Thursday, February 25, 2010

Fascinating

Human civilization is older than we thought. I love discoveries like this that shake up what we thought we knew and force us to rethink our assumptions.

Not everyone does, of course. It makes me wonder how the young-earth creationists will spin (or dismiss) this to keep the age of the universe within their 6,000-year time frame.

Even more noteworthy than the age of the ruins, to me at least, is how this discovery suggests that religious observance predates every other aspect of human civilization, rather than being its byproduct. Such evidence that spirituality is an innate human trait may not prove the existence (or nonexistence) of God, but it does allow for the possibility that we long for something beyond the world around us because there's something beyond this world to long for.

1 comment:

Doorman-Priest said...

The thing is Eugene, when one is right one doesn't have to justify anything. The others have got it wrong.