In Response to Austin Bodzioch (4/21/2010)

Q:"Do you think that people will ever go back to the simpler ways of life or do you think that humans will continue the never ending cycle of advanced technology and other incredible ideas..?"

I am not exactly sure what you mean by a “never ending cycle of advanced technology and other incredible ideas”; I does not seem like it would be a never ending cycle if we continued the same process of coming up with new technology. With that said, I think that you bring up a great question, and this question was one of the main ideas of our discussion in class.

In regards to the situation of us going “back to the simpler ways of life,” I tend to agree with the graph that Dr.J drew on the chalkboard. The graph showed the constant human process of going above nature, and then heading back down to nature. As Dr.J mentioned in class, I believe that we are already showing signs of getting back to nature or the simpler ways of life.” A great example of this would be the recent explosion of organic products. If you go to any large supermarket, you are likely to see an organic section, which is usually popular. People are starting to realize that the best foods to eat are not things labeled “low fat,” which are filled with artificial sweeteners, but are actually organic foods. The habit of shopping for organic foods is a recent craze, and I think that it is a sign that other habits will arise in the future that involve going back to nature.

As far as advanced technology, I do not think humans will ever stop trying to come up with new ideas that could change our way of life. We may start to change back to nature, but I do not think everyone will stop trying to come up with new technology; People are always trying to look for new ideas. Furthermore, I do not believe that we should ever stop trying to invent new technology. I do not believe that new ideas create problems for our society; I think that a problem is created once we start to have a dependence on these new ideas. An example of this would be our general history of transportation. Humans have created bikes and other simple ways of transportation that have not, and will never cause any problems. Humans have invented many things that have moved away from nature, but they do not cause any problems. An issue comes into play when humans start to depend on technological advances too much. I do not think automobiles were extremely dangerous to our future well-being when we first created them. Now they are dangerous to our environment because our whole world has become dependent on them to get around.

Humans should not be afraid of new ideas, but we should be careful about becoming dependent on them. As long as we do not move away from our roots in nature then I think we will be fine. I think the main problem with moving away from nature is that people think we can invent technology that is almost better than nature itself; they feel that we can come up with ways of almost beating nature. They need to learn that we will never beat nature. If people do not eat healthy because they think that a pill invented in the future will cure their health problems, then they are completely wrong. We should always be trying to improve our way of life with new ideas, but we need to make sure that we are not forgetting about nature.

What other recently new habits other than the organic food craze, can you think of that show our path back to nature?

In Response to Megan Cooney (4/22/2010)

Q: “What is it that changed the minds of people to become more accepting of atheism?”

I enjoyed reading your blog post because I think that it highlighted something that we did not really discuss in class about Darwin’s ideas. It does seem that a major consequence of Darwin’s idea was that society began to accept the idea of being an atheist.

I think the fact that people changed their minds about atheism relates to one of the main reasons why religion is popular in the first place. Most religions have a story of why humans exist, and what will happen once we die. In addition, humans are afraid of the unknown; this is exactly the reason why religion is so popular. Religious beliefs provide people with the feeling of security because it provides them with a purpose and the certainty of knowing what happens after death. There are many unknowns in our world, and most religions are able to provide answers to these unknowns.

As far as unknowns, the question of how humans were created is one of the most important unknowns that exists. For this reason, I think that Darwin’s ideas were able to use scientific evidence to prove an explanation of this unknown, and his ideas were the first that could give a scientific answer to the question of how humans were created. This leads to the idea that people began to accept atheism after Darwin’s ideas because before Darwin, there was no way to scientifically explain how humans were created. Many people accepted the ideas that religions provided as an explanation for the creation of humans because there was no other idea that could be proven.

Once Darwin’s ideas began to become accepted, people began to realize that some major religious ideas could be wrong. This is exactly why I believe that people began to accept atheism. Darwin’s ideas proved scientific evidence of why religious ideas could be incorrect. Before Darwin and other scientific breakthroughs, there was not much science that could disprove religious ideas. Once the idea of natural selection could be proven, I think people began to second-guess religion.

There are things that I like about religion, but I absolutely hate their exploitation of human uncertainty. Most people are extremely afraid of death, and I believe that certain religions, especially Christianity, take advantage of this human characteristic. I see things all the time that try to convert people into being Christian by saying that they will go to heaven if they choose to be Christian, but hell if they do not. This whole strategy turns into a type of scare tactic into getting people to convert to a certain religion. I do not believe that an all good, all powerful being like God would want people to be scared into obeying his standards. For me, religious values relate to things like peace and love, not fear mongering.

The idea that religions often use the exploitation of the fear of uncertainty to convert people relates back to your original question because Darwin’s ideas helped remove one of the human uncertainties that religions used. Even though I highly doubt it would ever happen, if someone were able to prove what happens after death scientifically, then I believe atheism would be accepted by people even more than religion was. With that said, I believe that religion will always exist.

What do you think about theories that combine Darwin’s ideas with religious ideas?

A Different Standard

In class yesterday we concluded our conversation on the ideas of Charles Darwin. I enjoyed the whole discussion, but the end of the discussion was the part that interested me the most. We ended the class discussion by bringing up an idea that seems to be very important in today’s society: the constant debate between human morality and natural selection.

During the class, there was a lot of discussion related to the idea that humans are trying to avoid natural selection by trying to find cures for anything that would lead to a premature death. People in our class kept bringing up the idea that humans are unable to let other humans die, which is something that other species do; people were trying to say that the human species is trying to avoid natures attempt at eliminating the weaker part of the human species.

I found this idea very interesting because it seemed to imply that humans should not be helping other humans that are in situations that are difficult to survive. Then the idea that humans are supposed to be moral creatures came into my head. Humans are supposed to follow the “golden rule”, which means we need to help others who are in difficult situations because we hope they would do the same for us. It seems the idea that humans should stop avoiding natural selection is completely ludicrous. If humans decide to not help others who are having trouble surviving then we do not seem to be following the “golden rule”.

I do not know if anyone in our class actually feels this way, but it seems that people were implying that humans are wasting their time searching for revolutionary scientific breakthroughs. I agree that it is smart to go natural by reducing wasteful technology such as automobiles, but there is absolutely no reason to stop trying to find ways to help more humans survive. If learning to clone human hearts could save lives then I do not see why we should not try to learn. I think it is ridiculous for people to think that we should not try to save human lives when we have the opportunity too. I know that it may seem like we are cheating the system by doing things like cloning, but I believe that it is each humans responsibility to follow normal moral values. If we have the opportunity to save other human lives then we need to take advantage of it.

My reasoning on this subject goes back to the final discussion that we had in class; Dr.J brought up the idea that some people try to find a balance of animal nature and human morals that just does not exist. People try to say that their decision is okay because animals do it in nature, and humans are apart of this same nature. The problem with this argument is that once humans use any type of human morals, it then becomes difficult to suddenly use the excuse of animal nature.

The idea that Dr.J brought up relates perfectly to my overall argument, which is that humans are not making a mistake by trying to “avoid natural selection”. It is our moral obligation as human beings to want to save as many lives as we can. We cannot let people die because of a disease just because animals die naturally of diseases all the time. Of course humans are still apart of the overall concept of nature, but humans should be looked at differently then animals are; human nature and animal nature is much different.

Do you feel that it is right to view human nature at different standard from nature in general? Why or why not?