Emotional benefits of the theory of evolution

We've heard a lot about how the TOE--apart from its truth status--is detrimental to the emotional state of human beings. It underminds religious belief; it underminds morals; it underminds the idea that one has a purpose on this earth. In fact, I've taken this view every once in a while myself.But the other night I was just sitting there, looking at my cat, and suddenly it dawned on me that I was related to her. Now I love this damned animal, even though she is a pain in the butt, and when I realized that she was a distant cousin, I also realized that all life was a distant cousin to me--some more distant than others, of course.I am not up on the evolutionary family tree--perhaps some expert can inform me as to how I am related to my cat, how far back we have to go to join up--but the more I thought about it, the more thrilled I was.And I realized that the theory of evolution was not this cold hard idea at all, that it was actually very warm and fuzzy.Therefore, I will advance the idea that the TOE is emotionally beneficial to humans in that through it we are able to see our kinship with all living things.How wonderful!

Both my cat and I like this but I don't know where it should be promoted to.Coffee house if you just want to chat a bit or biological evolution if you want to work out in detail how close you are to the cat ( see Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins ).Or Social Issues if you want to discuss the impact this world view might have.

I see the problem.But I would like to know some facts about the evolutionary family tree. I'm ignorant about that, as about many things.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I can't find my copy of the Ancestor's Tale ( a fun read as well as informative by the way) so I will shot some stuff out off the top of my head.If you go back about 70 million years before the big guys bit the dust (iridium laden dust) then we find that mammals had not diversified very much (they were down trodden to a great extent it seems) or as least the liniages which had diversified have not survied.So Puzzle and I think that we are fairly close in the grand scheme of things since it has been less than that time period that her line started to progress beyond ours to greater things.Now, memory tells me that by about 50 million years ago the early primates existed and that the cats are on a lineage separate from that. So they and we are not as close as pretty much any monkey is to us by a bit.Incidentally, I seem to recall something called "miacis" (might be right) that was a common ancestor to both dogs and cats and was around somewhere around 25 or 30 Myr ago. (Much to close as far as Puzzle is concerned).ABE (added by edit)This sort of thing is worked out by taking what we can get from the skimpy fossil record.When we find a time in which fossils of two animals are found that each have characteristics of a particular modern lineage we take it that the split has occured between those lineages and set the time back to before those two existed.On some lucky occasions we find a specimen that has primative characteristics of both lineages (my "miacis" example above -- if it is real) and conclude that the split had not occured at that point. This allows a gradual narrowing down of the time of separation.Here is an interesting picture about cousins -- I like it so perhaps others will rip it to piecs gentley. (I think it is from Dawkins too but,as usual, I don't remember the correct attribution).At some time there was a population of animals alive. And in the population two babies were born. (for fun let's make them siblings (but that is very unlikely indeed). They were not especially different, no more so than the others around them. But one of them was the great, great, great.... grandparent of your cat and one of the was your own great, great, great, ... grandparent.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 06-05-2005 10:40 PM

I've pondered this, too - it's unfortunate you don't have a tree shrew for a pet, 'cause they seem to be closer to us than cats are. Bats are closer, possibly, as well, but are much creepier. And then cats and dogs (and walruses) are closer relatives than manatees, or aardvarks, or sloths.This amateur feels like the whole field of mammal kinship is in a major state of flux at present - all that good molecular data being generated has upset some previous ideas about who is first cousin to whom.

Hi rob,The Tree of Life project has a lot of what you're looking for.Eutheria

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"select * from USERS where CLUE > 0http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com
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YES! Yeah! This notion is so compatible with Buddhism. I've read that a human body has more bacteria in our guts than our own cells in the rest of our body. This life of the earth is a woven interdependence and the heavier elements were birthed in the death throes of first and second generation stars.The ego with it's desires for repeated pleasure feels thwarted by many situations and suffers. The Abrahmic religions come from an egoic viewpoint that the ego's ideals should be the case and would have been without original sin, and someday will be in heaven. The ego does experience alienation in wanting to be "special".lfen

any view can be distorted to support a variety of evils. religion is quite often used oppressively. take a look at feudal europe, and the crusades, or the caste system in india.evolution was used to support "social darwinism" for instance. the ideology is actually older than darwin, so the name is a misnomer really. they applied the thoughts of survival of the fittest to society, and said that the poor were the weak, and the rich rightly deserved to rich. in reality, darwinism doesn't make any comment about the way things SHOULD be, just the way they are. and there is a lot more going on in human society than natural selection, which is unrelated really to money. it really speak of the interconnectedness of all life. which can be quite an uplifting idea.i also find astrophysics to be quite uplifting to my religion. the idea that we're just a tiny little speck, less than that really, of god's creation, but that he loves us anyways, is quite awe-inspiring.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 06-06-2005 01:49 AM

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אָרַח

Hi Robin,There has been quite a lot of work in mammal phylogeny recently, here is a relevant result from Cao et al (2000) Gene Dec 23;259(1-2):149-58. Interordinal relationships and timescale of eutherian evolution as inferred from mitochondrial genome data.Cao et al used the fossil record to estimate divergence dates for marsupials from mammals (150-170 million years ago), hippo/whale from horse/rhinoceros (52-58 million years ago), and orangutan from other hominids (13-18 million years ago) then used these to calibrate a phylogenetic tree of mammals to estimate the remaining divergence dates of major clades.According to their results, cats diverged from other carnivores around 58 million years ago. Carnivora diverged from perissodactyla (horses etc) around 76 million years ago. The containing group of carnivora and perissodactyla (called laurasiatheria) diverged from the clade containing primates (called euarchontaglires) around 102 million years ago.In other words, 102 million years ago (in the Cretaceous, and only 25-50 million years after the origin of flowering plants!) there was a small furry animal who is the great great great (...) grandmother of both you and your cat. It is possible that she was eaten by a dinosaur.Unfortunately the dates vary quite strongly from study to study. For example, Waddell et al (1999 Syst.Biol.48(1):119—137) put the divergence date at around 150 mya. And many paleontologists would want to make the common ancestor exist more recently than 100 mya. But 100mya is a reasonable guess.MickThis message has been edited by mick, 06-06-2005 12:20 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 06-06-2005 12:22 PM

How dreadful.Thanks for the information.So I and my cat are both euarchontaglires.

'fraid not. Euarchontaglires consists of primates, rodents and lagomorphs. Cats are laurasiatherians. You and your cat are both eutherians, but you evolved on different continents.Mickadded in edit: I think that you come from africa, but your cat comes from central america. Or something like that.This message has been edited by mick, 06-06-2005 03:34 PM

That's even better. At least I can pronounce "eutherian."Thanks.

Since you seem to find this interesting I do recommend the Ancestor's Tale to you. A fun read!

Thanks. I'll check it out.I announced impressively to my wife last night that she, I, and the cat are all "eutherians." My wife was not impressed.