Of Allegories, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB/META and @Brianrrs37 on Twitter)

If not to question social norms
Ones eons old, of dark skies
Before we learned to use fire
Curiosity our desire

Of times when we thought our blood pump
Was the seat of our intellect, our passions, emotions
Of times we thought epilepsy was demon possession
Of times when menopause was hysteria

If not to question social norms
Ones eons old, of dark skies
Before we knew the heliocentric relationship
Between terra firma and the giant hydrogen ball

Of times of fangs in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungry
In other times it was rumored that Countess Bathroy
Would bath in her victim’s blood
In her vanity to keep her beauty

Of times of half falcon half man
Of times of half horse half man
Of times two men with wings of wax
Daedalus and Icarus flew too close to the sun

Plato, Plato, what have you done
Your idea of “essence” Dawkins shuns
It intwined politics, religion, under the gun
Chasing utopias until we’re gone

If not to question social norms
Ones eons old, of shadows
On cave walls, what academia calls
Calls us to do , always, always

Will I question you.
(end)

“If our species never question social norms our species never would have left the caves”, <– Brian James Rational Poet.

Notes on this poem:

Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Greatest Show On Earth” in the preface he makes the bold claim that Plato’s idea of “essence” was deeply flawed and lead people to chase for that perfect thing. And we all know there is no such thing as perfect. In that striving for perfection it infected critical social structures such as philosophy, politics and religions.

“Things are not what they seem” is the theme of “The Allegory Of The Cave” an that there is a bigger world outside the cave with a different view or a bigger perspective. But Plato unfortunately did not have the modern benefit of the principle of scientific method as we know it today with the principles of falsification, replication and peer review.

So to me Plato was only half right. He was right to question, and he did value that. But to me, that morphed into religion as an excuse to not seek answers but fish for excuses to cling to what you feel is true.

So when you hear a religious apologist say “Go ahead ask me some questions” what they are really doing, is inviting you to listen to their sales pitch. They are not interested in you really kicking the tires or checking the engine. They are not interested in you asking if you can hand their claims over to independent sources they have no control over.

DISCLIAMER: Full disclosure, I could not get past the preface into the nitty gritty science of the kingdom phylum classification, it was like reading hieroglyphics.

But I do understand the simple concept of DNA in the 4 amino acids Adenine , Thymine, and Guanine, Cytosine.

If you want to think of the diversity of life you can think of it like all the graphics and programming you see on your computer stemming from two choices, zero’s and ones called machine language. Now imagine that much more diversity is coming from not two choices, but four choices. Or two base pairs Adenine + Thymine and Guanine + Cytosine.

You can think of the chimp human cousin relationship a lot like you can consider Twitter and Facebook don’t look alike, but are both in the class of “social media” just like chimps and humans are in the class of “ape”. But even your laptop is related to a toaster because both are “electronic” which would be less related “DNA” because there was more evolution between the first toaster and a laptop. The electricity is the four choices(amino acids) DNA all electronics share, and the toaster and laptop are simply different outcomes of the evolution of electronics. I hope that is a satisfactory metaphor on my part.

But it is why we can see that grass although not a palm tree, are related. Why a tiger and domestic house cat are related. As incredible as it may seem theists, it is absolutely true, like it or not, you are related to cockroaches too, but fortunately not that closely related. Point being ALL LIFE has the 4 amino acids Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine.

Richard Dawkins has in the past basically said that it is a mistake to think of DNA as “mixing paint” but rather “shuffling a deck of cards”. If I am remembering correctly, he said that the uniform back of the deck is the DNA that all life shares, and the face of the card are the slight differences over long periods of time.

Before someone says, “You are talking about science but you didn’t get through the book”. Well one can know how to drive a car even though they can’t build one from scratch. I still understand the overall concept.