The alternatives I outlined have been presented here by different posters, so thanks for your take on it. Here’s a question. If ‘hard wiring’ is involved, and this is not a survival instinct, what place does evolution have in explaining this or being a mechanism for it?
No it doesn’t. You’ve been shown in painful detail dozens of times. Why aren’t you admitting when you’re wrong? Do you think that by pretending to debate that you’ll win through attrition?
Sure it can. Just like it can explain your lust. Or your complete inability to understand simple answers to your questions.
As said again and again, virtual particles. Quantum mechanics is full of causeless events. If you don’t like to admit that, tough.
And where did this supposed intelligence come from? as has been pointed out again and again, saying “goddidit” only pushes the question a step back.
Evolution explains benevolence just fine regardless of how many times you say it doesn’t. And there’s no truly objective morality for it to explain. And again, if there WAS some kind of objective morality, we have no way of knowing it and no reason to care about it. if “objective morality” contradicts my own I’ll follow my own.
And, again, God or gods are simply besides the point when it comes to morality. Your imaginary friend didn’t create your hypothetical “objective morality”; if he did, it wouldn’t be objective morality, it would be his morality.
So we are hard wired to “feel distress when we see injury inflicted on those close to us”.
1> As you subscribe to common descent, I assume you would posit that this empathetic response ‘evolved’ from the very earliest life form. If so, how did the earliest life form capable of killing survive while this response evolved? Are you suggesting this response developed in the earliest stages of evolution?
Your grasp of evolution is terrible. Why would this be in the earliest form of life? Is every trait present on Earth now present in the earliest form of life? Did the first replicating cells have the ability to fly, grow fur, echo locate and see into the ultraviolet?
You’re so messed up on the details, it’s no wonder you rebel against the idea.
I already explained this to you and you didn’t understand it. But lets try again.
You look at Jessica Alba and you get excited and want to fuck her. This is your body’s way to get you to breed. But your mind doesn’t think about that, all you know is you’re being compelled to chat her up.
You see a pic of Jessica Alba in the shower from Machete. You still want to fuck her. So you beat one off. Good for you.
Why did you evolve the ability to masturbate to photos? Early man had no photos!
The answer, as if you’re still reading this, is you didn’t. You developed a set of responses to find young, fit women exciting. When you see a photo of a young, fit woman the same fucking switches go off.
So lets go on. While your ancestors were evolving in small tribal bands they got wired to protect children. Because the people who protected their children got are more likely to pass on their genes.
However, when you are in a burning building and across a smoke filled room you see a crying toddler, the same fucking switches go off.
I don’t really care that you have no intention of actually listening or developing knowledge, but you shouldn’t promulgate ignorance.
You ask “Why would this be in the earliest form of life?” But I didn’t say it was. What I asked was “how did the earliest life form capable of killing survive while this response evolved?”
You dissertation on procreation, although humorous, is irrelevant.
The desire to procreate can easily be explained by an impulse re survival.
The empathtic repsoonse cannot.
Likewise your child illustration also misses the point.
The question is about why we would have an empathetic distaste to murder a neighbouring tribesman with whom we compete for food.
Can I suggest you take a little time to actually read the repsonses and formulate a sensble answer before hitting ‘submit’.
I would suggest that on this last point you are odds with many involved in evolutionary psychology. This quote is from an article by Raymond Tallis for the National Humanities Centre. The full article is at http://onthehuman.org/2009/09/does-evolution-explain-our-behaviour/:
“Evolutionary psychology assumes that human behaviour is being shaped, indeed determined, by processes of natural selection: those modes of behaviour that favour the replication of the genome will preferentially survive. We behave as we do because we are designed to optimise the chances of our surviving long enough to replicate our genetic material. Men who sleep with a lot of women, traders who aim to maximise their returns on their investments – or at least attempt to – are simply responding to the fundamental biological imperative to make the world safe for their genes.”
I read most of it. It’s usually the same bullshit where you ignore evidence and state grandly that none has been offered.
Not all animals have similar emotions.
Yes it can. Because the desire to help others made primitive tribal bands more successful. Imagine if you will:
Tribe A: Is the asshole libertarian tribe. Everyone is out for themselves. At the first sign of weakness they gang up and kill members of their own. They don’t cooperate or assist each other.
Tribe B: The Jesus-Like communist tribe. They assist each other, because they have an evolved trait that makes helping others feel good.
Which of the tribes is going to do better? Which is going to be more successful and sire more children?
People we are competing with are enemies. And I think you may have noticed that humans regularly kill their enemies. For instance you would never burn a child to death (I assume). But if you were a fighter pilot you would drop a bomb that would probably cause a child to burn to death. But you’d rationalize it as a necessity of war.
The people we live with, that we aren’t actually fighting are the ones we have empathy to. But you live in a big city, so your mind isn’t seeing the people around you as threats, so your natural empathy comes to the fore.
Dude, I’m doing six kinds of thinking you’ve never even heard of.
