Hm, you may ask questions, honey... I'm a rather poor solicitor for any psychologic problems, as I'm a typical representant of people devoted to natural sciences. Just one of those kids who can exactly explain you the molecular mechanisms of that lung cancer your pipe-smoking grandmother is suffering from, but absolutely helpless when she actually dies and you cannot stop crying.
Therefore I will keep only on natural science, OK?
As far as the evolution is concerned, the newer research is mostly dealing with population genetics. All the staff we have learned from Darwin is true, but it works
statistically. This means, a specific gene may not necessarily bring some
direct advantage or disadvantage to the specific individual. At the end, an especially usefull gene can be found more often in a population until majority (not all!) of individuals have it. But most of our genes have no special purpose, they are not especially good or bad for the individual or the population. Indeed, most of our DNA is trash, an absolutely useless ballast, deactivated by molekular locks, just like the mass of an old computer programm code, modified over and over again for the last 25 years.
So I would not put any of our little or big diseases or "disorders" to a podest of an evolutionary achievement... Each of us has his own cross to bear - be it a predisposition for the Parkinson desease, Alzheimer, cancer, AIDS, epilepsy or shizophrenia, or whatever. We are paticipants in this big experiment called "Life on Earth" and, unfortunately,
we are the laboratory rats. There is no escape and no mercy, one just has to go his way through this life with dignity end enjoy the
good things one encounters and be gratefull for meeting reasonable fellow creatures. It's true as well, that some people are more sensitive than others and suffer their existence harder than others - without any obvious additional reasons. It's sad but you should not look for any guilt at your place - this is just life.
All this suffering and the cruelties of the life (think on the "nutrition pyramide") strenghten my belief that no sensible "God" can be made responsible for the result of the evolution. It just came this way. Just make small experiment in your aquarium: put some worms, some small fishes and a couple of piranhas together and look 1 h later inside - hmmm, about the same result as we can generally see on this planet.
However, one cannot deny that initially, religions were very important elements of human civilisatory developement - they taught people what is right and what is wrong, explained the way the world is functioning and provided certain spiritual relief for all the frightened ones. These natural religious vere
dynamic - the elders and shamans modified the particular regulations depending on new circumstances, so they still could serve the needs of society. As time went by, new religions emerged and have found tremendous spread with the rise of states and empires - mostly the sword and fire were used as the method of choice for reluctant ones. Now, as we know pretty well, how the world is functioning, the use of religions is overcome and the civilization on this planet should make a step forward - towards new ethics based on knowledge and philosophy. It's too convenient to adopt one's moral and ethics from a single book without thinking, but it requires a little bit more intellectual constraints to develope one's own, funded ethics.
On one point I have to agree to you - our societies, in general, are not sufficiently developed from the social point of view. We learn maths but no psychology; we learn to repair bycicles but not how to deal with emotional problems of our fellow creatures. However, I'm positive on this specific topic in future: once we have burned all the oil, digged all the metalls out and extinguished most of the forests, we will come back to a non-industrial society... Then we'll have nothing else to do but talk... about our priblems!
Regards, and - always look at the bright side of life.
Vicky
