POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Road Rage, Fermi’s Paradox, Hard Wiring and God

I have a theory. It’s a little odd, but I think there’s some evidence here that if twisted AGWlly, it might make some sense…

If not, well then, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

DATA POINT #1

Road rage (violence exhibited by drivers in traffic) is on the increase and is recognized as a condition in the UK, the US, and Australia. I have personally experienced and witnessed road rage in Nigeria, Liberia and Cameroon. At the risk of making broad, sweeping assumptions, I would guess that humans experience road rage when there’s a road with multiple drivers on it.

DATA POINT #2

Fermi’s Paradox (the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations) might find an answer here. While not original, one explanation is that those “other” civilizations are avoiding us. My theory is that they are working hard at staying away because of road rage.

DATA POINT #3

“The brain is "hard-wired" with connections much like a skyscraper or airplane is hard-wired with electrical wiring. In the case of the brain, the connections are made by neurons that connect the sensory inputs and motor outputs with centers in the various lobes of the cortex.” There are also connections between these cortical centers and other parts of the brain.” In my theory, the amygdala, basal ganglia, limbic system and the pre-central gyrus are hard-wired together to create a basic sense of territoriality in the human animal. It is this that drives us to say “mine!”

DATA POINT #4

Even those who love and follow God discover that theology (the study of God) cannot help us. It’s a matter of faith (like the extraterrestrian belief in aliens despite no verifiable proof). Those who don’t believe in God say that the idea of God is ridiculous because they can’t understand God; or “gods are crutches”; or God is for the intellectually weak; or that we are in charge of our own destiny, there is no God.

LEAST SQUARES FIT

(When plotting data points on a graph, the least-squares-fit is the line or curve that comes closest to going through all the points
www.sciencemaster.com/physical/item/earthquake_glossary.php ).

In my mind, the line describes this: No one has contacted us because we are hard-wired to be territorial. This hard-wiring creates road rage because we perceive the 144 square feet around our car as “our territory”. We set our own speed limit. We listen to our own music. When someone invades, we fight back. We typically ignore brief incursions, but lash out when the invasion is intentional. (Extraterrestrians will insist that in order to go into space in the first place, extraterrestrials MUST be territorial because it’s the only thing that could drive space exploration. I will point out the singular genius in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS for an investigation of a different exploration-driving hard-wiring.) I propose that our type of hard-wiring is not the norm among the intelligences in our galactic arm. They prefer we stay here and learn us some genetic engineering to de-hard-wire ourselves.

Humans find it very hard to accept God, in particular the Christian God, because we cannot understand how someone who HAD it all GAVE it all away. That makes no sense to us on a genetic level. The billion of us who believe that way do so by faith alone – which is the ONLY way belief in Christ can happen. It’s NOT an intellectual compulsion nor is it a biological compulsion.

In summary: Humanity is territorial due to cerebral hard-wiring which causes road rage while at the same time making it difficult to believe in a God who gave up all His territory for our sake and has also prevented First Contact between Humans and alien cultures.

Comments?

image: http://888redlight.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/roadrage.jpg