Mission Statement

MISSION STATEMENT

This blog will address the following questions: Is natural selection an answer or is it a question? Did Darwin make the greatest intellectual breakthrough in history, or did he merely pull the rug out from under revealed truth?

The author’s general answer is “yes” to all of the above questions. Natural selection provides the only context for understanding all things living. Revealed truth does not provide the path to perceiving reality. The bridge between the real world that we cannot change or control and our own world (cognitive reality) is provided by recognition of what we adapt to and how we adapt to it. Understanding how to adapt to the environment for the long term will keep reality from killing us. How we describe reality is less important than how we adapt to it.

The various disciplines necessary for understanding the answers are laid out in my book: Natural Selection’s Paradox: The Outlaw Gene, the Religion of Money, and the Origin of Evil. We can leave the proof of evolution to Richard Dawkings (The Greatest Show on Earth). However science has missed the most important feature of evolution for our species: natural selection’s central paradox or trap.

A systemic trap follows from the fact that natural selection does not distinguish short-term adaptations from long-term adaptations in the short term. This has little relevance for other species. Those short timers disappeared a long time ago. Humans, through the use of tools, may put off the day of reckoning for some time, long enough for the short-term adaptation to use up the resources necessary for long-term adaptations. Most of humanity’s failures stem from short-term solutions. This trap in natural selection provides the biological basis for morality. Survival of the species, as the primary value, is necessary for the calculation of long-term adaptations. Adapting to the wrong thing (such as adapting to our tools instead of nature) is the curse of the species.

The most dramatic short-term adaptation involves exploiting or appropriating other people’s labor, rather than making use of the most efficient mode of production. This mode involves merit-based divisions of labor where everyone shares in the product. Cooperative divisions of labor are the norm in nature. Observe the genetic diversity in the makeup of the human body. The exploitive adaptation produces the most obvious to the subtlest forms of slavery. The adaptation of stealing other people’s labor forms the basis of evil.

The book I wrote covering these maters and more is available on the net at Amazon (or CreateSpace). The link to Amazon is http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Selection’s-Paradox-Outlaw-Religion/dp/1419692747/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238520962&sr=1-1