I’ve got this thing about the moon – not that I begin to howl or turn into a werewolf, just that I am enamored of it and feel something of a personal relationship, some deep seated primordial kinship.
Bright enough at night to illuminate shadows in the forest and other times a mere sliver as though struggling to emerge.
There’s always been a mystique about the moon that continues inspite of lunar landings and science’s best efforts to demystify what humanity has always looked to the heavens and wondered about.
There’s even talk of colonizing the moon and mining it, an effort to look for planets hospitable to our form of life in the far away reaches of the galaxy.
Seems to me if the same effort and money had been directed at maintaining our home planet the pipe dream of traveling to another light years away wouldn’t amount to anything more than the fantasy of little green men – which ultimately it probably is anyway.
The pursuit of knowledge is one thing, but it pales in comparison to the pursuit of not befouling our own nest.
Of the two I’d rather know less about the Big Bang than how to live harmoniously with our environment.
I’d rather know more about viable habitat for the species of our world than the ability through genetic manipulation to create chickens with dinosaur legs or puppies and others that glow in the dark.
To me such manipulations are Frankensteinian, a corruption of thought and nature on a mad scientist Josef Mengele level.
If science wants to become the new Creator, the new religion, it needs to up the quality of it’s game.
Science speaks of war being waged against it in the midst of a war science is prosecuting against religion – this is an ideological struggle for supremacy.
There can be no Olympus, no home for any but one God, one belief system.
Karl Marx referred to religion as the opiate of the masses, a claim that can be argued either way, but an equal argument can be mounted that science seeks to become the new opiate.
Some point to the Old Testament asserting that it speaks to intolerance, war mongering, and an all too human like character of the god of Abraham – they speak of the perversity of Lot and his daughters, of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice/kill his son Isaac as a “test” of faith, of smiting and smoting.
Difficulties to reconcile for the believers who are left only to say it is god’s will whose mind you cannot know and the wellspring of belief is faith.
Others say the religion of science is a perverse one replete with war mongering in the research and development of nuclear arms and all manner of weaponry.
That it seeks to not only create life but to manipulate it in obscene and perverse ways – that in it’s manipulations creates and engages in a new form of bestiality in the gene splicing of one species to another, in the implanting of one species into the womb of another, and ultimately follows the same doctrine of belief – to have faith rather than question.
To not question whether it be religion or science is to accept the dominion of another as absolute, inerrant, and free will becomes moot as your name is already in the Book of Life or it is not in what sounds a great deal like predestination.
Christianity speaks of “surrendering” to the lord, science would have you likewise surrender to glowing puppies and the cultivation of organs in pigs.
If believing provides a comfort and sense of purpose to an individual, leads them to be a better person sans any destructive zealotry then I say no harm no foul – if accepting the reality of climate change leads an individual to advocacy for the environment then too there is neither harm nor foul, only benefit.
In the midst of this are those who believe that against all odds there will be some interstellar alien intervention that will step in at the last minute in the most benevolent of ways to save us from ourselves.
It could only follow that another contingent exists who are as passionate in their belief that these same interstellar entities currently walk among us, have bases on the moon, orbit the earth in huge motherships with cloaking devices and may actually have additional bases beneath large bodies of water on planet earth- their goal is to subjugate humanity.
A typical and somewhat obligatory good cop bad cop scenario – a pending war of the worlds, a twist on the story of Lucifer the outcast angel of heaven accompanied by his legions and the coming of a savior if only one were to believe, for all belief systems require the existence of opposites no less so than life itself.
There can be no cold without a counterpart, nor day without night, joy without sadness, youth without age, good without evil, and ultimately life without death.
In the main we believe in what we see and experience, an approach that has undergone a devolution that lends credibility to sound bites in lieu of having seen, experienced, taken a common sense approach, or accepted and relied upon facts.
The loss in doing so is incalculable, and some thought should be given to that.
As a people, as a sentient species capable of reasoned thought humanity should feel obliged to question, compelled by an effort to understand.
Children should be taught to question as it is through questions that understanding and solutions come.
By this I don’t mean questions for the mere sake of argument or garnering attention but rather a sincere desire for knowledge – a desire not merely to exist but to live and contribute in a meaningful way.
Whether the harvest moon, full moon, blood moon, pink moon, super moon, or the moon when geese lay eggs as it is now it remains a friend and silent witness to all that has been and will be.