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Conclusions, Deductions and Corollaries of SC

Organized religion is incorrect and inappropriate. The doctrines, beliefs, and liturgies of Catholicism, Islam and Judaism should be classified with other mythologies.

It is the Earth and the natural environment that is sacred and deserves our love and respect—not plastic figurines of Christ, Moses or the Holy Prophet (may anxiety be with him for screwing up so many heads.)

Biodiversity must be preserved. The dwindling wildlife and deplorable extinctions at human hands are clear evidence that there is no divine providence and mankind is just another animal.

The purpose of life is to have a fun trip. As in the Titanic, it’s not the destination that counts, it’s the trip itself.

Population growth must stop—not gradually, but totally and immediately. Humans should have a pregnant pause a few years so that scientists and scholars can access the situation and make recommendations. Politicians, lawyers, and especially clerics should be told to stay out of it.

Sex is a celebration of life and wonderful gift of nature. It is neither sinful nor shameful. Clerics have a lot of nerve telling people how to live when their own lives, like waiting for Godot, is self sacrificed to a god that never comes.

There’s no god to save us. The cosmos is indifferent to humanity and we have to save ourselves by the ingenuity of our intellect.

The fact that gibbons and orangs are near extinct shows clearly how much religion has perverted the human condition. SC would have humanity spend more money protecting our phylogenic cousins than we spend protecting the oil fields of the Middle East.

If mankind is to evolve into a spiritual entity, we must break out of the confines of the Prime Directive. All animals, insects and plants obey the PD: self preservation, and reproduce as much as possible. Once humans control population growth as a species, humanity will claim to the metaphysical and transhumanism.

If species consciousness replaced the narrow confines of religion, no man would blindly do the dirty work of the masters of war. Every person would refuse to fight but in self defense in their own country.

In Reason We Trust, should be the motto on our coins.

“Thou shall work in the mud,” (or whatever the heck Genesis says) is an excuse for the alphas to get the under classes to do their bidding. “Work or stave” has to go because capitalism has its limits.

The Devine Right of Kings is a joke and I find it difficult to understand how rational people can stupid enough to believe it.

Violence is part of the R-Complex and must be strictly controlled. Stupid bully kids in school should be placed in class with other bullies so they know what it feels like. When they reform they can return to classes with kids who want to learn.

Tags: SC, aristopus, atheism, consciousness, species

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Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 26, 2009 at 10:32pm: P.S. About the earthworms, right on. I wish people wouldn't look at the lower animal forms in disgust. Evolution is such an amazing story. So many improbabilities happening in succession.

The reason animals were able to conquer the land is only because plants left so much nutrient behind with rotting leaves. In number of species beetles are the most successful life.

I think an ET who studied the Earth would consider bacteria the most important form of life. There would be no life without them, the grow everywhere, they feed on everything except plastic, and they were here the longest by about two billion years.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 26, 2009 at 10:18pm: Thanks for your thoughts, Free. I always appreciate your input. Speaking of flatulence, I was just going to bed after a quite a few beers and turkey.

we are as mundane as any other primate, except that we can communicate at a high level and we have great technology".

I realize that humans are the culmination of billions of years of evolution. I’ve written these exact words a few times in my other posts. I meant the above statement only as an aspect of species consciousness that I was trying to describe. There is nothing supernatural about us and I could never understand religious people believing they are the center of the cosmos, as in Genesis. I feel this is an arrogant position.

I’m working on a video with Wonderist on this very topic. There was a time when someone could have gotten tortured and killed just for saying the world is NOT flat, as described in the HOLY Bible.

But by the same token, 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct.

We’re in the middle of the sixth extinction right now. We are losing 125 precious species every day. The previous five were caused by natural phenomena, like a meteor hitting the Yucatan, or insufferable climate changes.

It’s true 99% of species have gone extinct, but many also live on through speciation. Birds we see flying everywhere are the descendents of dinosaur, as you know. What is remarkable about the current, never before has ONE species caused the annihilation of so many others.

Comment by Atheist Exile on November 26, 2009 at 10:10pm: P.S.

By way of illustration:

Which would be worse: the extinction of earthworms or the extinction of chimpanzees?

I think it's no contest. Earth needs the earthworms more. There are no lifeforms or life processes that depend on chimpanzees. Earth could suffer their extinction without so much as a hiccup.

Comment by Atheist Exile on November 26, 2009 at 9:15pm: Hi Richard,

I have a bone to pick with your assertion that, "we are as mundane as any other primate, except that we can communicate at a high level and we have great technology".

On Earth, humanity is where the action is. No other species is in the same ballpark. I think our bent for liberalism, as atheists, leads us, sometimes, to the most inclusive positions possible: despite common sense. Islam is not a religion of peace and tolerance (not that you even mentioned it) and species are not valued equally.

I understand that ecosystems are fragile and dependent on relationships that have evolved over geologic time. But by the same token, 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. Life has a way of filling every available niche: when one opens up, something will fill it.

Only human beings have left the planet and returned. Only human beings have the power to destroy or to save the planet. If cows could control their flatulence, then, maybe, they might supersede our unique influence on Earth.

We are the end of evolution on our branch of the tree of life.

Consider this: a new species arises that is more intelligent and dexterous than we are. Would we allow ourselves to be supplanted by this new species? Of course not. We have the wherewithal to rule the Earth for the rest of time. It might be better if the new, improved, hominid could take over but that's no longer an option . . . precisely because we are different than all other lifeforms. Our intelligence makes us unique.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 24, 2009 at 11:36pm: Free, thanks for your astute comment. I'll comment later, as I'm pretty tired now.

Your points do remind me of a chapter in Dawkins God Delusion. If you meet anyone who claims "all morality comes from God," ask the person, "what would YOU do if you found out there is no god. Would you go out and kill, rape and pillage? Most people say, "of course, not."

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 24, 2009 at 11:31pm: Jeff, humans haven't evolved very far since the ramidus came down from the trees. I didn't say spirituality was necessary, just that's it's possible. As it stands, we are as mundane as any other primate, except that we can communicate at a high level and we have great technology.

I remember reading a long time ago that when it comes to non-kinship related altruism, humans place a little behind bats. They're the only species that will share food after a nigt's foraging. Sure, humans have "Feed the Children" and other charities but a lot of that is to receive reward in heaven.

To me, humans are at their most spiritual in the realm of the arts. I'm an opera and classical music buff and I must admit at times I feel some sort of transcendence. Beethoven says in the Ninth Symphony "all men are brothers." "Oh Freude," Oh, Joy—it's quite exhilarating.

Of course, spirituality means different things to different people. Maybe if humans love and respect nature with the same fervor they worship their God, we'll have a claim as a species. As Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sang at Woodstock, "we have to get back to the garden."

Comment by Atheist Exile on November 24, 2009 at 8:59pm: Hi Vicki,

Human rights: humane treatment, security of property, pursuit of happiness, can be seen as necessary to best promote peace and prosperity; both of which are survival values.

Comment by Atheist Exile on November 24, 2009 at 8:23pm: This second page of your discussion of SC segues neatly to a related discussion I've been having about "objective morals". I was surprised to see you describe survival as the prime directive because I had also done the same recently. Until now, I had never seen that correlation.

I was discussing morality with another atheist who believes there are "objective morals" to be found in nature; but he wasn't sure what they would be. At first, I thought this was an absurd notion. Once I quit resisting the thesis, I realized that survival is THE prime directive and therefor an objective standard by which morality might be based.

Nature is, as Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “red in tooth and claw”. It has no morals. Morality is a human construct that usually reflects our social norms. As such, morality is formed by an amalgam of influences from family, religion, culture, evolution and the arts. This amalgam of influences varies from person to person and is relative to our exposure to, and experience with, these influences.

Almost half the human race subscribes to a religion that claims morality is objective because it is handed down by (an Abrahamic) God. Most of the rest of us believe that morality is relative and subjective. Can morality be objective without being handed down by God? It’s commonly claimed, by the religious, that it can not – that, without God, morality has no authority.

Nature may not have any morals but it does have a prime directive that compels all living organisms: Survive. We eat, drink, breathe and procreate for survival. At all levels: genetic, individual, cultural and across species, survival dictates the terms of life. Survival is a basic, objective, fact of life: shouldn’t morality conform to it? Could there be a more objective, fundamental, basis for morality? If so, what is it?

Morality, as a human construct, can only be relative. There are no morals "in the wild" waiting to be discovered. Unlike morality based on scripture, morality based on survival enjoys a solid, objective, foundation: those things that best enhance and promote survival are better than those things that don’t. Though the prime directive is objective, any morality derived from it would still be relative because, in the end, we decide, individually, what best conforms to the prime directive. Even the utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number" philosophy suffers from this relativity: who decides what is the greatest good or who the beneficiaries would be?

But at least we would have an objective standard -- a source -- for morality that reasonable people can agree is objective and primary. So, assuming we formulate morality based on survival, what would the differences and consequences be for us as a species?

Let's take North Korea and Iran, for example. Both are unstable, rogue, nations with nuclear ambitions. Wouldn't survival be best served if we stripped them of nuclear capabilities? Many might argue that all nuclear nations should be stripped of their nuclear capabilities. That would certainly make our species more likely to survive but can we really put that genie back in the bottle? Is it truly desirable? Perhaps we need to keep nuclear weapons to avert a global catastrophe from a rogue meteor on a collision course with Earth.

In the end, geopolitics would still prevail in this scenario because we, as individuals, would still decide what is right and wrong. At any level, we decide. The prime directive is the source. Morality distances us from the source. It's inescapable. We just need to be careful to keep the source in sight as much as possible.