David

The Earth's diverse yet mutually supporting systems are forcing a limit on the continued increase in the human population. If the increase continues, in the near future extreme suffering will result. Our species’ extinction is a possibility. The harsh reality is that males impregnate females. Females then produce babies. Our species is producing too many babies. Unlike other forms of life, we humans have a measure of control over our thoughts and actions. That control is exercised through what the renowned ethicist Herschel Elliott called our conscious behavior. One form of that behavior is seen in the way the male sex views the female sex and both view the continuation of family. That is the subject of this essay.

Occasionally I meet someone and they say to me; I am an Atheist. I think to myself: What exactly do you mean by that? How can you be so sure of what you disbelieve? You my friend need a better word and a better “A -” with more definition. In today’s quantum world such a statement as yours is “passé.” Theism, Atheism and Deism are word descriptions from the prescientific past.

Judeo/Christian/Islamic belief will be forced to adjust to the reality of an ecologically disintegrating planet with humans on it searching not for solutions restricted to their past, but built on new ideas within a thought process reaching beyond. This is not to say that all Abrahamic thought will die. Many ancient texts and beliefs will find value. However, a new world-wide cosmic realism will be taking hold. Past religious belief in all three of the religions of Abraham will be made to measure its value against a new form of thought that encompasses the nonlinearity of all matter and non-matter in the context of human/planetary consonance - and survival.

To understand the cause of the recent event in San Bernardino we need to understand the cause of Radical Islamic Terrorism. To understand the cause of Radical Islamic Terrorism we need to understand the European Enlightenment and how it affected Judaism and Christianity.

In Pope Francis’ recent environmental encyclical and in his many pronouncements since them, most notably his address to the US Congress and at the United Nations, he was in effect telling the world that the time has come for all of us to take a long hard look at a false god that has, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution been and continues to be venerated by so many.  

How can we achieve the sense of cosmic multidimensionality expressed in the Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi in 1945? For each

Our gods are more a part of us than we realize. We pattern our thoughts and actions after them. Only by understanding how

As it always has been with all species that defy planetary order, ours will soon be facing a painful adjustment and even the possibility of extinction. How did we – you and I - get to where we are today? Historically throughout human history we see a certain archetypal pattern repeating itself over and over again. Can this give us an answer? Yes, it can.

This problem began long before the late Middles Ages and the Enlightenment here referenced. It began with the Babylonians, Akkadians, Egyptians and others who lived at the beginning of the bronze, iron and agricultural age; what many now call the beginning of the first axial age. It was an age that tore us away from thousands of years of attachment to nature. Unlike earlier Homo sapiens going back to the beginning of our species who had a reverence toward nature and the delicate balance that needed to be maintained, in the mind of that first axial civilization the earth was turned into an inanimate object to do with as humans wished. Remnants of this contrast were seen when Europeans first met the American Indian. Along the way this contrast was also seen the life of certain spiritual leaders and their followers such as the Buddha and Jesus and Gandhi and in isolated communities. But for the bulk of humanity, we all went from homo sapiens in tune with nature to homo economicus in opposition to nature.

In his presentation David Anderson will bring together a wide range of his interests, namely; theology, philosophy, geopolitics and current ecological trends threatening human survival on this planet. In the context of these interests he will be discussing the concluding paragraph of an essay he has just completed titled: "A Defining Moment in Human History".

America's problems extend beyond these obvious structural weaknesses. An intellectual depravity that avoids lasting solutions has settled over large segments of the body politic. As a result, congress is often divided on critical issues between far right and left. Important legislation often turns into polarized partisan battle. Compromise to find passage demeans the rigor of clear hard fought thought leaving only a flaccid attempt to solve the problem at hand.