THIS I BELIEVE, CLASSICAL*
Richard Allen Hart, PhD, 15 Dec 2023
This I Believe Cultural Evolution Factual Links Related Topics Outlines
Who, what, where is God? Our current situation is the result of four stages: the Creation, the single cell, biological evolution, and cultural evolution. It is a changing mix of all four.
Evolution is not continuing as it has; with short term reserves (glucose and fat, cash and savings, education and research), optimizing one action until the environment is exhausted.
The potential for life is being found throughout the universe. The basic stuff making up genes is now found to be self-assembling. With a large enough brain mass, consciousness appears.
Brains produce and sort spontaneous ideas. Creative brains ask questions. Questions demand answers: real and imaginary. Love (caring) and charity. God and hope. Friends and enemies.
The environment allows and limits biological (material) and political (immaterial) cycles. The “educated” can entertain an idea without needing to own it and needing to destroy all others (the natural brute-force animal-level of thinking and acting that life is now surpassing).
What is appropriate, changes with time. This applies to English moths and to cultural customs. The dark moths hiding on tree bark became lighter when burning coal was banned in England.
The 2,000-year-old core teachings of Jesus remain as cultural customs adjust to industrial and political developments. They provide a common need including honesty and sincerity.
Grandma anticipated living with Jesus as she now does. The changes from small country to mega-church fascinated her. The Cooperative Baptist splitting from the Southern Baptist and back distressed her. Important things are strongly tied to our childhood and our schooling.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Humans act on their beliefs. Each task and level of organization requires its own application of basic rules in three flavors: Guess (immediate), believe (individual), and know (factual).
Beliefs are polarized toward the past (religions and politics), knowing the facts, toward the future. The “educated” see little conflict in new revelations of the continuing creation. Strongly held beliefs are real to the believer. This is a continuous source of highly resistant conflict.
The history of human nature shows that church and state can be independent or any combination. Their environments may serve different purposes best when separated. Both require well “educated”, active, learners to balance highly trained and skilled participants.
A belief in God and a belief in the United States of America Constitution are both made of the same stuff that is of little consequence until acted upon; made real. Jesus placed mankind on a positive path acceptable to a patient God. The Constitution and Bible both place humans above animals. The time has come to create the needed environment.
This I Believe Cultural Evolution Factual Links Related Topics
*Addendum
Having worked two months on "the best" citations to ground this "one page essay" in reality I have convinced myself it is an endless task. Each month a new unexpected event occurs that challenges rationalizations based on what is known at the time. I find this work is just a first attempt to solve a problem of how evolution works above the basic biological level.
I am aware of three ways bureaucracies "solve" a complex problem: 1. Make a policy statement with or without money and keep it at a distance (Don't get involved.).
2. The seminar in which persons, at all administrative levels, who are actually involved on a daily basis are invited to present their experience. It is fun to watch these people interact when all are treated as equally important in providing needed information. No one person knows all.
The air quality in the New Science Building degenerated when maintenance was "out sourced" causing severe eye irritation. We found the floor cleaner is sold by the strength of its odor, that has little to do with cleaning power. The Business Office buys by the odor! Buy an odorless, less expensive, and more effective cleaner.
3. Define the problem accurately. My best example is being seated near a man who only took million dollar contracts. There was no charge if the process of defining the problem solved the problem, which happened most of the time. His comment on the occasion, an International meeting in Honolulu to feed the poor was, "This banquet setting is not the way to do this."
The problem we are facing, now that the Nano World has been revealed, is how to become successful in the third level of existence: abiotic, biological, and cultural. The failure of the direct application of biological rules to the nano world and world history indicate the same mismatch for the cultural world. It took two world wars to create a single currency (the Euro).
So today, 24 Feb 2024, I am sorting what I have in hand to post on the Internet. I need to add more comments as I can no longer remember what is in each citation. Out of sight, out of mind. Browse the find column on the right side of videos for a wealth of related insights.
God in the bio-nano-world is a far more wondrous concept than ever imagined in the past 4,000 years. We can now "see" everything. I learn as I write and then search for verification.
This page is a condensation of three one-page attempts to explain the world I have lived in the past 93 years. At times it becomes key words that unfold into endless stories when searched after logging into Wikipedia or Googling: Google Wikipedia.
The nano world is young and growing. A lot has changed since I last taught classical genetics 30 years ago: Automated equipment to duplicate and sequence genes. Finding genes shared by every living organism and saved functionally and non-functionally in human chromosomes. Engineering better and even new genes which renews the discussion of god and ethics.
Evolution with Hypertext
I have limited serious attempts to communicate with others to one page. It all started with a two-year leave with the US EPA, Denver, CO, 1978-1980. If a topic goes longer than that you either do not understand what you are doing or you're lying, in research and government work.
Several times, in the past dozen years, I have started to write something about the world that I have lived in. Each time my world has expanded by the time I finished the paper. This time a single page can be made as meaningful as a reader wishes when I use hypertext links to automated updates.
This I Believe Cultural Evolution Factual Links Related Topics
Preview of Epilogue (at end of Related Topics)
Biological evolution follows two basic rules: (8 Mar 2024)
1. A space (environment) niche.
2. A self reproducing entity (with variation, with errors).
Cultural evolution adds two more:
3. Spiritual-and-religious (S/R). Unverifiable individual beliefs.
4. Science. Verifiable and verified group beliefs.
When these mix well (no harm) there is peace and prosperity.
