Comments (2) | Links to this post | EMAIL THIS POST=>
**If it were conceivable that there be a patron saint of atheism, it would undoubtedly be Dan Dennett. A very humane, brilliant thinker and engaging writer, he gently demolishes the unchallenged assumptions of most religionists, while introducing his readers to a wondrous world view made even more so by its lack of a deity. Here's an excerpt from his latest comment in the Washington Post on the recent revelations of Mother Teresa's silent atheism.Mother Teresa’s agonies of doubt are surely not all that unusual. What is unusual is that she put them in writing and now they are being revealed to the world, in spite of her explicit wish that they be destroyed. I get mail all the time from religious leaders who admit to me in private that they do not believe in God but think that the best way to continue their lives is to swallow hard and get on with their ministries, concentrating on bringing more good than evil into the lives of their parishioners and those for whom their churches provide care. I would never divulge their names without their consent, but I do wonder: How many millions of priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, nuns and monks around the world are living lives of similar duplicity? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the outing of Mother Teresa inspired a few thousand of them to come out of the closet and acknowledge their atheism! Then it might start being obvious not only that faith in God is not a requirement for morality, but that the loss of faith in God often goads people into living more strenuously helpful lives, as seems to be the case with Mother Teresa. Of course, such honesty carries a price: you have to change your mission in a way Mother Teresa never did. She could have devoted herself more single-mindedly to helping the poor instead of trying to convert them. Perhaps it was her guilt at being unable to convert herself that drove her to work so hard to convert others to take her place among the believers.Books by Dennet that I have read: