This article is an excerpt from Chapter 12 of The Greatest Show on Earth (2009) THE SOLAR ECONOMY The natural economy is solar-powered. Photons from the sun rain down upon the entire daytime surface of the planet. Many photons do nothing more useful than heat up a rock or a sandy beach. A few find their way into an eye – yours, or mine, or the compound eye of a shrimp or the parabolic reflector eye of a scallop. Some may happen to fall on a solar panel – either a man-made one like those that, in a fit of green zeal, I have just installed on my roof to heat the bathwater, or a green leaf, which is nature’s solar panel. Plants use solar energy to drive ‘uphill’ chemical syntheses, manufacturing organic fuels, primarily sugars. ‘Uphill’ means that the synthesis of sugar needs energy to drive it; by the same token, the sugar can later be ‘burned’ in a ‘downhill’ reaction that releases (a fraction of) the energy again to do useful work, for example muscular work, or the work of building a great tree trunk. The ‘downhill’ and ‘uphill’ analogy is with water flowing downhill from a high tank and driving water wheels to do useful work; or being energetically pumped uphill into the high tank, so that it can later be used to drive water wheels when it flows downhill again. At every stage of the energy economy, whether uphill or downhill, some energy is lost – no energy transaction is ever perfectly efficient. That is why patent offices don’t need even to look at designs for perpetual motion machines: they are implacably and forever impossible. You can’t use the downhill energy from a water wheel to pump the same amount of water uphill again so that it can drive the water wheel. There must always be some energy fed in from outside to compensate for the wastage – and that is where the sun comes in. I’ll return to this important theme in Chapter 13.
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are more recent, but they have only strengthened the old Jewish narrative. These are the same ideals . . .
The transnational, transracial, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond peoples, races, cultures) and are the daily diet in our schools, in our media, in our pop culture, in our universities and on our streets, have reduced our biosymbolic identity and ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are death cults that originated in the Middle East and are completely alien to Europe and its peoples.
Sometimes one wonders why the European left gets along so well with Muslims. Why does an often openly anti-religious movement side with a fierce religiosity that seems to oppose almost everything the left always claims to stand for? Part of the explanation lies in the fact that Islam and Marxism share a common ideological root: Judaism.
Don Rumsfeld was right to say, "Europe has shifted on its axis," the wrong side has won World War II, and it is becoming clearer by the day. . . . What has NATO done to defend Europe? Absolutely nothing . . . My enemies are not in Moscow, Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh or some ethereal Germanic bogeyman, but in Washington, Brussels and Tel Aviv.
Excellent article! What a fools errand it is to waste time trying to explain human existence through “intelligent design”. We humans, like all living creatures anywhere in our universe, have evolved via natural selection. It’s laughable to think how many humans have deluded themselves through faulty logic and religious non-sense into thinking we are all “created” by an intelligent design of some kind. Our parents are the ones who “created” each of us, and some parents were more intelligent than others. One would hope that the most intelligent parents would also be the most successful in passing on their genes, but there are many other factors at play in natural selection, and intelligence often takes a back seat to other human traits. In fact, it seems to me that being intelligent in the modern world is overall a disadvantage in deciding whether to pass on one’s genes to a new generation. I also fret about social evolution selecting for unfit religious philosophies - which stubbornly seem to continue expanding at an alarming rate. It take comfort in the fact that more and more people have begun the process of realizing the folly of religion, but as a species we’re a long way from fully shrugging off the chains of the faulty thinking that finds its roots in religious dogma. Keep up the incredible work you do Mr. Dawkins!
Thank you for this. I have been reading about the horrific war in Israel/Gaza and the horrible suffering. It seems clear that it is driven by people who believe in a "designer". In some way, this distorted belief must be selected, as it is complex, enduring and expensive (possibly because it is so stupid). Thoughts?
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are more recent, but they have only strengthened the old Jewish narrative. These are the same ideals . . .
The transnational, transracial, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond peoples, races, cultures) and are the daily diet in our schools, in our media, in our pop culture, in our universities and on our streets, have reduced our biosymbolic identity and ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are death cults that originated in the Middle East and are completely alien to Europe and its peoples.
Sometimes one wonders why the European left gets along so well with Muslims. Why does an often openly anti-religious movement side with a fierce religiosity that seems to oppose almost everything the left always claims to stand for? Part of the explanation lies in the fact that Islam and Marxism share a common ideological root: Judaism.
Don Rumsfeld was right to say, "Europe has shifted on its axis," the wrong side has won World War II, and it is becoming clearer by the day. . . . What has NATO done to defend Europe? Absolutely nothing . . . My enemies are not in Moscow, Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh or some ethereal Germanic bogeyman, but in Washington, Brussels and Tel Aviv.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
The most interesting explanation on this subject I’ve ever had; thank you Mr Dawkins.
Excellent article! What a fools errand it is to waste time trying to explain human existence through “intelligent design”. We humans, like all living creatures anywhere in our universe, have evolved via natural selection. It’s laughable to think how many humans have deluded themselves through faulty logic and religious non-sense into thinking we are all “created” by an intelligent design of some kind. Our parents are the ones who “created” each of us, and some parents were more intelligent than others. One would hope that the most intelligent parents would also be the most successful in passing on their genes, but there are many other factors at play in natural selection, and intelligence often takes a back seat to other human traits. In fact, it seems to me that being intelligent in the modern world is overall a disadvantage in deciding whether to pass on one’s genes to a new generation. I also fret about social evolution selecting for unfit religious philosophies - which stubbornly seem to continue expanding at an alarming rate. It take comfort in the fact that more and more people have begun the process of realizing the folly of religion, but as a species we’re a long way from fully shrugging off the chains of the faulty thinking that finds its roots in religious dogma. Keep up the incredible work you do Mr. Dawkins!
Thank you for this. I have been reading about the horrific war in Israel/Gaza and the horrible suffering. It seems clear that it is driven by people who believe in a "designer". In some way, this distorted belief must be selected, as it is complex, enduring and expensive (possibly because it is so stupid). Thoughts?