6th extinction

As many others have noted, the descendants of the first hunter-gatherers that became agriculturalists wrote the founding document of the Judeo-Christian tradition. I’m referring of course to Genesis: “God said…be…

In the science fiction classic “2001, A Space Odyssey,” HAL, the all too human-like computer, malfunctions and kills the hibernating crewmembers, and then snuffs out the life of one of…

As I approach my main meditation place, I’m shocked to see a young woman performing fallatio on a young man in a hammock. Dismayed, I walk upstream to an alternate…

For at least 100,000 years, since ‘modern man’ first emerged from East Africa, we humans have been as we are—tribal, self-centered and dominated by the extremely powerful adaptive strategy of…

A reader in the Middle East wrote giving voice to a central concern of this column. “There is indeed an evolutionary process taking place with consciousness, but that process takes…

It’s widely known that some Neanderthals buried their dead, inspiring some anthropologists to deduce that Neanderthals were religious. Perhaps we should find out what it means to be religious before…