It's May 22 and I'm still here. Did I miss the rapture?
Oh well, I have been wrong before...with any luck, I will be wrong again.
Michael Shermer has swapped his Christian world view for a scientific one. He discusses why people are attracted to apocalyptic explanations of this life here and here. This is scary stuff. Jesus takes his hits as do some of our favorite scientific theories. Even Ayn Rand gets roughed up. Oh this is fun!
Shermer and other theorists are speculating as to how could evolution have selected a brain that thinks as the human brain does, giving rise to minds that 'believe' as ours do and, ultimately, lead to human culture, society, institutions that are adaptive in the Darwinian sense (enhancing our ability to survive and reproduce). The theorist often try to express their insights through stories in which some human(s) get to survive and pass forward a certain adaptation, skill, behavior, or way of thinking, (see social systems above). Turns out, the human mind is very influenced by stories or narratives.
And this too must be adaptive!
1 comment:
The first link, above, goes to an article "Apocalypse Redux" in my blog feed. It's the posting in which Jesus gets critisized. Unfortunately, all direct links to this article seem to be broken.
Maybe Jesus is setting the world in order now!
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