The Narrative Image

This handprint appears above a depiction of a spotted pony that was painted in a gallery of a cave at the end of the last ice age some fifteen thousand years ago. Scholars point out that the gallery was far away from any living quarters and difficult to get to and therefore posit some religious – perhaps magical – significance to the artwork. It is one of the first recorded instances of a hominid making a characteristic gesture across time – a message that cries, “I was here. Remember me.” Later, in one of the first super civilizations, the Egyptians went to great lengths to have their respective deity remember them each as specific individuals. Of course, the more resources one had, the greater the lengths attained… Who will remember me? When you face that question, it becomes easy to see the selling points for religion as it exists today. What peasant, toiling in the mud of the fields during a short brutish life wouldn’t want to be re-united with God and fam...

The way I understand it, we are all descendants of an original replicator. Our D.N.A. convincingly shows that almost all life is related. If we trace our ancestry through the evolutionary bush, it goes something like: Initial mystery replicator – bacteria – sponges – worms – things with backbones – fish – mammals – beavers – primates – monkeys – hominids. The inference here is that humans are simply animals, yet a resounding majority of humans prefer to think that humans must be much more than just animals and cite as evidence special human features like opposable thumbs, the ability to brew beer, self-consciousness, oral and written language skills, culture, and eternal souls. Nobel laureate Francis Crick, in his book the Astonishing Hypothesis almost apologetically tries to explain that, “… “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and the...