Evolution and Specialness of Humanity

"You may know of love, but refuse to understand it's apparent use within "evolution", and how truly fake it is there." -ProphexI hope I read you right here. Are you thinking that because it can be argued that there is no true altruism, that every loving, conciderate and caring action is derived from an evolutionary imperative to survive long enough to reproduce?If we then become aware of this truth then we are also aware that every such action is a hollow utillitarian action with the intent of mindlessly reproducing; could we then conclude that the positive response we recieve on completion of such positive acts is also a keyed response designed to elicit more such positive action?What I would humbly suggest is that you try this: Do someone a good deed; help someone with their shopping, open a door for an older person, or just smile at stranger. Look into their eyes and see their reaction. It's you who helped them, not god. How does it make you feel?

I think Prophex has read that altruism can be seen to be simply an artefact of natural selection. I remember doing my psych degree having a question; is anything truly altruistic? We settled on the soldier diving on the grenade or giving money to a charity you hate i.e. there is zero reward.Pro could have a valid point but it ignores the internal world of our conscious experience. We ARE driven to do socialy benficial things on a cultural scale (a culture of people who hate each other would not last long) but we chose to do good things individually because it makes us and our fellows feel good.Maybe Pro equates this with the spirit of god? I just think it's not being a 2% psychopath.

Fair enough: What is life like in real life then? Do you see nothing when other people see on love?If you contend that people who don't believe in god can't honestly be loving, I would ask you; where is the evidence that you or people who believe in god can?Could one not argue that your "god-inspired" love is artificially induced and that "atheist-love" is pure and generated spontaneously by the nature of the individual, unsullied by authortive direction?

"I see the world as it is, a world that is filled with genuine love. (genuine as described in schraf's reply)" - ProphexThis may be true of your little world. It's not the world as seen by the poor unfortunates your cruel god condems to death every second of every day, every year since the begining of time. They see natural disasters, starvation and murder. Nice god you worship."To say that this love was simply part of evolution's mechanical process would be an insult, and a total understatement, it would defile this love, I don't accept that as truth. I see the world as it is, a God-given wonder." - ProphexTo say that I don't feel love because I don't believe in your baby killing, culture destroying, mind numbing god is the insult. You belittle emotional features that make us the incredible beings we are. If there is a god; it's us.Can you tell I'm angry? Or is that false to? Did your god make me angry? Your representation of a god does.I wish you could see how your mode of thought will effect you in later life.

"My brother calls this "evidence for an afterlife". The unfortunates that I can't even look at, me part of a disgusting lifestyle, and in fact liking it. Liking the materialism, and greed of the economic system. Without God, even a god there would be no afterlife, and these people born into a world of pain would only know of that, and their dark hole." - ProphexI see what you mean. Your brother being the arguement of authority makes me see what you mean. I shall embrace your god on you brothers say so. Hang on, wait a second, you almost had me there. One question: what the fuck does your brother saying anything about anything have to do with your cock-eyed beliefs? You believe his word? Is that where you get this view that you need guidence to have morals? Did some one tell you: you are incapable of being a good person without out a god? What have they done to you that you can only experience happiness if it comes from the belief in a god. Morality is more pervasive than god. We felt the effects of morality thousands of years before your god was just a two bit sky god with a bunch of genocidal followers in the desert.It sounds like you feel guilt because others are suffering and you want an explanation?"You have misinterpreted the system that you seem to accept as truth. Evolution (the idea) belittles the "emotional features"." - Prophex.As far as I can see you belittle emotional features by saying that they need to be inputted by a god. I believe that they have generated spontaneously, much to the emotional benefit of every human in a position to benefit from them i.e. not being tortured my your god.BTW the evidence for an after life can be summed up in the following sentance:

You are correct of course. I will appologise and moderate my responses.

Sorry mate. I hope you will accept my appology. I was angry and should not have written my last post to you. Despite our obvious differences there was no call for my verbal assault.Jon-Paul

"Our generated feelings and love are all social mechcanisms to aide the survival of our human species. " - ProphexThis I would argue is probably true."It's worthless because it is part of an evolutionary mechanism, and not part of me, or who I share my love with." - ProhexYou know, you could rewrite that as "It's worthless because it is part of a divine preprogramming, and not part of me, or who I share my love with."If I read you right, the mechanical nature of ToE takes away the relevance of the choice we make to do good. If we are essentially driven to do good, where is the significance of almost every moment of ones life? Ones has no choice.But thats the stumbling block. For you (it seems) taking away Yaweh makes us robots.I would argue that as a species we have evolved drives to be social. But on an individual level, if you feel and receive love, it's not for our gain alone. If this were true we would have no crime or antisocial behaviour because we would be driven to do good.The fact that we do evil and selfish acts means that this must come form Yaweh too (you can't have it both ways). However, to be conscious is to have a choice. We make a judement on what we do. If our up bringing and psychology is not too out of wack (saddly it sometimes is) we learn to do the right thing by other people from our parents and culture.I don't think we are inherently good or evil (although about 1.5% of a given population has resrticted emotional responses of the sort that can churn out violent or manipulative individuals), we learn it from our culture.If co-operation and social behaviour gives a survival advantage it will most likely be retained as a cultural artefact.We learn our attitudes and beliefs from our culture. If you were bought up as a Buddist, you would have that cultural frame work in your head now. You obviously believe what you say; as does every one with an opinion alive today. However, what you or I or anyone here believes should be subject to re-evaluation (or in fact evaluation) that is based a best as we can on evidence NOT wishfull thinking.It's not uncommon to change ones beliefs as you go through life. Thats what makes it fun.