Why Adam's Rib Became Eve

@sonship said
Then abstract thought was absent for millions of years in animals.
How come all of a sudden ( on a relative scale) there was a need for it?

Because of our evolving and growing cognitive and social capacities.

@sonship said
Have you considered the tapeworm?

Considered it in what way?

@sonship said
What is in this program of evolution that makes arrival at abstract thought a necessity?

Communal living, the need to interact, the ability to affect one another with actions, words and thoughts, prospering and/or surviving as a group.

@sonship said
Rocks were unconscious for billions of years. How come the material universe had a need for consciousness to emerge somehow?

I just accept that rocks don't have consciousness.

@fmf said
Arguing that anthropology is "arrogance" doesn't make any sense to be.

sonship, we have created a discipline called anthropology because we can.

@FMF

This may be where some people's curiosity takes them, sure.

So if these "some people" are led to chemistry, but you are led elsewhere, then you believe there is a real non-material component of people?

Is there a legitimate component of man which does not render itself to physical weight, mass, and atomic particles?

Is there a non-material part of man?

@sonship said
Is there a non-material part of man?

There is the capacity for abstraction and personhood that is made possible by the faculties that exist because of the physical body. If you want to describe that identity, memory, morality, interrelatedness as "non-material", I am OK with that.

@FMF

I just accept that rocks don't have consciousness.

Me too. What made them tend to evolve into something having consciousness?

@sonship said
@FMF

I just accept that rocks don't have consciousness.

Me too. What made them tend to evolve into something having consciousness?

I don't claim that rocks have consciousness or ever did. But I know you are just being facetious. You see, I don't know what the origin of the universe is. I don't think the ancient Hebrews knew either. I don't think you know.

@FMF

There is the capacity for abstraction and personhood

Why did rocks begin to evolve into something having personhood?

that is made possible by the faculties that exist because of the physical body. If you want to describe that identity, memory, morality, interrelatedness as "non-material", I am OK with that.

So then you do believe there is a non-material component to man.

Why did rocks evolve into something needing consciousness, identity, memory, and morality ?

@fmf said
This is [1] surely a metaphor, right? There is no reason to take it literally, is there? And [2] it is also surely a metaphor whose purpose is to underpin the social order and gender relations that the people who wrote it, in the context of their times, believed in and wanted to perpetuate, yes?

An answer to this would be more interesting than you wheeling out your riffs about tapeworms, cockroaches and rocks. The metaphor in question is 'Adam's rib'.

@sonship said
@FMF

There is the capacity for abstraction and personhood

Why did rocks begin to evolve into something having personhood?

I don't know what the origins of the universe and of human consciousness are. And I don't think you do either.

@sonship said
So then you do believe there is a non-material component to man.

If you want to describe the things that are made possible by the faculties supported and enabled by our physical bodies ~ things like identity, memory, morality, interrelatedness ~ as being as "non-material", I don't have any objection.

@sonship said
Why did rocks evolve into something needing consciousness, identity, memory, and morality ?

Like I have said, repeatedly, I don't know what the origin of human consciousness is. Neither of us do.