[extropy-chat] Re: Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[The Avantguardian]

--- Spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

>  
> > Kevin Freels
> > Irriducible Complexity
> > >
> > > 2. By Darwin, all structures must over any long
> time be useful for
> > survival or they gradually vanish. What is the
> survival advantage of 
> > having God?

     Well depending on what time period you look at
there were many. There are fewer today but they are
still there. The God meme once served as an
explanation for everything unexplained. He was the
conceptual blackbox that simulated the universe in the
minds of early man. He explained our origin, our
purpose, our destiny. He seved many roles in his
various names and guises throughout history. Yes he
was a crutch for ignorance, but we needed a crutch. I
look around me and I still think we need one today.
     I tutored a student, (she was an older lady but
she looked like she might have once been a
model/actress), on introductory biology. She was a
particularly challenging student because she had
serious problems understanding the concept of atoms.
She was also stressed because her exam was coming up
right after the Rosh-Hashana holidays and she was
Jewish. I realized something that day. She could go
through her whole life, with the exception of a
passing grade in biology, without really understanding
what an atom was and be perfectly happy. God was
sufficient for her. 

     God serves many functions. The God meme is cited
as the authority from which rights extend. Whether it
be the Divine Right of medieval kings to rule or the  
"unalienable rights endowed by the Creator" the
Declaration of Independence. Acts of God are still in
modern times written into insurance policies as a
disclaimer of responsibility.
     God is a mental crutch and as such is an
important and useful meme since most people probably
still need a crutch. Some people cannot stare into the
abyss of nihilism without going mad. Why take any
responsibility at all if there is no final justice?
Why stay with your family? Why not just do what your
hormones are telling you and run away with that cute
redhead? God might be the only thing that keeps some
people from acting like the monkey that carries their
wallet.
   
> 
> --- Spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:


> I have posted one of my favorite notions here
> before,
> that human brains resulted from mate selection: both
> genders selected mates with bulbous heads because
> the
> big-headed were cute.  They looked like babies.  The
> cute tended to mate sooner and more often, giving a
> slight reproductive advantage to the large-headed,
> resulting in a totally accidentally smart species.

     You are good company, Spike. Geoffery Miller
wrote an intersting book about this very subject,
although the head size thing is something he overlooks
in his book. He talks more about the role that big
intelligent brains served in courtship. How us men
saying and doing creative things were the equivelent
of a peacock fanning its tail to all the prospective
mates out there. This led to women's intelligence
being selected so she could critique the overtures of
her prospective suitors. This is definately viable but
can't be the entire cause of the runaway selection for
brain size. After fire came about, other survival
advantages for a big brain just kept feeding the
evolutionary pump.        

> The punchline to all this is that large brains now
> work against our survival, just as the oversized
> antlers did for those elk and their ilk.  We make
> war, we use birth control, we build nukes, all of
> which work against human survival.  

Well... the Serpent slithers on its belly eating dust,
and Prometheus served quite a long sentence getting
his liver torn out. They have paid their dues, now we
have both fire and the knowledge of good and evil, the
test is ours and ours alone. Will we pass it? Stay
tuned to reality to find out.  

> 
> I would question this to some extent, but even if I 
> allow these notions, we have another natural defense
> 
> that few humans think about: we taste terrible. 
> Evidence:
> there are cases where lions or other large
> carnivores
> have slain humans, but do not actually devour same.

We may taste bad but if we do, it is probably because
the predators that thought so, survived to reproduce.
How else could you explain Jeffery Daumer? I wonder if
the moutain lions would be more amenable to eating us
if we came with chianti and fava beans on the side. ;)


=====
The Avantguardian 


"He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind."


		
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com