Sunday 24 June 2001

Pic of the day: Bees like flowers, and so do we. The bees have a reason for it, but what about us?

A friend of God

Well, today I did not write my journal in the morning and later in the day I got a visit from my pious friend who live a humble life with Jesus. I mean, he's like really christian. He comes over every few months to borrow my scientific magazines and talk about the things that belong to the Kingdom of God, and to pray with me.

This is one of those people who have been a slave of alcohol (and who knows what else), and then he met Jesus and switched allegiance. I guess to an atheist this would be considered proof that religion is indeed opium for the masses. Wish it were so. Opium is still opium for all too many people. And this particular religion has certainly been good for him. Though I know there are some who have taken some heavy damage from religion. One should not approach religion as a hobby. It can have drastic effects indeed.

***

Together, we pondered the fact that most of us enjoy life. I mean, from a purely darwinian point of view, it doesn't matter as long as you survive and reproduce. Whether you are enticed to survive or just forced like a mindless robot, it matters not. And robot seems like the most practical solution. For instance, we are indeed made that way with regards to breathing. True, we can hold our breath for a while, but we are soon forced to reconsider. For such an important activity, robot mode is almost completely implemented. But for much else, the pleasure principle reigns supreme. We do what we do because we enjoy it, or enjoy some result of it.

I have assumed that simpler organisms are more like robots: That they eat and drink and breed and build nests (or whatever) because they can't help themselves. But I don't know. I have never been anything else. Perhaps a bird loves singing just as much as we do, even though there is a prosaic explanation why it sings. There is a prosaic explanation for much of what we do too, but we can still enjoy it deeply. Food comes to mind. I hear sex is very enjoyable too when you do it right, but don't quote me on that. And so on with many things.

Of course, just because something feels good doesn't mean it's the right thing to do at any given moment. But still, there is a lot of joy in life. And given that there need not have been any, I think it is a good deal.

***

We also pondered the beauty in nature, and the intricate construction of for instance trees. (OK, so I brought up that. Big surprise, huh?) And the fact that so many living things have so much in common. Even plants are built using many genes similar to ours. The green chlorophyll in plants is quite similar to the haemoglobin in our blood. And so on. Most any amino acid in our body is found in some edible plant. To the dedicated atheist, this simply proves that we all develop from the same primitive organisms. To the believer, it is arranged this way so that we can conveniently maintain our bodies by eating plants. It sure beats spending the daylight hours lying flat in the sunshine to absorb as much energy from the sun as possible.

Not that some people don't do that anyway, on a day like today.