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Question for the religious
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AViking
Platinum Member
I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to. You seem to think that we are trying to create new species.
Let me use a real world example. My girlfriend is a geneticist and is doing research on a species that has some very interesting properties. She wants to find the gene or genes that hold these properties, better understand them, and apply them to humans for future space exploration. In order to find these genes she has to grow samples of the species in the lab and do all kinds of experiments to them in all different stages of their lives. She breeds them over and over again. She's not trying to create a new species but she is using evolutionary principles to find the genes responsible for what she's searching for. It's very cool.
ThinClient
Diamond Member
There are Christians like Rob M. who will reject the fossil record because it doesn't fit into their agenda. God created the fossil record to test our faith!
Many Christians like Rob M. claim that the earth was created during what we now understand to be the agricultural revolution.
Let me honest with you, since we seem to be having a productive and respectful discourse.
What kind of drew my skepticism about evolution and its relation to human intelligence is the fact that we are humans, and animals are still here. So I naturally wondered: "why do animals lack our intelligence yet, survive and pass on their genetic material just fine"?
"Why is there a superior human race, with supreme intelligence (compared to animals) when looking at nature, we really don't need it this level of intelligence to survive?"
These "why" questions are what caused me to think about God and purpose, because I don't see a reason why trees change to a beautiful reddish color during Autumn, or why we enjoy music or beautiful artwork. We don't need any of that to survive. Animals and insects survive, yet they don't enjoy artwork or changes in season, or music.
I think animals and humans, while sharing similarities, are distinct in many ways.
So I wondered why is that. Evolution just hasn't given me the answers to those questions.
I think answering those questions will help us understand our origins, so that was a goal of mine...to seek out those answers.
Those questions are simple to answer, try to think outside of your evolution is wrong box for a few days. There is nothing complicated about it, it's very simple. These answers being so simple makes me not think you are reasonably asking these questions or that you have really thought about it.
Don't invoke god, look for why based in reality. Don't give up till you find it.
Answer them, then, if they're so easy. I'm waiting, and I was being honest too, btw.
The problem is that you are looking for others to answer these questions for you so you can attack the answer given. For you to really understand the answers it's better if you come up with them or at least some ideas yourself.
Blackjack200
Lifer
I'll get you started:
"why do animals lack our intelligence yet, survive and pass on their genetic material just fine"
Your question suggests that only the most intelligent creatures will survive in a competitive environment.
What evidence do you have to support this? Do only the most intelligent humans reproduce?
Does intelligence impose any disadvantages from an evolutionary perspective?
You need to question your assumptions, try to figure out where things might work differently than intuition would suggest. This is how a scientist thinks. He doesn't throw up his hands and say "Whelp, it must be god!"
On the contrary, I was sharing my thought process...I am not looking for an answer...you said they're "simple" to answer, and I wanted to hear yours, then.
"Its a part of our evolution" wasn't satisfactory for me then, and it isn't now.
Actually, I was suggesting that we don't need intelligence (at our human level) to survive because animals don't have it and survive fine, yet, we have it but it obviously isn't required.
Sorry if I wasn't clear.
Our level isn't required, is all I am saying. I am operating under the established fact that one can't have what doesn't yet exist.
In other words, if supreme intelligence never existed, how can we have it?
This is why you are having a problem
Quoting me out of context. The point of those questions is to explain why I am a skeptic of evolution, NOT for anyone here to answer them.
C'mon, dude...I know you're smarter than that.
ThinClient
Diamond Member
So you're willing to question it and you're willing to explain what you think evolution is (which proves that you don't know what you're talking about) but you're not willing to challenge your own belief system and you don't want anyone educating you on the matter?
Do you not see the irrationality of your attitude?
ThinClient
Diamond Member
He is close-minded. It's the very definition of bigotry. He's not here to have a discussion. He's here to argue and flail his arms above his head because everyone who disagrees with him is wrong. It's a very typical religious platform.
ThinClient
Diamond Member
Perhaps if you were capable of setting aside your irrational religious abortion-of-an-understanding of evolution for two seconds, you might just learn something. 🙂
If you aren't open to change your conclusion based on new evidence introduced, then what's the point of even posting in this threads?
Why SHOULD we bother educating you on something that is widely accepted outside of (and even within some) religious circles as undeniable fact when you're not even willing to learn even though you say you are? That's called lying.
Blackjack200
Lifer
Sorry if I wasn't clear.
Your question may have been leading to your conclusion that our level of intelligence isn't needed, but the assumption suggested by the question itself is that the ability of less intelligent species to reproduce and survive is an evolutionary problem.
Do you think intelligence confers any advantages to our species over other species that lack our level of it (say, for example, chimps or neanderthals)?
Kind of, but I'd say our intelligence is the "problem", IMO.
What advantages would those be, exactly, that we needed that they couldn't survive without?
PieIsAwesome
Diamond Member
I was interested in seeing these questions discussed, but the thread is getting sidetracked.
Why is it just us then? It may have not just been us. There were other species of Homo close to us in intelligence, but they died off. Maybe we were simply among the first, or maybe it is difficult for two different intelligent species to exist on the same planet.
I remember seeing a video with Neil Degrass Tyson discussing how little genetic difference there is between us and chimps. We appear so different, yet the genetic difference is so tiny. His idea was that maybe we are not as different as we think. What we think is our great intelligence may be nothing. Some more intelligent alien species may group us together with other animals.
PieIsAwesome
Diamond Member
Don't believe I've watched that one, will have to see later after work.
This is the one I saw, towards the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeJoVeKSsyA
ThinClient
Diamond Member
It's the same exact statement, simply given (almost verbatim) at two different interviews. The one I linked is the shorter "version" in that it jumps right to the main point and cuts off right after he's made the point. There's no additional dialogue before or after.
You NEED to try and answer your own questions, this is exactly your problem. You ask questions but then don't bother to think about them or answer them.
The fact that you ask these questions don't expect and answer and don't try to answer them yourself is the very problem you are having in the first place.
AViking
Platinum Member
First off intelligence isn't the only factor for survival. When humans are dead and gone I'm sure cockroaches will still be around. If you look at the history of life on this planet we are just a small blip on the radar. We'll die out just like the rest unless we come up with a way to leave the planet or survive nuclear winters from massive asteroid strikes or multiple super volcanoes blowing up. Yellowstone is due for an explosion. Humans could potentially die out if it blew up tomorrow.
You draw judgement on humans as if we are superior. We aren't. We're just another species and happen to be able to utilize tools to shape our environment. We're also incredibly violent and competitive. There are several other species that are intelligent. In many ways we are not the most intelligent since we have a habit of "shitting where we eat."
Our brain size is also shrinking if I'm not mistaken. Homo sapiens also don't have the largest brain size of the homo family. Homo Neanderthalensis had a larger brain but was probably not as violent as us and who knows if they were truly smarter. We conquered and bred them out of existence. They have done genetic mapping and determined that a lot of us have neanderthal DNA.
Why do trees change color? With today's photographic technology you can "see" why. Find a time lapse of a tree during the fall. The reason is that water is being pulled from the leaves and into the trunk so that it can survive the winter. The changing colors are different depending on the type of tree and the type of waste left behind in the leaf. When photosynthesis stops red is, I believe, due to left over sugar. So yes a tree does need to change colors to survive.
Music might be a human thing. Not sure. Outside my expertise. I think we have a luxury that other species don't have and that is the time to invest in the arts. We also have fingers and thumbs which helps. Most species spend their days just trying to survive on a very hostile world.
SMOGZINN
Lifer
One of the things to remember is that humans are not only competing against other animals, we are competing against each other. For a long time that would have meant that the smartest, the ones so smart that they were able to effectively make and use tools, were the superior breeders. So they had more children with smart partners and passed along their smart genes. Some of those smart children were even smarter then the rest and invented new tools that let them do even better then the other smart kids, and so lived longer and had the best and smartest mates.... Keep this up for a few tens of thousands of years and you get us. And to some extent we are still doing it. Smart people tend to mate with other smart people and dumb people tend to mate with other dumb people.
The question remains if the current strategy of smart people having few children in order to concentrate their power will be a winning genetic strategy or if the dumb peoples strategy of breed as many as possible will win out.
Dr. Zaus
Lifer
That's signature worthy.
I can claim that by definition natural is regarding things that happen; so even if we violate the laws of physics, it isn't 'super natural' it's just a part of nature that we don't understand.
So yes, I can make a totalizing claim about something when it is axiomatic.
The term 'super natural' is a non sequitur or it simply holds the place of "we don't know yet". Either way we violate the 'laws' of physics at singularities and thus either we have proof of the super-natural (which by definition is simply that which we do not know) or we have proof that super-natural is just a place holder for "our ignorance."
For example, explaining why mass creates gravity is 'super natural' if we are to accept the definition: as anything that is beyond our knowledge is such.
tl;dr;
If we accept the concept of super-natural as defined, then every scientist studies the super-natural as they are studying what we do not know yet.
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