Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (Documentary; 2012)
Different from many of his presentations, here Richard Dawkins portrays an image of sobriety as he tackles one of the many unanswered questions of life. Rather than being ballistic against the many dogmatic beliefs and seemingly meaningless rituals of organised religions, he is willing to engage in his attempt to understand their many practices and how it maintains sanity in Man.
On one aspect, we act and behave like animals. On the other hand, due to development in our neocortex, we are capable of rational thinking. We have the capacity for reasoning and able to differentiate right from wrong.
Different from many of his presentations, here Richard Dawkins portrays an image of sobriety as he tackles one of the many unanswered questions of life. Rather than being ballistic against the many dogmatic beliefs and seemingly meaningless rituals of organised religions, he is willing to engage in his attempt to understand their many practices and how it maintains sanity in Man.
Studies have shown that everyone sins including people from a religious background. Unlike their non-believing counterparts, believers carry a considerable amount of guilt. The incidence of cheating, lying, fornicating and watching porn is the same across the board. In fact, some figures show suppression brings the worse in us.
On one aspect, we act and behave like animals. On the other hand, due to development in our neocortex, we are capable of rational thinking. We have the capacity for reasoning and able to differentiate right from wrong.
Animals think within the cocoon of satisfying their personal needs, of food, mate and territorial space. Humans, however, have been bestowed with the ability to empathise. Perhaps with this feature, they can be kinder towards each other and are able to judge what is morality. This mindfulness must be the precursor to spur the goodness that is buried within us.
If so much of decency is embodied within us, why do things go wrong? The same mental faculty must be at fault. Our capacity to imagine, to concoct a potentially disgusting or fearful situation may make us wary o the others. We need to safeguard ourselves from a potential collapse of the other. Hence, the justification of self-indulgence and self above others.
Faith gives us a reassurance that a third party will be a guiding light and a protector of sorts as we allay our fear and recruit our resources to meet the challenge of the day. Without this conviction, life would be a bigger struggle than it already is.
If life is just all about our lifespan, it will not make much sense. There would be nothing more to look forward to. The fear or bliss of an afterlife must be a good enough motivator to put law and order in place. Earth would then be a home not only for the big and strong but for the weak and incapacitated. Simply put, life on Earth is just for the continuity of progeny. Centurions live long live probably thanks to their longevity genes. On a related observation, they also have fewer offspring. Is that Nature's attempt to give them a longer time to sow their wild oats?
Many religions of the world talk about souls being immortal and the body just being a vessel to carry the soul. The only thing that seems to continue generations after generations is the passage of genetic material. And the blueprint of this template must have started from our sea-living ancestors (or Adam and Eve), and its traces are ongoing. So that it must the Atma or the Soul. But that, however, does not explain the re-births in different species based on your karma.
No comments:
Post a Comment