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Meditation 1255
Re-Imagining Religion: human intelligence

by: Gordon Barthel

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I dream of a religion that champions humanity’s most important resource as the human brain, the large, highly evolved encephalon inside every citizen’s skull, for it is the human brain that allowed our ancestors to domesticate fire, it is the human brain that permitted our ancestors to fashion stones into knives, axes, spearheads and arrowheads, it is the human encephalon that enabled our ancestors to craft animal hides into clothes and tents.

I dream of a religion that teaches our most important resource is our intelligence, the cognition within our cerebellums, for it is the mortal intellect that enables us to turn trees into homes and stones into temples, it is our imaginative intellects that allows us to turn cotton and wool into fabrics that we can then turn into garments and linens, it is our ingenuity that permits us to cultivate crops and domesticate animals so we can then feed millions of people.

I dream of a religion that preaches our greatest natural resource is the intelligence cradled inside every human skull, for it is our creative intelligence that enables us to exploit fossil fuels and turn wind and sun into useable energy, it is our inquisitive intellects that allows us to study everything from atoms to galaxies, ants to dinosaurs, and the culinary arts to the performing arts, it is our highly evolved cerebellums that grant us the ability to study the heavens and put footprints on the moon and rovers on Mars.

I dream of a religion that believes our greatest natural resource is the innate intelligence lurking behind the eyes of each and every citizens, for it is our intelligence that enables us to study the nature of intelligence itself, human, nonhuman and artificial intelligence, and it is our intelligence that gives us the cognitive ability to be good stewards of this beautiful blue planet.

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