The difference between a human and a rock

No. As I have demonstrated myself (as I mentioned just the other day on a thread that I know for a fact that you have read) it is favored by the law of natural selection. It's not a motive, it's a cause.The motive is that I do in fact love my neighbor, even though I do occasionally become irritated by his habit of spouting evil stupid wicked nonsense. The cause is, as I have demonstrated, evolution.

Evolution isn't about the survival of individuals, it's about the survival or failure of specific gene configurations. Killing everyone else is a good survival strategy for individuals, but terrible for genes because there's no one alive to reproduce with.Birds of a feather flock together. Do they do it because they believe in God? Seriously, tiny feathered critters work together to protect each other from predators and raise their offspring safely. They don't have enough brain to them to believe anything, they do it because the ones that didn't got eaten by cats and foxes and so forth before they could reproduce a lot more than the ones with the gene configuration and nervous system programming that the ones who flock have.Southern bigots used to lynch black men just for whistling at white women in admiration. Did they do it because they believed in God? Or was it because that had been a successful strategy for the "honky" geneset for long enough to become common? And did they stop doing it because they stopped believing in God? Or because we started putting them in prison where their reproductive aggression was rechanneled into activities that didn't perpetuate any genes and re-educated their existing children to use their nervous systems in a somewhat different strategy?

So try it. If you think you'd get on better by behaving like a complete asshole, do so, and see how far you get.I notice that you do in fact use the "complete asshole" strategy on the Internet, where there are no negative consequences. But if you had the courage to be this much of a jerk in real life, then you would discover that it does indeed have selective disadvantages.

As I pointed out on the other thread, natural selection does favor cooperation between individuals in any case where individuals have some benefit to gain from cooperating.In the case of humans, this benefit is the hallmark of our species. We are the ultimate eusocial species. Do you grow all your own food? Generate all your own electricity? Supply all your own water? Make all your own clothes, having made your own needles and thread? Did you build your own computer and then build your own Internet so that you could scream evil nonsense at us?You did not.Your very survival, not to mention your opportunity to preach stupid immoral garbage at us (as, it seems, is your choice) depends on your ability to fit into human society. Therefore, your ability to do so is selectively advantageous.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

ModulousI especially enjoy reading your replies, as they always are chock full of interesting content-but forgive me if I don't always do justice to them in responding fully (yours take more time).I think one should be weary about using evolutionary behavioral social science to make conclusions about human traits origins. When one starts to say that any particular trait amongst humans would be the deciding factor for who reproduces more, I feel this is on pretty shaky ground. Take one example, beauty, which evolutionary behaviorists love to make many claims about.Beauty holds virtually no role whatsoever in determining who reproduces the most, for a whole host of reasons which I think are pretty obvious.First, everyone sees beauty differently, not only from person to person, but from population to population (studies which attempt to show otherwise are frankly bullshit).Secondly, for most of mankind's existence, people have not had the luxury of choosing which partner looks best to mate with. It is almost always other factors, such as one's family status, arrangement from the family, proximity of location, who was drunk at which time or what have you. Heck in most cultures in history, the couples usually never even saw each other before they married.Third, ugly people and beautiful people exist in equal ratios on this planet.Fourth, beauty doesn't really confer which person has the best genes or best prospects for producing a healthy child. Beautiful people have as many diseases as ugly ones.Fifth, almost every sexual union has a whole host of causes, and trying to single out individual reasons as having a consistently higher selective advantage when choices are being made about the sex partner is really impractical.Sixth, humans have only been on this earth in their present form for about 100,000 years or so, that's not much time to make a lot of evolutionary change if one were really going to do it the Darwinian way.So when you start talking about womanizers and deadbeat dad's and high social statuses I really think you have a pretty hard case to make for this causing any of the mental traits we see in humans.If one were to choose one element as the most important in deciding who reproduces and who doesn't I think the overwhelming favorite would be pure blind luck, with perhaps proximity to a pint of Guiness as second.You can disagree with this all you want, but no science has proven this, and frankly its just too easy to make up any story one wants to say why it would have been selected for. If some population had people in it with green toes, sure enough some evolutionist would create a story about how green toes look like vegetables, and thus might have originally attracted men who were foraging on the ground for food.Try it some time, just make up any trait you want, and then see how long it takes to come up with an explanation that sounds just like these evolutionary fireside tales. It's pretty easy.It never ends. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

Dr.A, one thing I can absolutely guarantee you beyond a shadow of a doubt is that I get laid a whole heck of a lot more than you do...So your theory has just been blow out of the water.

Your fantasies about me reveal a lot about you, and nothing about me.I am, as it happens, very happily married. My wife is a constant source of joy and delight to me. Also, as you so crudely put it, she does offer me the opportunity to "get laid". Though that is not why I love her.Thank you, though, for trying to reduce the debate to who "gets laid" more often. You are fulfilling all my expectations of a creationist --- a crass materialist who only thinks of material gratification.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Frustrated by the fact that atheists are better than you, you are apparently trying to persuade atheists that they should be as wicked and cynical as you.It seems that you want to persuade me that, since I'm an atheist, I should therefore be a thief or a rapist or a murderer.Well then --- suppose you succeeded? Suppose that I swallowed your evil and stupid arguments. What then? I should go to jail, and my hypothetical victims would have been robbed or raped or murdered. Whom would you have benefited?Even if your arguments were completely right, rather than evil nonsense, should you not keep them to yourself? Even if you were to win this argument, the result would be that you would turn me into an evil person who would do evil to other people.What happened to "love thy neighbor"?Now when I talk to fundies about their morality, I try to make them into better people. I tell them that since Jesus said "love thy neighbor", they shouldn't be so full of hate; and I tell them that since one of the Ten Commandments is "thou shalt not bear false witness", they should lie less often. I try to bring them up to the standard of morality preached in the Bible.Of course, since I am preaching virtue to fundies, I shall fail; and, of course, since you are preaching evil to atheists, you will fail. Both arguments are equally a waste of time. But at least it would be a good thing if I succeeded in influencing fundies to become good people. Whereas it would be a terrible thing if you managed to persuade atheists to be evil.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

*tips hat, gracefully* Agreed. Agreed. However sometimes it is useful to talk in specifics to get across the principles under discussion as a means to explain why a human treating a human differently than a rock could occur. Can you see why an undefined female animal could have to make a greater investment of time and energy into creating offspring? Could you see that there could be advantage in selecting a mate that will invest some of it's own time and energy into raising the offspring? And if cheaters are sufficiently punished (no more sex, no access to the social group, no mutual protection etc), then whatever genetic component lies behind motivating an animal to cheat will be constrained. It may still be a good bet to cheat in certain circumstances still, of course. However 'being good' might be the best strategy for a male to get what it ultimately wants: lots of healthy babies.I'm simply giving you reasons to accept that it is not inherently a major difficulty to consider that our social instincts (ie, treating certain others as not being inanimate objects or simple resources to be ruthlessly exploited) might be as a result of natural events.I'm certainly not going to attempt to provide you with a complete physical theory of human psychology and consciousness. I can explain how, given that we are animals with social instincts, there is no reason to think that the general principles of how animals develop social instincts can't be applied to humans too. However, humans have all that interesting pre-frontal cortex stuff going on and some other interesting things that are unique to them.We often make moral decisions based on an instinct that we rationalize after the fact. So I wouldn't be surprised if our morality, like other animals, is based on a lot of hard wiring that can then be used as a starting point for that extra grey matter to ponder entirely novel situations. It all does seem consistent with the evidence, but there are many ethical restrictions against direct testing of these issues on humans (fitting, given the topic of the thread) - so indirect evidence is all we can access really. In human terms? Oh in a civilization where we live to such a ripe age? Undoubtedly. In a civilization where reaching thirty is something to be pleasantly surprised about, I have a feeling that competition for mates might be a little stiffer.And for the rest of all life? Yeah - there is a lot of competition out there, and small edges matter: as testified by the numerous trials males face in the animal kingdom, before they get to mate. Blind luck is out there of course, and has its role too in individual cases. But as you look at bigger and bigger numbers of cases, the patterns would show a clear bias towards certain alleles in the population and I think we wouldn't be mad to argue that those alleles might be giving their posessors a statistical edge. I'm not making up just so stories, fortunately. I am not saying 'this happened to these animals'. I'm just saying that animal behaviour can be explained as a result of natural selection. There are empirical studies that suggest that this is true. Social animal behaviour (morality) doesn't seem to be excluded from this.Do you at least agree that the fact that I prefer chocolate ice cream to strawberry is at least as mysterious as why I prefer opening doors for people rather than slamming them in their faces? Even if we can't agree that there is a possible physical account for them, that's the least I think we can achieve.

I'm beginning moderation of this thread effective immediately.My first action will be to close this thread for the remainder of the day. I'll open it at my first opportunity tomorrow morning.EvC Forum prides itself on hosting constructive discussions of higher quality than most other Internet discussion sites. The goal is discussions that actual get somewhere. Needless to say we cannot take pride in many of todays posts in this thread.When I reopen the thread I'll be suspending those who insist on posting in ways contrary to EvC Forum ideals.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I have reopened this thread. Those who insist in posting in ways that do not constructively move discussion of the topic forward will receive 24 hour suspensions.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Your post seems to be setting up a false dichotomy: naturalism vs. something else; given your posting history that would most likely be some form of religious belief in deities and/or the supernatural.But the evidence to date does not seem to support that dichotomy as there is as of yet no empirical evidence for deities and/or the supernatural.Rather, the most likely scenario, based on scientific evidence, is that humans evolved from now-extinct species going back millions of years to an ancestor common to all the great apes.Further, the notion of deities and/or the supernatural most likely grew from early tribal superstition and fear of the unknown. Explanations for the unknown gave some comfort, as then remedies could be attempted and early peoples at least had the illusion of being able to control their otherwise unknown and frightening surroundings.From that early start came organized religion. And, as Heinlein noted:

quote:

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The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.

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Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

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If we discount religion as being supernatural in origin and accept it as an example of an evolved human defense mechanism against the unknown, then the dichotomy disappears and any question of values vis-a-vis various life forms becomes a problem for human sciences to answer free of any imagined and human-created supernatural explanations.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I agree with Admin.What I am actually suggesting is that morality is perhaps one of the best pieces of empirical evidence for a supernatural being we are ever going to get. Since we are unlikely to get a burning bush talking to us...because it appears that is not really how this supernatural force interacts with the world for the most part.I believe all humans posses an appreciation for life, all life, which differs from its appreciation for non-life. Many here have explained at as simply a better strategy to survive, but I think that explanation lacks.We have evidence of some of the earliest men involved in tribal or ritual acts, as well as worshiping some type of God. Now since we know that modern man has only existed for say 100,000 years, and we know that evidence of religious beliefs dates back at least 50,000 years ago, that means during that brief 50,000 year period, when the populations of man were very very small, that this sophisticated type of neural transformation could have occurred randomly. I don't think that is a very believable argument. But there's more.AND HERE IS WHERE IT GETS MORE INTERESTING I FEEL, SO PLEASE BEAR WITH ME.We are said to have acquired all of these types of mindsets because it held some type of selective advantage for our survival. That it just might have had some small advantage if you co-operated, maybe you would get better co-operation from others which might improve your chances in a pack, or some other link. However tenuous, lets for the moment accept that ok, maybe it could have some small small advantage. And we say this for all of our other traits as well. All the other things that make us human also arose in the same way, our love for music, for playing baseball, for watching movies, these traits are all part of the big picture which helps some particular alleles survive better than others (lets also overlook for now that we can't seem to identify these alleles). But let's carry on.So all of these things, love, art, baseball games, empathy for others, these each have their own small part to play in deciding which individuals had the better chance of surviving and passing on their genes. Now from these tenuous proposals, we are now required to make an even bigger leap of faith-perhaps the biggest leap of all.Not only has empathy (morality) for others become one of the factors for our survival, it now leap frogs over all other factors of our survival chances, by basically becoming the NUMBER ONE factor for our survival, based on the importance it hs taken in our frame of reference!If empathy for others was just another of the many survival qualities we have accidentally obtained (as was selected for), just the same as our love of sports, and music and so on, then how come when we miss a baseball game, or don't listen to music, we only perhaps feel bored (boredom, another genetic mistake that was selected for?). But if we were to kill someone, or commit some other immoral act it could psychology destroy people for the rest of their lives. Likewise, the same thing can happen when we lose a loved one. In fact it has risen to such a high level of priority in our existence that it is the worst crime we can ever commit, and our feelings of love and empathy are the single strongest emotions we possess as human beings!We won't feel guilty for very long if we miss a baseball game or an evening of Bingo, but when we violate our internal ethics? We won't be heartbroken over skipping a meal of spaghetti, but if our best friend dies? We will work our whole lives, and fight with our lives to protect our loved ones (this is a survival strategy?). This does not fit at all with the minor role we are claiming it has as one of the many survival features we have acquired. If just surviving was all it is about, getting skin made of armor would be infinitely more useful than feeling guilt or dying to save a loved one.So I am not claiming that people of no faith would also have no morality, quite the opposite (how did you all get this so wrong?). I am claiming that morality is obviously extremely important (the most important aspect) of our entire being. So important that it trumps every other emotion we have in our lives. So of course atheists will have this. Its not something that is only given to people of faith.So when I pose the question, why isn't smashing a rock any different than smashing out a life, the answer is blaring right back at us. Because our love and our empathy are what we are as human beings. Its not just another one of the survival techniques which could be discarded as easily as we could discard our hair-it IS what we are.If you want evidence of a supernatural being, I don't know what more you could ask for. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

Its kind of funny, all of the scientist demanding they need empirical evidence.Well, if God was a Christian god, and he said, "Well, I made you the king of all animals, I made love and empathy for others the single most important emotion you will ever experience, I wrote a book, but that still didn't convince you so I sent down my only son to tell you as clear as anyone can speak in 20 different languages (a lot of which I can't even speak myself), but then you went and killed him, so I then wrote another book, AND I made it the best selling book of all times and I have posted my picture all over town for everyone to see. Look, this house up here is only so big, if you STILL weren't paying attention, don't go blaming me, I can't be taking in the ones who slept through the entire class too can I? I thought one of the tools I gave you to work with was intelligence, geez!"

But that's not an answer, is it? Why don't we want to smash out a certain life? Because we are driven not to.But why are we driven not to? It's amazing how our species so frequently lies, cheats, kills and steals when survival is on the line. Almost as if we could discard it when it becomes necessary to survive. Try shedding some survival strategies when survival is actually on the line. Try not to grasp out for something when you fall. Then shave your hair. Then tell me that you really think survival techniques are easily discarded.Your supernatural theory has to be able to take human's propensity to commit immoral acts in order to survive or prosper into account. It also needs to explain the evidence that one of the leading causes of death in earliest men was being killed by other men. Because we love one another doesn't explain why we go to war today. It doesn't explain why we need to set up stringent protections against being murdered, robbed or raped. How does the supernatural theory account for the increase in crimes when social structures begin to break down?. How does it account for the startling numbers of young men that answer 'yes' when asked confidentially 'would you rape a girl if you knew you could away with it?'?.Of course, the physical theory is making interesting progress in explaining things like in-group cooperation versus out-group violence. About why cheating within a group is still be expected. Really? Have you ever heard of the Milgram experiments? Ones where your moral beings would administer lethal shocks to other moral beings just because someone with a perceived authority told them to or if they agreed to take responsibility for the consequences?It's an important part of our lives, but it is very easily trumped by other concerns.