Dan Hagen

Supposedly, anatomically modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. We know something of the past 7,000-9,000 or so. But what was going on before that? Little empires rising and falling, possibly religious and cultural conflicts that still echo even in the present day. Interbreeding with other hominids. Ice age coming and fucking everything up, an apocalypse of sorts. All kinds of crazy stories and happenings that we will never know.

Languages and traditions gone forever. We really only see a tiny fraction of our history. We’re like a 50 year old man in a mental institution with amnesia, and can only remember the past week of our life.

There could have been a person who looked just like you, maybe just as smart as you, running around europe 150,000 years ago. Can’t help but wonder what their life was like.

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“For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: ‘We come in peace for all mankind.’ As the United States was dropping 7-1/2 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.”

-Carl Sagan

I always become a little perturbed inside when people are quick to become defensive and/or hostile for no good reason. I remember my 18th birthday, mid-December 2009, when my mom gifted me a copy of Richard Dawkin’s newest book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution. It’s a sort of primer that sets out all of the evidence for biological evolution, and even clears up some people’s misconceptions on scientific theory and fallibility. It’s a thoughtful and informative text especially for those who are not well-versed in scientific reasoning.

I digress though. For my birthday, I was with my mom, my sister, and my brother-in-law. I was enjoying myself, at least, until a point where the mood shifted a bit: As I uncovered my newly-gifted book from its wrapping paper, I was met with an extremely cynical and disconcerting look from my sister. She immediately, quite forcefully exclaimed, “Seriously, Danny? Seriously?”

To which my mom added, “You know, the LDS church doesn’t speak out against evolution. Not at all.”

Across the table, my brother-in-law nodded in agreement. “Nope, they don’t.”

I hadn’t said anything this entire time. Rather, I was sitting there in disbelief, shocked, and slightly offended by this exchange that just occurred in front of me. It had only been a few seconds, and already my family appeared to be up in arms, speaking defensively about the church, and getting bothered by something that really shouldn’t have bothered them at all. Based on this, I can only assume they believed the book to be deceptive anti-Mormon fuel, granted for me to keep in my arsenal of evil, misguided, confused atheist literature. My family was aware of my negative feelings toward the church, so they felt compelled to immediately tell me how the LDS church really isn’t like that, and I’m looking in the wrong places to get information.

Except… it was merely a science book. And those weren’t my intentions at all.

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If you need rules, laws, or religion to make up for your own lack of an inner moral compass, congratulations, you’re a psychopath.

There is no objective morality.

In some societies it was perfectly acceptable to eat people.

Slavery was a matter of economics, and morality wasn’t something even considered until there was an effective means replacing human labor.

It is honorable to murder in certain contexts.

The theist may say that God gives reality to morals, but in that case it’s a code of ethics which God would insist we obey. They aren’t “real”.

Likewise an atheistic view would be the same, but substituting societal consensus for God.

Morals are still a construct.

It isn’t.

It is a very sad state of affairs that human body parts can be age-inappropriate. Everyone has body parts, but we’re creating a culture of intolerance and ignorance by hiding natural human biology from kids. Knowledge and acceptance is what we should be instilling in the minds of children. A naked body isn’t something to be ashamed of (or gawked at).

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to ge tinto your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”

-Lawrence Krauss