Larni writes:
Hoot Mon writes:
The human is like any other animal, we’re all hard-wired to fear death. Some animals take up arms races to counter what they fear, such as the porcupine.
I disagree. Living things are aversive to aversive stimulus. I don't think an ameoba fears death but it will move away from an acidic solution.
It really pains me to say this, but I'd have to agree with Hoot on this because he wasn't using the word "fear" literally. Survival, or maintaining one's continued existence, is hardwired into every living organism. Even the species that purposely take some actions to die to give their offsprings a chance at life, like some spiders that feed their young with their own bodily fluids, are doing it to maintain the continued existence of their genes.
Larni writes:
Hoot Mon writes:
Some animals take up arms races to counter what they fear, such as the porcupine.
Fear had nothing to do with it. You are assigning an affective drive to evolution.
Again, he was speaking figuratively here. The porcupine's ancestors didn't consciously say, "ok, let's evolve to develope bad-ass armor piercing spears to protect ourselves..." Nonetheless, they did develop a very effective mean to defend themselves, and Hoot Mon was only referring to it as an arms race as a figurative referrence to what human civilizations do.
Larni writes:
This pains me, it really pains me; but I have to go with Rob here with a caveat.
Humans are special but it is becuase of the complexity of our brains not special creation. It is possible that other non human animals may fear death but I would argue the level of abstraction we can.
Humans fear death on a level of cognitive recognition. So we can conlude that the god assumption is just another overvalued idea in the human mind and therfore quite natural.
Well, if you want to say that we are special because of our brain and our cognitive abilities, might as well say penguins are special because of their special adaptation to one of the harshest environments on earth. Penguins must be god's chosen "people" then.
Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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