We all search for answers to the big questions … how did we get here and where are we going and what is this all about? This is an inherently human aspiration, to figure things out and to understand the world about us. Moreover, as far as we know, we are the only species (on earth that is) with suffiicient self-awareness to pose such abstract queries. Well, perhaps the dolphins have but they are not on Facebook yet, so we don’t know. Not only that, this quest for ultimate answers has been going on for a long, long time.

Check out the the ‘FACTS POST’ below. Somewhere in our distant past, we homo-sapiens prevailed over our neanderthal cousins to start us on our way toward what we are today. When you consider the number of improbable events that had to fall into place just right to first create life, then to facilitate complex biological forms, then generate consciousness, and now to bring us to a state where we might create our own immortality (or singularity where we merge our understandings and thinking into some form of artificial intelligence), it is wildly improbable that we exist at all. The number of factors that had to go ‘right’ are beyond counting. But we do exist, either because some omniscient and omipresent being willed it so or just due to the laws of probability.

Somehow, we have reached our current state where, as a species, we are peering back to the origins of the universe and looking ahead toward immortalizing ourselves in forms of advanced artificial intelligence. This accomplishment defies the odds. So many individual factors had to fall precisely into place over an immense period of time. Even f each event had a .5 probability, the aggregate odds are infinitessimal. That would not happen by chance unless the law of large numbers comes into play. There are trillions of stars and galaxies out there, the chances that a few would permit an outcome in which beings like us would evolve and thrive is better than 0 … perhaps significantly so. Howeverm it would have been a sucker’s bet. Still, all we know is that it has happened here, assuming we are not a fabrication of someone else’s artificial intelligence.

We have the advantage of modern science and technology. Think back to the time when our long ago ancestors huddled in caves and tried to make sense of simple things like thunder and lightning, disease and death, how to survive against so many daily threats. The primitive members on our family tree had to figure things out pretty much on their own. With faulty logic and little clear evidence, answering the unanswerable through appeals to supernatural forces made as much sense as anything else. It also made sense to take elements of their own attributes and merely make them more impressive. For most of human history, our gods were anthrpomorphic in character … much like us but way more powerful, including having robust versions of our own shortcomings and failings.

After one short experiment with monotheism in early Egypt, the notion of single, omnipowerful deity emerged to stay among the Jewish tribes wandering about the middle-east as they tried figuring out how to survive. Their Yahweh, a being so sacred that the word ought not to be spoken, gave them a psychological advantage when facing powerful enemies on all sides. It also provided leverage to the tribal leaders to enforce minimal social conformity among otherwise unruly peoples. You can imagine Moses thinking one day, ‘I’ll wander off and come back with these rules and tell people they are from God. That will bring them into line.’ Even today, religion is employed to support acceptable behaviors essential to the survival of ever larger human groupings. Break these commandments and it is everlasting brimstone for you. I have already ordered a poweful air-conditioning unit for my afterlife.

Yes, the picture above is me during my early religious period. Most people who know me as the depraved lech of my adult years find this fact hilarious. You … religious? No way! But it is true. Just like the cave dwellers of long ago, I sought to make sense of things as I grew up within a Catholic, working class, ethnic cultural cocoon. I only stayed in the seminary a year and a half (and this pic was a posed bit of humor) but it made sense then and now. I wanted to lead a useful and meaningful life. Joining a missionary order (the Maryknollers for you Catholics out there) seemed a way to do that. By my second year of training for the Priestly life, it hit me that I really wanted to save people, not their souls. My faith in a traditional notion of God was not nearly strong enough. But the impulse to do good would lead me to go from the Church to leftist (anti-war mostly) politics and then into the Peace Corps. Later, I studied poverty and taught social policy as a career. The inner drive to make sense of things and live life accordingly never went away.

For me, my rational side could never support a belief system absent some empirical basis. Church leaders often told me to be aware of one’s intellect, it was where Satan lurked (along with all those pretty and sexy lasses). The pretty lasses ignored me totally (I had no occasion of sin in Catholic parlance) so my actual downfall was my intellect. I recall sitting in my High School religious classes (in an otherwise excellent academic Catholic Prep School) questioning so many of the Church’s doctrines. Of course, I did all my questioning silently. That should have been clue number one that a life as a priest was not in the cards. But I had to try.

On a larger scale, society confronts similar struggles. In the Western world we are most familiar with the Renaissance that emerged in 15th century Europe. This revolution in the arts and thought shifted our attention from a rigid set of fixed beliefs to patterns of explorations in which humans began to question things. They started to observe and rely my on actual observations and more rigorous deductions as oposed to given doctrines as the source of understanding. Slowly, we shifted our perspective from an unknowable God to an empirical understanding of our world though the road forward was decidedly rocky. Copernicus only published his findings refuting an earth centered view of the universe upon his death while Gallileo promptly recanted his finding when the Pope challenged him. It was not until the 18th century that the Biblical understanding of time (the earth is older than 6,000 years) took root. That insight also took many years to be accepted, and still isn’t among many evangelicals and Republican politicians.

All that aside, here is the question that I’ve noodled on many an occasion (I do need to get a life). Do we need some divine judge and arbiter of what is good to keep us moral and good? Are Heaven and Hell essential to morality and social cohesion? It is not like the historical evidence is clear on this point. Pope Urban II called for good Catholics to go on a crusade in 1095 to battle the infidels in the Levant. These crusaders for Christ went of a rampage of rape and murder in their God’s name. Islamic warriors did the same as they charged out of Arabia some five centuries earlier to conquer the infidels (in their eyes) and slay those who resisted their truth. And let us not forget the various inquisitions that tortured, hung, burned, and quartered untold numbers of victims for infractions of the most arcane doctrines. Belief can be a most messy affair.

But let us not be overly harsh here. There is a huge difference between those who employ religion and spirituality as a weapon and those who use it for a force for good.

Mr Rogers, the TV peronaity who taught a generation or more of kids clearly was a man of faith. But he never seemed to rely upon his religious affiliation or background to do good nor seek a fortune (I doubt he was in it for the money as so many evanglelical preachers are). He embraced the message of love, compassion, respect, and kindness which he brought to millions of children (and adults). His contributions to better understandings of one another and caring for each other were endless. They included having an African-American as a regular character on his show. This was when racial apartheid was yet part of the American landscape and showcasing a Black actor risked losing part of his audience.

I chose the Marknollers for a similar reason. Many of their Priests and Nuns of that order worked in places like Central and South America were political strife was rampant in the 60s. So many Maryknollers were on the side of the peasants as they battled the oligarchs and coprorations (many foriegn). Some lost their lives for their work and beliefs. Those sacrifices inspired me.

It strikes me that we are yet caught in a transformational era, and there have been several such discrete transitions where mankind has gone through a qualitative change. Our conquest of the Neanderthals (or killing them off with new diseases), agriculture, urbanization, monotheism, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and now being on the theshold of the AI revolution. Yet, not surprisingly, we are stuck between world views. None of these ‘revolutions’ happened over night.

Thus, some of us (not me of course) are working on technologies that will alter the very concept of consciousness and what it means to be human. Those on the cutting edge are exploring the capacity to capture and use all stored knowledge in a new form of artificial intelligence, including mimicking and improving (we hope) human emotions and morality. The consequences of the future are beyond reckoning. At the same time, so many are yet stuck on issues like the age of a 6000 year old earth, whether sex is inherently sinful, and on so many myopic and unanswerable notions such as exploring the nature of a divine which simply are beyond our empirical reach. Such divisions are always present during transitions and have the unfortunate consequence of invoking great passions and bitter conflicts. Let us hope for the best.

No forum captures our extant conflicts better than our political arena. We see Republicans rise and say that we need not worry about climate change because God can save the earth if He wishes. Or no need to take the Covid Vaccine since it is all up to Jesus. We see logical abominations such as the argument that guns save lives, and ownership of such is a religious duty just as we cement our reputation as the outlier nation for gun violence and death. We witness countless conservatives argue we need to become a Christian nation (e.g., like the Taliban in Afghanistan) by banning objectionable books, replacing public libraries with Christian alternatives, and replacing parts of the Constitution with the Bible. They push such frightening measures as they vote against every public law and regulation that reflects Christ’s message of love and compassion. It is hard to imagine how these polar opposite perspectives can coincide with one another.

In the end, I mostly thank the stars that I am old and probably won’t be around when homo-sapiens ‘screw the pooch’ as the old saying goes. That means screw things up royally and end the human experiment before we can find out where it might lead.

And that is the big question. Where are we headed? I look at the unbelievable images of the Universe out there (see above) and marvel at the majesty of it all. Perhaps a divine being or force is responsible but such knowledge is beyond my poor talents to determine (and sciences) though I could never accept a personal God who wastes time checking on my attendance at some religious observance on Sundays.

I fervently hope we don’t screw things up. I am comforted by the knowledge that humans just might crack the code to those core questions we have been asking for eons. And that could happen sooner rather than later. How exciting is that? And what if we are the only species in the vast universe capable of doing that. That is frightening one one level and special, even flattering, on another.

One final wild thought! Maybe, just maybe, we are in the process of becoming the very God we have been seeking over the long history of our spiritual and religious searching. Wow! On that note, I see it is time for my nap.