[Copied here for reference by request - ff]
There are two possibilities, aren’t there? Either the universe was made in order that we could occupy a miniscule small portion of it, or we developed through natural selection as beings that were able to survive in these particular conditions. In other words, either the universe fits us or we fit the universe.
Now consider. If it is really the second of these options (which after all is what all evidence suggests) how would you expect it appear different from the first? How could you tell them apart?
Another thing. We don’t know of any other intelligent life in the universe (I hesitate to say just ‘life’ since we’ve found bacteria in meteorites**) but consider the probabilities: a conservative estimate is that there are 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars. That’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns out there (described, I have seen, as more stars than the total number of words spoken by everyone who's ever lived). Now, how frequently might there be a habitat orbiting one of those suns that’s suitable for complex life to develop?
Again, being very conservative indeed, let’s say just once in any galaxy (and we know there’s at least one in the Milky Way because we can experience it). That’s still 100 billion planets suitable for complex life. If you feel that a probability of 100 billion to 1 is still too frequent, let’s make it I trillion to 1 (one million million to one). That still leaves a billion planets with suitable habitats.
Now say that intelligent life has evolved on only one planet in a million of those that had a suitable habitat. That’s still 1,000 planets out there with complex life, using an ultra-conservative estimate.
The point I’m making is that I’d be very surprised indeed if there’s no other intelligent life in the universe. And if there is other intelligent life, what does that say for any notion of the universe having been designed for us on Earth?
** [I think this is wrong. What we've found are amino acids - necessary precursors of "life as we know it, Jim"]
An interesting point here might be to consider whether a creator made the laws of physics from scratch – in which case they’re purely arbitrary and (presumably) could be changed at any time – or whether he or she co-opted something that already existed – in which case, why was a god required? Time and again as we understand more, the space that could be occupied by gods gets smaller.
As a complete aside, Noah’s an interesting example, mainly because it’s lifted wholesale from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian legend than predates anything in the Bible. Sumeria was where Iraq is now, and the flood plain of the Tigris-Euphrates was notorious, some 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, for flooding. There is some geological evidence for a very bad flood there about 4,000 BCE, for instance.
The Epic of Gilgamesh contains the story of Utnapashtim, who saved his family and animals in a boat he’d made, having been warned that the gods would send a great flood. He sent out various birds to test whether the waters had fallen, and the boat came to rest on a mountain. The gods then sent a rainbow. A recently translated Sumerian tablet has the same tale, complete with the animals entering the boat (a great coracle) in pairs.
Presumably Hebrew slaves held in Babylon (previously Sumeria) heard the story and incorporated it into their own tales.
And you, Magnificat, are very big on belief. I believe things too. I believe that music has a power to move that’s quite different from other things. But I also believe that believing true things is always preferable to believing false things. Here we return to the Platonic view that physical reality is less important than spiritual – tremendously influential upon the authors of the bible – and a philosophy that ousted Democritus and other early ‘scientists’.
But we cannot define ‘spiritual’ except in physical terms. As far as we can tell, the ‘spirit’ is the sum of our brain’s activities – what makes each of us us, so to speak. But this is not satisfactory for those who seek exact answers; much easier to posit an independent ‘soul’ that survives after death. Yet we know that people can change their personalities entirely as the result of traumas to the brain. Does this mean a change of ‘soul’ too?
Your question about love is important, but you are wrong to suggest that evolution has not much to say about it. The development of emotions in species is a fascinating area of evolutionary study – and has been since 1872, when Darwin began it. It’s not difficult to find whole books devoted to the issue, including Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1974) which, despite its often misunderstood title, is as much about the evolutionary development of altruistic behaviour.
There is a lot of research into emotions in animals, and the results may surprise us. Other primates, particularly apes, experience well developed emotions, with the equivalent areas of their brains being stimulated for different emotions as are stimulated in ours. They share many of the behaviours we do, including things that might come within ‘love’ – signs of affection, caring for each other and the like. But it doesn’t stop with primates. Dogs (wolves), elephants, dolphins and octopuses (yes) all show wide ranges of emotional behaviour, in much the same way as we.
So what’s happening? I suspect that much of it is the result of natural selection favouring those in communal societies who have a greater tendency to empathise with others, who demonstrate more altruistic behaviour and who better assimilate the ‘rules’ of ‘give-and-take’ (aka game theory). I don’t know much about octopuses, but the other animals I’ve referred to above are social, living in groups and relying on social interaction. All of them (octopuses too) are intelligent, with well developed brains.
We have the added advantage of speech, and we can express our emotions in abstract ways. But this is greater complexity rather than uniqueness. No doubt the other animals communicate their emotions – there’s not too much point in having them otherwise.
So why might this have happened among social species? At the most basic level, altruistic behaviour has an evolutionary advantage where the groups are small and their members mostly related. (This was the case among our ancestors for millions of years, until only some 10,000 years ago.) It ensures the chance of my genes being passed on are higher. Remember that with sexual reproduction (most common among complex species) we only pass half of our genes to any child, where they are shuffled with half from the other parent. The evolutionary advantage of this is the constant re-shuffling that allows greater diversity, better protection against illnesses, and more opportunity for natural selection to work since there's a greater possibility of helpful mutations arising. The downside is that we pass on only half our genes.
By my being part of a small community, the chances of all my genes being passed on by are greater, since I share most (or all) of my genes with the group as a whole. Perhaps it won’t be me who passes them on (I may be eaten by a lion) but they probably will survive through others. Natural selection would thus have no doubt favoured those who carried genes for greater empathy and altruism - who interacted better. (Remember that nothing really 'favours' anything. There's no decision made. It's just that over time the proportion of members of any group that evinces a particular adaptation will increase if it is a useful adaptation.)
Living in large communities is quite recent in our history. We are thus ‘hard-wired’ to be social and demonstrate empathy and altruism by the previous several million years' development. And this even though we don’t usually live in small, family-oriented groups. Quite the opposite in fact.
It’s much more complicated than this, of course, but this is the evolutionary background. Evolutionary psychologists have taken the development of emotions further. Steven Pinker comes to mind as someone worth reading on this subject.
But we must never forget that, although 'love' may well have been an evolutionary adaptation, it is hardly so now (at least not primarily so). This is very common in evolution, particular in human evolution, since our huge brains allow us to question the very processes that allowed those brains in the first place and to rationalise (and romanticise) the consequences.
Originally posted by Magnificat
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Now consider. If it is really the second of these options (which after all is what all evidence suggests) how would you expect it appear different from the first? How could you tell them apart?
Another thing. We don’t know of any other intelligent life in the universe (I hesitate to say just ‘life’ since we’ve found bacteria in meteorites**) but consider the probabilities: a conservative estimate is that there are 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars. That’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns out there (described, I have seen, as more stars than the total number of words spoken by everyone who's ever lived). Now, how frequently might there be a habitat orbiting one of those suns that’s suitable for complex life to develop?
Again, being very conservative indeed, let’s say just once in any galaxy (and we know there’s at least one in the Milky Way because we can experience it). That’s still 100 billion planets suitable for complex life. If you feel that a probability of 100 billion to 1 is still too frequent, let’s make it I trillion to 1 (one million million to one). That still leaves a billion planets with suitable habitats.
Now say that intelligent life has evolved on only one planet in a million of those that had a suitable habitat. That’s still 1,000 planets out there with complex life, using an ultra-conservative estimate.
The point I’m making is that I’d be very surprised indeed if there’s no other intelligent life in the universe. And if there is other intelligent life, what does that say for any notion of the universe having been designed for us on Earth?
** [I think this is wrong. What we've found are amino acids - necessary precursors of "life as we know it, Jim"]
2) It would follow my thinking generally that the creator of the Universe also decided the rules under which it operated. Again computer analogies come to mind.
3)… As for Noah, like Genesis, a poetical narrative lacking the understanding we have now perhaps.
The Epic of Gilgamesh contains the story of Utnapashtim, who saved his family and animals in a boat he’d made, having been warned that the gods would send a great flood. He sent out various birds to test whether the waters had fallen, and the boat came to rest on a mountain. The gods then sent a rainbow. A recently translated Sumerian tablet has the same tale, complete with the animals entering the boat (a great coracle) in pairs.
Presumably Hebrew slaves held in Babylon (previously Sumeria) heard the story and incorporated it into their own tales.
Pab you are very big on evidence and proof and, if I understand you correctly, that evolution answers most if not all the questions; but what does evolution have to say about emotions e.g love and the appreciation of beauty. Not much as far as I can tell and these parts of our nature are not provable as far as I can see. I love my wife but I can't prove it. If God is love rather than an old man with a white beard ,as I believe, can it ever be proved? Really you just have to accept that it cannot and cling to faith as you say.
But we cannot define ‘spiritual’ except in physical terms. As far as we can tell, the ‘spirit’ is the sum of our brain’s activities – what makes each of us us, so to speak. But this is not satisfactory for those who seek exact answers; much easier to posit an independent ‘soul’ that survives after death. Yet we know that people can change their personalities entirely as the result of traumas to the brain. Does this mean a change of ‘soul’ too?
Your question about love is important, but you are wrong to suggest that evolution has not much to say about it. The development of emotions in species is a fascinating area of evolutionary study – and has been since 1872, when Darwin began it. It’s not difficult to find whole books devoted to the issue, including Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1974) which, despite its often misunderstood title, is as much about the evolutionary development of altruistic behaviour.
There is a lot of research into emotions in animals, and the results may surprise us. Other primates, particularly apes, experience well developed emotions, with the equivalent areas of their brains being stimulated for different emotions as are stimulated in ours. They share many of the behaviours we do, including things that might come within ‘love’ – signs of affection, caring for each other and the like. But it doesn’t stop with primates. Dogs (wolves), elephants, dolphins and octopuses (yes) all show wide ranges of emotional behaviour, in much the same way as we.
So what’s happening? I suspect that much of it is the result of natural selection favouring those in communal societies who have a greater tendency to empathise with others, who demonstrate more altruistic behaviour and who better assimilate the ‘rules’ of ‘give-and-take’ (aka game theory). I don’t know much about octopuses, but the other animals I’ve referred to above are social, living in groups and relying on social interaction. All of them (octopuses too) are intelligent, with well developed brains.
We have the added advantage of speech, and we can express our emotions in abstract ways. But this is greater complexity rather than uniqueness. No doubt the other animals communicate their emotions – there’s not too much point in having them otherwise.
So why might this have happened among social species? At the most basic level, altruistic behaviour has an evolutionary advantage where the groups are small and their members mostly related. (This was the case among our ancestors for millions of years, until only some 10,000 years ago.) It ensures the chance of my genes being passed on are higher. Remember that with sexual reproduction (most common among complex species) we only pass half of our genes to any child, where they are shuffled with half from the other parent. The evolutionary advantage of this is the constant re-shuffling that allows greater diversity, better protection against illnesses, and more opportunity for natural selection to work since there's a greater possibility of helpful mutations arising. The downside is that we pass on only half our genes.
By my being part of a small community, the chances of all my genes being passed on by are greater, since I share most (or all) of my genes with the group as a whole. Perhaps it won’t be me who passes them on (I may be eaten by a lion) but they probably will survive through others. Natural selection would thus have no doubt favoured those who carried genes for greater empathy and altruism - who interacted better. (Remember that nothing really 'favours' anything. There's no decision made. It's just that over time the proportion of members of any group that evinces a particular adaptation will increase if it is a useful adaptation.)
Living in large communities is quite recent in our history. We are thus ‘hard-wired’ to be social and demonstrate empathy and altruism by the previous several million years' development. And this even though we don’t usually live in small, family-oriented groups. Quite the opposite in fact.
It’s much more complicated than this, of course, but this is the evolutionary background. Evolutionary psychologists have taken the development of emotions further. Steven Pinker comes to mind as someone worth reading on this subject.
But we must never forget that, although 'love' may well have been an evolutionary adaptation, it is hardly so now (at least not primarily so). This is very common in evolution, particular in human evolution, since our huge brains allow us to question the very processes that allowed those brains in the first place and to rationalise (and romanticise) the consequences.