Vancitydissident's Blog

No matter which side of the theological divide you’re on–there is a God/There is none–I think we all agree knowledge has helped us.

To simplify things, I’ll take he position that we were created by God, in his own image.
I’ll also take the position that he intended us to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and he was angry at us for spoiling the gift of knowledge by stealing it.

That having been established for the purpose of this blog; why the hell are certain of us backpedalling away from knowledge at such a pivotal time in human history?

During the past century, we’ve managed to roughly double our life-spans, transplant body-parts, and decipher the human genome. In other words, we’re closer to speaking God’s language.

Yes, I said it. If you’re a devout individual, then you believe mysteries are revealed by God, in His good time.
So, who are we to say that certain knowledge, some life-saving or livelihood-preserving, is immoral?

If we can use stem-cells and gene-therapy to cure Alzheimer’s, re-grow organs, restore sight to the blind and reverse paralysis, then why shouldn’t we? Sounds a lot like what Jesus did.

People always ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” Jesus would heal the sick, blind and lame. In fact, he did.

Some say that cloning is immoral.
Okay, let’s go back to the book of Genesis:
Oh…Eve came from Adam’s rib? Do you know what an organism derived from part of another organism is called? A clone.

The point toward which I am meandering is that a god who created us in His image would imbue us with a great potential, the seeds of a great destiny.

When I look at photos from the Hubble Telescope–or even at the night sky with my restored eyes–I feel closer to God. I feel, on a very instinctive level, that he wants us to explore the universe. He wants us to learn. He wants what any parent wants for a child; to see us grow up smart, strong and able to provide for ourselves.

We are the only life forms on Earth which have the capacity to leave it.
We are the only life forms on Earth which have the ability to contemplate our existence.
We are the only life forms on Earth fully in control of our own destiny.

We can eliminate most diseases, given the right tools.
We can extend our life-spans and improve our quality of life, form one generation to the next, in ways of which our ancestors could not have dreamt.
We can move out from Earth, so that a planetary catastrophe would be a tremendous tragedy, but not an extinction-event.

Those of you over the age of fifty, think back.
When you watched the Soviet and US space programs, particularly the Apollo missions, what did you see for the twenty-first century?

Didn’t get that did we?

Yes, we have neat computers, and in other ways we have progressed, but other ways, we’ve sort of reached a plateau, haven’t we?

Remember when the US was at the vanguard of education and technology?

The US literacy-rate now hovers near the halfway-mark.
Sixty-three percent of Americans aged 18-24 were unable to locate Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map, seventy-five percent couldn’t find Iran or Israel, forty-four percent couldn’t locate any of the four nations and eighty-eight percent were unable to find Afghanistan.
Despite Hurricane Katrina, one-third of the same Americans couldn’t find Louisiana.
Half of the men and forty-three percent of the women in the same group could find Ohio or New York state.

It’s not just geography, either:
Fewer than thirty percent of those surveyed thought it was necessary to know the locations of nations mentioned in the news, and only fourteen percent thought it was necessary to learn a second language, much less additional tongues.

Of course, that’s understandable when you realise that more than seventy percent cited English as the most widely spoken native language.

The United States still exerts an inordinate amount of influence on world events, specifically the direction of the United Nations and the sciences, yet Americans are getting more ignorant with every generation.

We damned well better figure out where Eden was, because we need another bite at the apple, if we’re to fulfill our destiny.