Dying Religion

It started out with Pope John Paul II saying that evolution is ""more than a hypothesis."
Now that he's gone and we got the new guy, Benedict in, he's trying to take that idea and run with it.

I'll say the Pope's a smart guy, but the hard part here is taking the notion of evolution and melding it with the concept of God. The world is getting smarter, more facts are more blatant, so the Pope has to do something.

So the other day, September 10th, to be exact, he says to his people, "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God." Taken out of context, I think this looks rather bad, but reading more in depth to the preceeding events, I think this is just the Pope's first try and some sort of cohesion between religion and science.

It is becoming widely known that "Intelligent Design" isn't making many friends. People are adimantly for it or against it. I think this spawns from its intentions. Firstly, it tries to not include god, the basis for the Christian religion that supports it, and it also tries to compete with science, which it surely can't. Science is based off testable data. If you can't have anything to test, like, say "the will of God/Intelligent Designer" then how can you prove to be a science?

That's why the intelligent design spoof, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has equal merit in the search for our beginnings. Any basis is untestable and rooted in writing that can only lead to circular debate. So recently, the Pope and a bunch of his former students are meeting to discuss evolution. I believe there's no doubt in their minds that evolution is a process that's been affecting the earth for the past few billion years. Even one of his student states, "Because like it or not," he added, "evolution happened." They're knowledgable, but now the hard part.

During their meeting they must come up with a way to bridge both science and religion. This whole intelligent design is creating a gap that's leaving many to have to choose between the two.

And herein lies the problem. Christianity basically spawned science. Christianity had an iron grip on science since that advent. Christianity has been able to tell people what to believe even when science has said otherwise (i.e. Galileo). But now science has graduated and no longer needs Christianty. But now, here's a religion that basically acts as a supergovernment, spanning borders and seas, that is losing its grip. Catholicism in the past has been able to reform and keep up with the times, but right now it's slipping. Back in the 1960's it was revitalized through more cultural clashes. It told people they were not defying God if they ate something other than fish on Fridays. But that was an era based on a cultural revolution. Women's liberation, civil rights activism, people advocating free love.

Now we've ocsillated back to a scientific focus and it's much harder to tell people to not believe what has been believed since the advent of the religion. People aren't really all that special. They're just some process along the span of life. Whatever life may be. This is a much more touchy subject then just telling people "how" to live. This rocks their core, their being. It tells them that they may not have a real purpose other than to survive. Period. You're not special. No one cares if you live or die, or even how you lived your life.

And even though I am not a believer in religion, I still think that it is necessary. It's necessary for those who want to be told how to live. It's also necessary for those who need to be told how to live. Morality wouldn't exist without religion, and unless we had a supreme enforcer, all would be in chaos. But that's the beauty. This creates the figment of a supreme enforcer. Something to be feared. You'll be cast to hell if you're bad, you'll be rewarded if you're good. So along with morality, it also gives a sense of a purpose. A goal to live for.

So without religion, then you'd just be left with government. And the government definitely can't do that. It can't give you a goal. The closest anyone has come is the communist block. They were successful because they controlled science much like the early Catholics. They only allowed knowledge to leak to the public that would promote the "perfect communist". Science was even controlled to the point of lying to the public. The people under the iron fist were told that acquired traits picked up during one's lifetime can be inherited in your offspring. This brainwashing gives a goal. The harder you work at doing what you're doing, your progeny will also be a better honed individual (although that wasn't a very admired word among the communist leaders), and thus the ultimate goal of a perfect nation can be reached.

Unfortunately, we know how heredity works, and again it brings about a sob story. Nothing you do in life will be passed down to your children (barring radiation or other exposure to toxins). As hard as you work, it's pure circumstance what gets handed to your offspring. You have no say. The point of life is to survive. To enhance the chances of survival, one can give to their offspring knowledge of the past. This can be any kind of knowledge--how to survive a harsh winter, what kind of flora and fauna surround you in your environment, how to more easily solve a given puzzle. But then you can look at it on the grand scale. One can actually be somewhat altruistic and hand off knowledge to more than just family and friends. It may be a circumstance of pride in one's own knowledge, but depending on the audience, the knowledge might actually be well received and passed on to a new generation. Computers, cars, carpentry (any given trade), or even an addition to a data base are all examples. But that is the beauty of communication; it strengthens chances of survival for anyone willing to accept it.

Now I may have gotten a bit off track there, but herewithin lies the ultimate goal. And the problem with it is that it's drastically different than the religious ultimate goal. Religion focuses on the self. I must be good, I want to be treated well indefinitely. I want to go to heaven.
The ultimate goal for "life", for lack of a better term, can be just as selfish, but can, as a side-product, be somewhat altruistic. It's a want for a comfortable lifestyle. However, comfortable can be seen in a few different ways, all which pertain to the goal. Comfortable can be a lavish lifestyle--living well, having prestige goods, enjoying life in whatever way fits you best. As one can clearly see, this is also something you want to pass on to your children and theirs and so forth.
But there's a second side to comfort that involves a broader view. This is technology. Through communication, be it oral or written, people have managed to take themselves out of the elements and make a situable lifestyle complete with less stress (although we can create that elsewhere in our lives but it still pales in comparison to fighting for our lives). The continuation of this process, which largely uses if not entirely science, has made our lives easier.
So with the contiuation of science, our cumulative goal of comfort will be met. Through helping others in the accumulation of knowledge (which may seem altruistic) you are also helping your future lineage (and the continuation of the species as a whole) in the long run.

If people would only accept this as a goal in life. Maybe we won't need religion. Yet regulation of actions, still might be a factor. However with the growing secularism, government use of people as enforcers have instilled enough of an actual fear into people that usually only leaves those most desperate, courageous, or willing to break with what could be seen as religious moral standards.

So now I guess I've convinced myself that religion isn't necessary. But since something like Catholicism has had such an effect on Western Civilization, it would leave me upset to see it go. Maybe it could just be like the royalty of the UK. It's more rich than hardly anyone in the world could boast and it could attract tourists from around the world to gawk at its traditional ways and silly outfits.
Maybe however, it's already reached that status and its just on its last legs, being one step above British royalty. They are loaded and the Pope speaks a funny language and wears a funny hat. I guess all that's left is the unleashing of all that ungodly power. A pope speaks, and one billion people follow. And not only that, but probably a billion more, at least, listen.

So maybe come this meeting of the papal minds, the brightest of the divine can devise a plan to create its own evolutionary path to fit into a niche that once again gives cohesion to religion and science and saves its ruling, comfortable lifestyle.

Good luck, Mr. Pope and Pals.

PS I have this urge to reference my quotes and thought sources.
Stupid school.
Here:

Pope Benedict and his ex-students holding seminar on evolution.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/01/news/vatican.php
viewed last: September 16, 2006.

Spencer, Frank. 1988. Prologue to a Scientific Forgery. In: Stocking, George W, editor. Bones, Bodies and Behavior. History of Anth 5: 85-116. University of Wisconsin Press: 1988.