3.1. Evolution - man and its place in nature
There is an important topic of "being clear about" evolution some of the subtopics here would include:
The relation between religion and evolution (the current debate around creationism)
The role of religion - giving meaning to life
What is the meaning of life? Meaning as "worth the trouble".
Several ways in which life may have meaning: pleasure, beauty and pure existence.
Religion cannot be taken out of its place as long as an alternative is not provided. Science must provide an alternative to religion. It cannot merely fight or oppose religion, or bash it around, it must actually replace it.
What science must provide:
a world full of beauty. (science, at least at this moment, cannot provide for "supernatural" or transcendent replies so it must be based on this world). Life is certainly worth living if integrated in a world full of beauty.
A willingness to approach topics that may reintroduce fluffy stuff again in our "respectable" theories about the world.
Understanding the historical uprising of science as a breakthrough on religious dogma, superstition and fear by taken out all animistic or non-mechanical explanations of phenomena:
Beyond the traditional explanation of science as a constant dialogue between observation, hypothesis and experiments we should also add that
In our society science made its breakthrough through the dogmatic walls of the inquisition, dogmatic thinking, superstition and fears were abundant in the time of Kepler, Galileu, Descartes, Newton and others. Science, at that time, had to let go of all the ghost or soul influences, to attempt a purely physical explanation of phenomena. This premise: that everything might be explained by a purely physical description of reality was born then and it is still at the core of contemporary science.
However, today, it has become a dogma that also needs to be broken through. Many subjects of research like ESP studies, show that things like telepathy, prescience and other phantasmagoric freakishnesses, have indeed some physical expression. Getting into topics like these (or like the ones developed by Cleve Backster or Masaru Emoto) is relatively simple, it does not demand millions of dollars or high end technology, but it touches an open wound, a fear:
the fear is that these studies of the "paranormal" open a Pandora box that will let loose again all the phantoms of religious superstition. Saints and daemons and fears and supernatural explanations could replace scientific and rational approaches by magical solutions fed on fear and hate, and that they would launch us again on a new period of "dark ages".
But today the unwillingness of scientist to "let the daemons in" is what gives strength to religious perspectives. As long as man will feel divided into a view that seems real but shows him as a helpless machine, and a perhaps illusory view, that shows him with some degree of control and power of decision and gives a meaning to his particular life, as long as this rift continues, some men will choose the cruelty efficiency of science while others will choose the improbable beauty of religious views. In this fight any victory will be short-lived, for we are unsatisfied unless we have both truth (something that really works in the world, like making capacitors and transistors and space ships), and beauty / meaning. Without one of them we are like a bird with just one wing. We cannot fly. Illusions make us delusional, solitary, detached from reality. They may be beautiful but, in time, they will impoverish us instead of making us evolve, for they imprison us into a solitary confinement where we are caught by the pleasures of our illusions like a fly is trapped by a light in the dark. On the other hand, truth without beauty is not the all truth, and it leaves out a part that is essential for our daily lives: the thing that makes our lives worth living.
The absence of a comprehensive scientific approach to reality that encompasses every aspect of reality (including "paranormal" phenomena - which are only "para" until they are well understood) helps to explain why we are so divided regarding religion and science. On the one hand we (as a human species) go to church and try to obey God, the inner invisible self, we try to fulfill our destiny, to be attuned to the invisible realm that makes our life worth anything at all. On the other hand we crush every kind of superstition, we denounce mythomania as the underlying cause of all religions. On the one hand we see religion as a mental disease on the other we devote our lives to God. It's like that old men's saying "women, can't live with them, can't live without them".
If and when we decide to look at the whole of reality without fear, with an inquisitive look, and search only for truth and clarity in all levels of existence, we will see that science and religion are like two arms of the same body searching for different parts of the world but having basically the same goal: contributing to the growth of mankind (and of the world, since we are a part of the world).
This is actually what we are trying to promote, a view is able to integrate all aspects of man's experience of the world, from physical experiments, to artistic endeavors, or mystical experiences. In all these dimensions we may attempt to be clear, clearness applies to everything we deal with, it can provide the fundamentals for scientific research and for any other kind of research that aims for the truth. But be careful, accepting that there are such things as telepathy and precognition does not mean we should start paying our tithing to the church. The way is forwards, not backwards. The Churches we have created had a very important role in the past, but their magical "explanations" are a hindrance to our hindsight, they take away reality and the desire to get to it (for they convince us that we already know everything that is important if we know their lullabies by heart). We must look at the spiritual world with eyes of inquest, of thirst, of doubt, of inquiry, of wanting to know more... only then we will be able to continue to evolve.
In short we should not be content with the superstitions of religion or the strict limits of scientific inquiry. Instead our minds should be open to inquiry about everything, to experience everything, to be open to everything. We should always strive for the truth, and for clarity. Only then will we be able to live the mystery in all its ecstatic glory.
What does the theory of evolution tells us about man and its place in nature?
The importance of nature, the sacredness of nature, and why recognizing this importance is so crucial to man's own survival
The equilibrium with the environment (overpopulation, etc)
The division between sacred and profane leads to a distorted vision of the world in which some parts of man are sacred (like his ability to reason) while others (common to other animals) may seem disgustful or unimportant (like the ability to eat or procreate). However man share his ability to love and dedicate his life to family and friends, with many other animals. Many animals in fact show much higher degrees of social abnegation. Albatrosses for instance marry for life. However man despises those abilities when they occur in other species, and many times he treats animals as objects, the fact that we treat animals by "it" in the same way we refer to chairs and tables, is symptomatic of the despise we grant them.
The most important of these distortions is that many of us (men and women) are unable to see ourselves as just another part of nature. Those of us who look at nature seeing it's fabulous beauty have no difficulty in seeing man as just another part of it. In fact many of them see it as a great privilege, even better than being an inhabitant of the Christian Heaven, for this is a much more complex world, with many more stories and beings, all interconnected for a period of thousands of millions of years, in this planet alone. Who would want a more beautiful past, who could imagine a more grandiose inheritance?
However, those of us who despise nature find themselves in a very different perspective. When we believe that we are superior, or that they are just despicable creatures, at best a utility, at worst a nuisance or even a menace, then we find ourselves stranded on an ugly world. When someone tryes to teach us that our ancestors were primates, that we are in fact still primates, that we were all born from the same organic soup, then all we can feel is disgust. Instead of feeling the lucky heirs of the greatest inheritance, even beyond our wildest imagination, we found ourselves betrayed in our dreams and aspirations, we find ourselves insulted by the comparison with these "lowly" beings, we find ourselves outraged, denigrated, and we wonder if those that made that assertion are indeed of the same status as ourselves, for to compare themselves to such obviously lowly beings, then they must somehow be lowly themselves.
This shows that the theory of evolution says nothing for good or bad about man. It might be the greatest flattery to be a part of such a grandiose world, but it might also be seen as the gravest of indignities, to be associated with the world of the without privileges, of the unthinking, tradable, caged and almost despicable beings we take other animals to be.