Kampala Express Christmas card, 2014 Civilization of the ages -- what shapes it most? By Timothy Kalyegira 1) Why does the same human mind that makes relentless, dazzling progress in the areas of digital and mechanical technology and scientific breakthroughs seem unable to solve the difficult area of interpersonal relationships and bring to an end war and conflicts? What explains this split nature of the human mind, genius in the technological but woefully helpless in the humane and personal? 2) Why, despite the relentless advance of technology, mass education, globally interconnected digital, satellite and television and radio communications systems and increased migration and international travel, does the world seem to be turning ever more trivial and why do there seem no more Einsteins, Newtons, Shakespeares and Aristotles today? 3) Why do the affluent societies of North America, Europe and Japan not experience a degree of happiness significantly different from or more than that among the downtrodden in sub-tropical Africa, if material progress and rising living standards are the answer to human happiness and a feeling of wellbeing? Why do statistics on suicide from about 1982 to the present consistently show higher rates in the affluent societies than in the desperately poor? Why do the billions of global users of social media, who are on average better educated and economically better off than the rest of the population, seem so restless, whimsical, disgruntled and trivial in their postings on Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and Google+? Why has this liberating social interactivity not resolved the frustration in relationships, in our personal loneliness and our nagging private emotional insecurities? 4) Why has the theory of Evolution, the most plausible and most widely believed and most scientifically adopted, persisted with the many contradictions, irreconcilable gaps in the evidence in the fossil record? If, as Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) argued, a ceaseless and remorseless struggle among and within animal and plant species results in a survival of the fittest, which remnant species go on to become the dominant progenitors of the next, even stronger species and derivative mutations, what then explains that the human baby, offspring of the most advanced and most highly evolved life species, is consistently born, generation after generation, in total helplessness, in many cases even weaker and more and more helpless at birth than many other lower mammalian animal offspring? Why did Darwin find it uncomfortable to face this helplessness of the human baby as evidence that refutes his theory of Evolution? If we can start to reflect on these questions, we shall have arrived at the beginnings of the answer to the question of why mankind needs intervention from outside of itself to handle the mounting and almost insoluble problems the world faces and why the universe bears all the hallmark and imprint of higher intelligent design, be it God or whatever that intelligent hand, being or design system might be termed. ENDS
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 08:46:40 +0000