The Politics of Animal Consciousness

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i have no problem with people who do the vegan thing i mean but they have to remember that they're killing plants and plants are fully in our evolutionary scheme. So this idea that somehow uh animal consciousness and animal experience um is something that we need to protect more than plant experience is a judgment call and it's kind of a selfish one, he says. Why the world wildlife fund chose the panda as its logo instead of the cockroach or something not a cockroach yeah okayuh let's kind of wrap it up here so i want to push you beyond the page here for a few minutes though beyond the book that is to sayyou don't talk much about politics in here.

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope.

Shermer and Goodenough discuss: origins of her personal beliefs • origins life, RNA, DNA, consciousness, language, morality • myths and religions • what it means to be “religious” • religious naturalism • where the laws of physics came from • why the universe seems so strange • chance and evolution • fine tuning of the cosmos • autocatalysis and emergence • purpose of religion • ethics and morality without religion.

Ursula Goodenough is Professor Emerita of Biology at Washington University. One of America's leading cell biologists, she is the author of a bestselling textbook on genetics, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard. Her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, is now in a second edition. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association.