It’s rather interesting that almost nobody objects to the idea that he or she is a descendent of subhuman primates except for the faithful. Why is it that only some people, always people that identify with one of the three large western religions, say that that is such an offensive idea to them, whereas most of us are not bothered at all by the thought? What’s so offensive about chimpanzees, for example, and why only to the faithful? Chimps are very much like us except that they are smaller, they have a lot more hair, they don’t use language or mathematics, they don’t have culture, and a few other obvious differences such as they play with their feces. A couple of the differences are actually advantages for the chimp. Try racing a chimp up a tree or on the ground for that matter.
We are obviously superior to apes in many important ways, but what is so offensive about the idea that our great-great-[a few thousand more greats]-great grandparents were simian? Nobody is saying that humans haven’t significantly evolved since then, or that apes aren’t our inferiors. But so what? What’s the beef? People who object seem to be saying that they are naturally offended by being associated in any way with something so primitive. But is this so natural a reaction, or is it taught and learned?
Interestingly, those same people don’t take offense at the assertion that they derive directly from babies. Babies are as different from adult humans as simians. They are equally inferior to us if not more so. And we develop directly and immediately from that low form of life without the thousands of intervening generations. Human development is an evolution of sorts. Is it any more natural to object to be a descendant of an ape than to be a former baby?
Look at how similar the list of differences between adult humans and chimps is to the list of differences between adult humans and their babies. Consider the fourth sentence of my first paragraph: chimps are smaller than we are, as are babies (check). Chimps have a lot more hair than we whereas babies have a lot less: opposite but similar. Chimps are nonverbal and nonmathematical, but so are babies (check). Chimps are uncultured and play with their own feces just like babies. Actually babies are even more inferior to adult humans than chimps. A baby can’t even walk let alone climb a tree. Nor can it find its own food or feed itself like a chimp can. The point isn’t to disparage babies, but to point out how artificial the objection to being related to apes is. There is no natural reason to object to that relationship.
So why is it that only the so-called people of faith are offended. You don’t ever hear of atheists or agnostics (or Hindus or Buddhists for that matter) complaining about the connection to monkeys – just people who spend time in churches (or temples or mosques). Recall the movie “Inherit The Wind” about the Scopes monkey trials of the 1920’s, starring Fredrick March as William Jennings Bryant, the bloviating blowhard and defender of the faith, who contemptuously and indignantly spat his denunciation of the very idea that his ancestors were apes.
Where does that come from? Is that a natural response? No, it’s a contrived outrage, a learned objection. Virtually nobody who hasn’t been conditioned in church to feel that way has that reaction or objection. That’s why those people don’t also object to their even more immediate and arguably even more embarrassing connection with their own babyhood. Because neither is a reasonable or an expected reaction.
The same phenomenon is apparent in the creation versus the Big Bang schism. The strenuous objection to the Big Bang theory is contrived, not natural. Why is it that only the church mice say that they find the scientific explanation impossible to accept on its face, as if that caused them to seek an alternative explanation? Believers like to pretend that the Big Bang theory, which, with its apparently uncaused beginning from nothing is admittedly difficult to swallow, is impossible for reasonable people to accept. That is obvious nonsense, since their creation myth contains exactly that kind of phenomenon: everything just popping into existence in great magical surges of creation. Invoking a deity does nothing to make the creation myth of the Bible easier to swallow than the Big bang theory, since the existence of an uncaused and timeless deity capable of making a universe is even harder to accept than the idea of an uncaused universe. The former is per force greater than the latter. It’s a falsehood that reason forces us to reject the Big bang hypothesis out of hand and should send us to the Bible for a more reasonable answer.
And just like the believers belie their indignation at having to accept a connection to apes by their curious acceptance of a baby origin, so too does their objection to accepting an uncaused, orderly universe seem insincere when they obviously have no similar objections to accepting their deity. As hard as the singularity at the outset of the Big bang is to reconcile with reason and common sense, the remainder of the theory, unlike the creation myth, does have a mountain of evidence to support it. The deity solution does nothing to add reasonableness to the explanation of existence, and it disregards the evidence, simply rejecting it out of hand.
Once again, the indignant posture is easily shown to be contrived, not a natural position that is avoided by the religious position. The religious indoctrination is obviously the source of the indignation, not reasonableness, as only the religious are afflicted with it. It is an ad hoc objection that we secular people are expected to acknowledge as legitimate even without that religious belief system. If that were so, then people from outside of religion would be strenuously objecting to the scientific explanation, and they are not.
But that’s not the end of it. The religious are also apparently appalled by abortion. They expect the secular to be offended by the very thought of abortion apart from church indoctrination. The problem, though, is that we don’t. Once again, you only find the religious indignant about abortion. If this was a natural, organic revulsion rather than a learned response, we might expect to see plenty of atheists and agnostics angrily protesting at abortion clinics. But we don’t.
Likewise with suicide and assisted suicide. Not every secular person wishes to avail himself of the option of choosing his own time, place and method of dying, and many of us are concerned that the practice not be used as a screen for euthanasia and murder. But only the faithful object to others having that right. None but the faithful are indignant about suicide and assisted suicide in principle even when employed as its advocates intended: only on volunteers in their right minds. Others may call the practice risky or too likely to permit crimes to be committed and go undiscovered, and that is a valid concern. But only the faithful call it immoral and unethical in any form, and expect us to share that moral judgment even before having the church software downloaded into us, as if it derives from the conscience and not the church.
Likewise again with stem cell research. All thinking people are concerned that this field be approached with thoughtfulness and care, and we recognize in a natural and unforced way that there is the possibility of immoral behavior and tragic outcomes here. But only the faithful object to the pursuit of the subject as immoral out of hand at any level and regardless of outcomes. Only the faithful have declared stem cell research innately immoral. And that, like all other issues already discussed is why the argument from immorality should be considered contrived and invalid. Morality comes form the consensus of the consciences of sincere and thoughtful men and women, not from unseen sky presences as interpreted by a handful of self-serving and powerful men. Their motives are beyond suspect. They’re known to be directed by a lust for obtaining and keeping power and wealth, not by what is right and wrong and not by what is good and bad for the bulk of mankind.
Power might not be what is on the minds of the faithful, the masses who are the principal consumers of religion. But the exploitation and control of those people by its promulgators is. Justifying that statement would be a major digression, but it will profit us to do so for two paragraphs in order better to understand the stealth motive of the church and of the secular establishment, which encourages us to submit to it.
Virtually the entire Christian ethos, which the power elite advocates for the rest of us but to which it does not subject itself, directs the believer to submit to its exploitation of him. Consider George Bush and Pat Robertson, America’s two most prominent Christians. Man is to reproduce without restraint and work unstintingly for the ruling class (originally the king, now the corporations) and donate generously to the church until his natural death.
He is to submit to his master’s authority, to be humble – meek even. He is never to lie, steal or do violence, this coming from some of the world’s wealthiest liars, thieves and murderers. He is to be content to be poor and powerless, for his reward, greater than gold, is coming in the next life. Social injustices will be rectified there, too, especially his inferior and powerless station in this life. He is to suffer these injustices and hardships gladly and with good cheer as a sign of his faith, even to the point of offering his other cheek to be bruised if it pleases his oppressor to do so after the first one has been beaten. Who but your worst enemy would give you that advice rather than defend yourself or remove yourself from danger. That’s slave mentality. Who but a slave would be asked to do such a thing, and who but a slave would consent?
Thus, Christian morality and the positions inculcated into the faithful by the clergy have nothing whatsoever to do with the conscience or right and wrong. It is all about maintaining a cheap and submissive work force to generate wealth with their backs and their swords for an elite master class. So is the neoconservative brand of “capitalism”, which has nothing to do with Adam Smith (stay on topic, Yaybob).
The moral outrage over the Big Bang, Darwinism, abortion, assisted suicide and stem cell research are all contrived and then indoctrinated to maintain allegiance to the church in the face of various issues that it sees as a threat to its control of people. And that very fact both explains why only the faithful hold these positions and why they’re invalid as moral arguments.
