Nature's God ?

Pathetic sophomoric journalism is a favorite hobby of mine, since I was a pathetic journalist once upon a time when I was 12 or 13. 

Now I find in one of the great publications that I read for 50 years, has hired numb-knots.

A presentation of that once great purveyor of scientific truth as well as honest inquiry, exhibits a photograph of one of  the great statues of the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, on an Asian promontory.

Beneath it is an article which announces that the adoption and worship of omniscient and punitive gods by small nomadic groups, led to larger more complex and cooperative civilization. 

Well....Um....Yes.

But there IS no punitive or omniscient God to worship in Buddhism, which is largely based on the Noble Truth that  Gautama spoke when he stepped from the Bodhi Tree:

"To live is to crave. To crave is to suffer. Therefore only with an end to craving can there be an end to suffering...."

I know it is nasty of me, but I always see evildoers in the shadows. Therefore I think that the great magazine Nature has been hijacked by progressive 2016 politically-correct cutesies.

Otherwise, they certainly would have  pictured a cross or a line drawing of Moses and the tablets, wouldn't they ? Or maybe to be more stylish, a man in a black balaclava waving a black ISIS banner...

The whole point of the "study" being reported here was the SHOCKING  revelation that "fundamentalist" RELIGION was the spark that ignited the spread of cooperation and finally, civilization! 

But the first few paragraphs of the "report" were taken up with telling how people in isolated gulags on the globe exhibited more "honesty" and "fairness" if they believed in a deity that kept track of their tribulations and triumphs and fashioned retribution and reward accordingly.

Just about any overage runaway apostate who left Sunday school, or their role as an acolyte or their synagogue-based shul would have been glad to tell the "researchers" THAT.  All that travel experience to isolate 600 people in disparate "native" locations was a waste of money and time, in the name of "Science".

Still and all, it is gratifying to have another (obviously clueless) portion of the population aware that basic arithmetic, and mathematics, the creation of languages including conjugation of verbs and the flowering of metalwork, drawing, painting, music and dance, the Renaissance, Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and the Era of Space travel ---ALL  came about because mankind learned to obey "Natural Rules".

I don't know about you but I'll go to bed with a little more optimism and we should all sleep a little more soundly knowing that maybe several pseudo-agnostics  and naysayers have stumbled on Truth.