This life or the next?

Last night I finished the book, Humans by Robert J. Sawyer. It is the middle book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, the other two books being Hominids and Hybrids. I'll start reading the 3rd book soon. The story is about an alternate universe in which humans died out instead of Neanderthals and what happens when a portal opens between the two versions of earth. This gives the author a chance to contrast the mess we've made of earth and the craziness by which we do things with a society that did things differently. We don't have to be stupid about things (though in some cases it would be hugely expensive to change now).

The story is mostly about human Mary Vaughn and male Neanderthal Ponter Boddit, both scientists. At one point, as part of explaining what humans are like, she takes him to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. He finds the reasons for the war and the humans reacting to the memorial to be quite illogical. I like his suggestion that all future presidents must declare war in front of that memorial. If they find they can't it is a war not worth fighting.

Ponter also says our belief in an afterlife leads us to devalue our current life. If we are promised heaven we are too willing to sacrifice ourselves for causes that may not otherwise be worth it.

That got me to think about the Right's view of the importance of getting that fetus born, then seeming to neglect it afterwards. That baby must be born for it to have a place in heaven (or hell), but once born the goal isn't this life, but the next one. It doesn't matter how brutish this life is because the next one is so wonderful and if some tragedy helps prepare you for the next one, all the better. These are my thoughts, put together from the Right's actions and not necessarily from any of their stated beliefs.

This idea is closely related to another that's been going through my head for a few years now. When our focus is on the next life we think nothing of being rather nasty to each other in this life. We do all kinds of trickery an coercion to make sure someone is "saved" and feel smug and superior to those who are not.

Related to that, the October issue of Michigan Christian Advocate has an article about Rita Nakashima Brock and her presentation before a meeting of area pastors. The article mentioned her new book Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire coauthored with Rebecca Ann Parker. Here is a summary of the book from Amazon: The authors did research around the Mediterranean and found none of the artwork from the First Millennium of the Christian era showed Christ as dead. The emphasis was on the living Christ and how to bring Paradise to earth for the benefit of those living now. It took a thousand years for Christ to die and when he finally did, that's all he did. With the emphasis on the crucifixion Christianity became a religion of torture, "redemptive" violence, and holy war. That got stretched into imperial tendencies -- Christ supports that we are conquering you. That view of early Christianity fits with my idea that we shouldn't focus on how Christ died to make us fit for heaven, but that he lived to bring paradise to earth. The November issue of the MCA contained a letter condemning Brock as being so far off base that her theology is no longer Christian -- which, considering how quick Fundies are to brand those who disagree with them as heretics, sounds like a recommendation for the book. I haven't ordered it yet.

Back to the Neanderthal book. It features a discussion amongst a group of archaeologists, Ponter included, about whether agriculture was central to the development of cities and culture. Ponter said his culture had never farmed, then stayed out of the debate. A hunter-gatherer society doesn't really need to spend all that much time acquiring food -- maybe 15 hours a week -- and, if they spend more time at it, they run the risk of depleting their food sources. They want small families because they want fewer mouths to feed and value the elderly for their knowledge and wisdom of how, when, and where to hunt. In contrast, a farming society can increase their amount of food by increasing the land under cultivation. They can feed more people, but need to spend much more time at food production, to where it becomes a full-time job. More children mean more hands to do the work, leading to a population explosion. The young are valued for their strength. To me this means the only reason to get into agriculture is greed, and that way of living is ultimately not sustainable (though farm technology vastly extends what can be sustained). Alas, it is the only way we have to feed the over 6 billion people we have now.

Some of the Amazon reviews of this book say it is too preachy and does little to extend the plot. Because of that the first book is better.