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September 28, 2008
A Different Take on Cognition
From an atheist's point of view, man’s discovery of Science was more likely to have been a fortunate random opportunity than the plan of an omniscient deity. Indeed, so recently, and so rapidly, has knowledge of our own cognitive function been evolving that even though we’d already been on earth a few hundred thousand years and discovered literacy, commerce, and agriculture, it wasn’t until the same Scientific advances that produced an Industrial Revolution in the Nineteenth Century were further accelerated by an IT (Information Technology) “explosion” in the Twentieth that we would discover we may have been doing serious damage to the planetary Ecology; also that we have yet to learn its full extent.
Nevertheless, those most affected (and with the greatest vested interest in denial) have also been the most vigorous at resisting any cut in commercial activity. it’s also becoming increasingly clear that fixing our most difficult problems may require a thorough overhaul of human notions of goodness and morality. Indeed, the degree to which our species proves unable to confront its own intellectual dishonesty and think objectively could determine our recovery from the series of behavioral crises now confronting us.
It’s now clear that the most common error of the men who started thinking about the universe was also the most predictable: their ignorance of that universe would lead them to take themselves far too seriously and uncovered a strong defensive tendency: codifying that ignorance as (admirable) religious faith and thus helping a cruel prohibition policy to masquerade as “Public Healtrh.”
Clearly, until Mankind’s residual Science/Faith Dichotomy can be peacefully resolved, it’s difficult to imagine much progress in settling other basic conflicts. But I also now see some good news: the de facto acceptance California’s gray medical market is real and will have to be dealt with, just as will a parallel realization that our economy, which had been rigged in favor of rip-offs for decades, has just been pushed to a point of near collapse.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 28, 2008 08:28 PM