February 11, 2009
- Jesus + Darwin 4 Eva -
Check it out, Rome is officially in the evolutionary boat:
Vatican backs Darwin, dumps creationism
Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin
Now, apparently, the Roman Catholic Church has backed Darwinism for a while (see the comments on the first article), but it’s still news to me!
Finally, I can agree with the Catholic Church on some of their official propaganda. No wait, I mean dogma! No wait, I mean beliefs… ;)
You know, the RCC might be seen as what the falling Roman Empire turned into by absorbing the memes that Jesus taught. In that way of looking at it, the Dark Ages weren’t necessarily just the result of the fall of Rome, more a sort of cultural chemical reaction between the two belief systems. Maybe ‘the empire never ended’ after all, eh? It just turned a little more soft and lovey is all.
And now that they’ve absorbed Darwin’s meme of evolution, and equated it with God’s work on the earth, maybe they can start naturally selecting themselves… I think the acceptance of natural selection is sort of an admission that things almost always work out for the best naturally, if they’re allowed to (ahem! Did you hear that government? If they’re allowed to).
Well. To be fair, things generally work out for the best in the long run. The short-to-middle ground, admittedly, can be a bit rocky.
Still, it sure beats the hell out of Tennyson’s interpretation of the relationship between God and Nature:
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed
And just in time for his birthday, too… Happy Darwin Day, everybody!
Maybe it has to do with Pierre Tielhard De Chardin.
Comment by Ted — February 12, 2009 @ 10:02 am
Wouldn’t be surprised if it did!
Comment by Ian — February 12, 2009 @ 10:54 am
A cool quote for your collection:
“… Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) … Fisher’s main contribution is what he called the ‘Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection’: The rate of increase of fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.”
- Peter Erdi, ‘Complexity Explained’.
*
From the same book, with reference to Judges 5:5 :
“… with the infinite observation time God can see the flowing of those objects which the man in her short time cannot see.
*We may conclude that the complexity of a stone should increase with the length of its observation.*”
Comment by speedbird — February 14, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Fuck yeah. Seriously. Check out this conversation over at Zac’s site, about identity and the search for meaning… It’s lengthy, and probably good to read the whole thing for teh context, but your point here ties right in with my most recent comment:
“Found this quote today, shortly after catching up on this conversation: “I can’t imagine a more complete and precise answer to the question ‘for what reason…?’ than ‘none’. The fact that you don’t like the answer is your problem, not the universe’s.”
— Lee Daniel Crocker
Meaning is OUR problem. We are the universe’s organs of meaning, it is something that is brought into being through our existence. But to get caught up in the meaning and to forget our connection to the universe is to stop serving that purpose.
Perhaps in this case, meaning is another way of saying “attention”. That to which we willing give our attention, and thus is more attention created within the universe… We tell the universe in which way it should grow, by giving our attention to that.”
Attention will increase complexity. Increased complexity leads to ephemeral stabilization at higher levels of complexity.
What were talking about is leveling up the experience points of the universe. Do we want to use an axe? The universe will get strength. A knife? It’ll get more agile…
(for all the old school RPGers in the house…)
Comment by Ian — February 14, 2009 @ 3:57 pm
Hey Ted, check a reply a received over to a similar conversation:
Comment by Dan Bartlett on February 14, 2009 11:48 pm
Amen!
“Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself. The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself.”
–Teilhard de Chardin
“Future of Man” is moving up on my next-to-read list!
Comment by Ian — February 15, 2009 @ 11:19 am