ESSAY 2.2. FOCUS ON THE SCIENCE
OF EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND DNA
The scientific factual ideas about human and animal and plant evolution in all its magnificent diversity and sophistication provide a rich historical record of the mental changes that accompanied the vast human changes based on the ingenuity of brainpower during the past 30,000 years of human civilization and especially the last 500 years of major scientific advances in human history. Since before Darwin's time, evolutionary biology has been demonstrating the fact that human beings represent a single evolutionary family with variant cultures but shared biological capabilities and motivations.
Evolutionary biology has become absolutely necessary for human existence in the future:
Book Source:
Why Darwin Matters
Book Source:
The Evolving World
Book Source:
How to Read Darwin
Book Source:
Evolution for Everyone ---
How Darwin's Theory can Change the Way We Think about Our Lives
Internet Source:
Darwin Exhibit at American Museum of Natural History
In the 150 years since Darwin published his idea of evolution and the process of "natural selection", evolutionary biology has proven as essential as it is controversial. It is a critical concept for answering questions about everything from the genetic code and the structure of cells to the reproduction, development, and migration of animal and plant life.
Today evolutionary biology is much more than an explanatory concept since it is indispensable to the modern world. Evolution applies when we domesticate wild species for agriculture or companionship, or when we manage our exposure to pathogens, or prevent and control epidemics, or when we foster the diversity of species and safeguard the functioning of ecosystems, or when DNA is used in courts to pursue justice within the legal system, or the idea of evolution is used to promote further scientific discovery through education and academic research.
For example, evolution is sometimes criticized as being an unprovable scientific "theory" instead of a "fact" because it is not compatible with childish myths about creation and sin and heaven and other religious beliefs. However, "faith-based" totalitarians who are ignorant of the scientific method and the history of science fail to appreciate the fact that the idea of evolution has a factual basis that is influencing all aspects of modern life right now.
Evolution is a rational explanation of biodiversity and the fact that animals and plants are the result of the processes of heredity, genetics, and DNA. People who criticize the idea of evolution wish to remain ignorant of the scientific basis of it, since the implications would force them to change their personal ethical values. They may be either too lazy to grasp the essential ideas or too habituated to "magical thinking" for the true scientific explanations of reality to matter to them.
Nevertheless, they need to update their unscientific ideas about history and the meaning of human life with science-based ideas and new humanistic patterns of community interaction, or they will be participating in self-destructive suicide and possibly inflicting their naive ideas on other innocent people including children.
The following two links identify creative approaches to the recent developments in the scientific understanding of the influence of evolution, including the elegant idea of the process of "natural selection," which Darwin first developed to explain the changes in animal and plant evolution, and DNA, which is essential for our understanding of the way our amazing brains actually work:
Book Source:
Cracking the Genome
Book Source:
An Intelligent Person's Guide to Genetics
Book Source:
Genetic Inferno
Just because your brain and the universe are so complex does not mean that the "Intelligent Design" argument about the existence of God is the best way to explain the splendid biodiversity of plants and animals on earth and the complexity of the universe.
Book Source:
Intelligent Thought ---
Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
The following book links describe the key issues in determining what new scientific knowledge will be useful to humanity and what may be useless:
Book Source:
Science Friction ---
Where the Known Meets the Unknown
Book Source:
The Elegant Universe
A good definition of the distinct characteristics of the objective thinking process of science is on the free online Wikipedia Encyclopedia:
In the broadest sense, the word science refers to any system of knowledge attained by empirically verifiable means. In a more restricted sense, "science" refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on empiricism, experimentation, and methodological naturalism, as well as to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research.
Scientists maintain that scientific investigation must adhere to the scientific method, a process for properly developing and evaluating natural explanations for observable phenomena based on empirical study and independent verification. Typically, therefore, science rejects supernatural explanations, arguments from authority, and biased observational studies. (www.wikipedia.com)
The primary core value that all the empirical findings center around is the distinction between the rational SELF, as described on this website, which is you, and the irrational abstract word "soul." That word "soul" was described in ancient literature to be a real thing that represented the essence or spirit of an individual person that could survive the death of that person's body.
However, since scientific research has developed a clear objective understanding of what is genuinely real in nature, and also, inversely, what is purely imaginary regarding human nature and the human spirit, the word "soul" is now scientifically known to be a "literary metaphor" or language trick. The word now indicates an imaginary spiritual entity that does not actually exist in scientific fact.
Today, the word "soul" is like the words Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck. They represent or connote make-believe characters that represent real human emotions. Billions of people for thousands of years have never been able to demonstrate in any empirical scientific way the alleged "spiritual characteristics" of a mystical soul that can inhabit a human body until that body dies and then mysteriously live on without its body. There is no such thing as a disembodied soul or spirit outside of sacred religious literature and religious doctrines that must be taught through rigorous repetitious pedagogical methods from infancy through adolescents in a rigid formula by religious authorities.
This is a crucial assumption at the beginning of the quest for Self-Liberation, since it was only a few hundred years ago that religious authorities believed and taught that our wonderful sun revolved around our unique planet Earth. That is now known to be a false wrongheaded assumption that was inculcated into the brains of believers long after there was empirical scientific evidence that the Earth was really revolving around the Sun!
More details about the Copernican revolution will be presented later on this website. Also Newton's ideas about the importance of scientific explanations concerning gravity and other reliable natural patterns on earth and in the universe have been fiercely contested by various church authorities during the past few hundred years.
Therefore, simply knowing the clearly defined difference between the words "SELF" and "soul" can be the starting point and the tipping point in your beginning to feel that you actually have freedom of choice. What will bring meaning to your life in the future is relevant facts and the reason-based ideas that you infer or deduce from those facts. It comes from taking personal responsibility for your behavior and actions based on scientific facts.
See the following outline of absolutely essential scientific facts and ideas that all sixth through eighth graders should know about the science of evolution on a global scale:
Online Internet Source:
National Public Radio's Science Friday ---
Kids Connection School Science Guides
National Public Radio's Science Friday ---
Kids Connection Evolution Curriculum Benchmarks
You do not need to create an imaginary super-hero "god" or "goddess" to bring meaning into your personal life. Nobody is born with the need for a god or goddess to fill one's life with motivation and meaning in order to achieve a good life.
Now you can create realistic "goals" instead of imaginary "gods" or "goddesses" in order to make realistic "plans." The planning process is similar to the "mindful meditation" aspect of feeling gratitude for being alive and able to imagine a successful happy rational humanistic ethical future for yourself!
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