Evolution Q & A

@pettytalk said
You can't be selective about what you enjoy seeing or don't. If you accept evolution with all its flaws, then all people are behaving and thinking just like Mother Nature has evolved them and shaped their brains/minds.

We are what nature has mindlessly made us to be... that's evolution, in a nutshell. If there is no purpose or direction, or preferences in nature, there i ...[text shortened]... ion, so it's argued. Evolution does not care, nor is it sad or happy for what it causes, mindlessly.

You're right, of course, I can't select what I enjoy seeing, any more I think than can anyone. I enjoy meeting friends, I don't enjoy seeing animals suffer, (for example) and as I thought I made clear, these are personal and emotional responses. We are unique as a species in that we can have empathy with other species, and can 'empathise' with an animal which is suffering. We are also unique in that we have the ability to consiously make choices as to how we behave, nature may be mindless, but we have evolved not to be mindless, that is our lot, clever old us. If you take the existential or philosophical stance that there is no good or evil, and no right or wrong, then I have no argument with you, that is your prerogative, but I think you would intervene if someone was beating up your best friend, or kicking your dog. (If you have either)

I agree with you that from an academic viewpoint, we should not care whether one species or another becomes extinct, including our own, and evolution has no mind to care with, but I'm unable to entirely see the world from an academic viewpoint; the sadness at seeing a species go extinct is, as I have said before, a personal and emotional reaction, which I would not expect you to share. I think we have to make a distinction here between the personal and the academic.

@pettytalk said
When did atheists start believing in ghosts?

I'm trying to take your job away from you. It's only a matter of time. A pawn who marches forward steadfastly will reach the last row and instantly become the Queen of the hive, the strongest piece in the game.

The trick sir, to true power, is to escape the board.

@moonbus said
Yes, you are quite right that there is no reason for mindless processes to generate organized life forms. They just did, without any reason to. The only point on which we are dissonant is that there having been no reason for it troubles you and does not trouble me, so you keep on looking for a reason to insert into mindless processes and I don't.

Without a reason is unreasonable, you are suggesting a causeless cause, just because is never enough, there is no understanding it's blind faith. Just because is not logical, or reasonable, it just is an admission you have nothing to base your worldview's point of view on, because that is all you are offering, nothing. We live in an information-rich universe, we can study it with mathematics, the universe has boundaries, and anything with boundaries and limited attributes is understandable to us through study, all just because is, is a thoughtless explanation. The only just because is the prime reality, the reason for everything else, He has no cause so you are giving finite things God-like attributes.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I thought though the Christian God was all about protecting the weak, and that it was evolution alone that preached the survival of the fittest?

He just said his god was limited to him.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The trick sir, to true power, is to escape the board.

That happens when all the pieces go back into the box.

@kellyjay said
That happens when all the pieces go back into the box.

I only put the pawns in the box.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I only put the pawns in the box.

Then it is quite possible you could lose a few.

@kellyjay said
Then it is quite possible you could lose a few.

The higher value pieces have their own sofa in the living room.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The higher value pieces have their own sofa in the living room.

😱 ahhh, well done! 😀