ACD                                         Mankind's race to doom

As a member of the species, I have an interest in the future of the human race.  It is my belief that the way that our species is multiplying, we are going to ruin the only place that we have to live.  We are the brightest of the animals that inhabit this planet, but we are not very bright in looking after our future.  We have shown that Mass Extinctions of animals have occurred in the past, and there is no natural law to stop another one.

The thing is that it is all so evidently possible, and probably likely.  I do see the possibility that a small number of us could build a home out in space, but to do that would be fraught with many dangers.  We may be able to cope with the high radiation environment, but silly little mistakes that our race is so prone to, would be totally fateful.  We really have to learn to live on this planet for the long term.

The dangers of global warming and climate change are the current worry, but there seems to be no intention of stopping the causes of this effect.  The effect has a variety of component-causes, with the most important one being over-population.  The Catholic Church. the Muslim world, and even an East European ex-Soviet state are all calling for a greater birthrate.  Africa is not politically advocating an increase in population, but central parts of it are breeding like flies.  It's true that these populations are dying like flies too, but the West is attempting to stop the death-rate while accepting the birthrate.

Only one country on the planet seems to be trying to reduce its population.  But China is accelerating its industry causing the secondary effect of increase in greenhouse gases to surge ahead.  And there isn't a politician of note who has said a word on the subject.  Bushy Boy on the other side of the Atlantic is so in the pocket of the Religious Right that he hasn't even accepted that there is looming problem.  And the Religious Right appear to be looking forward to "the end of the world".

I don't know what a steady-state population of the globe would be.  Ten million, perhaps.  But it must be a great deal smaller than it is at present.  Even the third-world populations are destroying their own nest with destruction of primeval forest to turn it over to cattle grazing.  And the cows are a huge source of methane. that worst-of-all greenhouse gases.  And we humans, even without our automobiles, add to the atmospheric burden.  If I trump (to use an East Midland  word for flatulate) I add a little to the problem.  There is only one answer in the long term: a lot less people on this planet.

If this solution could be put into place, those parts of the globe that are a hazard to humanity could be abandoned.  I suppose it could be said that as population rises. the natural effects tend to reduce it.  Earthquake deaths. AIDS.  possibly bird flu, all help to reduce the numbers of polluters (which we all are), but surely there are more humane ways of staving off the catastrophe that so obviously looms ahead.  And I am not certain that these minor reductions in population will have sufficient effect to save the rest of us.

Mother Nature has the ability to recover from a small amount of abuse, but She is unable to compensate for the enormous destructive effects that are currently ongoing.  The earth will survive, but will we?  And if we perish, how long will it take for the next civilisation to appear?  Ten million years?  Fifty million years?  What a waste?

  Science versus Religion

It is conventional to establish definitions at the start of any discussion of a difficult subject.  However, I have looked at dictionaries and have come to the conclusion that the definitions they give for Science and Religion are so long and difficult, and overlap in certain areas, that it is much safer to leave the terms formally undefined   I will assume the reader has a fairly clear understanding of both words in their own mind, otherwise he/she would not have chosen to read this essay.

Now let us look at the present furore that is occurring in the Southern States of the USA.  There is a fierce argument between Evolution and Creation.  The Evolutionists follow Darwin's theory of slow changes to the structure of living creatures as a result of mutations, that are then tested in the harsh environment of life to see if they are superior to the un-mutated creatures, with the fitter versions surviving in the hard world of 'dog-eat-dog'. There is a great deal of supporting evidence for this theory.

But the Creationists argue that life is just too complex for that process to have occurred despite the enormity of time that it is supposed to have taken.  Personally, I tend to believe in the evolution theory against the other one.  It is true that life is enormously complex, but there are observed changes in some of the simplest life forms that follow the evolution theory demonstrating that it is possible.  Microbes have been observed to mutate from generation to generation, and some of the different types are seen to be superior at surviving their harsh environment.

Culture a dish of microbes and immerse it in a non-lethal bath of anti-biotic chemical.  Many microbes will perish while a small number survive and replicate.  Very soon a colony of microbes will emerge that are immune to the chemical that destroyed many of their forebears.  This exercise demonstrates the principle of evolution.  It can be observed in these simple creatures, but the timescale for it to occur in more complex animals is so long that man has not seen the complete story unfold.

But is it not just possible that the Creationists are right?  We cannot PROVE that God does not exist.  We can think of other scenarios that appear to be more plausible.  At the moment physics is unable to explain the Big Bang.  If you cross-question a cosmologist about the details before the Big Bang he will tell you that you are asking an impossible question.  "There was no 'before' ".  Why should we believe him when there is another explanation?  True, that explanation goes against modern scientific thought, but mankind went through a similar trauma with the abolition of the phlogiston theory.  We can now show that that earlier theory was nonsense, but the best brains at that time had no better theory to offer.

As an aside,, "The Big Bang Theory" is currently being questioned by some leading cosmologists.  They are not saying it is wrong, but they are saying it has some weaknesses that suggests it MAY be wrong.

Fred Hoyle was virtually shouted down when he proposed that life came to this planet via a meteorite.  Now his hypothesis is being seriously looked at anew by modern scholars.

We've a lot to learn

Some religiously minded scientists have suggested that all the findings of their atheistic colleagues could be right, and there still could be a God.  It is just that we are discovering some of His secrets, and how he makes things happen.  Some of the findings of quantum theory seem to be absurd, but they definitely happen.  Is He teasing us?, or will we learn that "the impossible" can occur.

We humans are a pretty irrational bunch.  We end up believing what our emotions want us to believe.  But there is only one sane conclusion  --  We Just Don't Know!

A final thought:  The Churches claim that God loves us all.  If this is true, their meaning of 'love' differs a great deal to what most people accept.  Was it an act of love that slew so many people in the Boxing Day tsunami?

It is my claim that IF there is a God, he has so much on his plate that we are no more to him that a mosquito is to us.  It is, of course, perfectly possible that He has such powers that he is capable of looking after the large and the small.  But the overwhelming evidence points in the other direction.