You Are Among the Most Well-Informed Humans ...
(Top Posts - Science - 032101)

... who have ever lived.

You have access to a more detailed and thorough explan-
ation of our natural world than most of the humans who
have ever lived, by far, due to your ability to build on the
knowledge of the past and access a wide knowledge base
which, thanks to the internet in no small way, is increasing
the ability of people to have a level of confidence regarding
the natural world that was not available to prior generations.

If you were born just 230 short years ago, at the age of 30
you would know nothing of the fossil record, DNA, genetics,
evolution, dinosaurs, continental drift, the age of the earth,
the age of the universe, the tens of billions of galaxies with
hundreds of millions of stars per galaxy, black holes with
super-massive black holes acting as the central core of
galaxies, the big bang, the expansion of the universe, dark
matter making up 90 to 95 percent of matter in our particular
universe, the possibility of multiple universes, the quantum
physical world which provides in no small way a probable
explanation for the source of our particular universe, special
and general relativity, electricity, space travel, nuclear power,
and on and on.

In fact, and this is truly an amazing fact when you think about it,
you would be the most intelligent and esteemed human on the
face of the planet if you were time-transported back to 200
years ago (with a rock solid science encyclopedia in your hands)
no matter your lack of depth or self-confidence about your know-
ledge of our natural world at the current time (although it wouldn't
hurt to do a little reading to build your self-confidence before mak-
ing that journey) - that shows you how far we've come despite
our impatience with wanting to know everything-now ...

It's a steady process and over time, in our generation or one of
the next few ones, if no human or natural disasters prevent us
from doing so, we will be ever-so-close to that state of near-
complete knowledge we (the curious truth-seekers among us)
desire.

Also of interest in comparing your place in the continuum of
advancement and knowledge and scope of the humans alive
at any one time on the planet, it's amazing how low human
populations were until the modern day and age came around ...

We must find a way to balance it all, and few would argue for
a decrease in quality of life to do that, so it's a matter of finding
better ways (utilizing science for pro-human endeavors) to
accomplish the goals of supporting a 10+ billion population
on the planet which will be with us by the 22nd century (see
the chart about 1/3rd down the following page):
http://gened.emc.maricopa.edu/Bio/BIO181/BIOBK/BioBookcycles.html

This is an ever-increasing scope of knowledge on which a
better future, a more pro-human and sane future, can be built
if we, humankind, are able to free ourselves from slavery to
ancient concepts of fear, authoritarianism, hate, greed, and
slavery to invisible beings. We can and we must begin to
divorce ourselves from the religious and superstitious ignor-
ance steeped within human cultures due to our evolutionary
heritage, and work towards a humanity of all humans for all
humans, in this life, at this time, on this earth and beyond.

Our religious-steeped notions of humans born as worthless
beings unless they follow the social/religious order, treating
humans as disposable waste, setting icons of demand for
worship/slavery to state/church or else, and continuing to
promote "us vs. them" ways of life which legitimizes ignoring
basic human needs, those ancient and anti-human founding
stones for living must go, along with the immoral and evil
threats/delusions inflicted upon children who have no way
to defend against such ancient insanities.