The difference between a human and a rock

Since I have shown that there is a massive selection pressure that must inevitably produce exactly our concept of morality, no invisible sky-fairies are necessary.

quote:

---

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.

---

Bolder-dash,this doesnt' follow. We don't have a detailed step by step story for the origin of empathetic behaviour in humans. How does that suggest a supernatural being? What it suggests we have an area that is deserving of further study, where we don't know all the answers. It's a big leap from 'we don't know the answer' to 'a supernatural being did it'.You should also be aware that the evolutionary picture isn't as made up as you think it is- many animals show empathetic behaviour, not just humans. There are degrees to which they show empathy. For example, monkeys will not eat food if they know that it will cause another monkey to receive an electric shock - until they are very hungry indeed, ie haven't eaten for a couple of days.- There is research that shows genetic control over levels of empathy and engagement in humans - eg this:

quote:

---

People with Williams Syndrome, who are missing about 21 genes on chromosome seven, are highly social and empathetic, even in situations that would elicit fear and anxiety in healthy people. They will eagerly, and often impulsively, engage in social interactions, even with strangers. However, they experience increased anxiety that is non-social, such as fear of spiders or heights (phobias) and worry excessively.

---

more at NIMH Science NewsSimilar work at Berkeley shows that human empathy is affected by which alleles people have for the oxytocin receptor protein.

quote:

---

Keltner's team is looking into how the human capacity to care and cooperate is wired into particular regions of the brain and nervous system. One recent study found compelling evidence that many of us are genetically predisposed to be empathetic.

​

The study, led by UC Berkeley graduate student Laura Saslow and Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University, found that people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances.

---

- Scientists at Berkeley are also looking at the effect of co-operation and generous behaviour on the respect people have and the influence people wield. The results are that generous, and co-operative people are much more respected and wield higher influence.

quote:

---

"The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated," Willer said. "But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status."

​

"Given how much is to be gained through generosity, social scientists increasingly wonder less why people are ever generous and more why they are ever selfish," he added.

---

More details of the Berkeley research is hereAttention Required! | CloudflareTo sum up, genetics have a significant influence on empathetic / co-operative behaviour, and empathetic / co-operative behaviour has been shown to increase respect and status.So while we can't demonstrate the step by step sequence of changes that led to human empathy, we can demonstrate that it a) is to some extent at least heritable and b) generates a selective advantage.So, what is your difficulty with the statement that this could have been produced by evolution?If empathy and love arose by natural methods it doesn't mean they aren't wonderful things. They are, however they came to be. Edited by Peepul, : No reason given.

I think what you have just asked is are we FORCED to be moral, and to that of course the answer is no. That is sort of the point isn't it, we have a choice to act or not act upon it, with guilt being the consequence is we ignore it. Why don't we have guilt if we don't go to watch a watch a baseball game, or play music?And can we discard our feelings of love if it makes it easier to survive? If your wife or best friend dies, wouldn't it be much better for your survival to just ignore it, because its already over anyway, and there is nothing you can do about it.And don't people go (willing) into a war to fight and die over principles of love for family or country knowing that it may very well kill them? Our feelings of love and morality are feelings we can never escape from-unless of course we choose to become immoral (which according to you we shouldn't ever choose unless it is going to help us survive longer, which let's face it, this is not the reason people choose immorality usually.And, your question still doesn't settle the issue of why this feelings of empathy and love are the single most important and strongest feelings that a human ever experiences. Surely if its just another element like hair or a tan, we don't need to carry such a gigantically disproportionate feeling about it. Wouldn't just a small urge be enough, sort of like when we need to scratch something? Couldn't we equate the need for morality as a selective pressure to survive (its certainly not in the top five or top ten selective pressures for what would cause our gens to be passed on more readily right?) to be about as important (or less) than our ability to have feelings on our skin which make us itch or move away from fire? I wonder why scratching doesn't exist as the single strongest emotion in our lives?Its almost as if we are beasts, forced to struggle to live and die just like all other animals, yet with one odd difference from all other animals-we are forced to live with the consequences of our actions (forever) as if it is a struggle between good and evil...Hmm, what does this struggle between good and evil remind me of, this one crazy unique feature which separates us from all other living things on earth, this one things that seems to only apply to the king of all animals? There is something that this automatically brings to mind, but I can't quite think of what it is. The struggle between good and evil, hmm I can't quite catch it, its right at the tip of my tongue... oh wait wait, I remember now, this, this is...oh, never mind, I don't want to consider it.

Is that really true Bolder? I beg to differ. Is not anger and fear just as strong and important (morally and psychologically) as love and empathy? Fear and anger can have as much of an effect on a human and those around him he influences as love and empathy. Even empathy or love taken to the extreme can be detrimental both to the individual and to the species. It is a balance of emotions that really aids in the survival of a species. Sometimes anger or fear is needed to spur that individual or group of individuals to do something that is beneficial for that species. Emotions are not all or nothing in effecting the survivability of an organism. Not everything is black and white as you paint it Bolder.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

---

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Nothing is deserved; all must be earned. LOL. That which is different for the couple sitting center stage can look the same to the gentlefolk in the balcony. How we determine similarities/differences is determined by where we stake our viewing spot; i.e., our epistemic framework will determine how we judge these things as different or the same. So, to answer your question: Smashing apart a rock would be different from smashing out a life within any epistemic framework in which those two things are different.JonEdited by Jon, : clarity

---

[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

And how do we make this choice, upon what criteria? Where do these criteria come from, what is making these decisions? Guilt is a feeling associated with morality, by definition. We don't feel hungry when we miss a baseball game, or kill a puppy. If my survival depended on it, I'd either ignore it or die. It's quite simple. I make no claims that the physical theory would give us an optimal solution. But why go to war? To protect the family or territory from invasion? But if we all love one another, then why would we need to protect ourselves against those that also love us? The physical theory has the start of an explanation here. What about the supernatural one where we are all moral beings? This makes no sense. We have feelings of morality from which we cannot escape unless we escape them. Eh?There are reasons in the physical theory to cheat and lie and be immoral and not just because of pure survival. I might embezzle to gain money. Money is just a stand in for resources. Resources enable me to survive, protect my family, and win mates.I'm not going to explain every possible motivation and possible pathways from instinct through the quagmire of culture and out into modern context. However, I know the basics behind how moral decisions can be made and so far it is all explained physically. Your Supernatural explanation seems to be 'we love each other, but sometimes we choose not to.' Is it?It does appear that we are like beasts, capable of creating social strategies and navigating the various challenges that come our way. It seems that we are capable of more complex interactions. It is proposed that brains control behaviour, so larger brains would be expected to handle more behavioural instructions.I see no evidence that suggests that we are subconsciously aware of a great struggle between good and evil that continues for eternity or whatever. It certainly makes for an fun story, and we humans do love a good story. But I thought you were railing against 'just so' stories?

In the book "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine there is a story about their visit to the island of Komodo, where a dragon ran off with one of the local's chickens. They followed it and watched it take its last bites. Adams writes that they felt as though they'd watched a murder. Did the chicken deserve to live? Or did the dragon? The point is, you can't get away with anthropomorphising everything as much as you seem to do.I smash rocks and I eat chickens, and I don't particularly feel like I've deprived either of anything it "deserved" in doing so.

I understand, you don't feel anything about a chicken, and won't mind what happens to it. But if you have to grab the chicken, and twist its neck to break it, and listen to it, will that bother you? What if it was a cow instead of a chicken, and you needed to hit it in the head with a hammer to kill it-feel anything? A horse?The horse should be the same as smashing a rock to you, if this is all just about your own ability to pass on your genes.Buddhists feel remorse for all things they have to kill.

I thought the physical didn't explain why we would go to war, because the physical theory has taught us that by killing others we are making ourselves less safe. i thought that was how the whole concept of morality got into our population, because we gained some mutations which made us realize that not killing others was to our advantage?You mean we also got another mutation which which made us realize that going to war was good for our survival? gee, I hope there are no other contradictory mutations we have to select for with natural selection, because now we are starting to run out of time. I am not asking for an optimal solution from your theory, how about even a decent one. Guilt and mourning serve absolutely no purpose as a means of propagating our gene pool. The events have already happened. How is feeling guilt about one situation supposed to improve my genes chances of survival for the next situation, which will never have the same circumstances twice? I am going to feel guilty when I disappoint someone, the same as I will feel guilty when I murder someone? This is somehow advantageous to my survival?We already know that guilt and stress actually lead to premature destruction of our body not increased survival. You see no evidence that we are subconsciously aware of a great struggle between good and evil that continues for eternity? How about a conscious awareness of this? Just look around. Have you ever read any classic books. Watched any movies? Gone to a church? Heard of the concept of religion? Heard of Dante? That's right, the morality exists within all of us, we can't choose to have morality, we can only choose to abandon it. If we never had morality to begin with, and did something evil it wouldn't really be an issue, because we would be completely unaware that there was anything even wrong with it. But because we have morality, we are aware when we are choosing to abandon it. This is the struggle of mankind-we know when we have done something wrong, and it is up to all of us to decide if we want to do something even when we know it is wrong.According to you, we wouldn't be able to make a choice of right and wrong, but instead would only be able to choose between what will make me survive longer and what won't. If something will make me survive longer on average, that is automatically the choice I will make.And once again, why do you think it is that love and empathy hold such a high priority for our existence, which is completely disproportionate with any selective advantage your theory proposes it may or may not incur?And no, my supernatural theory doesn't say that we love each other and sometimes decide not to, it says that we know the difference between right and wrong, and sometimes choose to ignore it. Something other animals can't do, because they don't have a conscience.Oh wait, a conscience, what is that doing here..that is not going to help one allele survive longer too now is it? So many new traits to get random mutations and then select for, and so little time....

There's lots of time, unless you are a young earth creationist.And its not a problem for many of them either! They have to solve the same problems that scientists do but in a much shorter time frame. That leads to some very creative solutions.For example, "Woodmorappe" writes:

quote:

---

As pointed out by other creationists [e.g., Lubenow], Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis can best be understood as racial variants of modern man—all descended from Adam and Eve, and most likely arising after the separation of people groups after Babel. Source

---

What this means is that the change from modern man, i.e., Adam and Eve, to these four species of fossil man took place since the Babel incident, which is usually placed after the global flood and in the range of 4,000 to 5,300 years ago. But there's a problem! This change from modern man to Homo ergaster would require a rate of evolution on the order of several hundred times as rapid as scientists posit for the change from Homo ergaster to modern man! Most creationists deny evolution occurs on this scale at all, but to deal with the shortened time they have not only proposed such a change themselves, but they see it several hundreds of times faster and in reverse!So no, your comment about time doesn't mean much now, does it? Creationists have taken that argument away from you.And none of this leads to the conclusion you have been trying to reach throughout this whole thread. There is still no empirical evidence that any deities or supernatural entities exist.I pointed that out way upthread, but you have not seen fit to address my post in any meaningful way.

---

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

That's just learned behavior though, isn't it? I mean, you don't believe anyone is born a buddha, do you? Long, long ago, certain clever people learned that by manipulating people's emotions to make them feel bad about the conditions of their existence they could gain great power while doing very little work, right?Don't get me wrong, I do my ahimsa by consciously refraining from participating in the killing of spiders, snakes, and other venomous creatures. In this way I can pay mindfulness to the 6th Commandment while actually contributing a lot to the actual death rate of vermin like insects, rodents, and neighbors. Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
And I endure eternally.-- Dante

To you the only thing the meaningful to reply to you would be to accept everything you say as valid no matter how illogical.Now you are asking me to accept that evolution couldn't happen at a rate faster than the Darwinian model proposes because some creationists have proposed that it happened at a rate even faster than that. At some point one just has to accept that you are stuck on whatever ideology you are going to be stuck on, and dam the logic.
I have even given you some empirical evidence, and you have no empirical evidence, and yet....

Hi Bolder-dash, Could you point out exactly where you did that? I must have missed it.Mutate and Survive

---

"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

The question presumes a system of valuation -- a basis for attributing value to the things you refer to as "natural forms." This in turn entails physical entities with some degree of awareness or consciousness of their surroundings, together with some behavioral repertoire by which they demonstrate a preference or avoidance of particular things or events in their surroundings.For bees, flowers are more valuable than rocks, and so are other bees. For birds, seeds are more valuable than rocks, and so are other birds. For anteaters, ants are more valuable than rocks, and so are other anteaters. For all living things that have awareness of their surroundings, their own offspring are especially more valuable than rocks, and are more valuable than other living things.Curiously, for humans, the valuation can depend on what types of rocks we're talking about... it's fairly common for people to consider diamonds or gold more valuable than flowers, seeds, ants, bees, birds, anteaters and other living things. But, not so curiously, it's pretty rare for humans to value even these kinds of rocks more than their own offspring. (Not impossible, of course, but rare -- it's in the nature of random variations within a population that some individuals will have unusual characteristics.)Obviously, human systems of valuation are tremendously complex, to the point that most individuals (regardless of their cultural/intellectual/spiritual upbringing) can find themselves perplexed, confused, and unable to decide on a "right" response to particular situations. Moral dilemmas are not uncommon, and a clever investigator can readily pose scenarios and questions that thinking people find very hard to answer. Dogmatic people -- even those raised in a common cultural/spiritual environment -- may answer such puzzles quickly and with certainty, but in incompatible ways (another consequence of random variations within a population). Again, the question depends on a valuation system, but of a slightly different sort. The notion of "deserving" entails having a sense of purpose: entities whose existence and behavior are consistent with / supportive of a specified purpose will "deserve" some appropriate benefit that is associated with achieving that purpose. Conversely, those that actively antagonize said purpose will "deserve" some appropriate punishment. These valuations apply most often (and most intensely) when the behaviors can be viewed as "intentional" or "deliberate", i.e. reflecting a conscious choice.In the absence of such a system, nothing deserves anything -- the notion of "deserving" is undefined. Viewed from the perspective of the physical universe in general, an individual does not "deserve" to live, life in general does not "deserve" to propagate, the earth does not "deserve" to exist, etc. A large meteor impact could wipe out most or all life on our planet, and the notion of "deserving" would have no relevance at all to that event, regardless of the qualities of the species that were exterminated (the opinions of bigots like the "reverend" Pat Robertson notwithstanding).It's important to understand that the presence/absence of purpose is a matter of perspective. From the perspective of the universe as a whole, there doesn't appear to be any purpose that humans can conceptualize with any accuracy or reliability; we have no basis for comprehending it. From the perspective of other living things, we probably don't understand them well enough yet to assert anything about a sense of purpose from their PoV.From the perspective of humans, there must be purpose. It's a natural entailment of how we evolved as a social species capable of manipulating abstract symbols, propositional logic, and intricate relationships of cause and effect. Ultimately, we must work out for ourselves (individually and as a population) what that purpose is: maybe propagation of our species is sufficient, or maybe there's something more (and all atheists are open to the latter possibility, regardless of what you would probably assume).One thing is certain (at least to atheists): asserting that the earth and all living things, and even the universe as a whole, exist for the purpose of fostering mankind is a ludicrous expression of hubris. Ah, the old strawman approach, but alas, a pretty clumsy example: "Atheists believe that rocks and life forms are different versions of the same thing (whereas theists do not abide such ridiculous ideas)." As others in this thread have said... EPIC FAIL. Actually, that's being too generous. This is just a tiresome, worn-out, worthless fail; it's also insulting, and leads others to take a dim view of your intelligence. Do yourself a favor and leave it behind.I gather from many of your posts here that you are unwilling or unable to handle complex, nuanced explanations for complicated interactions among complicated physical entities. This condition certainly limits you in terms of understanding science, but it's also a problem for any sort of honest approach to theism (to the extent that theism is compatible with honesty).Edited by Otto Tellick, : added "cause & effect relationships" to explanation for human perspective of purpose.

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Where exactly?Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.