Edited 4/15/2014 00:27:53

And Evolutionists say that everything - be it cultural or biological - is a result of Evolution.

No, they don't.

Well some may, but those are almost exclusively agenda-driven, crackpot 'popular scientists' with a complete lack of understanding of - or disregard for - the philosophy of science (*cough* Dawkins *cough*). Your questions for the most part do not concern (evolutionary) biology at all, but the social sciences / humanities instead.

"Evolution", in biology, is a scientific theory about the origin of species. It's not a theory about why lovesickness happens. Or why so and so many women choose an abortion at some point in their lives. Or even why most heterosexual men like boobs.

tl,dr your evolutionists are straw men.

Furthermore, ITT:

My basic line of thought is this: If mankind is the highly refined result of a millennia-long process of selection benefitting the survival of those individuals with the superior survival strategies, then you - as the result of this process - should give proof of this descent and your inner akins and tendencies should resemble this, or else you are simply not a result of such a process.

It is even valid in my view to look out for such preferences in current human individuals and in current human culture which should give proof of mankind's fit-for-survival-predecessors. Therefore I don't agree with Sze, that this would be like explaining cooking with quantum physics, but to the contrary, our culture is where Evolution should show as well as in our genes or does in fact not show. We should expect some overall Fit-for-survival-culture and/or some refined instincts in ourselves to sniff out the better strategy, if we would be the result of such a process stretching over millennia descending from fit and even fitter fathers.

And then, when you are feeling pain at the break-up of a relationship this on the other hand must be some hard-wired result of this evolutionary process, if there was such a process at all. And it must be a successful strategy, because it is wide-spread so to say. This is nothing cultural. Therefore I see there a contradiction to the Selfish Gene which favors promiscuity according to Mr Dawkins. It is completely plausible to think that it would be a successful strategy for men to impregnate so many women to spread your genes. So why the pain then? And no response of man's biological reward system like: 'Very well, you got that one, you are free to take the next now. Spread your genes! Oh, happy day!' I cannot see a trace of any such reward by Evolution for freeing myself from this or that woman to impregnate the next and, indeed, my friend does not as well. Of course, it is well played to claim that caring for your woman is some survival strategy like Dutch did, and this is what the pain is for, but then the obvious promiscuity in men stays unexplained. There is a contradiction.

Richard Sharpe's explanation isn't convincing. If he was right, there would be some reward for changing your partner once you fathered offspring. And the pain at break-up would be reduced. And he did not grasp the contradiction between abortion and evolution: You are killing off YOUR OWN offspring, not that of other people! There cannot be an evolutionary reasoning behind this or can there? Where is the Selfish Gene? I wanted to hear that.

My point is, that this right-to-abortion-ideology is obviously gaining ground and if we would be this highly refined result descending from evolutionary fit predecessors we would instinctively abhor this evolutionary nonsense or if there would be any resemblance of a Selfish Gene in ourselves we would never kill our offspring at any time, at least we would not WITHOUT NEED. Because my point was, that abortion does indeed not happen in the suffering and poor countries like he readily suggested, but in the prospering countries. It is completely the other way round than his explanation went. Richard, I feel that your explanations were just from the shelf without any thinking. If that would have been some Warlight move, I would have beaten you into smithereens.

And yes, there is no specific source that it is mostly men forcing their women to abort which I know of, but just some notion of mine. But I will have a look, if I can find one, because I am quite sure that I am right on that one.

Sze, if you are just saying that our current society and the direction we are going is not fit for survival, I totally agree. The Western World is right before downfall in my view. Rotten. The ideology of PC is for lemmings and surrender monkeys. But then remains my questions, how could we be a highly refined result of an evolutionary process, if we make such mistakes, once we are at the pinnacle of wealth and welfare of all societies of all times? I am seeing a contradiction there.

Gnull, yes sure it was Dawkins who claimed that everything beyond genetics should somehow be a result of Evolution, as well. And you are just saying it is not. Alright. I agree.

Edited 4/14/2014 23:14:49

Edited 4/15/2014 00:28:06

- this is Sharpe's exact point -

Overzealous me.

Edited 4/14/2014 23:28:23

Edited 4/15/2014 00:28:13

But then remains my questions, how could we be a highly refined result of an evolutionary process, if we make such mistakes, once we are at the pinnacle of wealth and welfare of all societies of all times? I am seeing an contradiction there.

Your post deserves a wealth of response, but I'll tackle this point first.

Darwin noted on the Galapagos Islands that during times of famine (i.e. drought) certain birds had an advantage over others. The Western World is suffering neither widespread drought, famine or wars (within their borders) to destabilize their comfortable living.

It has been observed that a comfortable person will tend to regress to a lazy-apathetic state at the cost of his/her health and well-being, because the notion of relative safety. This is something of a general trend and not exclusive. It can be observed though (again) in Roman literature and historical documents.

I'm alluding the to Romans because it's one of the best resemblances of a multicultural empire, but old enough to not be mixed in with the enlightenment and industrial revolution, which can be seen as the birth of the "American/Western Empire" rather than a separate event from modern empires. The Roman Empire is sufficiently old enough to extrapolate comparisons. It's also a good case to study if you're curious what could happen and what the major similarities and differences there are in these wide-spanning cultures.

The other thing to note in regards to evolution is that it is only a theory.

Just as electricity, magnetism, atoms, gravity and plate tectonics are mere theories to name a few.

Yeah, "theory" as in "in years and years and years, nobody could ever come up with an experiment to disprove it" as well as in "it's predictions are so fucking reliable that we can do all our 21st century stuff with it". Like, everything around you that comes with a plug.

Gnullbegg, that was my exact point...

Well, theory does imply that they're not complete.

All these theories are true, to the best of our current knowledge, but lack the fine tuning to be considered proven fact. At the same time they're all critical to our current understanding of reality and even if proven false, are true enough to the extent that we can apply them positively in our daily lives.

They, at the very least, hold fundamental truths, which would help us to later discover the "real truth" whatever that may be.

Edited 4/14/2014 23:29:34

Richard, no I did not ignore this part of your argument. I just accepted that argument as plausible. Of course, the pain points that way. An Evolutionist should absolutely understand this pain as the result of a selection process stretching over so many thousand years, which says that man should stay with their women as the winning strategy. But this hard-wired evolutionary lesson obviously leaves male tendency to promiscuity unexplained. You can't have it both or can you? If both would somehow be favorited by Evolution, then why did Evolution make this pain so terrifying without any powering up of your biological rewarding system? That was the initial question.

And the one about resources is just not hitting the target. Think again.

And abortion still kills your own offspring. An evolutionary strategy would be to let the others kill off their children, if they really are so stupid and if resources really are any point. Because that would leave more resources for your own ten-fold horde, then. So think again.

Edited 4/14/2014 23:36:08

Gnull, yes sure it was Dawkins who claimed that everything beyond genetics should somehow be a result of Evolution, as well. And you are just saying it is not. Alright. I agree.

Cool, so we agree this thread is over now?

Taisho, right. This is what is to be observed. And now what? We are observing again and again evolutionary stupidity. Now what? ................. We are no result of a evolutionary selection process? At least, there is no resemblance or proof of such in our current minds or that of the Old Romans or any others. And to reach this conclusion was my strategic goal. I reached it. Or did I?

Yea Gnull, its over. Thanks for the game, mate. ;)

Oh yes, and this thread was about bashing PC and abortion. I gave it a decent thrashing now. I am happy. =) Though I got the feeling that this was too easy. :/ There is still something to come, I feel.... Enter Aranka. Oh, oh, so much to read. Are you serious, girl?

Edited 4/15/2014 00:05:21

While I do not have the time nor the interest right now to fully delve myself into writing a respone in regards to this subject I would like to recommend various Stanford articles with relevance to this discussion:

1) FitzPatrick, William, "Morality and Evolutionary Biology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/morality-biology

--> Special regards here to chapter 3 of the thesis, although a full reading will prevent drawing the wrong conclusions as Julkorn was want to do here

2) Doris, John and Stich, Stephen, "Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/moral-psych-emp

--> Notice article 5.3 titled "Altruism and Evolution"

3) Downes, Stephen M., "Evolutionary Psychology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/evolutionary-psychology

--> The WHOLE article since this seems to be the root of misunderstand people are having in this conversation that they falsely attribute causations and explanations which are not intended as such

4) Lewens, Tim, "Cultural Evolution", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/evolution-cultural

--> This delves deeper into the differentation between evolution, memes and group adaptation in a cultural and/or biological perspective



Would love to continue this conversation at a later time if and only when people have taken the time to enhance their understanding. But right now I'm going to sleep - good night :)

Edited 4/14/2014 23:55:49

Edited 4/15/2014 00:27:17

Well, well, Richard. Let me focus on this "if they deem it necessary". Would you say that your evolutionary heritage would have any stake in that process of "deeming"? And if so, how do you explain this mass-killing of your own offspring in the richest society of all that ever existed, in terms of Evolution? And if not, you are saying that we got minds of our own without any influence by Evolution, filled with utter stupidity in terms of Evolution or where is it that you are aiming? You got my point now, I presume.

At least in my view this is lacking proof to Evolution right there. Right on hand. That position can only be saved by withdrawing all things evolutionary back into Genetics. Right? No Selfish Gene influencing our behaviour in sight so far. Waiting... waiting....

Edited 4/15/2014 00:26:33

Edited 4/15/2014 00:27:10

Right. We agree on "unrelated to Evolution". Evolution, shoo, shoo! Back with you into Genetics! You got no hand in our minds! Hehe.

Ah, still need to read Aranka's a thousand sources. :(

You can't separate Genetics and Society with a clear line and you can't bleach the grey area out with a skylight.

Humans are more than capable of ignoring their instincts for a number of reasons, so just because you have a genetic hard wiring for reproduction, doesn't mean you'll end up wanting to. This also implies that we accept our existence is primarily to reproduce. This may be a part of it, but not necessarily the only purpose we serve, but let's leave the "meaning of life" out of this thread, it'll get even stickier than it is now.

Evolution would simply refer to these people as dead ends, I assume. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean that those who survive are the fittest, in terms of health, intelligence, etc. It's simply referring to the dog-eat-dog reality we live in. There's always a few lingering oddities in our genetic code and perhaps our general behavior, that would be self-destructive.

You seem to be fighting from a perspective that our genes are getting better over the millennia, but I'd like to highlight that some of the most brilliant and influential figures in history have failed to reproduce. Well, offspring that is. They did oftentimes create lasting impressions through their works, which could be considered their offspring in a sense perhaps?

Lastly, humans are self-aware and have higher cognitive function. That means we can observe something and then choose to reject it i.e. Someone knows they're genetically wired for reproduction, but they have no desire to take responsibility of raising another life (the Selfish Gene you were talking about I guess?).

Taisho, you are observing all these contradictions to the statement, that we would be the highly refined result of a millennia-long process of selecting the fit for survival which should let you expect that this descent should show and could be proven in our behaviour. First this waning of cultures at their pinnacle of strength and wealth, now this about most brilliant figures having no offspring. You are adding to my initial three thoughts.

Though, you do not completely want to agree with me that this is a wrong statement, you do in effect at least agree that I was looking at evolutionary stupidity or at dead-ends as you call it when looking on abortionists and that we are currently looking on the downfall of Western Culture. You could even draw my conclusion from your observations that there is no such result of a selection process which leads to this that there is no selection process resulting in any noticeable progress, but, of course, you would not.

Then again, do you think that the development of higher cognitive functions and self-awareness is some sort of dead-end? Will the future belong to humans that are less self-aware and clever and more like slaves to their desire to reproduce and would not kill their offspring? And if so, isn't it plausible that this has already been some necessary step in-between animals and humans that was already reached and actually overcome? Aren't we today most fit for survival at least according to our potential? Isn't that a contradiction again? I'm getting tired now. Got to work tomorrow. :(

Edited 4/15/2014 01:23:11

Something I've always wondered is why some aethiests try very hard to make Christians lose their faith. If you are an aethiest, you aren't gaining anything from it, where with Christianity, you have the hope of something after death. Christians want all to know the Word so that others can go to heaven with us. But what do aethiests gain by pressing their religion( or lack of) on other people? It's always puzzled me.

And just so you guys know, I'm a 17 year old Boy who goes to a private, Lutheran high school in a rural town in the Midwest so the only way I learn about aethiests is from a very biased religion teacher who has no idea what he's saying half the time, and the Internet. I was starting to wonder about whether we (Christians) were being brainwashed by our parents and so I did a few days study on the Internet about why Creation is false compared to why evolution is false, and I ended up strengthening my faith in Creation and Jesus. I'm stronger in my faith now than ever, so please don't try to convert me, it will be a waste of your time. But I would like an answer to my question if you can provide it.

Maybe you are so brainwashed that you believe you came by that conclusion on your own?

You can't prove Christianity but there's no way to disprove it either. And because of that, I will never lose faith. I am happy in life, have my future mapped out and I am confident I am going to heaven.

Btw, you didn't answer my question.

Edited 4/19/2014 14:49:31