Hi there,
I have a question on Evolution.
What is the benefit of producing young? If our bodies are designed to conserve energy, and protect ourselves from destruction.
Why then does our selfish genes invest so much in reproducing and creating young?
Why do our bodies care so much, when it isn't us?
Is there something that passes on through us, as far as I can see when we die our cells die and degrade so how then does our offspring benefit us when we are dead? Why is there such a push to keep our DNA information replicating this is not a religion question but figured that there may be a few people on here that no a bit about evolution.
Many Thanks
Spudnik510
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It's like throwing a bunch of people into the ocean off a ship; then coming back to pick up survivors 24 hours later and wondering why all the survivors you find happen know how swim!
Can't help but wonder why you write `lifeforms' rather than `organisms.' Statement C only holds under the condition that all organisms die.
Does it matter?
Yes. It's hard to tell what you mean; obviously, a dog is both an organism and a life form. What about a virus? An enzyme? Many of these could give the impression of life because they move and act in complex, complicated ways. The definition of the word `organism' often lets us reject the virus, and always, the enzyme. A life form could be a floating dandelion seed, but an organism it is not. The vocabulary exists for a reason.
calhais,
The OP was about humans, and Nyarlathotep's answer is a generalization that takes in plants and animals that reproduce sexually. It's nice, and it's concise. I don't see the need to quibble over the fine meaning of words when the point of the question is clear. Such quibbling might make for an interesting side discussion, but is irrelevant to the main question.
Better to make something beautiful than ugly. If you know the right word and there's no clear advantage to using the wrong one, then it benefits you to use the right word because it makes you seem well-read or educated, at least. If you use the wrong word because you don't know the right one, then it may still interest you to learn the right one. In this case, using the right word defends against certain angles of attack. A theist who wants to discredit Nyar's argument could challenge the use of the word implicitly to make arguments about viri and dandelion seeds (e.g.) that appear to contradict Nyar. The value of writing accurately derives from the pointlessness of writing inaccurately.
calhais,
Your general point of principle is nicely stated!
It may be of some interest, however, to note the definition that Merriam Webster gives to "life-form":
Apparently, this definition is popular in ecology as suggested by a science dictionary I have on hand. In that sense dandelion seeds would not qualify. However, you have my vote on using "organism."
Then you've answered my original question to Nyar. Thanks. I didn't know that about the word `life-form,' and I feel stupid for not trying a dictionary. I was wary that Nyar meant something specific by using the word, something other than what a descriptive definition (such as MW's) would entail. It does seem like the word `life-form' connotes a focus on the shape of the organism's body rather than the evolutionary potential and history of the organism's species, so I can see why you might agree that `organism' fits better.
@Greensnake Re: Calhais and "I don't see the need to quibble over the fine meaning of words when the point of the question is clear."
Hey, Green. I'm afraid you may have to forgive our friend Calhais a bit. After seeing his posts on several other threads, it has become apparent that dear Calhais has something of an obsessive fixation on each individual tree (and sometimes very specific markings on very specific trees) that tends to interfere with his ability to view the entire forest as a whole. Not saying there is anything wrong with studying individual trees. I'm sure they can be quite fascinating. However, it is a shame sometimes to miss out on seeing the grandeur of the entire forest.
Species that don't evolve a trait to care for mating and caring for their offspring don't usually survive. Such actions are hard-wired in our brains by a very, very long process of evolution. Children that weren't created didn't commit at all to species survival and ultimately evolution. Children that died young due to lack of care didn't commit either. Genes that carried with them the trait of being attracted to the opposite sex, and those that produced the 'feelings' for the offspring, are clearly the ones more likely to survive, and drive the next generations of evolution. Rinse and repeat, and boners become as common as babies getting called cute.
This only seems insincere because of our consciousness. Which in itself is nothing but a fabricated inside reality, which ultimately runs as coded by our DNA. I, like many others, often experience feelings, which we only later recognize as influenced by hormones. Like sexual attraction, anger, take your pick... Our bodies know what's happening around us before we even get the chance to consciously realize it ourselves. Feelings hardly ever follow logic, and this is the underlying reason for that.
Also, small clarification - our DNA does NOT get replicated, at least not fully. It get's all mixed up, experiences mutations, not to mention all the hereditary baggage of recessive genes popping out every now and then. The uniqueness of each individual is an important part of evolution. Same as natural selection, which should be explained rather clearly in the first part.
species and individuals are not static.
Muashkis,
As I understand it, the DNA helix gets unwound by enzymes and each strand collects the missing parts. In that sense DNA gets replicated in ordinary cell division. Of course, DNA inherited by offspring is a patchwork of swapped parts due to the cross-over process. And, as you indicate, that can bring up recessive traits and involve other complications.
Evolution does not "work" for the individual. It is concerned for the species. My granddaughter is already benefittng from what little I already did to produce her dad and my evolutionary purpose is not yet over as a supporter of the family gtoup within the human species. Bsbies really are the focus of evolution despite appearances.
Evolution works on the population level, not just the special level.
My personal definition of "the purpose of life" is to survive and reproduce. That applies to all life forms. Due to the nature of this universe, cosmic rays and other forms of radiation damage cell DNA, resulting in mutations. Some mutations do nothing, some are beneficial, and some are lethal.
The drive to reproduce powers many of our actions and perceptions. For a male, selection of a viable mother influences us in many ways. For example, good skin tone, a healthy body and wide, child-bearing hips are what makes some females more attractive than others to many males.
Added on top of our biological drives is the fact that humans are a social species. One of our main survival tactics is that living in groups enhances the odds of survival.
I think the best answer anyone can give you is that it is just a glitch in the matrix; a virus that emerged at the right place and time, creating a positive feedback loop that continued to this day.
Replication does nothing but replace the individual, and evolution does nothing but replace the species. It doesn't benefit the person to reproduce, nor the species to evolve. Those benefits are reaped by someone or something else. It doesn't even benefit the genes inside our bodies to replicate, since it is only a randomized version of those genes that pass down, and then get mixed and matched with the genes of another person.
Breezy,
Evolution doesn't replace individuals; it is the mechanism for new species. It doesn't even necessarily replace the original species. An evolved species and the species from which it evolved may co-exist, usually in different environments. Our genes "benefit" from offspring in that a substantial part of their information is passed on. That is, they "survive" in a probabilistic sense.
"I think the best answer anyone can give you is that it is just a glitch in the matrix; a virus that emerged at the right place and time, creating a positive feedback loop that continued to this day."
Its not the best answer. There is no 'glitch" and there is no so-called sci-fi "matrix". What you term a "glitch" covers the intricate processes of how evolution and the continued development of all the species works, encompassing a vast array of complicated chemical, physical and sometimes psychological interactions that do not rely on any one single issue, like a "glitch" or any single "positive feedback loop", there are thousands of them. What you call the "matrix" is life, its all right to call it that, life.
Viruses have had tremendous impacts on evolution and variation in genetic material, but probably the greatest for humans is that of the placenta in mammals which is believed to have viral origins. The emotional demands humans deal with weren't instigated by a "virus" but rather are the result of a long history of social interdependencies within the species to serve individual needs and survival which is all part and parcel with the theory of evolution.
"Reproduction" is a better description than "replication" which infers an exactness in copying which rarely happens in evolution and to be really specific, "reproduction with variation" is an even better expression. However reproduction does more than replace the individual, but its precisely because it does not replicate perfectly it passes on modified genetic material throughout the larger population, bearing old and new traits, increasing the potential of the future prospering and/or survival of the species in changing environments; not by replacing it but by modifying it.
If a species does not evolve, replicate, if you like, it is more likely to die out. Over-specialisation of survival traits in a single environment with limited or reduced variation in reproduction has probably seen the extinction of more species than even mankind has been responsible for. Of course it benefits the species to "replicate" and evolve!
Reproduction has personally benefited me. I have a family, the children of which are grown with family and children of their own but I am still engaged in ensuring that my family unit survives and prospers and that's good for the mammal that I am. The enjoyment and satisfactions and even the disappointments, I get from my family give me a sense of meaning and purpose. It keeps me positive and engaged which keeps me alive which benefits me, no?
Life would be meaningless and drab without other humans. I might consider suicide. And yet the processes of evolution have wired me so that even if I had no family of my own, I could find like satisfaction in supporting another family or a single/widowed woman and her children from a previous marriage, I have seen it happen all the time.
You and I will die, irrespective of what our children and our children's children evolve into. Hence evolution does not benefit anybody except the recipient. The altruistic genes would have been a better name than the selfish genes.
Evolution would dictate what you find enjoyment in. If it wants your to find enjoyment in the lonely dirt of the earth, then you'll find it there.
"The altruistic genes would have been a better name than the selfish genes."
"Any gene that behaves in such a way as to increase its own survival chances in the gene pool at the expense of its alleles will, by definition, tautologously, tend to survive. The gene is the basic unit of selfishness.” The gene's only 'purpose' is to replicate itself, it isn't sentient so can't be construed as altruistic, nor of course can it be construed as selfish in the literal sense of the word. In this context I always understood RD to be using the word selfish metaphorically, not in a literal sense.
"Evolution would dictate what you find enjoyment in. If it wants your to find enjoyment in the lonely dirt of the earth, then you'll find it there."
Only where enjoyment enables the recipient an evolutionary advantage over a others that lack that "enjoyment". For example a genetic disposition to enjoy carefully tending their young gives an obvious advantage over an indifferent careless parent, all else being equal of course.
Ironically this trait in humans can and does get exploited by non biological relatives where there is no genetic advantage in caring for the welfare of children you are not related to. Thus creating an evolutionary advantage at the species level.
The evolutionary process benefits all of us, in turn; we are all or have been, recipients. Its influence can continue well after child bearing/raising years have passed and be life long sometimes. Altruistic and selfish are both appropriate terms. So is the term 'indifferent' in special circumstances.
I have cared very much about my children and continue to do so (selfish) and I have the same care and concern for my stepdaughter (altruistic). Both reactions stem from social and biological evolutionary impulses, both of which are inextricably connected.
I may never know my great great grandchildren, I only know my grand children are getting a good start in their lives. At my age, its all I can reasonably expect to know. Irrationally, because I am human, I envisage the best for them and live in the enjoyment of that hope.
I dislike referring to "Evolution" as some sentinent being dictating my preferences like a god, I am an atheist, afterall, but it will never want me to find enjoyment in anything outside reproductive matters.
Ironically after actively promoting and preserving lives and lifestyles within my extended family circle, I have had a life-long obsession with the destructive and devastating history of WW1. My genes don't give a toss about that (indifferent). I have found that enjoyment all by myself, or so I like to think, but its not directly because of evolution.
Look Around You - Life feeds on life. Life feeds on life to live. Life feeds on life to breed. Life feeds on life no matter what that life is. Our bodies are not DESIGNED to conserve energy. Calling them "designed" is .... well frankly,,,,, retarded. We eat and breath out of the same hole which makes chocking to death a common way people die. We have extra body parts that we do not need; teeth. an appendix and more. If we overheat we die. If we are not hot enough we die. As far as design goes we are not even close to conserving energy or protecting ourselves. WTF are you talking about?
Why do our bodies care so much, when it isn't us? What makes you think you are not your body? Show me consciousness without a body. You need at least one example to make the assertion that a body is separate from who it thinks it is. Only one. Got any at all? Of course you don't. If you are going to assert you are more than your body, you will have to prove it. Or how about this. Show me yourself without your body. That will work as well.
How does offspring benefit when we are dead? Every atom in your body came from someplace. The atoms in your body were once shared with the dinosaurs. You are built of the exact same stuff. Not stuff similar. The exact same stuff. Organic matter rots and returns as living matter. Life exists on life and that is how life benefits.
A push to keep DNA? Huh? Have you heard of the RNA hypothesis. Life began as RNA and EVOLVED into DNA/ DNA is changing all the time. I don't think anything is being kept. Not sure what you are talking about.
You might want to pick up one of Richard Dawkin's books. The Selfish Gene could probably answer all of your questions. He is a biologist. We are just atheists.
Whenever religious apologists or creationists start talking about design you can guarantee they are about to ignore the one criteria that objectively determines design, which is that we never see examples of things that are designed occurring naturally. Creationist metaphors about things humans design being compared to things they want to believe are also designed, always ignore this, like Paley's watchmaker fallacy, as if we ever see watches occurring in nature, and don't of course have ample objective evidence they are designed.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got an ontological mess spilling out of the argument that literally everything is designed and we're `living in a simulation.'
True, but this is why objective evidence is the best determining factor in validating any claim. There are also some obvious incongruities in the claim everything is designed, firstly in these arguments creationists nearly always cite complexity as a factor in determining design, they don't seem to have noticed that they are claiming literally everything is designed, thus complexity is obviously irrelevant, and again Paley's watchmaker fallacy is an excellent example. In a designed universe we're looking at a watch on beach of watches on a planet made entirely of watches in a universe that contains nothing but watches, the analogy starts to lose something when you realise this simple fact.
The far more obvious flaw creationist seem to have missed in such arguments is that a deity in such a universe would by definition be the most complex thing imaginable, and therefore must more probably have been designed that any of the less complex things. What ensues is some fairly obvious special pleading fallacies.
An ontological mess is an apropos description, like claiming we might be living in the matrix. The claim has all the appearance of being unfalisifiable, indeed it must be or else it's validity could be tested and falsified. So it is epistemologically erroneous to make any claims about an unfalsifiable premise, as by definition we can know nothing about them. Then again the phrase we might or might not be living in the matrix, but can't know which, well it doesn't have the same compelling appearance at all.
A good analogy would be apologists who claim theism is a valid belief because you cannot disprove the existence of a deity. This is true of all unfalsifiable claims and I have never understood why anyone finds it at all compelling.
Bad assumption; it is often argued that deities are not imaginable.
Probability is beside the point when it comes down to whether certain (lone) things are designed. My understanding is that in spite of the clumsy language used, the watchmaker argument generally relies on an imperfect correlation between complexity and design. You can't have it both ways: you can't say that a correlation is nonsense and afterward apply it extremely. You can do those in reverse, as a heuristic to a proof, but beyond that, it sounds like a rant.
One of the troubles with basing an epistemology on falsifiability is precisely that it holds only ``by definition.'' Another is that it begs the question of how you can know whether something is falsifiable or unfalsifiable; in the language of information theory, it encodes most of the problem of epistemology into a single word, rather than getting to the bottom of things. It is better to appeal to the idea of concept instead. Falsifiablity, regardless of whether it is called an objective property, is necessarily subjective in the wise that it is defined upon a judgment: that no-one, as a matter of fact, has conceived of a way to potentially find the degree to which the proposition is false. That makes it a matter of induction to conclude about the proposition what is really meant when the proposition is called `unfalsifiable': that no-one ever will conceive of a way to potentially find the degree to which it is false. In this use of the word, `unfalsifiable,' it is necessary to make the assumption that past trends in our ability to conceive of ways to find the degree to which a proposition is false will continue unerringly, and this, being an assumption, requires faith. In the sense that how well the induction holds can be expressed as a degree, faith, as it might be defined in this context, can be quantified. A schema for the quantification of faith as the base member of assumption would be more rigorous and intellectually honest than compacting important arguments into single words like `falsifiability.' It would allow for the comparison of the quality of assumptions in a homogeneous, quantifiable way, and would let us express epistemological paradigms and models mathematically.
It is easy to see why this is compelling: it is and argument, rather than the absence of one, and it therefore lets theists put aside thinking further about the problem. This flaw in reasoning is characteristic of theists and atheists alike, as I point out about the abuse of the property of `falsifiability.' One of the things that makes this flaw seem rather characteristic of theists alone is that theists do not tend to present literary arguments. While atheists as a whole have done at least a mediocre job of promoting Richard Dawkins as a character, and his famous book, theists do not promote some of the oldest and most powerful apologists. Descartes, Kerkegaard, C.S. Lewis, Dostoevsky, and, less so, even Godel have all presented interesting apologetic arguments, even if only in passing. Yet these arise rarely at most on fora like and including AR. What you perhaps rather care about is whether the argument in question is convincing; it is not, and its purpose, in my experience, if it is to convince, is to convince the atheist to quit pestering the theist rather than to convert the atheist.
"Bad assumption; it is often argued that deities are not imaginable."
It wasn't an assumption, I was making a logical extrapolation of a creationist claim. You get that many theists imagine a deity right?
I agree: it wasn't an assumption. I left out a verb because I meant that it would be a bad assumption. I don't really care what you've assumed in this case.
Yes, and that is compatible with my claim that it is often argued that deities are not imaginable. The union set of the people who claim that and the people who imagine deities is probably small.
I do not care; you are accountable for what you write.
"I agree: it wasn't an assumption. I left out a verb because I meant that it would be a bad assumption."
So it would be a bad assumption, but since I made no such assumption.....nah you've lost me.
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""I agree: it wasn't an assumption."*******"I don't really care what you've assumed in this case."
I've assumed nothing, and this is rather hilarious since you admit it yourself, then immediately imply the opposite?
--------------------------------
Me "You get that many theists imagine a deity, right?"
YOU "Yes, and that is compatible with my claim that it is often argued that deities are not imaginable. "
That's a bizarre non-sequitur.
--------------------------------
YOU ""Bad assumption; "
ME "It wasn't an assumption, I was making a logical extrapolation of a creationist claim."
YOU "I agree: it wasn't an assumption. I do not care; you are accountable for what you write."
Where did I say I wasn't 'accountable' for what I write? Another bizarre non-sequitur.
"A deity in such a universe would by definition be the most complex thing imaginable . . . ."
This is not an assumption, it is what theists claim. Are you saying I am accountable for the claims others make, because I have cited their claim, even though it was with the express purpose of showing why I thought their claim was flawed? In what way accountable, for the claim itself? That makes no sense, so in what way *accountable? Again this is bizarre, you seem to be using some fairly tortured semantics just for the sake of disagreeing. Lets try bullet points:
1) Do you agree that there are theists who imagine deities?
2) Do you agree there are theists who imagine those deities are more complex than what they perceive to be it's 'creation'?
3) would you agree that if those same theists claim complexity is indicative of design, then it is a logical extrapolation that the more complex deity is more probably designed?
Of course this creates infinite regression, but then that is another flaw in apologetics.
No. I expressly stated that to criticize a claim requires citation, and it should be your assumption, in good faith, that I do not believe that criticism of a claim does not equate to accountability for that claim.
Infinite regress itself is not necessarily a flaw.
I think an attentive re-read of the conversation adequately addresses everything else you mentioned.
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