The Problem of Our Species
First off, I am against organized religion. I know that nothing will ever change in my lifetime, but I believe organized belief systems and the hierarchical structures they create and maintain are detrimental to human society and the planet as a whole. Organized religion is based upon a philosophy propounded by an individual, like Jesus, Mohamed, Moses, or Buddha, and then others build schema on top of it. Over the years, and even millennia, these organizations force rules and interpretations on people, very often in a detrimental way. The original person who started this religion may or may not have been a product of his or her time and gender, and so we can see the flaws in the thinking as times change and peoples evolve. In the end, we find these organized religions and their followers splitting up into different sects, and they fight each other. Then, as secular society changes, these religions fight against the evolution of morality standards, and more fighting ensues. All along the way, countless people are hurt through ostracism, intimidation, violence, and even murder --not to mention mass killings and terrorism. Organized religion has proven to be a great source of all the evils in this world that it is supposed to be a solution to.
More recently, in addition to the Islamic terrorism that is messing up the world of the 21st century, conservative politicians in the US are doing their level best to fight against the evolution of society. They wish for us to return to an imagined past that they idealize to the point of lunacy. It's like they have Alzheimer's or something! In Republican-held legislatures across the nation, new laws are being passed that are founded on religious (Christian) values, which is in total opposition to the Constitution and the very spirit of this country. With cynical laws hidden in other legislation and downright draconian statutes, things like gay marriage and abortion are being threatened, opposed, and outlawed. In addition, marijuana, which is now becoming accepted, is still harshly opposed, and for no good reason. Once again, religious ignorance is rearing its ugly head in our politics and our laws.
I suppose what it comes down to is plain, simple selfishness. People are too selfish to see beyond their own existence, and their arrogance makes them think they have a right to force other people to do what they think is right. They stand in the path of progress. They wish to hold us in their grip and force us into obeying their rules. They say that it is because their God has commanded it, but this is another cynical cop-out. Were they to follow their Gods' laws, they would have to commit atrocities that even they would deem primitive and evil. So they chose to turn a blind eye to those aspects of their religions that they cannot accept and push only certain vestiges of the past's moral constructs on everyone else.
Thus, the question comes to mind: will our selfishness help us to climb out of our ape origins and move beyond our ancient ways, or will it hinder us (or even destroy us), holding us in a continuous pattern of bickering, myopia, and war? We have demonstrated our ability to grow beyond our biology to reach for the stars and contemplate the very nature of our own existence, an amazing feat of the universe's growing to be cognizant of itself, but we are at the very same time in danger of succumbing to the detrimental remainders of our development, dooming our species to extinction in navel-gazing.
I believe in our ingenuity and our progress. I think we are only at the beginning of an amazing journey into the stars and into alternate ways of being that will lead us someday to become beings we can scarcely recognize. Maybe we need to evolve into that next thing, that thing that is no longer human? Maybe we are a necessary step in evolution, kind of like homo erectus, from which we evolved. We call ourselves homo sapiens, the knowing beast, but I think this arrogant. We are the not knowing so much as we are the species that questions and learns. We are at a very primitive stage in our evolution, and our arrogance in thinking we are at the pinnacle is proof of it.
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