1. ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION
AND ITS RESOLUTION
WTM FAQ 1.15 If this is a biological explanation of the human condition why are the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ used and why are there so many religious references?
The short answer:
The study of the human condition is the study of humans’ capacity for acts of both so-called ‘good and evil’—of why, when the ideals are to be cooperative loving and selfless are we capable of incredible aggression and selfishness. This realm of inquiry is where science and religion overlap, so naturally in explaining the human condition the terms ‘good and evil’ and religious references will be used, and through scientific explanation, finally demystified and reconciled.
The elaboration:
The human condition is the underlying issue in all human affairs, and our hitherto lack of understanding of it is where human progress has been stalled.
Having been unable, until now, to explain the human condition—which is the dilemma of our species’ capacity for what has been called ‘good and evil’—the human race has been left with a deep, subconscious sense of insecurity and even guilt about our fundamental worth, leaving us no choice but to live in near total denial of the issue of the human condition, relying on dogmatic and religious assurances about our fundamental goodness until we could scientifically explain why we are good after all.
The whole objective of our conscious mind has surely been to replace ignorance, mystery, superstition and dogma with knowledge and understanding. So in order to search for knowledge and comply with our almost universal need to deny the human condition, we needed both science and religion. Science took up the responsibility of enquiring into the mechanisms and workings of our world in a denial-complying, mechanistic (not holistic) way, while religions became the custodians of the ideals of life and dealt with the question of ‘good and evil’ and our sense of guilt in an abstract, metaphysical way that provided comfort in the absence of understanding. So, the true role of science was to liberate humanity from ignorance and the true role of religion was to comfort humanity while the search went on until the explanation of the human condition was finally found, which is exactly what has happened.
Through the advances made by mechanistic science a holistic, denial-free, human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding, first-principle biological explanation has been able to be synthesised by biologist Jeremy Griffith, that at last answers this age-old and crux question about our fundamental goodness and worth as a species, and it is this explanation that is presented on this website. It is to be expected, then, that when this breakthrough explanation is found, such scientific work will be able to demystify and make sense of all religious terminology, metaphysic and dogma, as well as unravelling all the denial and dishonesty of mechanistic science—which it does.
The need for this reconciliation between science and religion has been recognised by many eminent thinkers and scientists. As Jeremy records in chapter 4:3 of his definitive book FREEDOM, “the truth is, to use Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes’ words, ‘they [science and religion] both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with the same substance. As we understand more in each realm, the two must grow together…converge they must’ (‘The Convergence of Science and Religion’, Zygon, 1966, Vol.1, No.3). The physicist Max Planck (another Nobel winner) similarly recognised that ‘There can never be any real opposition between science and religion; for the one is the complement of the other’ (Where Is Science Going?, 1932, p.168). As my headmaster at Geelong Grammar School, Australia’s greatest ever educator, Sir James Darling, said, ‘The scientist can no more deny or devaluate the truths of spiritual experience than the theologian can neglect the truths of science: and the two truths must be reconcilable, and it must be of importance to each of us that they should be reconciled’ (The Education of a Civilized Man, ed. Michael Persse, 1962, p.68 of 223). And with understanding of the human condition now found, ‘converge’ they have; ideality (which religions and the truthful, denial-free-thinking, God-confronting-not-avoiding prophets they were founded around represented) and our search for understanding of our non-ideal reality (which science represented—the word ‘science’ literally means ‘knowledge’) have finally been ‘reconciled’.”
This ability to understand the human condition, makes it possible to reconcile not just religion and science but all the unresolved polarities of the human situation—of instinct and intellect, women and men, young and old, left-wing and right-wing, idealism and realism, socialism and capitalism, etc. At last all these manifestations of the duality in human life can be understood and reconciled.
With explanation of the human condition now available and humans’ fundamental worth biologically established, the terms ‘good and evil’, superior and inferior, worthy or unworthy, etc, can literally disappear from our conceptualisation of ourselves and soon will no longer be part of the human language. In fact, in Jeremy’s publications the terms ‘good and evil’ are usually written in inverted commas to indicate that they are now no more than historic terms.
Another key reason for the use of religious references throughout this website and Jeremy’s work, is that because religions have been the custodians of the ideals, written by denial-free thinkers (or what have been known as ‘prophets’), they have historically been our greatest source of truth about human life. For instance, the Bible has, without a doubt, been the most influential book in history obviously because it contains such extraordinary honesty. If what it is revealing wasn’t resonating as being truthful at a deep subconscious level, then it surely could not have gained the appreciation it has. Indeed, the Bible has been the most denial-free book humans have had for guidance while they continued their immensely challenging task of finding knowledge, with the ultimate knowledge being self-knowledge, understanding of the human condition.
The extraordinary denial-free honesty in religious scripture can now be fully appreciated because in FREEDOM so many of the abstractly and metaphysically described truths in religious scripture are demystified and clearly understood—such as that God is the abstract recognition of the truth of Integrative Meaning (see chapter 4), and there are many, many other such clarifications of religious scripture in FREEDOM.
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Watch Jeremy Griffith present the psychologically redeeming and transforming explanation of the human condition in THE Interview; for a fuller explanation read chapter 3 of his definitive presentation on the subject, FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition; and for a summary presentation of the key ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation watch Video/F. Essay 3.