against materialism – Harmonia Philosophica

Eugenics works! So why not use it? A hard problem begging for a simple answer…

Photo by **Spiros Kakos** from **Pexels**

In a recent online discussion where the idea of modern eugenics was brought up, many people were against it. Since eugenics bring up correlations with the Nazis it is easy for most people to discard such ideas as wrong or unethical. It is obvious that applying eugenics is wrong.

But all obvious things are very hard to prove.

In this case, someone simply asked “Why shouldn’t we engineer a baby not being sick?” and since then, this simple question has stuck into my mind. Sure, eugenics seems obviously wrong. But why? Why shouldn’t we make better babies? Only because we have bad memories of some people who at some point in time used similar techniques to do bad?

This sounds as stupid as fearing nuclear energy because at some point the US Air Force dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. Surely it did happen, but one has nothing to do with the other.

So why is eugenics wrong?

Why shouldn’t we eradicate disease if we can?

The argument that “eugenics will not work and will cause probably more disease” is a plausible one, but yet it is not enough. For sure eugenics are currently not so advanced that it is error-free. Editing the genome of a person could result in numerous other mutations that could in turn result in more dreadful diseases than the ones we try to eradicate. But this argument does not answer the question at hand. It simply defers the answer. What if we had a way to have a working method for eugenics and for editing genome without problems? Would we then accept eugenics as something good?

Imagining this perfect scenario where we have mastered eugenics in such a way that it can produce perfect humans with no diseases whatsoever, is the key to the answer we seek. You see, the problem of technology as Heidegger put it, is not that it does not work, but that it does.

Humans without disease.

Humans not dying.

Humans perfect in any way.

This is our dream. But we have been into that dream for so long, that we have forgotten it is a nightmare. Humans not dying, means humans enslaved into the material world were we do not belong in the first place. A cosmos without disease and pain, means a world where there are no warning signs. We might all fear pain and death, but philosophy does strongly indicate that these might not be issues after all, in a cosmos which strongly suggests that the material aspect is insignificant in front of the spiritual one that engulfs it. A world with perfect humans, is not a dream of a rational man but the hubris of an irrational psychopath looking for perfection is a world which is nothing but. A world with people not dying is no different than a world full of zombies.

In simpler words: Yes, a car might get you faster where you go. But that does not say anything whether your destination is the right one.

Eugenics is a way to build on modern materialistic dogmatism and enhance it to new unprecedented heights.

But is materialism correct as a philosophy?

Is the cosmos made of matter only?

Do you breath only because your cells do?

Do you think because your brain does?

Do you love because of chemistry?

Do you cry because of molecular interactions?

Sorry to break the news, but if your answer to the above is “Yes”, then it doesn’t even matter if eugenics works or not.

Because you are already dead.

Killing humans. By analyzing rocks. [Brake that rock!]

University of California, Berkeley neuroscientists have tracked the progress of a thought through the brain, showing clearly how the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain coordinates activity to help us act in response to a perception.

Recording the electrical activity of neurons directly from the surface of the brain, the scientists found that for a simple task, such as repeating a word presented visually or aurally, the visual and auditory cortexes reacted first to perceive the word. The prefrontal cortex then kicked in to interpret the meaning, followed by activation of the motor cortex in preparation for a response. During the half-second between stimulus and response, the prefrontal cortex remained active to coordinate all the other brain areas. (1)

In another research, scientists have unveiled incredible images of how the DNA code is read and interpreted – revealing new detail about one of the fundamental processes of life. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, captured images of molecular machinery called RNA Polymerase III in the act of transcribing a gene in exquisite and unprecedented detail. (2)

We apply human-related words to lifeless matter and we believe that this actually means something. The cortex “reacts”, the cortex “interprets”, the cortex “prepares a response”, cells “read” the DNA…

We have created a universe with no humans inside, where only “objects” exist. And then we have given to these objects life. We have not only excommunicated our soul from the universe. We have trapped it inside rocks…

The only way out is to break that rock.

To analyze everything and see for ourselves.

To search deep inside until we see everything.

And only then will we see…

That we are inside that rock…

Resurrection? Difficult to believe? But it happens all the time. And science is the first to acknowledge it!

Life on Earth originated in an intimate partnership between the nucleic acids (genetic instructions for all organisms) and small proteins called peptides, according to two new papers from biochemists and biologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Auckland. Their “peptide-RNA” hypothesis contradicts the widely-held “RNA-world” hypothesis, which states that life originated from nucleic acids and only later evolved to include proteins.

The papers – one in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the other in Biosystems – showed how recent experimental studies of two enzyme super-families surmount the tough theoretical questions about how complex life emerged on Earth more than four billion years ago.

“Until now, it has been thought to be impossible to conduct experiments to penetrate the origins of genetics,” said co-author Charles Carter, PhD, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine. “But we have now shown that experimental results mesh beautifully with the ‘peptide-RNA’ theory, and so these experiments provide quite compelling answers to what happened at the beginning of life on Earth”.

The special attributes of the ancestral versions of these enzyme super-families, and the self-reinforcing feedback system they would have formed with the first genes and proteins, would have kick-started early biology and driven the first life forms toward greater diversity and complexity, the researchers said. (1)

Whenever we talk about resurrection we tend to say difficult it is for someone to believe it. It is something extraordinary after all, is it not? And yet… it seems that resurrection is not something so rare but rather something common! All it takes is to see the phenomenon from a different point of view.

Resurrection happens all the time!

In front of our very eyes!

And science is the first to acknowledge it!

We are created by simple dead matter and yet, we are now alive. We are made of soulless soil and yet, we grow up to the sky. We are thrown into a cold dark cosmos and yet, all we see is the light. We are living in a meaningless universe and yet, we constantly strive to discover a meaning which we somehow know it is there…

We are dead men. Lifeless sets of matter.

Who were born out of nothing.

Who got the breath of life and came to be.

Ask science. It will tell you that you are not supposed to even exist – let alone ponder on your own existence and on the meaning of your life. There is the proof you need. Inside every lab. Inside every scientific paper. Raw matter resurrected. Every passing second…

Materialistic dogmatism in modern science. Just another example of the many…

[…] the rise of modern neuroscience has seen a more pragmatic approach gain ground: an approach that is guided by philosophy but doesn’t rely on philosophical research to provide the answers. Its key is to recognise that explaining why consciousness exists at all is not necessary in order to make progress in revealing its material basis – to start building explanatory bridges from the subjective and phenomenal to the objective and measurable.

In my work at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex in Brighton, I collaborate with cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, brain imagers, virtual reality wizards and mathematicians – and philosophers too – trying to do just this. And together with other laboratories, we are gaining exciting new insights into consciousness – insights that are making real differences in medicine, and that in turn raise new intellectual and ethical challenges. In my own research, a new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and bodies work together to maintain physiological integrity – to stay alive. In this story, we are conscious ‘beast-machines’, and I hope to show you why. […] (1)

This is how an article written by a scientists reads in the beginning!

Impossible. And yet true.

Modern dogmatism is just crude. The “material basis” is just something scientists now state at the BEGINNING of their papers/ articles, as if it is something self-evident. They use the very same thing they should be looking to analyze as BASIS for their conclusions!

This is how it always is minutes before collapse.

Arrogance brakes in…

Cornered in the dead-end of consciousness research, humans will someday have to face their worst and most fearsome enemy: Themselves…

And at the end, where Consciousness is waiting free from the bondage of the material body, the truth awaits smiling.

A faint smile…

Cannot be detected with an MRI…

Materialism. The poison of our age.

Scientists “discovering” the source of things in… things…

Depression’s physical source seems to be discovered, or at least this is what some scientists claim. Thanks to new research the understanding of the physical root of depression has been advanced since researchers have identified the lateral orbitofrontal cortex as the area of the brain affected by depression. The human medial (reward-related, OFC13) and lateral (non-reward-related, OFC47/12) orbitofrontal cortex networks show different functional connectivity in patients with depression. This discovery could open up possible new treatments, say the researchers. (1)

Scientists find new genetic roots of schizophrenia: Using a recently developed technology for analyzing DNA, scientists have found dozens of genes and two major biological pathways that are likely involved in the development of the disorder but had not been uncovered in previous genetic studies of schizophrenia. (2)

Materialism. The dogma which has poisoned our age.

We have always been afraid to grow up.

We have always been afraid to have free will.

We always wanted to be machines.

We always wanted to be nothing.

Be careful what you wish.

It usually comes true…

And through this example of exertion of free will, humans managed to actually become machines, thus proving that matter is not only illusive but can be actually manipulated by the mind and the mind alone.

Take a look at that rock.

It is not a rock…