We're all really alike....really!

[clarsct]

Seems that some Xians have a thing about all cultures having a belief in some higher power...

Well, turns out that humans are, more or less, the same everywhere...
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/864_reg.html

In over 400 ways, really. So why is this fairy tale stuff important or unique...it isn't.


It's just more bullshit.

[clarsct]

In over 400 ways, really. So why is this fairy tale stuff important or unique...it isn't.


It's just more bullshit.

Unique? No.

Important? Maybe it's a survival trait in some way?

A 'God gene'?


Would be interesting.....if true.

[DrMatt]

A tendency to believe in invisible agents. Because predators are good at making themselves invisible, so those capable of entertaining such notions are better able to avoid becoming lion lunch than those who only fear threats they can see. The waste of energy running screaming through the woods every time one steps on a branch and hears a crunch and has an automatic "eerie" feeling is apparently not bad enough to cancel out the benefit of occasionally being right and thus living longer and having a greater tendency to reproduce.

That'd be a plausible-sounding answer from anthropology.

[Luke T.]

Do wild animals believe in a higher power? Yet they react to a cracked branch and have survived quite well. The two are not connected.

We have far more intellectual capacity than is necessary for mere survival. We have imagination. And that needs to be fed or it turns on itself.

[DrMatt]

I'm agnostic about the continuum hypothesis.

[DrMatt]

Do wild animals believe in a higher power?

There is no way to know the answer to that question.

Actually, the question itself might be incoherent.

[En folkefiende]

Humans want to "understand". Absent physics, chemistry and mathematics, a "higher power" sounds like a good explaination.

But we've outgrown it, and we need to get over our primitive selves.

[clarsct]

Now that I think of it, Luke may be onto something, but from the wrong direction.

Why suppose imagination isn't survival trait?

Ok, to go back to Luke a little, how is imagination a survival trait?
In what ways do we enjoy an advantage?

[Luke T.]

Why evolve?

If it is just about survival, what is the problem with being a single cell on a deep sea volcano vent? Huh? Moving on up to the east side. Yeah. I'm onto you.

The answer is overengineering. The first organisms wouldn't have come into existence unless things were overengineered. And that same overengineering caused things to just keep going and going once they got started. We don't evolve because we want to. We evolve because we can't help it. It would be a helluva trick turning it off.

And now we have more going for us than we need to survive. Now we have leisure time. Time enough to make shit up.

Shit! What's that noise? I've eaten everything that moves for a two mile radius.

Who threw that lightning bolt?

I want answers. Whoever gives me the best answer, I want to keep around. He gets to share my kill.

[DrMatt]

Now that I think of it, Luke may be onto something, but from the wrong direction.

Why suppose imagination isn't survival trait?

Ok, to go back to Luke a little, how is imagination a survival trait?
In what ways do we enjoy an advantage?

The ability to evade predators that we haven't spotted yet, by only imaging that they might be creeping up behind us. The ability to plan future actions like agriculture or, even before agriculture, going back next spring to where the wild blueberries were last spring. Lots of things. Imagination and subjunctive thinking are really the same thing.

[Luke T.]

Now that I think of it, Luke may be onto something, but from the wrong direction.

Why suppose imagination isn't survival trait?

Ok, to go back to Luke a little, how is imagination a survival trait?
In what ways do we enjoy an advantage?

The ability to evade predators that we haven't spotted yet, by only imaging that they might be creeping up behind us. The ability to plan future actions like agriculture or, even before agriculture, going back next spring to where the wild blueberries were last spring.

Birds do that. Nothing special.

[DrMatt]

Now that I think of it, Luke may be onto something, but from the wrong direction.

Why suppose imagination isn't survival trait?

Ok, to go back to Luke a little, how is imagination a survival trait?
In what ways do we enjoy an advantage?

The ability to evade predators that we haven't spotted yet, by only imaging that they might be creeping up behind us. The ability to plan future actions like agriculture or, even before agriculture, going back next spring to where the wild blueberries were last spring.

Birds do that. Nothing special.

But we are not birds. And birds don't do adaptive agriculture.

[gnome]

Now he's having a go at the birds!

[DrMatt]

Now he's having a go at the birds!

Charley's 'ad 'em

[sparks]

Why evolve?

If it is just about survival, what is the problem with being a single cell on a deep sea volcano vent? Huh? Moving on up to the east side. Yeah. I'm onto you.

The answer is overengineering. The first organisms wouldn't have come into existence unless things were overengineered. And that same overengineering caused things to just keep going and going once they got started. We don't evolve because we want to. We evolve because we can't help it. It would be a helluva trick turning it off.

And now we have more going for us than we need to survive. Now we have leisure time. Time enough to make shit up.

Shit! What's that noise? I've eaten everything that moves for a two mile radius.

Who threw that lightning bolt?

I want answers. Whoever gives me the best answer, I want to keep around. He gets to share my kill.

Engineering implies an engineer. We are simply the result of what chemicals can do given 5 billion years.

Ain't it grand? :D

[Tiosylanyl]

And now we have more going for us than we need to survive. Now we have leisure time. Time enough to make shit up.

Not sure I fully agree that this was the sole source of human imagination. I don't know if that was what you were implying, but I think that building tools to aid in survival also qualifies as the use of imagination.

[SamanthaMc]

And now we have more going for us than we need to survive. Now we have leisure time. Time enough to make shit up.

I have a pet hypothesis that there is a direct relationship between leisure time and depression. If we were busy doing manual labor for 12+ hours a day just to fight for basic survival, we would be too tired to be depressed.

[DrMatt]

And now we have more going for us than we need to survive. Now we have leisure time. Time enough to make shit up.

I have a pet hypothesis that there is a direct relationship between leisure time and depression. If we were busy doing manual labor for 12+ hours a day just to fight for basic survival, we would be too tired to be depressed.

Or how about a link between antidepressants and depression--at the population level? Without antidepressants, folks who are genetically prone to depression might be genetically prone to not have kids...

[SamanthaMc]

Or how about a link between antidepressants and depression--at the population level? Without antidepressants, folks who are genetically prone to depression might be genetically prone to not have kids...

Because they would kill themselves first or because they would be too depressed to have sex? Actually, most antidepressants have an adverse effect on one's sex life: lowered libido, delayed or absent orgasm, even erectile dysfunction. Fun.