the progression of humanity, science, and euhermerism

The video I posted yesterday was created by a wise man who goes by the name QualiaSoup; he and his brother TheraminTrees have been getting some attention over the last few months on Buzzfeed, Neatorama et al thanks to their solid demonstrations of logic and rationality.

It reminded me that I'm quite a strong believer that as humanity progresses, we are only accumulating more and more information about ourselves and our world, and that this is only a natural and good thing. Something of a simple statement, but it has implications on the way we perceive the world and the nature of belief and reality itself. And I don't think it's something quite everyone holds to be true right away, as evidenced by opponents of scientific progress (stem cell research), civil rights (gay marriage) or anything of the sort.

I think there's this idea out there that humanity could somehow be "doing it wrong." This seems to be the basic argument behind "social decay" or "losing our morals" or anything of that nature: everything was much better _____ years ago. As a quick side note, this is one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by nostalgia. It's logical fallacy/fooling ourselves in pure form; a true testament to the integrity of the quote I've used on http://www.projectnostalgia.com: "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson. You find the present tense and the past perfect."

But as the history and reality of the world has shown time and time again, there is only one direction we're going in: more information, and more rights for more people.

What got me thinking on it was a new term I ran into today while listening to the How Stuff Works podcast describing the conditions in Cameroon and other similar climates that allow for huge clouds of CO2 to erupt suddenly from lakes, killing up to thousands of nearby villagers on any given occurrence. For ages these seemingly unexplainable events were thought by villagers to be evil spirits exacting vengeance, or any number of other supernatural phenomena; it's only in the last couple of decades that researchers actually started investigating and understanding what's really going on.

The term is euhemerism, describing the rational/scientific understanding of previously mythical/supernatural phenomena. Euhemerus, circa late 4th century B.C., believed that much of Greek mythology could be interpreted as natural events subsequently given supernatural characteristics. And I think humanity will continue to explain the world around us in similar fashion, indefinitely.

Lots of more thoughts on this, and a similar dynamic with respect to social norms/how we "should" be doing things. Still need to get to that "implications on the nature of belief and reality" part. Soon.

In the meantime, another great video: