I would think, if humans have really been around for millions of years, and we’re doing all this evolving and getting smarter and more advanced, that we would have figured out how to get a long by now.
Bro, it’s the not getting along that is making the whole evolution possible
Posted by J Ly on 2 November 2005 @ 5pm
lol. People as individuals are definitely becoming more advanced, as far as understanding and intelligence go. People collectively, however, aren’t really developing very much. You may notice that the people who drive the “getting smarter and more advanced” part tend to get along fine, while it’s usually those who don’t understand and/or don’t care to understand that are responsible for the majority of the antagonism.
Humans as a whole could have all the knowledge in the world, but if people don’t care to learn and apply it, it doesn’t have much of an effect on the development of society. I think people generally know how to get along, they just don’t care.
Oh, and evolution is driven mostly by cooperation, much less by competition. The reason competition gets first billing is because it’s easier to see, and generally more exciting.
Posted by Matt Zellman on 2 November 2005 @ 6pm
Quite the opposite, it has always seemed to me that those who are “smarter and more advanced” seem to mostly use their edge to rule over and oppress those that they deem less so.
Posted by Joy K on 2 November 2005 @ 10pm
mmmk this is completely unrelated but…
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Its like a trainwreck, you know you shouldnt but you cant help but stare.
enjoy.
Posted by ellie on 2 November 2005 @ 10pm
Generally, oppression is not committed by those who fall into that category, but by those who do not understand, and see it as a means to dominance. Those who develop knowledge and understanding are almost never the ones who use it for domination. Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Franklin, Aristotle, da Vinci, etc…
These are not the ones who are responsible for oppression. Those who dominate use their brilliance to give their actions the illusion of legitimacy, but rare is the occasion when the innovator supports the cause of the dominator.
Posted by Matt Zellman on 3 November 2005 @ 12am
Yeah, I can’t even remember the last time I evolved.
Posted by Travis on 3 November 2005 @ 9am
I rest my case.
Posted by Cory on 3 November 2005 @ 9am
The case was well made for you Cory.
Posted by Bill Ekhardt on 3 November 2005 @ 9am
I just wanted to take a cheap shot.
Posted by J Ly on 3 November 2005 @ 11am
:) And I ask nothing more of you.
Posted by Cory on 3 November 2005 @ 11am
Evolution is incapable of providing a rational basis for moral behavior. At best, Evolution enables an organism to participate in what are known as the Four F’s: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and reproducing.
Posted by Timbo on 3 November 2005 @ 7pm
No, Tim. Evolution is in fact capable of providing a rational basis for moral behavior. It does so through the significant advantage offered by cooperative behaviors, which work best when constrained by societal expectations. It is precisely those favorable expectations that evolution provides as the rational basis for moral behavior. The fact that different constraints offer better advantages in different environments even serves to explain the difference in moral behaviors between cultures…
The four F’s are an extreme oversimplification of the factors that aid evolution. In fact, any behavior that increases an organisms chances of surviving or reproducing, including complex social behaviors, is going to be rewarded by selection.
Posted by Matt Zellman on 4 November 2005 @ 2am
No, Matt. Ease up on the naturalism.
Posted by Timbo on 4 November 2005 @ 7am
“The description we have to give of thought as an evolutionary phenomenon always makes a tacit exception in favour of the thinking which we ourselves perform at that moment.” —C.S. Lewis, Miracles, ch. 3
“If my own mind is a product of the irrational—if what seem to be my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel—how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution?” —C.S. Lewis, “The Funeral of a Great Myth” in Christian Reflections, p. 89
Posted by Timbo on 4 November 2005 @ 7am
You know what I think the problem is Cory… liesure. I’ll bet that if humans were still worried about getting eaten by big cats when they woke up each morning and went outside the hut… or cave… or whatever… then we would get along much more completely. I don’t have to worry about getting eaten. Getting along is not a primary need for my survival. It’s optional.
Posted by The dd on 4 November 2005 @ 8am
Of the four F’s, it’s the Feeling I’m concerned about.
Posted by Cory on 4 November 2005 @ 8am
dd, you’ve got a point. Nothing crosses the barriers between people like a common enemy. There is little with the power to bind us together than a threat we share in common.
“No, Tim.” Matt, your tone infers an authority that you have not established. Your method suggests that your view of your intellect and opinion is greater than your view of Tim’s. Asserting it as you have suggests that those participating in the discussion agree with that relative authortiy, and I fail to see why that would be likely. As someone younger than us, I find it peculiar that you speak as one would to a younger person - “No, child.”
As someone speaking with a peer, I would have begun, ‘Tim, I disagree’, rather than ‘No, Tim.’ Perhaps you did not intend to assert yourself so.
Posted by Bill Ekhardt on 4 November 2005 @ 8am
I do not intend to argue from authority in any sense… My responses to arguments are not based on my view of the people that made them, but on the depth and merit of the arguments themselves. Tim’s argument is one that has been refuted by studies in the primary scientific research literature numerous times over the last several decades, including at least 5 articles in Science, and one or more in Nature, since 2000.
Tim, I am not arguing from naturalism. I do not rule out the role of God in the process of evolution. However, when you say that evolution *can not* account for something, when there exist real and tested models showing not only that it *can* account for it, but *how* it accounts for it, it is disingenuous for me to just nod in agreement.
Just because God is there doesn’t mean that he alone is capable of absolutely everything we attribute to him. Likewise, just because other things are capable of something doesn’t mean that God is somehow incapable of it.
The first models of cooperative evolution were developed in the late 60s and early 70s. One of the earliest models for the mind that attempts to integrate the cognitive role of the observer into experiment was developed less than 20 years ago. While Lewis’s comments may have been legitimate criticisms of the state of scientific understanding at that time, they are not nearly so relevant to the body of knowledge on the subjects that stands today.
Posted by Matt Zellman on 4 November 2005 @ 3pm
As a general exercise in laughter, I would like us all to compare the amount of words in my post versus the amount of words in all these comments.
Posted by Cory on 5 November 2005 @ 10am
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