Evolution vs Creationism

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huh, you want to see a murderous chimp check out "frodo"
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0304/feature4/online_extra2.html
He has even killed a human child

check out the article for the rest

 

Great book! Have you read it?

What's obvious, Nataraja, is that you did not get my point. Religion crafts laws that makes us different from animals. It's one of things that, again, points out that a human is not an animal. Good grief, I have no doubt about the violent nature of some animals in the wild. But again, nature is not the model used in religion, at least not in most instances.

And to say that humans have murdered in the name of religion - well yes, they have. That is why religion is almost always in need of reform.

As for the fact or theory of evolution, I'm not disagreeing with you, only that humans are different, which to me, and a great many others, is obvious. I used to live just a few blocks from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (there's that great scene in _The Catcher in the Rye that takes place there). And I used to walk over to the museum often to look at all the exhibts on evolution. It was extraodinary! .

If you say that "science catalogues homo sapiens as animals for its own uses," and get no argument from me. Yet, when you comment that "humans are animals," then that carries with it a different connotation. And an important one.

 

Maybe the other species doesn't taste as good...

That sounds like something out of Spinoza...

I don't know that Science can truly evaluate what it means to be "human".

It could be a flaw in our character...

But can it account for how different humans are from animals?

 

The thing with the clip of the chimpanzee warfare is that they exist in a state of plenty, they do not need to compete with each other for resources. The chimpanzee in the clip live in an area unlike the areas in which all other chimpanzee live, and the area can sustain troops of up to 150 chimpanzee...that is the equivalent of the population of China in chimpanzee terms. Resources are plenty. And yet they still go to war solely to intimidate other troops for nothing more than their own ego.

Again, I will say...humans are animals, a species of animals, so of course we are different from other animals, the same as other animal species are different from each other. Of course we have a lot of things about us that make us different, and yet so do other animals. Human sense of smell is horrendous, we lack infra-red and ultra-violet vision, yet our brains more than compensate for these deficiencies. I am not saying we are not special in any way, all I am saying is that we are animals, a species of animals. That is it.

Why is this so hard to accept?

 

Because of the subtext carried within that statement. Some of us just don't agree. In fact, I think it's idiotic that science catalogues humans in the animal kingdom. But it really doesn't matter to me either way because it's not my area. Like most in literary studies, for me it's mostly about the development of the individual.

 

Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes

So after reading this are you still convinced that humans are not a species of animals?

 

I'd be inclined to look into that book, but for that following remark in parentheses: The Catcher in the Rye is that book that that nutter who killed John Lennon was obsessed about. I heard it really appeals to american youths too. I avoid it like the plague! Is In Cold Blood anything like CitR?

 

coin, i think that you would identify with holden(the main character in the CitR) much more than you think.

 

_The Catcher in the Rye_ is a classic. It does have a strange history because there is a story that Lee Harvey Oswald also had a copy, and the guy who shot Ronald Reagan did as well. But I've never been able to verify that in any official manner.

_In Cold Blood is a riveting retelling of the slaying of a Kansas family carried out by two losers back in the 50s. It was written by Truman Capote, who is also a real life character in Harper Lee's _To Kill a Mockingbird_.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood_(book)

Sorry their link is jacked-up. There is a page but the link appears broken. Thatnks, Coin. I fxed it.

 

Chandos, do you care about the divinity of religion or do you just view it as an interesting and beneficial sociological phenomenon? If something is divine, which many religious people think their religion is, and is coming from god/the gods then why would it need reform? Or was god wrong and we humans need to correct him? You see, as soon as you introduce the "divine" in the discussion things get quite shaky.

Also I think you misunderstood my "smoke and mirrors" comment partly because I do not understand the issue completely, it wasn't helped that I had managed to miss a whole page of posts before my own. Anyhoo what meant is that, what our senses take in is not at all the same as what our brain constructs for our "mind". Most of what you experience is constructed inside your brain by guesswork and experience. Our perception of the world is mostly constructed inside our own heads. As I said I am no expert, nor a scientist I am a student of the humanities just as you. I find this extremely fascinating though, it seems like science has wandered into the last domain that was left for philosophy and religion. No we might be able to check on what we have been forced to speculate in before.

I have read "In Cold Blood" it was one of the more interesting books I was to read during my literature studies. What struck me the most when I read it was how typical the behaviour and attitudes of the two killers were. At the time I worked in a psychiatric ward and the two killers could have fit right in among the patients there.

 

Chandos, you aren't adding the final parenthesis to your link. You did the exact same thing in the whale thread.

If you see me as some kind of emotinal, angsty character, then you have me entirely wrong. Even when i was a teenager, people found me a bit dull (the result of coming across as unemotional). I've never done anything rash or hasty in my life, and have a good idea of who & what I am; I'm not 'desperately in search of something' or 'discovering how to be at peace with myself' or something. As far as personality traits go, oversensitive, self-absorbed angstiness makes it in my top 5 most despised, definitely. I guess I learnt that unchecked emotions cause misery by observing my extended family and their infighting.

back on topic: joacquin points out exactly the issue that makes religion and evolution theory unreconcileable: God is perfect. How can the Holy Bible, His word, have gotten the facts of our creation SO wrong? But this should be christians' problem, not mine.
There was an episode of Family Guy on TV (FG is an animated series from the USA, it can be really dumb and annoying) and I noticed something peculiar in the story: First it was a joke about how god created the universe by lighting one of his farts, then it turned into a simplified version of evolutionary history.
It's interesting how they tried to combine the two, and I guess I'm OK with it. As long as evolution isn't denied and objected to, I as a biologist am indifferent. Let the cosmologists take over the fight. But eventually there will be a point where religion must choose what the repercussions will be of inaccuracies in the bible. Does the bible, by its own mistakes, disprove God and religion, or will there be another explanation?

 

Not quite, reciprocal altruism, the golden rule "Do unto others as they would do unto you" which can be found in almost all major religions is an evolutionary stable strategy.

It's the optimal way of behaviour to yield the most fruitful results for all the participants when there's a competition of resources that can be resolved in other ways than being "nature red in tooth and claw".

It's also an interesting approach into explain inter-species altruism.

Symbiotic and altruistic behaviour arises by itself. It does not need a deus ex-machina as an explanation. It doesn't even need the concept of human rationality as an explanation.

 

Coin, that is only an issue if God were trying to give man an instruction manual for the process of creation. I don't know any religion that claims that. If God had meant Genesis to be the foundational text for evolutionary biology, it would be, but He didn't. You can't say an object is imperfect because it doesn't accomplish a goal it was never intended to.

As to the human animal, I will say it again, and in more detail. Biologically speaking, humans are animals, yes, but psychologically speaking we are of a different order all together, and spiritually speaking, we are part of an entirely different level of existance. Like I said, human are animals in as much as this laptop is a chunk of metal and plastic. And the biggest proof that humans are different from animals? Humans are the only species I know of that is at all capable of denying our instincts, and we do so regularly. Many of us do it just for the sake of doing it. All other species (as far as I know) are completely subject to their instincts, like a machine is subject to it's programming and a rocket is subject to the laws of nature. Many of them may be able to use intelligence to rationally extrapolate those instincts many times, as man is, but only man can actively deny those instincts.

 

That's an interesting rationalization: God gave us the Bible, and it contains only what He intended us to know. So us finding out about evolution ourselves, can be seen as part of God's plan, and how we choose to react to this knowledge, could even be seen as a test. Once again I underestimate how airtight religion is.

I also give human life more meaning than animal life most of the time, but from a more discriminating viewpoint of: Humans are one of us, other animals are 'them'. Without a divine mandate, there's more room for discussion. There are exceptions, when human development encroaches upon the final population of an endangered species. I wouldn't be opposed to park rangers adopting a 'shoot on sight' policy, which is fair, since poachers do the same to them. When people do inhuman things, like murder, child abuse, or hunting/eating endangered animals, we should view it as them 'using up' their humanity, and human rights.

 

Not to mention that all research into neurology and psyochology seems to point that we are as much slaves to instinct as any other animal. We are just good at tricking ourselves into thinking we are not.

 

A good point. Do we make friends out of an innate desire for friendship, or the soothing reassurance that we have allies to back us up in times of need? Do we post on the internet because we blab incessantly, or we strive to better ourselves, and perhaps improve our survival/success through gathering and exchanging knowledge? Would people go to work if there wasn't a financial reward for it? Even the most innocuous emotions, thoughts, and actions, like kindness and curiosity, have an element of self-interest in them.

 

We make choices of things in our lives because we are individuals; "individuation" or how the individual seeks to differentiate himself from the herd, or the "collective," helps to form our personalities. I don't know if animals care about how they are viewed in this sense. Again, it is that dual nature that I believe is unique to us, which causes us to want to be both solitary and social creatures at the same time.

I have a Jungian approach to religion, and many other things as well (like literature and mythology), as I'm sure you have noticed in the past, Joac.

Coin - Holden is a character much admired in literature, not only because of the great "voice," which Salinger gave him, but also because he has an uncanny abilitiy to recgonize the superficial and move beyond it, but it's that VOICE that's so cool:

I guess Holden agrees with Nataraja about animals and humans.

 

Humans are worse than animals. We kill in cold blood, we lie and cheat. The only other speicies that comes close to us in being gits is hyenas and even then they probably have the moral high ground

 

Chimpanzee do it all the time, and they are 98% human...or is it that we are 98% chimpanzee?

Both us and chimpanzee have an innate Machiavellian intelligence. Both species are inherently dishonest and frequently stab each other in the back.

As humans, we live in a sort of grey area between the behaviour of the chimpanzee and the behaviour of the bonobo.

 

But with less fruit in our diets