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It seems to me that human thought can be superficially thought of as having two aspects. The first is the ability to reduce phenomena to simple principles, by which future phenomena may be predicted. This has led to the development of technology, as well as its underlying science, which has been invaluable in allowing the human species to become the dominant and most influential species on earth.

The second line of thought searches for ``meaning'' and ``truth'' among our daily experiences. I find this more abstract in nature, and thus more difficult to understand why humans should be endowed with such a capability.

Indeed, the human need for ``meaning'' is often used by the religious to prove that religion contains ``truth''. It is conceivable that intention of a personal God to have relations with man would necessitate just such a ``seeking''. It is also possible that human consciousness arises out of some sort of cosmic order, which in turn dictates that this consciousness should seek out its relationships in and with this cosmic order.

Still, I am not prepared to abandon the purely ``rational'' (as opposed to ``spiritual'') and ``natural'' (as opposed to the ``metaphysical'' and ``supernatural'') line of inquiriy into the formation of human thought. I am not at all positive that these two lines of thought I have sketched are separate.

Perhaps the search for ``meaning''is merely the attempt to find simple principles where there are none, or where they lie outside our ability to discern them. For instance, calamaties induced by natural forces such as the weather or seismic activity were at one time interpreted as acts of vengence wrought by a wrathful god; since we now have the ability to track the weather with sattelites and the earth with seismographs, and have developed purely physical theories for the origins (although not always the means of predicting the occurence of) natural calamities, fearing that a vengeful God has sent the floods and volcanoes is rightly considered unfounded and superstitious. We no longer need to ascribe the causes of hurricaines and earthquakes to a power that exists outside of the natural world in order for our experiences to make sense.

Moreover, human morality may leave the realm of the divine as well, as we further understand the psychological and physiological origins of human behavior. It is certain, for instance, that very few educated people would believe that people can be possessed by demons, because biochemical maladies are known to cause all of those symptoms that used to be considered signs of possession. On a still more sublte level, many aspects of a person's personality can be traced to functions of the brain and hormones, or products of a person's upringing in a family and in a society. Psychologists believe that a person's relationships with the opposite sex are strongly influenced by events in childhood. For instance, a girl who is abused repeatedly by a relative will likely have troubled relationships with men as she grows older.

On the more amusing (or perverse?) side, a recent study in Britian showed that if a young male goat is taken from its mother and instead raised by a sheep, when that goat becomes an adult, it will only be interested in mating with sheep. The same is seen with sheep raised by goats. Apparently, men really do fall in love with women who remind them of their mothers.

No such correlatin is found with young female goats, however. Men and women are truly different, if you weren't already aware.

Back to the topic, it is also likely that human morals can be best understood as originating in the demands of a social structure, rather than the righteous demands of a diety. Prohibitions agains pork in the Jewish Torah may be explained as a reaction to pork's tendency to harbor parisites--- the law is essential a public health issue that has been made authoritative by caliming that it is a direct order from a higher power. The similar prohibition against all animals ``with cloven hoofs, yet who do not chew the cud'' may be a further attempt at explaining why a diety would wish to arbitrarily prohibit pork in the first place, by making the single prohibition a subset of a larger principle. Of course, in the end the larger principle is just as arbitrary, but it might seem to be of considerably wider potential in application, and thus contain far more ``wisdom'', then the single prohibition did. Once again, the question of ``wisdom'' and ``truth'' is left unanswered.

This humanistic line of understanding the search for meaning has brought in the hypothesis that humans need to have a basis in reason for their moral imperatives. This assumption once again exposes the fact that I do not have a clear idea of why humans should need a reason for their moral actions. Clearly, some sort of order is necessary in any community; this is easily observed in the cooperation within groups of wild dogs, primates, and other animals that live in groups.

These groups exhibit two competing dynamics--- first, there exists cooperation, by which all member of a group benefit from the ability of the group to capture prey and protect and rear to young. On the other hand, the order that develops is almost inevitably heirarchical, with some members of the group receiving more food, siring more offspring, and generally getting beaten-up far less than other members. This is seen in human society as well, and yet there is no sign of religion amoung dogs and apes, while man must always ask himself, ``why is this so?'' and the spiritual leaders among men must respond with a divine purpose.

It may seem that I view religion as purely the result of a corrupt leading class trying to take advantage of the gullible underpriveledged, and that this cause eventually faded into the shrouding mists of tradition. Although I have not ruled out this possibility, I do have to wonder why such a means of convincing the masses as religion could have ever taken hold in the first place. Shamanism and religious myths seem to have existed perhaps to the time of the Neanderthals; what is it about human thought that is conducive to the spiritual? Why no we take comfort in it? Why do we need to feel confident that we have some influence over the things we cannot control becuase of our connection to the spiritual world?

What's worse, is it possible that by only relying on the ``rational'' and ``empirical'', that one can completely miss the cosmic truth that the human soul can produce?

Although my philosophy is empirical, I would never claim that the artistic and emotional aspects of human nature are invalid or inadmissible. I feel a genuine sense of wonder at both the ``physical'' aspects of the universe, everything from atoms to proteins to planets to galaxies, but also at the ``artistic'' and ``creative'' aspects of human nature. Something in mankind allows us to relate to music and to art, to find some common ``truth'' that connects us to what the artist was feeling and in turn imparts into us some of those same feelings. I must admit that I do not know for certain how these more abstruse things fit into my philosophy.

The same is true for my view of spirituality to some extent. Unfortunately, I feel that I have encountered some of the worst tendencies that are aroused by a spiritual search for ``truth''--- bigotry and fanaticism and guilt and self-loathing--- so that I have no desire to search in that realm for quite some time. The negative tendencies of religion I find frighteningly effective toward producing a cohesive and vigorous community. If this was all there was to religion, I could quickly dismiss such spirituality as a odious side-effect of the need for societies to survive.

Still, the idea of ``truth'' lies somewhere behind religion, and it insipres a reaction as if to beauty.

Perhaps the origin of religion is in fact in art. Religion speaks in the language of poetry far more than it does in the rigor of science; perhaps art and religion survive because they are essentially allegories of human emotions. When we share those emotions, we are able to sympathise with others, and that sympathy compells us to overcome our selfish desires and aid those around us. If so, then art and religion would spring from our ultimate weakness as individuals, and our need for each other. We would then be truly blessed if we removed those things from our philosophy that lead to bigorty and fanaticism, and embrace those shared emotions that allow us to scrifice our own desires for the good of others.

Although I have come to some conclusion that makes sense tonight, I somehow doubt it will tomorrow when I've gone over these thoughts again. I do not know from where truth and beauty spring, nor how they have found their way into our understanding.

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