Homo Sapiens, the Impostor Species

In this volume I hope to establish not only that belief by humans in a supernatural, theistic being makes humans impostors, but also that being an impostor violates many of the principles of behavior which humans generally accept as appropriate. Behavior as impostors, I propose, has genuinely dangerous, and possibly catastrophic, circumstances for humanity. Support for that premise is well documented by Jared Diamond in The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live3, as well as many other sources which will be consulted as the book progresses. The word “impostor” suggests falsehood, as opposed to truthfulness. An understanding of the meaning of truth, and the implications for human life in being truthful, will be another major theme throughout the book. Additionally, I hope to further demonstrate that biological humanism, the basic principle of which is mutual concern and responsibility for each other (a form of truthfulness), when set in the context of established forms of religious behavior, can serve as an effective replacement for theistic religion, a premise which I also examined in Embracing Biological Humanism. As a biological humanist, I will attempt to show the value that can accrue to human society by viewing humanity as a biologically emergent species instead of the currently prevailing cultural view that humans are special beings created by a theistic being, god. Accordingly, each chapter will explore a major topic which has acquired its current understanding in a theistically dominated cultural milieu and attempt to demonstrate how a biological humanistic view of humanity can produce an understanding of that topic which will benefit humanity more than the currently prevailing view. When human society generally abandons the idea of god and accepts its role as emergent biological beings who have a mutual interconnection with each other, human society can have been remastered as a society of biological humanists.