(April 18, 2008)
The Pope is in America this week and he is talking to victims of sexual abuse. It is ironic that this leader of the Catholic Church was also a Nazi member of Hitler youth.
"With the selection of Josef Ratzinger as the new pope (in 2005), the Roman Catholic hierarchy has placed at its head a hard-line enforcer of Church dogma, and one of the Vatican’s fiercest opponents of not only Marxism, but liberalism, secularism, science and virtually all things modern." (Peter Schwarz, April 21, 2005 - "From “grand inquisitor” to pope: Benedict XVI to head crusade vs. secularism, democracy")
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Catholic Inquisition. Why? Because he suggested the earth was alive. That was over 400 years ago. The earth is alive in so far as it hangs in space, held there by magnetism and gravity, which is principally a product of planetary gravitational balance on each other.
The planet is under great stress. It is getting hotter. Lynn Margulis, widow of Carl Sagen and scientist says about the planet, she (the Earth) is a "tough bitch." I'd say life is really tough and it is also a bitch much of the time just surviving in this hostile environment. Even oxygen, which we think we must have, will kill us. And we must have it. It is as important to us as light is to plants for respiration. But increase the levels and we have may explode.
From introduction to James Lovelock wrote in The Revenge of Gaia, Earth's Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity, by James Lovelock - 2006, by Crispin Tickell:
"The sun's heat on the Earth is steadily increaasing, and eventually the self-regulation on which life depends will be put at risk. Looking at the global ecosystem as a whole, human population increase, degradation of land, depletion of resources, accumulation of wastes, pollution of all kinds of climate change, abuses of technology, and destruction to biodiversity in all its forms together constitute a unique threat to human welfare unknwwn to previous generations..."
James Lovelock said "if we fail to take care of the Earth, it surely will take care of itself by making us no longer welcome."
I distinctly get the feeling the welcome mat has been taken in. The world is in turmoil (much as the Church has been since it's inception) and the planet is sick too. As humans, (other animals also) we are genetically programmed to look after our own. We are tribal groups trying to kill or eat and consume each other.
As for religion or the "Singularity" I am not optimistic that any of it will save us. We could only get there if we fixed the present and that isn't going to happen.
Lovelace sums it up nicely, though it is not comforting to read these words:
"Even if we stopped immediately all further seizing of Gaia's land and water for food and fuel production and stopped poisoning the air, it would take the Earth more than a thousand years to recover from the damage we have ALREADY DONE, and it may be too late even for this drastic step to save us..." (ibid)
Category Obama
Category Religion
Category Science
Category Dystopia
Category Singularity
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