Rebecka said:
You know as well as I what greater means as you said you suspect that isn't what I meant. You just know.
The president of the USA isn't greater than you or I, but a fellow human. I refer to exactly the meaning of it.
If you tried to hold your breath for 10 minutes, you wouldn't be able to do it as you have no control, but something within you would make you breathe.
Certainly. It is a hardwired instinct, much similar to the self-contained nerve system that regulates the heart in that we have little or no conscious control over it. An instinct who's steady evolution came as an immediate short-term benefit.
If you build a company from the ground up beginning with a dollar and work hard and build and learn and build and learn, and finally your company is worldwide and is worth millions of dollars.
There is nothing about your company you don't know because you built it yourself. You were there for every decision, every move, every advancemet went through you first. You know it inside and out.
You are that company.
Hold that thought...
If evolution is true, how come we don't know where we came from according to evolution?
How come Jack of 1,000,000,000,000 B.C. didn't pass on to Jack of 2003 A.D. the gene that contains this knowledge? What happened to it?
Well 1) there was no Jack in year 1'000'000'000'000BC. There wasn't even a planet or a universe, almost certainly. However, typos occur so I will get onto addressing your point.
2) Your analogy is comparing two very dissimilar things. One is a centralised organisational structure built top-down by an individual. Evolution, by contrast, merely describes the process by which features of short-term benefit to an animal or plant, or to it's wider population, may be selected for.
'Evolution' doesn't talk about the origins of the universe, but merely the origins of species, and in that direction we have a fairly good idea 'where we came from', according to available evidence.
3) There is no gene for memory. I feel you are making a fundamental flaw in your understanding of evolutionary theory. If a mouse or smart dinosaur once (heh) had a philosophical breakthrough in the distant past and exclaimed to itself "by George! That's what it's all about!", it would have no way of passing on that knowledge, as the patterns in your memory do not affect your genetic makeup.
Consciously-derived memory can only be passed on by teaching within a social species. This might be the teaching of hunting routines in a pack of wolves or a tribe of chimps, or the teaching of moral values and mathematics within a human society.
All science does is assume, guess, suppose, take notions and make conjectures. You had knowledge to build your company. You assumed nothing.
Don't say that knowledge passed only to Darwin because then how would you account for he not being superior to every living thing?
His death proved what he was. Just like us.
Of course. Whoever tried to claim that 'knowledge was passed only to Darwin' regarding evolutionary theory? He was indeed one of (
one of) the founders of evolutionary theory, but he is not it's god.
Evolutionary theory has been taught, analysed, cross-checked against evidence and subtley modified to better represent findings many times since; it has not been set in stone since the time of Darwin, and many new discoveries have come to light regarding this; Darwin didn't even know of the existence of DNA and it's relevance to genetic inheritance!
Again, your analogies compare apples and oranges. The scientific method applied to current knowledge and research is
not akin to your hypothetical company.
-And science does a lot more than assume and make guesses; it forcibly criticises itself by demanding that hypotheses are backed by evidence and can be verified by repeatable experiment. It does not make a guess and construct loose evidence around that guess, but does it the other way around, taking evidence and data and constructing hypotheses out of them, which are
then ruthlessly criticised in turn.
Science is not a company created by an individual out to spread his opinions. It is a self-checking analytical system by which research and raw data can be turned into functioning hypothetical models for various aspects of nature, and checks itself
constantly to see that the smallest number of assumptions has been made at any given point.
Science says that nature is mechanical, it as an emotionless unseen power making things happen with no concern for anything and anyone and for no apparent reason.
It isn't even a power. It is an unpredictable dynamic system of emergent order, but I shall let that slide.
A lion in the jungle attacks the weakest zebra and kills it for food so it can survive.
The lion can be looked as as mechanical, emotionless, but the one who built the company cannot be looked at as mechanical since he built the company from the ground up and.........thought, reasoned and in every way displayed intelligence whereas the lion simply saw food and attacked.
I see here two things. An animal and a human being.
Now, if you say we used to be animals and became human, then where did emotions and the mind come from?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Why was there a need for emotions and a mind in some animals (man)? and yet that need failed to evolve into the lion who kills the "inferior" zebra ? What happened? What determined that the man is superior to the lion who didn't get any compassion?
Again you misunderstand evolutionary theory. The process has no prescience, dictating how species should evolve. It is a blind process of selection; nothing more.
Say, for example, the lion (or a single lion, or a small population of lions) evolves a larger brain with the capacity for improved analytical thought. Is this useful to it?
Not really. Our own intelligence became useful because we had a pre-existing social order, the dextrous limbs necessary for tool-use, a complex 'language' system and the ability to evolve improved linguistics due to our vocal agility. We were damned lucky in that respect.
The 'smart lions' would have none of these advantages, so it would be of no real benefit, since increased intelligence is only useful if there is a real benefit to be derived from it or a social structure allowing knowledge to be passed through generations. Indeed, a lion with a large brain may actually be
more vulnerable to brain injury, may have (as we do) quite thin skulls and so forth; an active handicap, given their environmental niche.
Evolution is not a guiding prescient force. No collection of proto-elephants ever gathered together to conclude "we shall evolve trunks! That will be jolly useful!" It is merely a matter of blind selection of traits based on how much they affect the viability and success, on average, of a population.
And, incidentally, the Zebra isn't 'inferior' to the lion, per se. Despite what many creationists think, evolution isn't constructed with a table with 'inferior' leading to 'superior'.
It has it's niche and it is well-adapted to it. The lion has it's own niche. Niches or the creatures within them change over time in any case, often unpredictably, and so from an evolutionary point of view it is very hard to make any kind of generalised assumption of superiority or inferiority.
Why is it wrong for a human being to kill another human being, yet it is not wrong for the lion?
Since I do not speak lion and do not know of their social structures, how could I possibly comment on their limited perception of 'right' and 'wrong'? ;)
You will say..it is not wrong to the aborigines in the backward Bongo Bojungo to kill.
Okay, then what determined that it is wrong for us, but not for them?
Why does kill mean one thing to us and another thing to them, and why isn't it spelled differently and also if killing is okay in Bongo Bujungo does this mean I can go there and kill? If not, how come?
Morality is a thing that cannot really be defined from an objective standpoint, really, as it is a creation of societies for the purposes within those societies.
In some Islamic nations it is thought acceptable to chop off a thief's hand, whereas we imprison them or even give them community service work to do.
Which is 'right', from an objective point of view, and how do you define that?
To put it in a more bunt fashion, say you lived in the Soviet Union in the 50s or 60s. There, it would be thought, at least officially, that capitalism is morally wrong and that capitalist leanings could get you thrown into prison or the gulags.
You would disagree and so would I, but are you
really going to speak out, in a society of over 250 million communists?
No. As ever, the matter is subjective. What is wrong to us is not necessarily wrong for everyone, and vice-versa. Defining an objective viewpoint from empirical data (and I'm sorry but religious assertion isn't that) is horribly difficult.
You will say, we have evolved faster in some places than in others.
Okay, but where did we get the idea that it is wrong?
No I wouldn't. Differing moral values are not normally reflective of genetics or evolution. It is sociological.
You will say, we just decided...
By what authority and knowledge since we are all basically wrongdoers (sinners)?
By your point of view.
None is capable of doing right unless he is taught, so how do you figure the conscience evolved?
Well I'm no sociologist (and that is really what this is about), so I will say that it most likely evolved as a slightly different facet of natural selection. -Tribes or groups which employed rules like "don't kill other tribesmen" thrived and survived, on average, better than tribes in which murder was not addressed. As such, before long most tribes employed such 'beneficial' guidelines. This applies just as much to chimps or wolves or even rabbits, for that matter. Not killing your own is a fairly well-founded guideline possessed by many creatures on an instinctive level, since it is of obvious benefit.
But here we blur the lines between genetic selection and social selection. Not killing your own kind and other more vague selfless instincts can be said to have an instinctive, and so genetic, base, but not all morals do, naturally. Not stealing, for example, is something that has to be taught (as it is a trait only really relevant to humanity, and there has been insufficient time to evolve it per se) and, again, societies which employ the rule are better off than those without (and people on an individual level support it too since nobody wants their stuff nicked).
I am not entirely sure why we are talking about morality in an evolution/ creationism debate, but hey ho. Internet debates are odd things. :wink:
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