 
"Although capable of beautiful acts, we humans have many flaws that have negative ramifications throughout society. Arguably the chief among these is an egocentricity - we struggle to identify sufficiently closely with others who are different or live in circumstances different from ourselves. We appear to be incapable of changing our behaviour enough on our own and this poses a threat to our continued existence on earth. We have the technologies to destroy our own, other species and our environment without the moral capacity to foresee the long-term consequences. This extended essay points very convincingly to the need of the hour - a wisdom that is evident in humble, ancient and counter-intuitive sources, but most especially in the Wise Man himself."

Doug Rawlings (PhD, DSc),, Emeritus Professor, Department of Microbiology University of Stellenbosch

### Microbes and the Master:

### How God uses the brainless to expose human folly

Mike L Anderson

Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Mike L Anderson

ISBN 9781370181650

Discover other titles by Mike L Anderson at Smashwords.com

<http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mikelanderson>

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non- commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. This ebook is freeware and may not be sold.

Unless otherwise stated, quotations from the Bible are taken from Holy Bible: New International Version, Copyright © 1978 by the International Bible Society, New York.

To conserve trees, please try to avoid printing this document.

### Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife Janice who is small in ego and big in wisdom and who humbly said, when I told her of this dedication, "I wouldn't say that."

### Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many people, but wish to especially thank Professor Doug Rawlins and Dr Allen Goddard for their comments and criticisms and my ever-faithful editor, Dr Andrew Potts.

### Table of Contents

Microbes are a marvel

Microbes are humble co-operators

Not a brain between them

Microbes know the best way home

Microbes don't fall for diet fads

Microbes make optimal choices

Microbes know the real threats

Humans misjudge the size of threats

Knowledge and wisdom

Our affective system

Threats humans face

Salt seals their fate

The most insidiously violent person of the 20th century

Poisoning the public

Bamboozling the public

Essential experts excluded

The spiritually insidious

The folly of faith in self-sufficient reason

The folly of faith in progress

The folly of faith in civilization

Atrocities even worse than war

The very worst form of atrocity

The "wisdom" that come from below

The wisdom that comes from above

About Mike L Anderson

Other titles by Mike L Anderson

Notes

### Microbes are a marvel

If "two are better than one" (Ecclesiastes 4:9), then many brains will be better than none, right? It is going to seem bizarre and this is not going to go down well with the intellectually proud, but scientists are discovering that microbes without brains can make decisions that are wiser than those made by humans. The particular microbes that we will consider are called slime moulds, but they are amoebae not moulds at all. They are only distantly related to fungi, plants and animals. If you think that finding wisdom in extremely stupid creatures is odd, bear in mind that locusts do not have much of a brain and yet the Bible points to them as illustrations of _extreme_ wisdom (Proverbs 30:24-27). Perhaps wisdom is something quite different to intelligence as cognitive and evolutionary psychologists are saying. Used wisely, intelligence is a great blessing from God, but used foolishly, as we will see, it is a terrible curse.

These microbes are simple creatures without a brain and with big problems. Their environment is replete with risks. Yet they are able to thrive by assessing and responding appropriately and proportionately. How microbes cope strategically with threats is a wonder of nature. As we unfold how they do it, we will discover what they have that predisposes them to wisdom. We will also discover why it is that humans have a predisposition to poor judgement. We tend to over-react to lesser overt threats such as snakes and under-react to more insidious ones such as toxins. Many if not most would venture that a blatantly malevolent Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse-tung were the most dangerous individuals of the 20th century. However, we will see that this distinction needs to go to another who is regarded as a hero but who has caused death and suffering on an even more massive scale. He was an extremely intelligent and educated man, but a foolishly reckless one. It is, however, too superficial to make him the monstrous culprit behind all the devastation. This is because, as we will see, he himself is the product of insidious forces. His all-consuming faith was not in Christ, but in very toxic ideas that started to gain ground centuries earlier. We will trace those ideas and why it is that they had such terrible consequences. We will see that intelligence and knowledge in themselves will not ensure us a future but can very easily accelerate our demise.

If you come away from this book merely having learnt a lot, its objective would have failed. What we need most crucially is wisdom, and I hope this book does something towards that. We can learn some wisdom from microbes, but with our knowledge, intelligence, and technology comes the imperative for a special wisdom from the Master. Taking risks is serious even for earthly matters. How much more so for spiritual matters? We will see that knowing the Master himself is the surest path to deep wisdom and abundant and eternal life.

Microbes are humble co-operators

There is unconscious conniving happening right under our feet all the time but we miss it because it is tiny creatures that are doing it. It has taken the exquisitely dedicated research of John Bonner and others to unravel what these creatures are up to.1 When times are good, the solitary amoebae of the cellular group of slime moulds (see accompanying picture2) such as _Dictyostelium_ _discoidium_ , or Dictyo as they are affectionately called, avoid each other while foraging for soil bacteria. Every now and then the cells reproduce by splitting into two. A remarkable thing happens when the going gets tough. The tough might get going, but the wise snuggle up. It is almost as if King Solomon had been tutored by _Dictyostelium_ about "a time to embrace and a time to refrain" (Ecclesiastes 3:5).

When the amoebae are stressed they start seeking each other out and clumping together. The cells are on a mission - to move away from an area where food is scarce to where food is plentiful and for that they need to cooperate with each other. The problem is too big for them to solve individually. Small clumps form bigger clumps until a slug-like colony forms of one or two million cells. Some will form the front end while others are happy to be relegated to the backside. The slug develops a sheath that protects them from the nematode worms that prey upon them.3 Now, without even a single brain cell among them the slug or pseudoplasmodium, as it is called, behaves as a single creature. First stop - the soil surface. It is attracted there by light, warmth, moisture and oxygen. Some of the cells become sentinels. They move around inside the slug searching for infectious bacteria and engulfing them. These infected cells then drop off to die sacrificially from the infection for the sake of the colony. Such martyrdom is common among many bacterial colonies. The cells that die release nutrients that keep the colony going until conditions improve.

On the surface a strange transformation occurs. To us who belong to the animal kingdom this is going to seem like a step backward - a demotion. The adventurous slug becomes a sedentary vegetable! _Dictyostelium_ does not have an ego problem. The cells take up different positions and functions so that the animal-like slug becomes a plant-like fruiting body. Some form the basal disc, others form the stalk and still others form the head and the spores in the head.

It may be a very humble move, but it turns out to be very a wise one. _Dictyostelium_ has sacrificed mobility for the sake of _dispersal_. With their sticky surface, spores are readily dispersed by insects and other invertebrates. In effect they have said to themselves, not consciously of course, "As tiny creatures we suck at mobility, so let us forget about even trying and rather give the job to other more capable creatures." They have outsourced their transport needs. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing and to leave it to others. There is the cooperation again - now with _other_ species. Creature without brains have involved others with brains or at least others are much closer to having brains. (Insects have a sub-oesophageal ganglion for a brain). _Dictyostelium_ has come up with this remarkably strategic move despite not having a brain or perhaps _because_ it does not have a brain.

To see why, have a look at a human who is perhaps the iconic Darwin Award winner and how he dealt with his transport needs. The award commemorates "those individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion."

Brian was a 25-year old man who drove, while drunk, an unregistered, uninsured snowmobile, at night, at reckless speed, without a helmet. He hit a tree, killing himself. There is something very wrong with Brian, but it is emphatically _not_ idiocy. He had the intelligence, skill and knowledge to be employed in a very responsible job - to promote snowmobile safety and respond to snowmobile emergencies! If he were an idiot he would not have been able to qualify for his position. Notice how intelligence can be a mixed blessing (as can technology). It contributed towards his proficiency in operating the vehicle, but in this situation, far from aiding him, colluded with the alcohol and testosterone mix and the technology to give him the confidence to behave in such a blithely reckless fashion and not call on a taxi for his transport needs. The technology in itself may be terrific, but in the hands of the foolish it becomes terrible. To say he is an idiot is to insult those who are mentally disabled, but who are wise enough to keep within their limits and rely on others who are cleverer than them. His deficiency was not in intelligence, but in wisdom. It has been summed up aptly, "Clearly, while others have been as foolish as Brian in their choice of recreational activities, few have been so uniquely aware of the possible concussions and repercussions prior to making that choice!"4

There you have it. In the matter of transport, stupid slime moulds make wise decisions whereas an intelligent human made a foolishly risky one. We tend to find this paradoxical because we persist in mistakenly equating stupidity with foolishness and wisdom with intelligence. As cognitive psychologist, Robert Sternberg points out, "The large majority of behaviors that we refer to as stupid are not stupid as opposed to intelligent, but, rather, foolish as opposed to wise."5 Indeed, it _takes intelligence_ to be really foolish ... and really evil. The Western tradition struggles to see animals as wise because, as we will see later, we tend to see wisdom as an intellectual virtue.

An elegant experiment has been done to discover some of the conditions under which folly appears.6 Several teams were given the task of solving a problem that could _not_ be solved by any one particular team member. The solution required a range of expertise. The teams varied both in the level of skill of their members and in whether integration of skills took place. In the case of integration, the members understood and deferred to each other's skills. The results were striking and are reproduced below. You might think that the team with the lower skills and no integration would be the least successful. Not so. The team that was least successful was the one with _high_ skill and no integration! (see accompanying figure). Why did this happen? The key is that the problem was too big for any one expert to solve. When expertise was high and integration non-existent one expert would lord it over the others. When expertise was average but integration happened, the combined expertise was greater and sufficient to solve the problem.

Notice that in the worst case, the very cleverness of individuals worked against them in finding a solution. When problems are bigger than individuals, we need something else in addition to cleverness to solve them. That something was discovered a long time ago by _Dictystelium_ \- it is the wisdom and humility to cooperate with others.

We saw earlier that the sentinel cells sacrifice themselves for the sake of the slug. There are other sacrifices that happen. Those individuals that went to make up the stalk all die. In their own way the spores have also made a sacrifice. They may go dormant for years without feeding, hardly living, without any at fun at all. How is that for delayed gratification? In effect, this is dispersal in time. They go without for the sake of the next generation. If a spore happens upon favourable conditions, germination is triggered. An amoebae will emerge and the cycle is completed.

It has been discovered recently that _Dictyostelium_ is quite agricultural in its wisdom. When its bacterial food supply starts to dwindle, it does consume it entirely. No, it preserves some of the bacteria to incorporate them into the spore capsule. It is a farmer of bacteria! As a spore germinates it innoculates the surrounding soil with some bacteria.

Contrast this behaviour with that of the humans who discovered the flightless dodo on the island of Mauritius. To them it was like a big chicken that did not run away when they were looking for lunch. "As dense as a dodo" seems very apt. You might think that the dodo is pathetic in its stupidity, but the dodo could not help being what it was. Since there had been no predators on the island, it had not evolved any response. The really pathetic ones were the humans who had the capacity to see that the dodo population was dwindling and had the ability to ensure a breeding population but chose not to do so. The dodos were stupid, the humans foolish and _Dictyostelium_ wise!

The name that humans have given to the family in which _Dictyostelium_ belongs is Acrasidae. It comes from the Greek meaning "acting against one's judgement" - how ironic considering its humble wisdom. There is a basis for a name change - perhaps Sapientae for its family name and _Homo_ _acrasia_ for us! Acrasia is the name of the witch in Spencer's The Faerie Queene. She seduced knights, turning them into beasts. If there is one beast we should be seduced into becoming more like in its humble wisdom, surely, it is _Dictystelium_.

Not a brain between them

_Dictystelium_ belongs to the cellular group of slime moulds. There is another group -

the unicellular slime moulds. _Physarum polycephalum,_ to take one example, is a giant of a cell with millions of nuclei - one measured over a metre in diameter and weighed three kilograms (see accompanying picture7). ' _Polycephala_ ' is Latin for "many heads" and refers to the shape of its spore-producing "fruiting body." Despite it size it is not even close to having a bit of brain since it is just a single cell. _Physarum_ doesn't look like much - a yellow smear oozing tributaries of protoplasm in different directions. But if you were the size of a microbe you would have to face being enveloped and digested by an unstoppable blob. What it lacks in appearance, and I can vouch for this, it makes up for in a quite pleasant fragrance.

Not having a brain doesn't seem to keep _Physarum_ back too much. Researchers have found that they have memory and can learn.8 They can even anticipate periodic events.9 In contrast, a friend of mind who belongs to the Mega Club for the super-intelligent (with an I.Q. of 185) forgot his wife's birthday even though hers is on the same day as his! Needless to say, he has now learnt that the most effective way to remember one's wife's birthday is to forget it once.

This is going to seem very weird, but besides many heads _Physarum_ has many genders. Yes, not content with just being male or female, it has more than five hundred sexes!10 Ridiculous? From the microbe's point of view, we are the ridiculous ones because it has a far superior reproductive strategy. Having so many genders does two things simultaneously - it reduces the risk of inbreeding and increases its chance of finding a mate.11

Astoundingly, and I kid you not, where _Physarum_ really excels is in its decision-making. Researchers have discovered that it makes remarkably wise decisions - even in complex situations - better than many humans in many situations and quite possibly better than most politicians in most. Put your pride and incredulity in your pocket and let us find out how come and how so.

Microbes know the best way home

One reason, as we shall see, is that _Physarum_ is not beset with the failures in good judgement called cognitive errors that cognitive psychologists have discovered in humans! They themselves have admitted that despite years of research in the field, they are not immune to such errors.12 It has been found that even seasoned researchers with extensive training in statistics are prone to cognitive biases.13 It seems to be part of our condition. _Physarum_ , in contrast, is a clean, mean, biochemical computing machine - well maybe not so clean since it likes to muck around in leaf litter. It is also about as clever as a calculator - which is to say it is not. _Physarum_ is incredibly stupid. There is not a single conscious thought between its many heads. Yet it can solve mazes! Indeed, it can find the shortest route through a maze to locate food sources placed at the exits, while absorbing the maximum amount of nutrients in the shortest time possible.14 And it does this without a single neuron, let alone a brain. This is particularly embarrassing for me since I have been known to battle to find my way home after visiting friends - once nearly climbing into a strange bed! I even have difficulty with following someone to a destination.

_Physarum_ is so computationally efficient, that it succeeds rather spectacularly where humans struggle. For instance, if you had asked city engineers, they would have said that the United Kingdom's M6/M47 motorway should pass through the city of Newcastle. And it does. The optimal route, actually, would be through Glasgow and _Physarum_ could have told them that! Researchers now know this through placing it on a map of the region along with oat flake titbits that are sized according to town populations, then noting and analysing the networks it produces.15 Software engineers are now developing algorithms based on the creature's secrets to help urban planners with the computationally difficult problem of designing optimal transport networks.

Microbes don't fall for diet fads

_Physarum_ are also wise in their choice of diet. In lab tests they make complex nutritional decisions. When given a choice between eleven sources of varying food quality they will opt for the optimal diet over inferior alternatives. They don't merely prefer food to have more protein to carbohydrate, they prefer food in the ratio at which they thrive best - a ratio of 2:1.16 This is an amazing computational feat. They have nutritional criteria, these are weighted somehow, they are able to integrate the nutritional information they have and they do the math very well.17 They would not make the cognitive mistake of thinking that if a little of something is good for you then a lot must be much better as did the chemist Dr. Basil Brown. He died of hypervitaminosis A from drinking a gallon of carrot juice daily.18 Evidently, a chemist, no matter how intelligent, does not a toxicologist make. The ailing poet Oliver Goldsmith had a wiser chemist. When Goldsmith asked for concoction containing mostly the metallic element antimony, the chemist begged him to consult a physician. It was to no avail. Less than a day later, the poet was dead.19 Evidently, neither does a poet a toxicologist make. _Physarum_ would also not make the mistake of thinking that if a lot of carbohydrate is bad for you, then none must be much better. Okay, if you must know, yes, I did briefly try the no-carb diet until a specialist friend put me right. And slime moulds would never make the dangerous mistake of going molly over just a single food source - say grapes - as promoted by that "doctor" of naturopathic medicine, Johanna Brandt.20

### Microbes make optimal choices

When human and slime mould subjects are tested to see how well they are able to compare the relative quality of multiple options, there is a marked contrast. In this classic so-called multi-armed bandit problem, researchers find that humans generally perform sub-optimally whereas _Physarum_ is able to "perform well in random environments, and compares information on reward frequency and magnitude in order to make correct and adaptive decisions."21 It is so good at this that researchers are now developing very promising amoeba-based knowledge-acquisition algorithms.22

How does _Physarum_ do this? It turns out that it has several tricks up its sleeve including a compensatory strategy or weighting system and the ability to integrate information between multiple options. To see how this works, let us compare how humans and slime moulds would go about making a couple of human decisions. Consider a ten-strong family needing to choose transportation. Six want a recreational vehicle while four would prefer a mini-bus. Just before they vote, one member suggests that there is a third option they could entertain - five scooters. They take the vote:

1. Recreational vehicle 3

2. Minibus 4

3. Scooters 3

Despite most of them preferring the RV and having 10 brains between them, the vote went to their second choice - the minibus! The family did not get what it really wanted. What was the problem? The third option put the spanner in the works. In mathematical terms this is called "the independence of irrelevant alternatives." The vote did not take into account the family's full set of preferences.

Lets see, now, how _Physarum_ would have gone about making this decision. It seems to have incorporate a preference ranking system for weighting the options.23 The mathematician de Borda suggested an elegant way we could do this. Simply list your choices in the preferred order.

Let's say the family do this and get these results:

RV, minibus, scooters 6

Minibus, RV, scooters 3

Scooters, RV, minibus 3

Now give 2 points for first choice, 1 point for second and 0 points for third. Then tally their final scores so:

RV: 6 x 2 + 3 x 1 \+ 3 x 1 = 18

Minibus: 3 x 1 + 3 x 2 + 3 x 0 = 9

Scooter: 6 x 0 + 3 x 0 + 3 x 2 = 6

The RV wins and the family get what they really want. _Physarum_ had a better decision-making system!

In light of de Borda's solution, it is odd that voting systems in most modern democracies remain so antiquated. Recall the Florida vote between Bush, Gore and Nader. While most Floridians would have preferred Gore over Bush, Nader came in and put a spanner in the works! Or recall the discrepancy in the popular and collegiate vote between Trump and Clinton.

It could also be argued that our voting systems are not antiquated enough! Slime moulds have been around for nearly a billion years and use something akin to the de Borda weighting system to make their decisions.24 Unlike our family or most democracies, it would not fall for the irrelevant alternative.

Let's apply _Physarum_ 's approach to another human decision.

You are invited to a wedding and you need to choose between a blue or red dress. You are in two minds about it. You prefer the colour blue and you think the blue dress is prettier, but you know your partner prefers the more expensive red dress. Actually you are in many minds about it. When you think colour or prettiness you go with the blue dress. When you think expense or your partner you go with the red. There are multiple attributes to consider and these are countervailing. So you vacillate. You tend to favour the dress that meets the attribute you are considering at the moment.

What you need to do is the microbe's trick of information integration. To do this, first give each criterion a weighting (say on a scale from 1 to 5) according to how important each is to you and indicate how well each option satisfies the criterion (again from 1 to 5).

You might tell yourself that while you prefer the blue, you don't hate red so colour isn't too critical - you give colour a 2. Prettiness is very important to you so you give prettiness a 5. Your cousin gave you some money towards the dress, so expense is not too big a deal. You give expense a 2. You are not too crazy about your partner anyway so you give his preference a 3. Place your criteria, weighting and options and how well they meet the criteria in a table (see below). Multiply the weightings with how well the criteria are met and sum them. Voila! The information you have is now integrated.

The blue dress wins.

There is nothing magical about the numbers and they are not carved in stone. One could always go back and change a weighting if something looks odd. The beauty of this method it that it allows you to take into account all the considerations that are important to you _\- simultaneously_. This enables you to get a handle on what you really want. It can be used for deciding on a partner, job, or house purchase. There, take a leaf out of _Physarum_ 's book next time you need to make a decision!

Microbes know the real threats

Before I get into _Physarum_ , let me ask you a question. If you had to have one of these creatures bite you which would you rather it be - a rabbit or a solifugid?

Before you commit to a decision let me give you some information. I presume you know about rabbits. Solifugids are non-venomous. On the other hand, as you can see, the massive jaws of the Solifugid make up most of its head - it can easily chomp through the hardest of beetle exoskeletons. Have you made your decision?

For _Physarum_ the choice is a no-brainer - it would opt for the solifugid whereas chances are you opted for the rabbit. _Physarum_ 's choice is actually the wiser. Why is this and why would a creature without a brain do better in a risky situation than us with one? _Physarum_ would have made the better choice because the rabbit's jaw is much bigger and its bite far more powerful And don't think rabbits cannot be aggressive. They've been known to successfully attack snakes in defence of their young. For us humans the jaws and teeth of the rabbit are hidden behind fluff and a cute face, whereas the jaws and head of the solifugid are obvious and ugly. _Physarum_ would get it correct partly because it simply and mechanically compares jaw sizes. In effect the microbe is following something exhorted by the Master, "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly" (John 7:24). Furthermore, the solifugid looks like a spider and we can subconsciously think venomous even though it is not. Our problem is that we have what psychologists call an affective system. It gives us a biased brain that can get in the way of clean calculations. If we do any calculations or reasoning we are clever enough to use them creatively in servicing our agendas or prejudices against the solifugid and for the rabbit. For instance, while it is true the jaws of this creature are much larger in relation to its head than the rabbit's, this is not to the point. It is the absolute size of its jaw that is relevant to how much injury it can cause. It is true that the solifugid can chomp through a beetle exoskeleton, but so can a rabbit. It is just the latter has no interest in doing so. All the information I gave you about the solifugid was correct. Notice that if we can be led astray by not weighing up information appropriately, how much more can we be led astray by misinformation!

The microbes very lack of a brain enables it to do very well at balancing risk and reward appropriately and acting accordingly in its environment. For _Physarum_ light represents a risk. It will opt for food from a source that is lighted only if it is has five times the food concentration of a non-risky source - it is able to do a trade-off between reward and cost.25 You could say that it demands danger-pay. Both safety and food quality are important to it, but it "knows" how much more important safety is to it than food quality, integrates the information it has about these and acts proportionately. It is also able to choose a minimum-risk path to a food source.26 Staggeringly, it even has wise risk management strategies for conditions varying in both space and time and these require sophisticated nonlinear mathematics to model effectively!27

Notice that it integrates information _across_ _different fields_ \- it integrates the physical information (light) with the nutritional information. In this, Dr Basil Brown went awry. As a chemist he may have known a great deal about the molecular structure of vitamin A, but this has to be integrated with the dosage effects on the human body which is a biological matter. A chemist, no matter how good, does not make a biologist. We can trust the award-winning chef Daniel Patterson when he says that raw milk tastes much better than pasteurized milk, but we need to ask medical researchers whether it raw milk is actually healthier for you. It turns out that raw dairy products are 150 times more likely to cause illness than pasteurized products according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.28 This has not impeded the raw-milk fad.

We will see later that humans are predisposed to cognitive errors that inhibit them from proper cross-disciplinary integration.

Humans misjudge the size of threats

In contrast to microbes, humans do not do very well at evaluating risk and responding proportionately, as we shall see. Don't feel alone if you were caught by the rabbit - solifugid experiment. I asked a class of life science honours students what they thought was the most dangerous creature to humans. More than half said such animals as sharks, hippos, crocodiles and snakes when the answer, is, of course, that vector of malaria - the mosquito.

Far too many mothers choose bottle-feeding for their babies even though it is _less_ nutritious, _more_ risky and more expensive than breast-feeding. Even in the United States with its high water quality, formula feeding brings 1.3 times the risk of infant mortality than breastfeeding.29 Many people keep guns in order to protect themselves. However, epidemiologists have found from a national study in the USA, that a person keeping a gun in the home has almost twice the risk of dying from homicide than a person who does not keep one.30 On average, the reaction to the risk is more dangerous than the risk itself - it is an over-reaction however psychologically understandable. The mathematics is clear, but we have creative ways of fooling ourselves about the risks. So we tell ourselves. "Guns do not kill people, people do."

Our tendency is to be far more worried about children ingesting "toxic" poinsettia leaves than say the half-glass of brandy left lying about during a Christmas party. The false but enduring belief that poinsettias are poisonous seems to have emanated from a single dubious instance in the early 1900's that went viral.31 Unlike _Physarum_ , humans are very susceptible to making the cognitive mistake of being overly affected by the anecdote. Poinsettia leaves are actually only very slightly toxic - a child would have to eat about 500 leaves to get sick.32 In contrast, a potentially lethal dose of pure alcohol for a 10kg child is only a few tablespoons!33 I'm not speaking hypothetically here. In eight years, none of the thousands of cases of people eating poinsettias that were reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers did any significant poisoning occur.34 In contrast, nearly 4,000 children were hospitalised with alcohol poisoning in the UK in 2013 alone.35

Snakes are our most common fear.36 We fear them far more than, say, ladders. This response is way out of proportion to the risks.37 In the USA, about ten times more people die from falling off ladders than from snakebite.38 The Snakes and Ladders game has mixed up the negative and positive motifs - we should be going up the snakes and down the ladders! We have a word for the fear of snakes - ophidiophobia. There is something that kills over 50,000 Americans per year,39 yet we have no word for the fear of it. That something? _Second-hand_ exposure to tobacco smoke. Consider our disproportionate reaction to the relative health risks of tobacco over marijuana use. According to the Surgeon's General report of 2014 the former leads to the deaths of at least 480,000 Americans per annum while the latter has lead to none.40

Knowledge and wisdom

What is going on here? Why do we over-react to relatively minor risks and under-react to major ones? How is that we can be so foolish in risk assessment and reaction when _Physarum_ is so wise? We will need to look deep into time for an explanation. But first off, we need to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom can be thought of as knowledge applied - whether consciously or not. It is the difference between knowing that a tomato is a fruit and not putting it in the fruit salad. Second, we need to get rid of the conceit that we are _the_ pinnacle of evolution. We are special in the sight of God despite ourselves (see Isaiah 51:1). In its own way microbes are also pinnacles of evolution. God is doing his thing with us, but he is also doing his thing with them. We are both endpoints of a very long evolutionary story. For _Physarum_ it is a very long story indeed. It has had hundreds of millions of years to adapt so impressively to the threats on the forest floor. It has evolved wisdom - not consciously of course - as the ability to _apply knowledge_ _effectively_ _in its environment_ rather than the ability to gain general rarefied knowledge for its own sake. The latter is a luxury that the organism cannot afford. The knowledge it gains needs to be applied towards its survival and reproduction.

Our affective system

So, why hasn't evolution served us with wisdom in proper threat assessment? The trouble is that we haven't had enough time to respond evolutionarily to our modern environment. We are adapted to fear prehistoric threats such as snakes (perhaps this is why a serpent features in the Garden of Eden and so many creation stories) rather than modern ones such as tobacco smoke. Research has revealed that our brains are wired to react unconsciously to snakes.41 We have, it has been said, "stone age brains." While tobacco use negatively impacts brain function, it is too recent a phenomenon to evolutionarily shape our instincts towards it. Hence the ironies in human fear. Over merely hundreds of years our modern environment has changed incredibly rapidly.

The psychologist, Paul Slovic describes a memorable incident that happened recently in the Netherlands to illustrate the foibles of our affective system. A domino display had been set up at an Expo centre. A house sparrow flew in, setting off the collapse of 23 000 of them. The bird was shot. The reaction to the birds death was virtually one of national mourning. There were death threats. The head of the Dutch Bird Protection Agency commented, "I just wish we could channel all this energy that went into one dead sparrow into saving the species."42 Our affective system is tuned to individuals rather than the masses. This is why Mother Theresa has said, "If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at one, I will." We are evolutionarily adapted to the environment of our forbears living in small groups and so we react to individuals and local phenomena rather than species-wide statistics.

Threats humans face

So, with our affective system and stone age minds, perhaps we seriously struggle to correctly judge threats. To address this question properly we will need to have an expansive grasp of the threats humans face. To unpack this, consider the following question. Which is the more violent - a lion devouring your child or humans dumping tons of salt solution on a plain? Our gut reaction, which is actually our brain reaction, may well be to say the former, but _Physarum_ would say the latter. It is impervious to repeated bludgeoning by a club but recoils from chloride salts!43 The microbe is far wiser than it at first appears. We have a predilection or cognitive bias to react more to causes of violence that are overt, simple, visible, local, physical, immediate and personal than to violence that is insidious, sophisticated, invisible, distributed, chemical, long-term and impersonal. The former is horrific and tragic for the victim, the family and friends, but it is the latter that is far more dangerous to the human race and other species on the planet. Both need to be acted upon, but with an appropriate sense of proportion.

This is taught both by microbes and the Master. Jesus said, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former" (Matthew 23:23).

Salt seals their fate

The dumping of salt has happened. It occurred in the Mesopotamian basin starting around 2, 500 BC. Someone had a brainwave. Why not redirect water from the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers onto their fields? They invented irrigation. With a fertile plain, plenty of sunshine and now plenty of water the harvest was bountiful indeed. Apparently, for the Sumerians, the world had become a much better place.

But then it all went downhill. As recounted by historian and archaeologist Ronald Wright, the water came with tiny amounts of salt washed down from the mountains.44 As the water evaporated, the salts left behind began to accumulate making the soil increasingly unfit for their crops. Gradually they switched crops from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley until, eventually, nothing would grow. They had created a salt desert. The Sumerian population collapsed and most cities were completely abandoned. Only God knows how many children starved to death.

Notice that their action did not have to be overtly aggressive, malevolent or calculated to be seriously destructive. In the Sumerian case, all that was needed was some intelligence, ignorance, time and many people and what you get is _insidious_ calamity. If anything, they miscalculated. We can't blame the ancients for not having the chemical knowledge we have today, so they can justifiably claim ignorance as an excuse. As we shall see, we today, despite having vastly more knowledge also tend to be oblivious to the insidious. Because this sort of calamity is less overt it is easy to fail to count it at all and to fail to realise that it is human-caused.

The concept of insidious calamity is clear enough and has been discussed at length by sociologists, theologians, historians and economists amongst others, using the term 'indirect' or 'structural' violence. The concept comes from the sociologist Johan Galtung and refers to social structures - economic, cultural, political - that impair human life. He stressed that our "concept of violence must be broad enough to include the most significant varieties."45

Now _Physarum_ is completely blind. Far from preventing it from responding to oblique violence, its very blindness fosters proportionate reaction. If it could see, it might over react to the club being wielded against it and under react to the salts and be quickly overcome. Instead, it responds to the former by just reassembling itself! Of course, we humans do not have this option available to us, but the wisdom behind _Physarum_ 's reaction is more relevant to us than appears at first. Since we have so many cells and some of these form a buffer between us an the environment (the skin and intestinal mucosa) while others provide energy storage (adipose tissue ), the effects of subtle violence take longer to play themselves out, predisposing us to take them insufficiently seriously.

But take them seriously we must if we are going to properly assess whether we are making the world a less violent place. We will need to tally all the kinds of violence, both overt and subtle and everything in between. This is not a job for one kind of expert. Recall how Dr Basil Brown failed to combine chemical information and biomedical information with fatal results. For the sake of the health of everyone on the entire planet we will need to use _Physarum_ 's trick of integrating information across multiple fields. We don't have it's option of avoiding cognitive errors by not having a brain. We shall see that assessing trends in violence is very susceptible to such errors. On top of this it is tricky for us to investigate this matter neutrally because it reflects on us. We can still take a leaf out of its book by co-operating with the brains of others - many of them. In the words of the Bible, "In a multitude of counsellors there is victory" (Proverbs 11:14). This is our best chance for discovering those errors. To name just a few, we will need within their respective expertise: chemists, engineers, anthropologists, historians, statisticians, epidemiologists, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, archeologists, theologians, Bible scholars and prophets. It is a common and big mistake to go along with just one or a few brains however clever and celebrated.

The most insidiously violent person of the 20th century

As devastating as the Sumerians were, their impact was local. There are far more effective ways to be lethal on a grand scale. This brings us to arguably the most cataclysmic person of the 20th century. No it wasn't Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler or Mao Tse-tung - they were too overt and hence opposed to have the most impact. The story of this most destructive individual is not one of ignorance and stupidity, but of ego and reckless folly. He had six public schools and a university named after him. He graced the cover of _Time_ magazine. He was an extremely intelligent man, served as president of a prestigious scientific body and was the recipient of many awards including more than a dozen honorary Doctor's degrees. None of these were a Darwin Award. Although he set into motion the removal of many, many millions of people from the gene pool, he himself came out unscathed, living to the ripe old age of 82.

On the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday he was appraised thus: "As symbol of progress ... as creator of ideas and builder of industries and employment— as inspirer of men to nobler thoughts and greater accomplishments— as foe of ignorance and discouragement— as friend of learning and optimistic resolve— [he] stands among the great men of all time."46 One biographer described him as the "last hero." Another fawned that is impact "was so great that he became a sort of 'institution'" that "will live, even though often anonymously, as long as civilization endures."47

Overtly, he was not known for any newsworthy malevolence but for his philanthropy. Insidiously, however, his institution perhaps did more than any other to curtail the longevity of civilization. If he had personally pumped someone full of lead shotgun style, he might have been more resisted and convicted. But he had his accomplices do something more obscure and they all got off scot free. They invented a system that released lead through car exhaust pipes into the atmosphere. Epidemiologist David Michaels says lead "is a potent toxin that affects the brain, the kidney, blood, bones, sperm, everything, and it is especially toxic in rapidly growing bodies—that is, infants and young children."48 The system depended on the petrol additive tetraethyl lead that has been called "a creeping and malicious poison"49 by the chemist Erik Krause and the "mother of all industrial poisons."50 One of the first victims was Joseph G. Leslie. Tetraethyl lead drove Leslie to violent insanity and he was secreted away to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years. The public had been led to believe that he had been dead all this time. Only his wife and son knew the truth.

It has been estimated in 2013 that no less that 853 000 people died from lead exposure.51 This is more than double the average annual death rate for the overt violence of war in the 20th century (including the First and Second World Wars).52 There are other forms of lead, such as elemental lead and white lead in paint, but tetraethyl lead is more toxic,53 and as a petrol additive it is a supremely effective way of being distributed into the environment. Ultimately, lead is behind far more deaths than that. It has been called the "criminal element" since it induces aggression through disrupting control centres in the brain. Researchers have found that USA counties with high atmospheric lead, had murder rates four times higher than counties with low atmospheric lead54 and have found a very strong association between preschool blood lead and subsequent crime rate trends in many countries.55 How much loss of life that has been put down to criminality has cause in early childhood? Law enforcement authorities may be oblivious, but there is a Judge who sees, and he had very strong words to say about the underlying culprits, "It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble" (Luke 17:2).

To this day there is no ignominy attached to the man behind tetraethyl lead. The respected ten-volume _Dictionary of American History_ mentions his name only in positive terms and not in connection with the toxin.56 Indeed, historian William Kovarik says, "U.S. historians have regarded the invention of ethyl-leaded gasoline as a heroic episode in the history of technology rather than a public health disaster that could have been averted."57 The historian Matthew White in his _Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements_ rightly recounts the Rwandan genocide. But his only mention of lead poisoning is to try to downplay its role in the demise of the Roman Empire.58 He does, however, mention the use of a lead-weighted lute in a failed attempt to clobber King Zheng of China. Talk about being oblivious!

In case you do not know who I am talking about, let us not keep him anonymous for any longer. A strong candidate for the most insidiously violent man of the 20th century is Charles F. Kettering, research director for General Motors. Hugh Iglarsh aptly describes him as, "the man that poisoned us all" having "put his mark on our blood and bones, and within our cell structures and genetic material. I am referring to the burden of lead we all carry within ourselves, in quantities many times the natural background level. Says Iglarsh, "Through the alchemy of corporate capitalism," Kettering turned base lead into golden wealth and power. He used science against humanity. He feathered his nest by poisoning his fellow man."59 In the 1960's the geochemist Clair Patterson estimated that the blood-lead level of the average American is about 20 micrograms per deciliter.60 You need only a third of this level to be almost twice as likely to die of a heart attack and two-and-a-half times as likely to die of stroke."61

Boss Ket, as he was affectionately known, had henchmen - 6000 employees. Chief among them was the award winning chemist, Dr. Thomas Midgley, who has been described as having "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."62 (He is also the inventor of chlorofluorocarbons that was so destructive of the ozone layer). In the 1920's General Motors had found themselves losing out to Ford Motor Company. They needed a competitive edge and found one in the tetraethyl lead. Tetraethyl lead is what is known as an anti-knocking agent that substantially improves engine life and performance. Although it is toxic, it was cheap, could be patented, and would make for mega profits. Midgley had done the sums. He calculated that they would make more than three times what it cost \- a gross profit of more than $40 million dollars per year.63 Ethanol is also an effective anti-knocking agent, as Kettering well knew, but it is safe and easy to manufacture by anyone with a still and could not be patented. The very toxicity of tetraethyl lead meant that much infrastructure and a large corporation was required to pull it off, thus eclipsing the small operator. What you have here is depraved indifference to human life for the sake of profits.

Poisoning the public

Recall that _Physarum_ recoiled from strange chemicals, only accepting their presence when their safety was tested. In contrast, Kettering and Midgely would have to be described as extremely reckless. Kettering's biographer and the man who put the first drops tetraethyl lead into petrol, one Thomas A. Boyd, admitted decades later, "The first opinions of doctors who were consulted were full of such frightening phrases as 'grave fears,' 'distinct risk,' 'widespread lead poisoning,' and the like."64 They failed to heed physiologist and toxicology expert Professor Yandell Henderson's warning that tetraethyl lead was "one of the most dangerous things in the country today." David Edsall, dean of Harvard's School of Public Health called the idea of spewing a lethal poison out of the exhaust of millions of automobiles "sheer folly."65 Unlike the case of the Sumerians, Kettering and Midgely could not claim ignorance. Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ physicians knew that lead was toxic. Dioscorides reported that it makes "the mind give way." There are those who are unable to receive from ancients in their pre-scientific condition, but there is more wisdom to be had there than among many moderns.

Midgley, in one publicity stunt, washed his hands in tetraethyl lead for a minute and dried his hands with a handkerchief. He did this even though he admitted, "After about a year's work in organic lead I find that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air."66 He later had to be treated for lead poisoning. Within a year from the start of the manufacture of tetraethyl lead, 50 workers at the factories suffered severe poisoning, some of which went insane. Many workers died.67 Midgely saw friends around him die, yet they persisted with the poisonous program. One of founders of industrial hygiene in America, physician and toxicologist Alice Hamilton said to Kettering soon afterwards, "You are nothing but a murderer."68 If she can be faulted, it is for understatement, Kettering was much worse than a murderer. The difference between Brian the snowmobile rider and Kettering is that the foolish recklessness of the former resulted in only his own death. The latter's lethal impact came to be global and has endured for almost a century. There are also differences between Hamilton and Kettering. Hamilton, who remained in relative obscurity, admitted in her autobiography that she chose medicine, "not because I was scientifically-minded, for I was deeply ignorant of science."69 She did come to gain considerable scientific knowledge, but it was built upon a foundation of love for God and others. Boss Ket also gained considerable scientific knowledge, but it was built upon a foundation of ego and greed.

Bamboozling the public

To foist such a dangerous chemical on the world would require an elaborate suite of deceitful tactics in advertising, public relations and dealing with health authorities. Kettering delivered. He was so successful that his pioneering brand of bamboozling the public into thinking his product was safe would later become a mainstay of his industry and would be copied by tobacco and other companies. Recall that _Physarum_ made wise decisions by integrating information. Kettering started the enormous folly of leaded petrol by fostering the integration of _mis_ information. William Kovarik points out that the hiding of Joseph G Leslie reflects a "larger picture of misinformation and deception in the history of environmental and public health."70

In communicating to the public, Kettering obfuscated. He personally wrote the first advertising,71 dropping the term 'lead' and calling the toxic additive simply 'ethyl' as the following illustration shows.72 This maximized the chance that his product would be confused with another petrol additive - the harmless ethyl alcohol. Trading on a wholesome nutritional analogy, their advertising described "ethyl" as a vitamin for car engines. When health professionals raised the matter of lead toxicity, Kettering emphasized the quantitative uncertainties. At the time safe thresholds of environmental lead were unknown. In contrast, _Physarum_ does not need to have complete information about a chemical before withdrawing from it. To this day, the General Motors Heritage Center omits the term 'lead' in its tribute to Kettering's role in the development of ethyl gasoline.73

A maxim in skeptical circles goes, "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof."74 The claim that a known potent toxin can be released into the environment in millions of tons without ill effect is certainly an extraordinary claim. It would be prudent to demand proof. But Kettering had no time for the precautionary principle - he shifted the burden of proof onto the health authorities. He did not need to prove the product was safe; they needed to prove it wasn't. The trick of trading on doubt would later be copied by dubious industries.75 Recall how adept _Physarum_ is at balancing risk and reward in choosing between multiple options. In contrast, Kettering mistakenly chose toxic tetraethyl lead over the safe ethyl alcohol. This is the charitable interpretation. The other is that he was being perfectly rational if, for him, human well-being was inconsequential relative to profits.

Essential experts excluded

We saw that Dictyo had wisdom in deferring to others. In contrast, Kettering was described as "a man who did not believe in experts."76 This was not quite true. There was one expert he believed in - himself. His biographer wrote approvingly, "An important aspect of his courage and confidence is the quite unusual tenacity with which he holds to, and stands up for his ideas whenever he thinks he is right."77 The sentiment was echoed by Alfred P Sloan, CEO of General Motors," ... his courage, his tenacity, his belief in the soundness of his deductions and his work have been essential ..."78

When Kettering often remarked, "Never mind about the experts,"79 what he meant were experts other than himself and the ones in his industry. Yandell Henderson, the toxicologist who had warned Kettering earlier said, "We have in this room two diametrically opposed conceptions. The men engaged in industry, chemists, and engineers, take it as a matter of course that a little thing like industrial poisoning should not be allowed to stand in the way of a great industrial advance. On the other hand, the sanitary experts take it as a matter of course that the first consideration is the health of the people."80

Kettering and later the industry he mentored made a show of deferring to others, but it was merely a masquerade. He had third parties vouch for his product, but they were on his payroll and so hardly independent. For instance, the Department of Health's industrial hygienist Dr Emery Hayhurst declared that ethyl lead was not a toxin, but he was a consultant for the industry.81 Kettering, an engineer remember,

made physiologist Robert Kehoe the lead puppet researcher at the Kettering Laboratory of Applied Physiology with a donation from General Motors.82 In effect he made human health a sub-discipline of engineering. The lab became the world's main source for misinformation on the health impact of leaded petrol for more than thirty years. Its finding? Leaded petrol was not at all a danger to public health. And later when the geochemist Clair Patterson found evidence suggesting that lead in the ocean came from leaded petrol, the industry tried to buy him off.83

Kettering lied to health professionals in claiming that there are no alternative anti-knocking agents to tetraethyl lead. Midgely responded to the health issues by saying that the problem "has been given very serious consideration . . . although no actual experimental data has been taken." With breathtaking arrogance, an engineer and his chemist demonstrated that they believed that their attention to the matter was enough - they had no real need for the research or minds of _independent_ others be they Romans, the public or health professionals alike. In matters of profit, engineering, invention and chemistry, Kettering and Midgely were rightly regarded as experts. In matters of health they were ultracrepidarians - speaking and acting way outside of their credentials.

In less than a decade ninety percent of petrol in the USA was leaded. Lead served Kettering in ways he did not anticipate. Pediatrician and medical researcher Herbert Needleman was the first to establish that lead, even at low levels, causes a drop in IQ making his victims less able to spot the connection between him and their maladies.84

It also shorten attention spans and delays the development of language skills.85

Kettering and his industry wouldn't have succeeded as much if it were not for collusion with politicians. For instance, later, the Reagan administration far from choosing what was best for the public, slowed down the phasing out of leaded petrol. It was introduced widely in the early 1920's and only phased out globally in 2012, nearly a century later. The company Innospec, in Colorado, is still producing tetraethyl lead. It is hard for those who love money over people to let go of a profitable poison.

Leaded petrol is an atrocity that has cost the lives and health of many, many millions of people. Why would an historian fail to mention it in his "definitive chronicle" of history's 100 worst atrocities while mentioning the case of an attempted clobbering with a lead-weighted lute? It is for the same reason that Kettering was so reckless and it took so long to react effectively to him. It is because, unlike microbes, we judge by appearance rather than by substance. We are cognitively biased to be disproportionately responsive to violence that is overt, visible, local, physical, immediate and personal than to violence that is insidious, invisible, distributed, chemical, long-term and impersonal. Kettering's brand of violence wasn't personal. It was just business. Hamilton was wrong. Kettering was not a murderer - at least not an overt one - since he did not administer any poison himself. And murderers work alone or with a few. Kettering was far too organised for that. He was certainly culpable of homicide but in orders of magnitude far beyond that of even a serial killer. We need a new category for a killer of this magnitude.

It is generally psychologically difficult for humans to kill someone directly. What is so diabolical about Kettering and his Ethyl Corporation is that they took ordinary employees, the great majority of whom wouldn't dream of stabbing someone with a switchblade and converted them into professional killers on a truly grand scale. They did this by making the killing banal. The killing was

not personal - the victims were anonymous. It was just business. They were doing their job of making car engines run efficiently. Kettering was not obviously malevolent, but in his greed, arrogance and reckless folly he is definitely a candidate for the most cataclysmic man of the 20th century.

The spiritually insidious

Tetraethyl lead was discovered more than twenty years before Kettering was born. It was not used commercially because of "its known deadliness." It may have remained just a chemical curiosity, at least for longer, if it were not for a certain conjunction of deeper forces and it is to these we must turn. It is a grave mistake and far too shallow to merely make Kettering with his "Ethyl" an aberrant monster. For the man himself is the relatively overt product of an insidious, toxic cocktail of foolish ideas. Scripture exhorts us to, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23)." Everything Kettering did came from ideas that gained momentum centuries earlier and these have been fingered by theologians, philosophers and historians. A great deal is rightly made of environmental "tipping points." These are changes to the environment which lead to even greater changes from which it is extremely difficult to return. But what about spiritual tipping points in a culture? If we can be oblivious to chemicals, perhaps we can be oblivious to insidious ideas that are destructive to societies?. If we easily overlook substance with our fixation on appearance, perhaps we easily overlook something so "insubstantial" as the spiritual? Everyone has heard of the overtly malevolent Adolf Hitler. How many have heard of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the philosopher who was described as "Hitler's John the Baptist"86 and who was so influential in promoting anti-Semitism? Karl Marx famously and naively said, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." As we shall see, philosophers _have_ changed the world and in drastic ways. Perhaps engineers need true prophets and good philosophers and historians?

The folly of faith in self-sufficient reason

One ingredient in that toxic brew is a faith - not in God - but in self-sufficient reason. We saw earlier that Kettering expressly downplayed authorities other than himself. In effect, he was saying, "I am God." He had no real need for prophets, poets, or philosophers. When he did defer to others - such as health authorities - it was a sham. He certainly did not come across as particularly attentive to the Word of God. Revealingly, he referred to God not as the Holy or Wise One, but as "the Great Intelligence."87 After his chemist died prematurely, the minister at the funeral read from the Bible, "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." Kettering's response, "It struck me then that in Midgley's case it would have seemed so appropriate to have added, 'But we can leave a lot behind for the good of the world.'"88

His life motto, "Think for oneself and ignore experts" is very pervasive to this day. It can be summed up as, "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."89 A bizarre case of this mindset can be found in the Collyer brothers. When the older, a lawyer, became paralyzed from inflammatory rheumatism, they rejected professional medical help. The younger, an engineer, explained, "We have a medical library of 15,000 books in the house. We decided we would not call in any doctors. You see, we knew too much about medicine."90 So much for a multitude of counsellors. Theologian Henri Nouwen has a different vision. "In community," he writes, "we are leaders from the place of our gifts and followers from the place of other people's gifts."91

Where did intellectual autonomy come from? A prominent proponent in the 19th century was the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote in his essay _Self-Reliance_ , "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, that is genius."92 (p. 145). For all his intellectual prowess, one doubts that the term genius came to mind to a certain servant girl as she watched Emerson's laboured and unsuccessful attempt at forcing a heifer into its stall. "With an amused glance, she thrust a finger into the animal's mouth, and the calf, seduced by the maternal imitation, at once followed her into the barn."93 But Emerson's views were widespread. One commentator said of people at the time, "They are constantly brought back to their own reason as the most visible and nearest source of truth. Then it is not only confidence in a particular man that is destroyed, but the taste to believe any man whatsoever on his word."94 Ironically, in valuing intellectual non-conformity, they were conforming to intellectual fashions that gained prominence a century earlier. As it is with mindsets, there is a tendency to conform to them without evaluating the mindset itself. Instead it is used to think about everything else.

Those fashions became evident with the so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century. One of the chief pioneers of the movement, Denis Diderot, edited the monumental _Encyclopédie_ that contained thousands of articles each encouraging the reader to "think for yourself."95 By this, Diderot especially meant do not let God do any thinking for you. The idea spread. Later, in 1784, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote in a short essay,

"Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity

is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, by lack of determination

and courage to use one's own intelligence without being guided by another." He goes on to say, " Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."96

The motto may have caught Kant in an atypically enthusiastic moment and he may not represent the myriad Enlightenment voices,97 but do the Ketterings of the world take in philosophers in all their nuance? Do the ideas on the street come from the more obscure sources? It is the philosophy of the CEO, the research director and the engineer that counts in terms of the practical consequences on the planet. Perhaps the Enlightenment must be distinguished from the populist versions. I'll leave these niceties to historians of philosophy; what I term Enlightenment here may refer more to the latter.

For Diderot and Kant, wisdom was an intellectual virtue. Where did the idea come from? It was promoted by Thomas Aquinas who got it from Aristotle. For them wisdom was a virtue of the speculative intellect - it was the "contemplative exercise of reason in relation to necessary things."98 The theologian and the philosophers all had formidable intellects. Perhaps this is what predisposed them to this viewpoint. It also made it impossible for them to view animals as wise. But it is a mistake. Intelligence is merely a _trait_ much like height. It certainly does not imply good judgment or sensible behaviour. Indeed, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa reports that data from the National Child Development Study in the UK shows that children with higher intelligence are _more likely_ to grow up to get drunk, use tobacco or illegal drugs. The intelligent are also more likely to be atheists and more likely to cheat on their wives.99 Rather than ensuring that we are set free to find the truth and live according to it, intelligence can provide the means for us to avoid it.

And intelligence certainly does not confer extra worth on an individual. An assault on a tall person is not deemed a more serious offense than an assault on a short person! It definitely should not incline us to pride. Unlike in the courts, ignorance and stupidity _are_ a defense before God. Jesus said to the Pharisees, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains (John 9:40-41)." If anything, knowledge and intelligence should make us earnest, since Jesus also said, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" (Luke 12:48).

Now there is something right about the Enlightenment's stress on reasoning for oneself. Indeed, God says,

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

Do not be like the horse or the mule,

which have no understanding

but must be controlled by bit and bridle

or they will not come to you" (Psalms 32:8-9).

It is possible to have an inappropriate dependence on God. He wants us to have a measure of intellectual autonomy. Notice that Revelation and reason are not set against each other in the passage. Both are God-given and both are needed. True, Paul does say, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4). But notice that Paul demolishes arguments with evidence - the knowledge of God - and not by force. The Biblical model is that we are to think both freely and in response to truth. It is not that we should seek the virtues such as wisdom without bothering with developing our traits such as intelligence.

During the Reformation, Martin Luther so enthusiastically overreacted to the misuse of reason that he sometimes comes across as an anti-intellectual even though he supported Aristotle philosophy of logic. But in a more sober mood, he admitted the need for it, as theologian Colin Brown notes, "Reason had its legitimate place in science and everyday affairs. It had its true function in grasping and evaluating what was set before it. But it was not the sole criterion of truth."100

Revelation and reason are like tools. Now, I am not a handyman. My poor wife has had to resign herself to mediocre workmanship around the house. Every now and then my neighbour peers over the fence at what I am doing and, with what appears to me to be a condescending smile, hands over a more appropriate tool.

I am an immature in tool-use. The psychologist Abraham Kaplan said, "Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."101 I was following what Kaplan called "the law of the instrument." The biologist and mathematician Sir Robert Fisher explains how this happens. "Any brilliant achievement, on which attention is temporarily focused, may give a prestige to the method employed, or to some part of it, even in applications to which it has no special appropriateness."102 Fisher was talking about the use of specific scientific methods, but his point applies more generally.

The Enlightenment had many good agendas such as fostering education, civil liberties and the separation of church and state. Where did it go wrong? It rightly reacted against those who tried to pound scientific matters with the hammer of Revelation (including Luther). But then, with the rising success of the hammer of reason particularly in the sciences, many in the Enlightenment began to try to pound all things with it. It tried to _replace_ Revelation with self-sufficient reason. It is good and right to use my human reason in certain matters; it is folly to rely on it in others.

While Scripture urges us, as we saw, to think for ourselves it also urges us to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:5-6). In another passage the Master shows his disciples and the crowds how to put these together, "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." It is not up to just any Joe Soap to evaluate the moral law with his reason, but it is up to Joe to evaluate people. Notice, how for Jesus, _both_ credentials and character are crucial. It is imperative to examine Thomas Midgely's character along with his credentials as a chemist. It is imperative to examine Charles Kettering's ethics along with credentials as an engineer. "It is a foolish sheep," as the saying goes, "that makes a wolf his counsellor." As we will see shortly, we cannot avoid trusting others, but we need to be wise in choosing who to trust.

Unlike what we saw in microbes, what the Enlightenment did, as the philosopher and sociologist Lucien Goldmann perspicaciously picked up on, is to champion a trend towards an _individualistic_ _itemising_ rather than a _symbiotic_ _integrating_ of knowledge. For Enlightenment thinkers he says, "Knowledge, whether of nature or of society, is autonomous. Its existence and range depend on the practical experience of the individual; but it is not regarded as something whose content is determined by the collective action of mankind in history."103 In the end, ethics takes a backseat to engineering, public health to commerce, theology to science. Some couplings of theology with certain disciplines may take silly turns, but the appropriate response is a sensible coupling, not a decoupling. Medievals may have got much of their science wrong, and we can throw that out, but there is something right about the spirit of their mission. The university began as a Christian endeavour in the 13th century. The term _university_ combines the concepts of unity and _veritas_ (from Latin) meaning truth. Since there is one Creator behind creation they expected a certain interrelation between fields rather than a radical autonomy.104

Some reflection shows that even in earthly matters, what Kant called maturity is actually immaturity. I am an immature handyman, but I would be an immature _person_ if I had said to my neighbour, "Thanks for the kind offer, but I actually have several degrees - I'm sure I can handle this myself." The Enlightenment's slogan, taken universally and literalistically, is both dangerous and absurdly impractical. When our oldest daughter was diagnosed at birth with hypothyroidism, I did not personally investigate the matter myself despite having done some lecturing in physiology, but was content to trust the doctor. When a dentist friend told me that our youngest daughter had a malocclusion of her jaw and required surgery by a specialist, I did not skeptically demand that I investigate this for myself. To do so would have, at best, delayed treatment. My trust was rewarded. Both daughters turned out very well. We see here the ancient wisdom of Scripture. Indeed, "Two _are_ better than one" (Ecclesiastes 4:9), when there is an ailment to deal with, the other is a medical doctor and I am not.

Philosopher Mary Midgley has stressed that it may indeed be progress to go from childish dependence to adolescent independence, but this is not yet maturity. Mature people are _inter_ dependent.105 There is an appropriate dependence on doctors and the teachers of the law, for instance. We can learn this wisdom from the Master who is before time began and we can learn it from ancient microbes. Recall how Dictyo outsourced its dispersal needs to insects. Yes, specialization _is_ for the insects ... and for any others that wish to be wise. Intellectual self-reliance is for clever fools. That even microbes can expose human folly suggests that there are more things in heaven and earth than reason and intelligence. If religious fundamentalism is scary, so is rationalistic fundamentalism.

Philosopher and historian, John Ralston Saul comments on Enlightenment's impact on the modern world. "Reason began, abruptly, to separate itself from and to outdistance the other more or less recognized human characteristics — spirit, appetite, faith and emotion, but also intuition, will and, most important, experience. This gradual encroachment on the foreground continues today. It has reached a degree of imbalance so extreme that the mythological importance of reason obscures all else and has driven the other elements into the marginal frontiers of doubtful respectability."106

The unhappy result is that child of the Enlightenment, Charles F. Kettering. He is what can be called an 'epistemic individualist.' The naivety of this position has been brought out by philosopher John Hardwig, "I find myself believing all sorts of things for which I do not possess evidence: ... The list of things I believe, though I have no evidence for the truth of them, is, if not infinite, virtually endless." He goes on to say, "I believe too much; there is too much relevant evidence (much of it available only after extensive, specialized training); intellect is too small and life too short."107

Isn't intellectual self-reliance as silly as physical self-reliance? What Chuck Norris is to action we can presume ourselves to be in intellect, saying in effect, "I can count to infinity twice on one hand." There is nothing virtuous about trying to lift a heavy table on ones own. So why should it be virtuous to be solitary in lifting something intellectually heavy - particularly in modern times with knowledge so ubiquitous? Indeed, Hardwig says, "Modern knowers cannot be independent and self-reliant, not even in their own fields of specialization. In most disciplines, those who do not trust cannot know."108 Many think that the scientific attitude is, quintessentially, to think for oneself. But even within science, teamwork is essential. Hardwig mentions the case of a physics paper on elementary particles that had 99 authors. Each author understood only a fraction of what was needed to be known to successfully conduct the experiment. The research effort was so huge that there was no university that could do it. It required multiple institutions with mutual dependence between theoreticians, experimentalists and technicians.

If others are needed even within science, how much more do we need others when it comes to even larger matters that transcend disciplines? We need prophets and physicists, Bible scholars and biologists, ethicists and engineers. sociologists and historians. Revelation and reason need to be wisely integrated.

The bunny and solifugid experiment we saw earlier suggests that the trouble with the Enlightenment's faith, is that reason easily succumbs to the power of our affections. Evidence is accumulating that this is indeed the case. For instance, Dan Kahan and colleagues have tested the ability of subjects with varying skill in numeracy to draw valid causal inferences from data. As might be expected, when the data was couched in politically neutral terms, subjects with greater numeracy did better. However, when the exact same data was couched in the politically polarised terms of gun ownership, the _more numerate_ subjects actually did _worse_.109 Kahan's research shows that merely correcting defects in the public's reasoning and knowledge is insufficient to improve their decision-making in regard to societal risks. It has been reported that the "parents more likely to resist vaccines, as it turns out, are found among educated San Francisco suburbanites in Marin County. While these mothers and fathers are not doctors, they are educated just enough to believe they have the background to challenge established medical science. Thus, in a counterintuitive irony, educated parents are actually making worse decisions than those with far less schooling, and they are putting everyone's children at risk."110 A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing! In a world that does not defer appropriately to the properly credentialed we left with a tussle between egos and their agendas. The leaders that will emerge will be the ones with the biggest egos. Heaven help us, since reason, as another Enlightenment figure, David Hume pointed out, "is a slave to the passions."111

Voltaire quipped, "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" implying that reason is a bastion against violence. But unless passions are tamed, reason can just as easily be used to justify violence. The historian Herbert Butterfield gives the example of the "French Revolution, where, within three or four years a liberal movement had turned itself into a totalitarian autocracy; while only ten years after the outbreak in 1789, the establishment of democracy led to a new corruption-the modern type of dictatorship based on a popular plebiscite."112

The subordination of reason to the passions is a dynamic that cost Denis Diderot. After spending most of his life short of money, he suddenly came into a small fortune. He treated himself to an expensive dressing gown. But now all his old possessions seemed out of place next to his new possession. So, he went out and bought expensive items to replace them, ending up short of money again. He wrote, "I was absolute master of my old dressing gown, but I have become a slave to my new one." For all his enlightened reasoning capacity, Diderot didn't escape the what has now come to be known as "the Diderot effect." Diderot and many other Enlightenment figures thought that by replacing Revelation with reason they would be set free, but they could have benefited from welcoming Christ's injunction, " Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal" (Matthew 6:18-20).

The folly of faith in progress

One's prior faith commitments trump reason and evidence. This is why clever believers in progress can remain committed to their faith despite all evidence to the contrary. The philosopher of economics, Bob Goudzwaard, has identified faith in progress as a major contributor to modern societal destruction113 and this is the second ingredient in Charles Kettering's toxic cocktail of ideas. Kettering was called a "prophet of progress."114 He certainly played at prophecy saying, We must quit saying we are living in a wonderful age, for the wonderful age is yet to come."115 On another occasion he said, "We are not at the end of our progress but at the beginning. We have but reached the shores of a great unexplored continent. We cannot turn

back for there is no other way to go but forward. It is man's destiny to ponder on the riddle of existence and, as a by-product of his wonderment, to create a new life on this earth."116 Another apt description of him is "salesman of progress" for he said, "The thing that is really hard to do is to sell the idea of progress. So many people are against it."117

Faith in progress is a dominant religion of today. Historian Christopher Dawson says, "It has been far more than a philosophical opinion or the doctrine of a school, for it has permeated the whole mind of society from the leaders of thought down to the politicians and the men of business, who would be the first to proclaim their distrust of idealism and their hostility to abstract theorizing. It has been, in fact, the working faith of our civilization, and so completely has it become a part of the modern mind

that any attempt to criticize it has seemed almost an act of impiety."118

And faith in progress is very much an Enlightenment idea. One of its prominent proponents, the philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet, prophesied that "the human race, freed from all its fetters, withdrawn from the empire of chance as from that of the enemies of Progress, would walk with firm and assured step in the way of truth, of virtue and of happiness."119

Robin Fox says, "The nineteenth century advanced the doctrine of inevitable progress allied to its eighteenth-century legacy of faith in reason and human perfectibility through education. We thought, for a brief period ("recent history"!) that we could do anything. We can't. But it comes hard to our egos to accept limitations after centuries of "progress.""120 With staggering optimism, political philosopher William Godwin wrote in 1793, "There will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. Besides this, there will be neither disease, anguish, melancholy, nor resentment. Every man will seek, with ineffable ardour, the good of all. Mind will be active and eager, and yet never disappointed." The faith is summed up very nicely in the epitaph on Henri Saint-Simon's gravestone in 1836, "The golden age does not lie behind us, but ahead of us." As the historian J. B. Bury notes, belief in progress is "an act of faith" that came to replace faith in Providence. It believes that humanity is "slowly advancing" ... "in a definite and desirable direction, and infers that this progress will continue indefinitely."121 Champions of progress are prophets and they may well be false prophets.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Doctrines of progress first appeared in 18th-century Europe and epitomize the optimism of that time and place. Belief in progress flourished in the 19th century. While skeptics of progress did exist alongside its supporters from the beginning, it was not until the 20th century that theorists backed away en masse from the notion. Many 20th-century thinkers rejected the notion of progress after horrendous events such as the two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the use of nuclear weaponry."122 Indeed, Google's powerful Ngram viewer shows that the frequency of the phrase "faith in progress" in English texts rose steadily until the 1960's and has declined somewhat since then.

To see why faith in progress is problematic, consider this thought experiment. Imagine that some genius discovers a way to teleport people extremely quickly from point A to point B. Super convenient and a boon to the economy! A clear case of progress would you say? Not so fast. It turns out that there is an intractable problem with the technology. Some fraction of people never arrive at point B. They disappear into a another dimension. Every now and then others, willy-nilly, also disappear. Would you still call this progress? What human burden would you allow and still call it progress? This experiment is not hypothetical. We do have something akin to this technology and it has exacted an enormous cost in lives. We call them cars of course and the cost in not just from traffic accidents but also from lead poisoning. You may want to argue that it is worth the cost, but you must argue the case and face up to the casualties and not presume we are moving inexorably towards paradise. Convenience is only one factor.

Bury says, "To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence. But it is impossible to be sure that civilisation is moving in the right direction to realise this aim."123 The trouble with claiming progress, is that it is a value judgment and there are multiple factors to consider. If our wealth is increasing, but the health of the planet is decreasing, is that really progress? The writing has been on the wall for a while. Goudzwaard pointed out that, "From 1946 to 1971 the gross national product (GNP) of the United States increased by 126%. At the same time the pollution of the environment increased by a staggering 1000%."124

The folly of faith in civilization

The term 'civilization' comes from the Latin, _civitas_ , but faith in civilization gained significant impetus during the Enlightenment. John Stuart Mill wrote in 1836, "the question has been seriously propounded, whether civilization is on the whole a good or an evil? Assuredly, we entertain no doubt on this point, we hold that civilization is a good, that it is the cause of much good... "125 The significant difference between us and our hunter-gatherer forbears (Mill would have said savages or barbarians) is not biological, but cultural - we are civilized. We have societal structures such as the law, democracy and commerce that keep us from the savagery and deprivation of our forbears. Or, so goes the argument. Is it sound? We will see that faith in societal sophistication is a superstition. This should have been seen soon after the Enlightenment. John Gray notes, " Enlightenment thinkers believed they served the cause of civilization. But when the political movements they spawned adopted terror as an instrument of social engineering – as happened in revolutionary France and communist Russia and China – it was barbarism that ensued, and a similar process is

underway today."126

Spiritual blindness and cognitive bias can keep us from properly appraising civilization. This is a job that requires both Revelation and reason. And it is one for many minds because perhaps nowhere are our egos more prone to bias and folly than when the subject matter is ourselves and our proclivities for destruction, violence and war. We will see that war and even worse is the product of the third ingredient in the toxic brew - faith in civilization.

One thing that should be dispensed with at the outset is the notion that there is a natural Law of Progress. Crozier, for instance, avers, " The progress of Civilization figures merely as one illustration more of a law that has necessitated alike the formation of solar systems from misty nebulae; of mountain and river and meadow from the original murky incandescent ball of earth; and of the bright and infinite variety of animal and vegetable forms from a few primitive simple germs."127 A law of progress is thus piggy-backed on the success of cosmological and biological evolution. But, evolution does not imply progress and especially not moral progress. Thomas Huxley's discounted the "idea that men in society, men as ethical beings, must look to the same [evolutionary] process to help them towards perfection" thus, "The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before."128

Until very recently, scholarship has been divided on the relationship between civilization and war. Anthropologist Lawrence Keeley has admitted that "The subject of "war among ancient and modern tribal peoples remains prone to glib speculation, the caprices of intellectual fashion, and the deeper currents of secular mythology." Some, such as Keeley have taken the Hobbesian view and found savagery in the ancients and civility in moderns. Others such as anthropologist Raymond Kelly, have taken a Rousseauian view and found it to be more the other way around. Each can find evidence to support their case.

One question to address is how _overtly_ violent we were to begin with. If you do any reading of evolutionary psychology be prepared to develop a fear of human nature. To persuade us that homicidal tendencies are primal, it has often been pointed out that humans are not the only species to torture and kill their own kind. We share that distinction with our close relative, the chimpanzee. The problem with this line of argument is that we are about as closely related to bonobos (or pygmy chimpanzees) and decades of field study have found little hint of anything akin to murder, rape or war in them.129 Their philosophy is: make love not war. This illustrates the importance of not rushing to judgment based on one line of evidence. This cognitive error is called confirmation bias. We should especially not do so with evidence from just one field.

Keeley makes the statistical point that hunter-gatherers can commit violence that is great on _a per capita_ basis. For instance, at a site called Gebel Sahaba in the Sudan from 12,000 - 14,000 years ago, forty percent of the human remains showed evidence of a violent death. We will miss his point if we think in absolute terms such as of the millions of deaths in the Second World War. The "pacified past" as he puts it, is a myth. Kelly has come to accept this, but says, however, that war is a recent invention (only about 10,000 years old) and that the violence has changed its _form_ \- we need to make a distinction between _war_ and _homicide_. Kelly's point is important because, as we shall see later, if we ignore categories of violence we can get a very skewed impression of trends.

Counter-intuitively, Kelly finds that warfare came after the agricultural revolution among societies competing for resources that were not scarce, but reliable and abundant. Anthropologist Douglas Fry finds social complexity to be a key factor in the emergence of war.130 One could say that agriculture's bounty and social sophistication were the obscure conditions that lead to the emergence of warfare. That these are fertile conditions for war does not seem so odd when one considers that the closest one gets to warfare and suicide bombers in the wider animal kingdom is in the social insects - swarming bees protecting their honey reserves (honeybee workers die straight after stinging a raider). Rather than taming us, perhaps civilization predisposes us towards war.

There are cases of both ancient and modern hunter-gatherers being extremely violent, but how representative are these of hunter-gatherers in general? It turns out to be not much. The atypical Gebel Sahaba case occurred in a period of transition at the boundary between the Paleolithic and Neolithic among the so-called _hierarchical_ hunter-gathers that had relatively sophisticated societies. Anthropologists Haas and Piscitelli did an extensive review of the remains of _nomadic_ hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic and while they did find some evidence of homicide, they found zero evidence of war.131 The modern San of the Kalahari had gained a reputation as stealth fighters, but this occurred after centuries of aggression from white settlers. Sociologist Sinisa Malesevic notes the great irony here. The liberal John Stuart Mill penned his essay extolling the virtues of European and British "civilisation" over "barbarism" at a time when between them these civilisations were waging as many as 45 substantial wars around the world.132 Oscar Wilde famously taunted of America that it "went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." Perhaps Jesus would have said, 'Remove the plank of barbarism from your own civilization before you remove the speck from another.' Isn't civilization a form of barbarism and decadence by another name? Creative naming is a great way to fool oneself. "Thus," says John Ralston Saul, "an incident between Austria and Prussia involving a thousand or so dead was a war. The fight in the Sudan between the British and the Mahdi, involving far greater losses, was only an expedition."133 One of these "expeditions" precipitated the violence among the otherwise generally peaceful San. Anthropologist Richard B. Lee points out that it is therefore perverse to use the San as evidence of hunter-gatherer violence as, for instance, the psychologist Steven Pinker has done.134 In fact, anthropologists have noted that the hunter-gatherer tribes surviving today are very rarely violent.135

While I was an undergraduate a psychology student friend did a little experiment on me. He got me to make a list of a dozen or so attributes such as _fun-loving_ , _stubbornness_ , _generosity_ and _aggression_. I was to tick off whether the attribute was true of me, not true of me or sometimes true of me. Then I was to choose someone at random and do the same exercise. After tallying up the scores, and as he predicted, we discovered that I was far more inclined to pigeonhole others than myself. For me traits varied depending on circumstances. Others unvaryingly lived up to their labels.

The ancients do not have an audible voice to protest our stereotypes of them, but we can listen to them by being diligent in the way we read all the evidence. Perhaps it is prudent to conclude that what is innate about hunter-gatherers and the "civilised" is that they share the _potential_ for violence and to try to understand the conditions that trigger it. Perhaps it is wisest to trust neither in human nature nor in civilisation. As for the former, historian Herbert Butterfield warned soon after the Second World War, "It is essential not to have faith in human nature. Such faith is a recent heresy and a very disastrous one."136 Jesus, while acknowledging there is good in humanity, matter-of-factly calls us evil (Matthew 7:11).

Faith in civilization is another equally disastrous heresy and is fostering the production of the Ketterings of the world and their leaded gasoline. While John Gray is extremely critical of Christianity, he was perceptive to view the Enlightenment as one of its sects.137 Jesus has given us an insatiable thirst for salvation. Those who do not look for it in him, will seek it in other things such as progress or civilization - to their downfall. Simeon prophesied that the baby Jesus was destined for the rise and fall of many in Israel (Luke 2:34). This continues to this very day and not only in Israel.

There are many champions of faith in civilization. One is the cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker. He discounts any romantic notion of humans being innately good.138 From whence, then, will we find hope? He puts it down to things that microbes do not have - reason and culture. To him civilization, particularly democratic government and commerce, curb our genetically influenced dispositions towards violence. In his celebrated 700 page tome, _The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,_ he argues that the "enduring moral trend" of the 20th century "was a violence-averse humanism that originated in the Enlightenment."139 Elsewhere he has said, "there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century."140 Not that many historians would admit to taking his claim seriously.141 For instance, the historian Edward Grant says, "The Middle Ages had its brutal atrocities and egregious stupidities. It also had the Inquisition. By comparison to their modern counterparts, however, the murderous irrationalities of the Middle Ages seem less flagrant. Those who lived during the Middle Ages simply lacked the capacity to kill and destroy on the scale of modern societies."142 While the Middle Ages certainly had its foibles, Grant shows that its reputation for barbarism and unreason is ill deserved. Indeed, magic and witchcraft persecutions played a greater role in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than it did in the thirteenth and fourteenth.

One line of evidence Pinker provides is a table of "(Possibly) The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other."143 His point is that 20th century's Second World War with its 55 million killed does not rank first but 9th. The top spot goes to the An Lushan revolt in China during the 8th century with 36 million killed (historians of China do not accept this overestimate).144 In any case, 36 million is less than 55 million, I hear you say. Yes, but Pinker scales the number relative to global population size at the time. The An Lushan revolt then scales to a whopping 429 million!

It might all look very convincing, but estimating mortality rates from war is notoriously difficult with many pitfalls and many fall straight into them. Statisticians and risk analysts Taleb and Cirollo have examined Pinker's methods and find his use of descriptive statistics anecdotal and say that it "reveals an attempt of bending empirical evidence to his own theory."145 "Pinker's severe mistake is one of standard naive empiricism –basically mistaking data (actually absence of data) for evidence and building his theory of why violence has dropped without even ascertaining whether _violence did indeed drop"_ (italics theirs). "Our data do not support the presence of any particular trend in the number of armed conflicts over time. Humanity seems to be as belligerent as always. No increase, nor decrease."A recent, statistically sophisticated study estimates 378 000 annual global war deaths for the late 20th century and finds no evidence to support a recent decline.146

For the sake of argument let us accept the dubious figures Pinker gives (casualties for ancient wars are notoriously unreliable), his dubious scaling method and what he counts as the worst atrocities. His table is very cleverly and disingenuously constructed. Agendas have come into play. To make the 20th century not look too bad, the atrocities of this century are separated but the Mideast Slave Trade atrocities are lumped together even though they spanned 13 centuries! To get a fairer idea of how bad a century is, surely one should sum all the casualties from its worst inhumanities? I reconstructed the table on this basis and found that while the 20th century was not the worst, it was fourth worst out of 18. His tipping point towards moral progress disappears.

The 20th century may actually rank higher than fourth. Many wars were ignored. As political philosopher, John Gray says, "The Korean war, the Chinese invasion of Tibet, British counter-insurgency warfare in Malaya and Kenya, the abortive Franco-British invasion of Suez, the Angolan civil war, decades of civil war in the Congo and Guatemala, the Six Day War, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet-Afghan war-these are only some of the armed conflicts through which the great powers pursued their rivalries while avoiding direct war with each other. When the end of the Cold War removed the Soviet Union from the scene, war did not end. It continued in the first Gulf war, the Balkan wars, Chechnya, the Iraq war and in Afghanistan and Kashmir, among other conflicts. Taken together these conflicts add up to a formidable sum of violence. For Pinker they are minor, peripheral and hardly worth mentioning."147

Atrocities even worse than war

We even have a word for the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth, arachibutyrophobia, but we have none for fear of ideology. The enlightened think that it is to ideology and government that we must look for the reason for the violence-averse trend. Not only does this trend not exist, but ironically, as political scientist Rudolph Rummel stresses, far more people (170 million) were killed by ideologies in the 20th century (democide) than strictly by war (35 million).148 Pinker does not differentiate between these, hence the higher figures he gets for war fatalities. He has a blind-spot when the killing is done by governments or ideologies - particularly those he believes in. But he just hasn't done the calculations correctly when he ignores, for example, the more than 9 million casualties due to direct US aggression during the Cold War in the _name of_ _democracy_.149 This bias is a very prevalent one. As sociologist Allen Grimshaw has noted, the Oxford English Dictionary devotes 460 cm to war, 230 cm to murder and homicide and only 6 cm to democide.150

Even if it is the case that fatalities due to war are, on average, decreasing, this does not mean violence is. We tend to fail to properly count the kind of violence that is less newsworthy. We are biased towards the concentrated carnage of war and against the more diffuse carnage of homicide. But the latter is actually more dangerous. As has been stated, "Although there is a wide-spread perception that war is the most dangerous form of armed violence in the world, the average person living in a conflict-affected country had a risk of dying violently in the conflict of about 2.0 per 100,000 population between 2004 and 2007. This can be compared to the average world homicide rate of 7.6 per 100,000 people."151

The very worst form of atrocity

Civilization has yet other ways of perpetrating violence, besides war, democide and homicide. There is a sophisticated form of violence that is easily downplayed relative to the other forms, but it has caused deaths and disability in the 20th century on a far more massive scale. I think it needs to have its own term - consumercide - death by corporate products. This oblique form of violence has been estimated to cause a staggering 4.9 _million deaths per year_ , the majority of this burden being borne by children under the age of 15 years.152

UNICEF estimated in 1997 that that 1.5 million babies die annually through not being adequately breastfed153 (See the accompanying UNICEF photograph of a mother at the Children's Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan with her twins. The breastfed one on the left survived. The bottle-fed one did not). How do corporations justify their aggressive marketing of milk formula to third world countries with poor water quality? The vice-president of Nestle, Hans Rudolf Muller, said, "If she continues to feed the baby with a dirty bottle and dirty water, it can lead to the death of the child. We accept no responsibility for hygienic conditions in the country and for the lack of knowledge of writing and reading."154 He may look suave and innocuous in his suit, and commerciogenic malnutrition as it has been called, may look less violent than armed conflict, but it is the sums that reveal how dangerous he and his company really are. The Master warned us of "the wolves in sheep's clothing" (Matthew 7:15).

According to the World Health Organisation just one type of product has "caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century."155 This whopper of an atrocity is thoroughly downplayed in Matthew White's _Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements_ and barely hinted at in Stephen Pinker's _The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined_. Why? One reason, of course, is that it is an insidious calamity.

Another factor comes down to breathtaking credulity. The culprit is a culture - the sort of thing the enlightened want to believe will rescue us from our inclinations towards violence. It is a culture with sophisticated relationships with governments and business. It is a culture that has a very good grasp of the inter-relationship between culture and natural proclivities and it has finely honed strategies for making an enormous amount of money out of it.156 It understands that humans have reward centres in the brain and are genetically predisposed towards stimulating those centres (adaptively through eating and drinking). It also knows what substances maximally stimulate the centres and how to deliver it there most quickly. It also knows how to target adolescents with these substances - there is an evolutionary basis for this age group to be the most inclined to take risks.157 It taps into children's acquisitive inclinations by selling it's product along with collecting cards on sport and cultural themes.158 It has sophisticated strategies for spreading misinformation about the health risks of its product.159 And it does all this to satisfy its own natural proclivity to acquire resources even though its product releases substances that are extremely dangerous. Which particular culture is the culprit? Your guess is correct. The tobacco corporations. When Pinker brings himself to mention smoking, it is to lament the banning of a certain children's television episode because it glamourised tobacco. Predictably, the product lead is only mentioned once and only in its overt form as a murder weapon - the lead pipe. Elsewhere, when he does bring mention the tobacco companies it is to bemoan their having been "slapped with staggering "punitive damages.""160 Furthermore, corporations know very well how to present a positive and innocuous image of themselves. Investigators have found the tobacco company, Philip Morris, spending more money publicizing its good deeds than on the good deeds themselves!161

One reason Pinker gives for our tendency to overestimate violence in the 20th century is that we are biased towards recent events. If one looks over much longer time scales, he falls for a similar bias towards recent events that he accuses others. He tries to take the violence of complex hunter-gatherers in a transitional phase around 10, 000 years ago as representative of Paleolithic humans over a period of 190,000 years!

Another reason behind our underestimating violence in the 20th century comes down to another cognitive error. We are biased towards overt, prehistoric, human-sized threats rather than insidious, modern, culture-sized and microscopic-sized ones. Snakes and "savages" can seem far more threatening than corporations, smoke particles or lead in the soil. Being bludgeoned to death with a club is sheer carnage. Being in a moribund state for years from consuming a commercial product along with the misinformation about its health risks and then expiring from lung cancer seems a much tamer way to die, less deserving to be tallied and the culprits less culpable. This is why we do not respond in proportion to the size of threats. That we don't is clearly evidenced by the data. The Ngram viewer reveals that in 2008 terrorism was mentioned about 50 _times_ more often than lead poisoning. Yet in 2013, lead poisoning caused about 50 _times_ more deaths than terrorism.162 Brandishing lead pipes and detonating pipe bombs seem far more threatening than manufacturing lead products, but it is the latter that causes more lingering deaths and far, far more of them. This statistic provides evidence for a very significant point. In the case of evil of the overtly malevolent kind, our media are a saving grace though exposing it. In the case of insidious folly, our media has just perpetuated our disproportionate reaction to it. By our media I do not mean the tabloids, I mean books.

Matthew White explicitly admits book why, for him, corporate killers do not count: "I get occasional suggestions that I should include tobacco company executives among history's worst killers, but smoking lacks two critical characteristics that my top one hundred share—immediacy and coercion. A voluntary activity that might kill you thirty years down the road just isn't in the same league as getting shot, beheaded, or gassed."163 Environmental health researchers count things differently. They have a measure, the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) for the overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death.164 Gandhi also counted things differently, saying, "It little matters to me whether you shoot a man or starve him to death by inches." Manipulating nicotine levels and targeting children may not be quintessentially coercive, but that doesn't make it any less diabolical.

I suppose many do not regard humans as predators since they "just buy their meat at a supermarket, where no animals get hurt!" But of course humans are. It is just that the killing of animals is now more sophisticated, done by professionals and at a distance. Similar considerations apply to humans killing other humans. It is difficult to get accurate figures and easy to get a false sense of security. Taleb and Cirollo explain, "We require more data to assert that there are no black swans than to assert that there are black swans hence we would need much more data to claim a drop in violence than to claim a rise in it." Any drop we see may very well be just a perception. Much of the killing now is less obvious to our prehistoric minds because it is more sophisticated. From the point of view of the precautionary principle, we do not want to be too quick to conclude that things are improving. It is risky because we may be lulled into complacency and do even less about trying to reduce the devastation. Unlike microbes, we are, despite or because of our intelligence, not immune to cognitive errors - in particular to the penchant of using creative accounting to service bias. We would be wise to take some cues from microbes and do our sums more mechanically.

Some say the Enlightenment project has failed. This too is an expression of faith in progress. It may be failing among philosophers, but while a great mass of corporate leaders remain bought into the project, it will succeed all too well - to the detriment of the planet. Brian the snowmobile rider is not merely an aberration. There is the distinct possibility that all of us will be removed from the gene pool along with millions of other species through a world war even while we blithely assure ourselves that our governmental, cultural and other institutions are increasingly making this possibility less likely. "The size of this delusion" says William H. Koetke, "is such that the combined military expenditures of all the world's governments in only one year - 1987 - were so large that all of the social programs of the United Nations could be financed for 300 years by this expenditure."165 There is also a distinct possibility that we will wipe out the human race and other species through accelerating climate change while denying that we are doing so. As indicated in my book _Bee Wise_ 166, celebrity climate change deniers are not unintelligent but foolish. They think they can compute better what is going on with global warming than climate scientists with their supercomputers! If any of this should happen, microbes will survive just fine. They have made it through many mass extinctions. It has repeatedly been pointed out that while we need microbes; they do not need us. In fairness, it is they who should declare the human species the winner of an award in our attempts to wipe ourselves out!

It should not be the Darwin Award because that focuses on isolated, concrete, dramatic and supposedly beneficial cases of the removal of individuals from the human gene pool. We need an award that commemorates those who insidiously

jeopardise the survival of the human species in intelligent but sublimely foolish fashion. I suggest we call it the Galtung Award in honour of the sociologist who identified the concept of structural violence and I nominate Charles F. Kettering for the 20th century. But, there are many contestants. Indeed, all of us who call ourselves civilized have played a role. If we wisely steward the planets resources, it will be for our benefit, not the microbes.

Richard Heinberg laments, "At present, we human beings while considering ourselves the most intelligent species on the planet are engaged in the most unintelligent enterprise imaginable: the destruction of our own natural life-support system."167 He did not choose his words correctly. We _are_ the most intelligent species on the planet - and the most foolish. We are engaged in the most _unwise_ enterprise imaginable. We are intelligent about it in the sense that we are very efficient in the making products we don't desperately need while destroying the biosphere that we do in the process.

Our knowledge and intelligence _by itself_ cannot prevent our destruction. Indeed, unless we act wisely, these will hasten our demise. We now have the technology, the social sophistication and the know-how to destroy ourselves most effectively. John Ralston Saul says, "... we are today in the midst of a theology of pure power — power born of structure, not of dynasty or arms. The new holy trinity is organization, technology and information. The new priest is the technocrat — the man who understands the organization, makes use of the technology and controls access to the information, which is a compendium of "facts.""168 Winston Churchill said, "technology can make a little ill go a long way." But technology can also make a little foolishness go a long way. The antidote to foolishness in humans cannot, of course, be stupidity, less knowledge and less technology (The Gutenberg Bible is a form of technology169). But with intelligence, increasing knowledge, more powerful technology and more complex societies comes the imperative for an even greater wisdom. Our wisdom needs to surpass that of the microbes. It needs to have a spiritual aspect.

The "wisdom" that come from below

Goudzwaardt notes that Jesus was spot on - faith, _in general_ , does move mountains - it does not have to be faith in God. Faith in progress has lead to 30 million tons of lead being distributed into the atmosphere.170 What an disastrously foolish faith! The Enlightenment figures were not generally atheists - they were deists. For them, God and especially Jesus were, at best, irrelevant. Denis Diderot said, "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." It is very important not to mistake lead for bread, but to have faith in Christ rather than the foolish alternatives is most important of all. The historian Carl Becker said of the Enlightenment figures that they "demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials."171 Those materials would eventually come to include white lead - the paint that contributes towards the 853 000 annual death toll in the 21st century.

Another prominent Enlightenment figure, Voltaire, once prayed, "I believe! I believe in you! Powerful God, I believe! As for monsieur the Son ... that is a different story."172 Goudzwaard says , "The intense emotional resistance to the Christian faith can probably best be explained by the fact that Enlightenment thinkers confessed a faith of their own." When Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5), he did not mean nothing at all - causing a cataclysm is doing something! What he meant was that without him we can doing nothing of spiritual substance. He was talking about the fruit of the Spirit.

For the children of the Enlightenment, the only laws worth being concerned about were natural laws. The Diderot Effect illustrates that Diderot was affected by spiritual laws after all - to his detriment. As Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21). If God is not our treasure, we will make it something else. We _will_ have a faith. If it is not in God, it will perhaps be in ourselves, our self-sufficient reason, in progress or in civilization. Diderot and societies in general cannot make God irrelevant without suffering dire consequences. "God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows" (Galatians 6:7).

The Enlightenment faith, far from preventing the French Revolution, was behind it. Behind war is God's judgment in the sense of him allowing evil to overreach itself. Speaking especially of the French Revolution Herbert Butterfield says, "Judgment comes upon these orders and systems."173 But war is also an act of God's disciplining grace. Since we are so blind to the insidious, it may take the overt horror of war to lead us towards our spiritual senses and to see that we need God after all. Indeed, as we saw earlier with Google's Ngram viewer, it has taken the world wars and the nuclear threat to blunt our faith in progress.

If mere intelligence does not prevent us from being foolish in worldly matters, what would make us think that mere intelligence can make us wise in spiritual ones? As philosopher of biology, Michael Ruse puts it, "We are middle-range primates with the adaptations to get down out of the trees, and to live on the plains in social groups. We do not have powers which will necessarily allow us to peer into the ultimate mysteries. If nothing else, these reflections should give us a little modesty about what we can and cannot know, and a little humility before the unknown."174 If evolution has left us with stone age minds, why should we think we have the innate wisdom to contemplate heavenly matters? To think that our brains are capable of computing the enormous gap between a Holy God and such egocentric creatures as ourselves or the optimal route to Him is arrogant in the extreme. We are just too clever - and foolish - in justifying ourselves. If we can benefit from other minds in making earthly decisions, perhaps we can benefit from Another Mind in making spiritual ones. Why not learn from both microbes and the Master? If tiny creatures can be wiser than us in earthly matters, would it be too outlandish to think that the Creator may be wiser than us about the way to Himself? If there is victory in a multitude of councillors, in the most acutely important matter of salvation, why restrict ourselves to creaturely counsel? Why not consider the counsel of the Creator himself? It is at this point that it would be very prudent to let God do the thinking for you.

If you have any doubts about the folly of putting one's faith in human reason, technology and civil or religious forces consider this: Would it be possible that humans, if given half a chance would use their intelligence to develop a technology and use it to torture and kill God himself ? This is indeed what happened 2000 years ago when people humans used a cross to murder God incarnate - the person of Jesus Christ. Self-sufficient reason led humans to try to destroy the Person that is the very route to God for the sake of their own agendas.

The Wisdom that comes from above

If it is folly to put one's faith in human flesh, where, then, is hope to be found? The message of the Gospel is that our only hope is in the One who died on the cross. We are not called to put our ultimate faith in civil or religious systems nor in ourselves or our reason, but to trust in _Someone_. The Apostle Paul listed many routes to God including his moral nature and religious observance and said he could personally boast about all of them. He then proceeded to discount every single one, regarding them as garbage compared to knowing Christ (Philippians 3:1-11). As Jesus died, he forever demonstrated his divine nature - to give through powerlessness while he exposed human nature and systems - to take through power. And he revealed that God doesn't look cursorily at the many, many millions of casualties in history as some sort of glib, far-removed academic juggling entries in a table. No, he identifies with all those who have suffered violently (or apparently "tamely"). He knows the suffering of each soul and he knows, perfectly, who is culpable. And he knows, personally, what it means to suffer through his Son. Whereas the evil sacrifice the masses as mere units for the sake of ideologies or money, Jesus sacrificed himself for the sake of the masses that they may have eternal life.

If mere human intelligence is going to fail us as a route to God the Father, where then are we going to turn? The optimal route to the Father is found through wisdom - not just any wisdom, but _God's wisdom_. This wisdom is found in a Person and in what he did for us. Christ crucified is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthian 1:23-24). God's message to us in Scripture is that human routes to himself, whether religious, moral or otherwise are a veritable maze of dead ends. We do not find our way to him, he established the way to us. That way is through his Son, Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus says, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." He said, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him" (John 3:14-15). It may seem odd that Jesus, who called himself the lamb of God, also likened himself to a venomous snake. The truth is that he is both. It is foolishly reckless to take on Jesus. He is no longer the cute baby. When his very closest earthly friend, the Apostle John, saw him in his grown-up and glorified state he fell down flat, terrified (Revelation 1:17). The beginning of wisdom is to fear God indeed! There is no greater risk than to face God on our own steam since no one can see God and live (Exodus 33:20). And death is no escape from him. God has a message for those who think they are smart enough to find the optimal route to him within themselves and it is this, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate" (1 Corinthians 1:19). As Solomon said, "The mocker seeks wisdom and finds none" (Proverbs 14:6). Seeking wisdom through our own prowess is doomed to failure. Come into a relationship with God though Christ and wisdom is the happy by-product.

Jesus reminded John that this terrifying Jesus is the very same one that had died for him. Indeed, he is the very same one that said to his tormentors, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). The glorified Jesus is a lamb in wolf's clothing! But he is that only to those who put their trust in him. As the Apostle Paul said, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:19). The cross is foolishness to those who put their trust in their own intelligence because it does not flatter it. But human intelligence, as we have seen, is somewhat overrated. Even microbes show us up. However foolish the cross may look to human intelligence, it is the wise choice according to God. And ultimately, it is what he thinks that counts. The end of wisdom is to abandon ourselves to the love and mercy of the One who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

Since they do not have one, microbes provide cannot help us much with how to cope with this tricky thing called a brain. We need an example who is a _person_ and one in whom "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). The Apostle Paul described this ultimate example so,

"Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

and being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2: 6-8).

What we see in Christ is someone with credentials _and_ character. Though he is the Creator of the cosmos, he did not use his stature to massage an ego or force his own agenda on others. Instead, his commitment was to obey his Father and love others even to the extent of going to the cross. Though he is Judge, he "not come to judge the world, but to save it" (John 12:47-48). The Servant King kept within his appointment. When someone from the crowd said, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me" Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" (Luke 12:14). How we need him as our Saviour and Example! We saw that microbes were able to leave things to others, but we see this humility quintessentially in Christ. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if he delayed his Jerusalem project to take a missionary trip to Rome and Athens? But he went resolutely towards the cross and left the Apostle Paul and us to be his witnesses.

Faith in Christ does not only have an eternal impact, but an impact in the here and now. I am not going to flesh out the deep significance of Christ in addressing structural evil in the world as one reviewer of this book flatteringly suggested I should. If I did I would be ignoring my admonitions against foolishness in the book! This is a job for a team of theologians and sociologists at least. A philosopher of evolutionary biology, no matter how born again does not a theologian make.

Suffice to say that those who have truly found their treasure in him will have less interest in devouring earthly resources to store up transient treasures, but will store their treasure in heaven. Those who know the Humble Servant will find less need to serve their own egos, but will be content to serve their Lord. Those who know Winsome Truth himself will be freed to face up to the hard truths such as their own foolishness. Those who know the mind of Wisdom himself will integrate their knowledge and intelligence in interdependence with others and especially with the Other. Those who know the Holy One will be become increasingly aware of the dangers of evil in its subtler forms. Those who are filled with the Holy Spirit will be empowered to love their neighbours including those that are yet to come. Those who are committed to honouring him as Creator will seek to be wise and responsible stewards of his creation that he has temporarily lent us. Those who know God as the ultimate judge will seek his award: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

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About Mike L Anderson

Mike has a PhD in the philosophy of biology from the University of the Witwatersrand. He has taught philosophy of science at Wits and taught evolution and coordinated a graduate course in religion and science at the University of Cape Town. Mike is a writer, speaker and artificial life software developer. He is married to Janice, has three grown-up children, and lives in Betty's Bay. If he is not playing Starcraft or walking his dogs, he can be found looking under rocks for bugs.

Email address:

### Other titles by Mike L Anderson

_Double-crossing the Cross?: The intel on intelligent design_

The Creator on the cross: Science in the light of Christ and him crucified

A Horde of Humbugs

Bee Wise

According to Jesus?

Is Jesus an Evolutionist?

<http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mikelanderson>

Notes

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2 By Usman Bashir (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>), via Wikimedia Commons

3 Kessin, R.H., Gundersen, G.G., Zaydfudim, V. and M Grimson (1996)How cellular slime molds evade nematodes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. USA 93: 4857-4861.

4 Northcutt, W. (2006) The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design. Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

5 Sternberg, R.J. (2002) Smart people are not stupid, but they sure can be foolish. In Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid. R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Yale University Press, New Haven, pp 232-242.

6 Woolley, A. W., Gerbasi, M., Chabris, C.F., Kosslyn, S. M., and J. R. Hackman (2007) What Does It Take to Figure Out What Is Going On? How Team Composition and Work Strategy Jointly Shape Analytic Effectiveness. The Group Brain Project. Technical Report No. 4.

7 By frankenstoen (flickr) [CC BY 2.5 (<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5>), via Wikimedia Commons.

8 Boisseaum R.P., Vogel, D. and A. Dussutour (2016) Habituation in non-neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283: 20160446.

9 Saigusa, T., Tero, A. Nakagaki, T. and Y. Kuramoto (2008) Amoebae Anticipate Periodic Events Physical Review Letters 100(1): 018101.

10 Judson, O. (2002) Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to all Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex. Vintage, London, p.188

11 Why, then, have we not evolved this strategy? It probably has to do with the conflict management of incompatible genomic elements of the cytoplasm. Having two sexes with the sperm contributing no paternal mitochondria means that this conflict never arises in animals. Slime moulds deal with this problem in a different way - they have genes that hierarchically manage the elimination of mitochondria from one parent or the other. See Hurst, L.W. and W. D. Hamilton (1992) Cytoplasmic Fusion and the Nature of Sexes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. 247(1320): 189-194.

12 Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, p. 5.

13 Tversky, A. and D. Kahneman (2002) Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases In Foundations Of Cognitive Psychology. D.J. Levitin (Ed.), The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp 585-600.

14 Nakagaki, T., Yamada, H. and A. Toth (2000) Maze-solving by an amoeboid-organism. Nature 407: 470.

15 Adamatzky, A. and Jones, J. (2010) Road planning with slime mould: If Physarum built motorways it would route M6/M74 through Newcastle. _International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos_ 20: 3065.

16 Dussutour, A. Latty, T., Beekman, M., Simpson, S.J. and J. H. Brown (2010) Amoeboid organism solves complex nutritional challenges. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 107 (10): 4607-4611.

17 Reid, C.R., Simon Garnier, S., Beekman. M., and T. Latty (2015) Information integration and multiattribute decision making in non-neuronal organisms. _Animal Behaviour_ 100 : 44-50.

18 Passwater, R.A. (1974) _Supernutrition_. The Dial Press, New York, p. 22

19 Kang, L. and N. Pedersen (2017) _Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything_ Workman Publishing Company, Inc., New York, p. 17.

20 Brandt, J. (1929) _The Grape Cure_. The Order of Harmony, New York. She was a far better spy than dietician! See Brandt, J. (1913) _The petticoat commando, or, Boer women in secret service,_ Mills & Boon, London.

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26 Nakagaki, T., Iima, M., Ueda, T., Nishiura, Y., Saigusa, T., Tero, A., Kobayashi, R. and K. Showalter (2007) Minimum-Risk Path Finding by an Adaptive Amoebal Network. Physical Review Letters. 99 :068104.

27 Ito, K., Sumpter, D. and T. Nakagaki (2010) Risk management in spatio-temporally varying field by true slime mold. _Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications_ , IEICE 1: 26-36.

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35  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nearly-4000-children-hospitalised-alcohol-4042260

36 Isbell, L. A. (2009) The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent: Why We See So Well. Harvard University Press, p. 3.

37 Of course, people are far more likely to encounter ladders than snakes, but this itself needs to be built into the equation.

38 Holstege, C.P., Miller, M.B., Wermuth, M., Furbee, B. and S. C. Curry (1997) Crotalid Snake Envenomation _Critical Care Clinics_ 13(4):889–921. Of course, Americans are far more likely to encounter ladders than snakes, but this itself needs to be built into the equation.

39 Rabinoff, M. (2006) _Ending the Tobacco Holocaust._ Elite Books, Santa Rosa, p. 40.

40 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2014) _The Health Consequences of Smoking —50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General_ , Atlanta, GA, p. 659

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44 Wright, R. (2011) _A Short History of Progress_. House of Anansi Press Inc., Toronto.

45 Galtung, J. (1969) Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. _Journal of Peace Research_ 6(3): 167-191.

46 Boyd, T.A. (1957) _Professional Amateur - The Biography Of Charles Franklin Kettering_. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, p.232.

47 Jeffries, Z. (1960) _Charles Kettering - A biographical Memoir_. National Academy of Sciences, Washington D.C., p. 106.

48 Michaels, D (2008) _Doubt is Their Product : How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health_. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 38.

49 Dauvergne, P. (2016) _Environmentalism of the Rich_. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 65.

50 Markowitz G. and D. Rosner (2002) p. 137.

51 Forouzanfar, M. H. _et al_ (2015) Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks in 188 countries 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. _The Lancet_ 386(10010): 2287-2323.

52 On average about 350 000 died per year from war in the 20th century. Rummel, R.J. (2011) _Death by Government_. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, USA.

53 Hill, M.K. (2004) Understanding Environmental Pollution: A Primer Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 350.

54 Nevin, R. (2000) How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. _Environmental Research Section A_ 83: 1-22.

55 Nevin (2007) Understanding international crime trends - The legacy of preschool lead exposure. _Environmental Research_ 104: 315–336.

56 Kutler, S. I. (ed.) (2000) _Dictionary of American History_. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, p. 174.

57 Kovarik, W. (2005) Ethyl-leaded Gasoline: How a Classic Occupational Disease Became an International Public Health Disaster. _International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health_ 11(4): 384-397.

58 White, M. (2011) _Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements_. Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh.

59 Iglarsh, H. (2011) The man who poisoned us all. _Counterpunch_ , March 25,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/03/25/the-man-who-poisoned-us-all/

60 Markowitz G. and D. Rosner (2002) p.111.

61 Menke, A., Muntner, P. , Batuman, V., Silbergeld, E.K and E. Guallar (2006) Blood Lead Below 0.48 µmol/L (10 µg/dL) and Mortality Among US Adults. _Circulation_ 114:1388–1394.

62 McNeill, J.R. (2001) _Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World_. Norton, New York, p. xxvi.

63 Kovarik, W.J. (1994) Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 discovery of tetraethyl lead. Paper to the Society of Automotive Engineers, Fuels & Lubricants Division conference, Baltimore.

64 Boyd, T.A. (1957) p. 59.

65 Dauvergne, P. (2016) _Environmentalism of the Rich_. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 65.

66 Quoted in Faulk, R.O., Gray, J.S., Larson, D.P. and G.W. Sewell (2007) Looking for Lead in all the wrong places: Alternative sources of exposure in lead paint litigation. Washington Legal Foundation. Critical Legal Issues. Working Paper Series No. 148.

67 Kovarik, W.J. (2013) The Ethyl Controversy. PhD Dissertation.

68 Dauvergne, P. (2008) _The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment_. The MIT Press, Camridge Massachusetts, p. 74

69 Hamilton, A. (1943) _Exploring the Dangerous Trades_. Little, Brown and Company, p. 38.

70 Kovarik, W. (2005) Ethyl-leaded Gasoline: How a Classic Occupational Disease Became an International Public Health Disaster. _International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health_ 11(4): 384-397.

71 Kettering Digest, August 1956, p. 32.

72 By Plazak (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (<http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html>), via Wikimedia Commons

73  https://history.gmheritagecenter.com/wiki/index.php/Kettering,_Charles_F. (accessed 2 June 2017).

74 Truzzi, M. (1978) On the extraordinary: An attempt at clarification. _Zetetic Scholar_ 1(1):11-19.

75 Oreskes, N. and E.M. Conway (2010) _Merchants Of Doubt_. Bloomsbury Press, New York, Michaels, D. (2008) _Doubt is Their Product : How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health_. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 38-44.

76 Chamberlain, John (1961) Some rules are for breaking. _The Freeman_ , June, pp 55-58.

77 Boyd, T.A. (1957) p. 227.

78 Boyd, T.A. (1957) p. 141.

79 Boyd, T.A. (1957) _Professional Amateur - The Biography Of Charles Franklin Kettering_. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, p. 77.

80 Quoted in Denworth, L. (2008) Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead. Beacon Press, Boston, pp. 54-55.

81 Markowitz G. and D. Rosner (2002) p. 24.

82 Rampton, S. and J. Stauber (2001) _Trust Us, Were Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and gambles with Your Future_ , Penguin Putnam Inc, p. 92.

83 Denworth, L. (2008) p. 56.

84 Needleman H.L. and C.A. Gatsonis (1990) Low-Level Lead Exposure and the IQ of ChildrenA Meta-analysis of Modern Studies. _JAMA_ 263(5):673–678. doi:10.1001/jama.1990.03440050067035

85 Needleman, H.L., Gunnoe, C. Leviton, A., Reed, R., Peresie, H., Maher, C. and P. Barrett, Deficits in Psychologic and Classroom Performance of Children with Elevated Dentine Lead Levels New England Journal of Medicine 300:689 - 695.

86 Mitcham, S. W., Jr. (1996) Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich. Praeger Publishers, Connecticut, p. 82.

87 Boyd, T.A. (1957) p. 225.

88 Boyd, T.A. (1959) Charles F. Kettering, Prophet of Progress. _Science_ 129: 255-256.

89 Heinlein, R. A. (1988) _Time Enough for Love_ , Ace Books. Page 248.

90 Lidz, F. (2003) _Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders_. Bloomsbury, New York, p. 22.

91 Quoted in Hernandez, W. (2015) _Mere Spirituality: The Spiritual Life According to Henri Nouwen_ , Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, p. 42.

92 Emerson, R.W. (1950) The Complete Essays and other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Random House, Inc., New York. p. 145.

93 Russell, P. (1929) _Emerson, The Wisest American_. Blue Ribbon Books, Inc., New York City, p. 3.

94 de Tocqueville, A. (1835) Democracy in America - Historical - Critical Edition of De la Démocratie en Amérique, Liberty Fund, Inc., Indianpolis, pp 700-701.

95 Blom, P. (2010) _A Wicked Company The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment Basic Books_. New York.

96 Quoted in Mueller, D. C. (2009) _Reason, Religion, and Democracy_. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, p. 176.

97 See Schmidt, J. (2000) What Enlightenment Project? _Political Theory_ 28(6):734-757 and the essays in Schmidt, J. (1996) What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, University of California Press, Berkeley.

98 Errington, A, (2016) "Go to the ant." The wisdom of animals in the book of Proverbs and its implications for ethics. Society for the Study of Christian Ethics, Annual Conference, pp. 1-6.

99 Kanazawa, S. (2012) _The intelligence paradox: Why the intelligent choice is not always the smart one._ John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

100 Brown, C. (1968) _Philosophy and the Christian Faith :A Historical Sketch from the Middle Ages to the Present Day_. Intervarsity-Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, p. 44.

101 Kaplan, A. (2009) The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, p. 28.

102 Fisher, R.A. (1971) _The Design of Experiments_ Hafner Press, London, p. 186.

103 Goldmann, L. (1968) _The Philosophy of the Enlightenment The Christian Burgess and the Enlightenmen_ t. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, p. 2.

104 The notion of a multiverse touted in cosmological circles does not, of course, touch this point.

105 Midgley, M. (1989) _Wisdom, Information and Wonder_.: What is knowledge for? Routledge, New York, p.6.

106 Saul, J. R. (1992) _Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West_. Simon and Shuster, Inc., New York, p. 15.

107 Hardwig, J. (1985) Epistemic Dependence _The Journal of Philosophy_ 82 (7): 335-349.

108 John Hardwig, J. (1991) The Role of Trust in Knowledge. _The Journal of Philosophy_ 88 (12): 693-708.

109 Kahan, D.M., Peters, E. Dawson, E. C. and P. Slovic (2017) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government _Behavioural Public Policy_ 1(1): 54–86.

110 Nichols, T. M. (2017 _) The death of expertise the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters_. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 21.

111 Hume, D. (1911) _A Treatise of Human Nature Volume II_ . J M Dent & Sons, Ltd., p.127.

112 Butterfield, H. (1949) pp. 75-76.

113 Goudzwaard, B. (1979 _) Capitalism and progress: a diagnosis of Western society_. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

114 Boyd, T.A. (1959) Charles F. Kettering, Prophet of Progress. _Science_ 129: 255-256.

115 Kettering, C.F. (1927) Age of Wonders Still in Future. _Popular Mechanics_ 48(3) 354–355.

116 Quoted in Jeffries, Z. (1960) p. 112.

117 Boyd, T.A. (1957) p. 205.

118 Dawson, C. H. (1945) _Progress and Religion: A Historical Enquiry_. Sheed and Ward, London, p. 3.

119 Dawson, C. H. (1945) p. 13.

120 Fox, R. (2005) The Search for Society. In, J. Zerzan (Ed.), _Against Civilization: Readings and Reflection_ , Feral House, Los Angeles, p. 90.

121 Bury, J. B. (1920) _The Idea of Progress - An inquiry into its origin and growth_. MacMillan and Co., London, pp. 4, 5, 73.

122 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/progress/

123 Bury, J. B. (1920) p. 2

124 Goudzwaard, B. (1979) p. 122.

125 Mill, John Stuart (1832) The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XVIII - Essays on Politics and Society Part I , Liberty Fund, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana, p. 160.

126 Gray, J. (2007) _Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age._ Routledge, London, pp. xvi-xvii.

127 Quoted in Dawson (1945) p.17.

128 Huxley, T.H. (1893) _Evolution & ethics_. Macmillan and Company, London, pp 31-32.

129 Ryan and Jetha (2012) Sex at Dawn: the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality. Harper Collins Publishers, New York, p. 722.

130 Fry, D.P. (2007) _Beyond war - The human potential for peace_. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

131 Haas, J. and Piscitelli, M. (2013) The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography In Fry, D.P. (2013) War, Peace, And Human Nature - The Convergence Of Evolutionary And Cultural Views Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.168-190

132 Malesevic, S. (2014) Taming or disguising violence? War, civilisation and social theory. Journal of Political Power DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2014.925181.

133 Saul, J. R. (1992) _Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West._ Simon and Shuster, Inc., New York, p. 179.

134 Lee, R.B. (2014) Hunter-gatherers on the best-seller list: Steven Pinker and the "Bellicose School's treatment of forager violence." _Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research_ 6 (4): 216 - 228.

135 See the collected papers in Fry, D.P. (Ed.)(2013) _War, Peace, And Human Nature - The Convergence Of Evolutionary And Cultural Views_. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

136 Butterfield, H, (1949) _Christianity and history_. Collins, England, p.66.

137 Gray, J. (2007), p. xv.

138 Pinker (2002) The Blank Slate - The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Penguin Books, New York, p. 192.

139 Pinker, S. (2011) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin Books, Ltd, England.

140 Quoted by Somma, R. (2012) Enlightenment Living: Essays on Living a Virtuous Scientific Life. _Ideonexus_. p. 140-141.

141 See de Dijn, A. (2012) The politics of the Enlightenment: From Peter Gay to Jonathan Israel. _The Historical Journal_ 55(3) : 785-805.

142 Grant, E. (2004) _God and Reason in the Middle Ages_. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp 6-7.

143 Pinker gets this table from White, M. (2011) The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities. W. W. Norton and Company, pp. 429-438. White revised the figure for the An Lushan Revolt down to 13 million.

144 Fitzgerald (1985) _China: a short cultural history._ Westview Press _, p. 314_.

145 Cirillo, P. and N. N. Taleb (2016) The Decline of Violent Conflicts: What Do The Data Really Say? Nobel Symposium 161: The Causes of Peace, June 15-18.

146 Obermeyer, Z., Murray, C.J.L., and E. Gakidou (2008) Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: Analysis of data from the world health survey programme. _British Medical Journal_ 336: 1482-1486.

147 Gray, J. (2011) Delusions of peace. _Prospect_ 21 September.

148 Rummel, R.J. (2011) _Death by Government_. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, USA.

149 Scherrer, C.P. (2003) Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Violence: Conflict Management, Human Rights, and multilateral regimes. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., England. p. 78.

150 Grimshaw, A.D. (1999) Genocide and Democide In _Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace & conflict_ Vol 2, Kurtz, L.R and J. E. Turpin (Eds.), Academic press, San Diego, p. 54

151 Tozija, F. (2015) Structural and Social Violence _._ A Global Public Health Curriculum _South Eastern European Journal of Public Health_ , Jacobs Verlag, pp. 65-76.

152 Prüss-Ustün, A. , Vickers, C. , Haefliger, P. and R. Bertollini (2011 )Knowns and unknowns on burden of disease due to chemicals - a systematic review. _Environmental Health_ 10:9.

153 Brady, M. and de Oliveira Brady, S. (2004) IBFAN International Report. Baby Milk Action, Cambridge, UK.

154 Quoted in Richter, J. ( 2001 ) _Holding Corporations Accountable: Corporate Conduct, International Codes and Citizen Action_. Zed Books, London p.44

155 Murthy, P. and B.N. Subodh (2010) Current developments in behavioral interventions for tobacco cessation. _Current opinion in psychiatry_ 23(2): 151–156.

156 Proctor, R.N. (2011) _Golden Holocaust: Origins of the cigarette catastrophe and the case for abolition_. University of Califormia Press, Berkeley.

157 Burnett, S., Bault, N., Coricelli, G. & Blakemore, S. J. (2010). Adolescents' heightened risk-seeking in a probabilistic gambling task. _Cognitive Development, 25(2),_ 183-196.

158 Brandt, A.M, (2007) _The Cigarette Century_. Basic Books, New York, p. 31.

159 Oreskes, N. and E.M. Conway (2010) _Merchants Of Doubt_. Bloomsbury Press, New York, pp. 136-168.

160 Pinker, S. (2008) The Moral Instinct _The New York Times_ , 13 January.

161 Rooney, P.M. and H.K. Frederick (2011) Tobacco industry philanthropy and the nonprofit. In _After Tobacco: What Would Happen If Americans Stopped Smoking?_ Bearman, P.S., Neckerman, K.M and L. Wright (Eds.) Columbia University Press, New York, p. 196.

162 There were 853,000 deaths from lead poisoning (Forouzanfar et al (2015)) and 17,958 deaths from terrorism (Institute for Economics and Peace (2014 _) Global Terrorism Index 2014: Measuring and Understanding the Impact of Terrorism_ , p. 2).

163 White, M. (2011) _Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements_. Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh.

164 Murray, C. J. (1994) Quantifying the burden of disease: the technical basis for disability-adjusted life years. Bulletin _of the World health Organization_ 72(3): 429–445.

165 Koetke, W.H. _The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and The Seed of the Future_. Author House, Bloomington, Indiana, p. 24.

166 Anderson, M.L. (2016) _Double-crossing the cross - the intel on intelligent desig_ n. Smashwords, Los Gatos, <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/684468>

167 Heinberg, R. (2005) Was Civilization a Mistake? In, _J. Zerzan , Against Civilization: Readings and Reflection_ , Feral House, Los Angeles, pp. 116 - 123.

168 Saul, J. R. (1992) p. 22.

169 And not without problems. Many and have been led to think by this technology, that ultimately truth is personal whereas Jesus declared it to be personal - himself.

170 Rampton, S. and J. Stauber (2001) _Trust Us, Were Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and gambles with Your Future_ , Penguin Putnam Inc, p. 93.

171 Quoted in Goudzwaard (1979) p. 44.

172 Quoted in Gay, P. (1988) _Voltaire's Politics_. Yale University Press, New Haven, p. 241.

173 Butterfield, H. (1949) pp. 75-76.

174 Ruse, M. (2001) _Can a Darwinian be a Christian: The Relationship between Science and Religion_. Cambridge University press, Cambridge, p. 219.
