War with a Race Billion-Year Lifespans

Dwellers were almost everywhere and had been there practically for ever. They had learned a few things about making war over that time, and while their war machines were believed to be as customarily unreliable - and eccentrically designed, built and maintained - as every other piece of technology they deigned to involve themselves with, that didn’t mean they weren’t deadly; usually for all concerned, and within a disconcertingly large volume. Other species had prevailed against Dwellers on ...

 Why Science and Religion are Irreconcilable

To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged from preb...

 Intelligent Life May Have Appeared in the Universe Billio...

[W]e might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?

 Overcoming Inherited Bias to Live In Peace

In our earliest history, so far as we can tell, individuals held an allegiance toward their immediate tribal group, which may have numbered no more than ten or twenty individuals, all of whom were related by consanguinity. As time went on, the need for cooperative behavior – in the hunting of large animals or large herds, in agriculture, and in the development of cities – forced human beings into larger and larger groups. The group that was identified with, the tribal unit, enlarged at each s...