there are days when i sincerely think we are moving toward greater world peace. Our empathy now stretches to cover other peoples in a way never seen before. Through art; novels, films we are ale to look at the world from others points of view. Genocide still happens but the overall trend is toward peace and trade. Medicine means diseases do not plague mankind as they once did. Many talk as if we are heading in to chaos. This is untrue, at least amongst ourselves. Because of our success the population has doubled in my lifetime. We are genetically engineering our crops to grow more food to feed everyone. Using fresh technologies to screw fossil fuels out of the ground. Any animal that becomes overpopulated hits problems. James Lovelocks idea of Gaia suggests the planet is an organism that addresses  problems and evens things out to restabilise. We will not destroy the planet or life, but we will see our numbers plummet as quickly as they rose. And this will happen in the next few hundred years. It may come from climate changes, disease, famine, the peace may wither, but something will happen to solve the human plague that upsets the planet. Despite the gross overabundance of humans we appear unable to stop breeding. Politicians of all stripes describe paths to further growth, even as they acknowledge diminishing resources. There is nothing in human nature to suggest we are able to stop our headlong jump in to the darkness. We are animals and any animal will spread to the limits of its environment. Without predators rabbits breed until disease spreads to cull their number. Whilst well meaning, the Green movement can only hope to slow things a tiny ammount. The innevitable will happen. It has been suggested that the reason extra terrestrial life forms have not come to find us is that they burn out and destroy themselves before technology takes them far enough to travel. In infinity this would not be true of all of the possible lifeforms but there is a point to the idea. Though peace has proved advantageous, at any cost, to our survival, this is not to suggest that this human harmony is anything other than temporary. Humanists, brought up through the christian system were unable to shake of the notion of a move toward salvation. Evolution does not mean we are moving to perfection. Natural selection is full of, what given a grand architect, would be poor design. A system may find a sustainable temporary harmony within its environment but any subtle change renders the system unsuited to its environment. We are not on an evolutionary journey to nirvana.

'In the world shown us by Darwin, there is nothing that can be called progress. To anyone reared on humanist hopes this is intolerable. As a result, Darwin's teaching has been stood on its' head, and christianitys cardinal error - that humans are different from all other animals - has been given a new lease of life.'
John Gray

In many ways science is only a slightly preferable belief system to religion. Any animal only has a smal sensory 'window' on to the world. Our blindness to the electrical senses of sharks or bats sonar, our limited hearing, our blindness to the scented world of dogs, all shows we see very little of reality. No creature is equipped to see the entirety. With the small area we are party to it would be arrogant to suggest we know much at all. The idea we are designed to understand ourselves and the world around us is modern and wrong. We are no more likely to figure out reality than a dog is. Science is a handy system for tool making but will not reveal the higher truth that a certain presentation of science is trying to trick us in to believing.

'Scientific fundamentalists claim that science is the disinterested pursuit of truth. But representing science this way is to disregard the human need science serves. Among us, science serves two needs; for hope and censorship. Today. only science supports the myth of progress...Science gives us a sense of progress that ethical and political life cannot. Again science alone has the power to silence heretics. Today it is the only institution that can claim authority. Like the church in the past, it has the power to destroy, or marginalise independent thinkers...science is a refuge from uncertainty, promising -band in some measure - deliveringthe miracle of freedom from thought; while churches have become sanctuaries for doubt.'

Some hold fast to the idea that through natural selection of ideas we can escape all superstition. Truth, however, is not always most helpful for survival. The religious believer is at an advantage to the faithless. Evolution will 'select for a degree of self deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray-by the subtle signs of self knowledge- the deception of being practised,' ;' The conventional view that natural selection favours nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.'

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