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morality is a religious concept...it has everything to do with morality. That's why many religious zealots do not want to see religion taken out of school because they believe in a moral compass.
As far as I'm concerned religion has nothing to do with morality...If you don't believe me just look at the record of various religions.
They ARE morals. We learn to be moral creatures. Because we are social creatures. We have to be social creatures. A baby cannot survive without a connection to another human being, to feed it and clean it and protect it. Being social is simply our need to connect with other human beings. And we learn to be moral through those connections. Pain is not something we seek out, so we learn not to inflict pain. When we forge connections with other human beings, we can empathize with other human beings. For some of us, that comes more naturally than for others, but empathy is an advantage. But being social comes long before any concept of god, and morality stems from our need for others, morals come FIRST.
Other species developed empathy for the same reasons:
This is the evolutionary meme:
Humans did not evolve from monkeys. Humans are more closely related to modern apes than to monkeys, but we didn't evolve from apes, either. Humans share a common ancestor (assumption) with modern African apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees. Scientists believe this common ancestor existed 5 to 8 million years ago (unproven). Shortly thereafter, the species diverged into two separate lineages (a theory based on an assumption). One of these lineages ultimately evolved into gorillas and chimps, and the other evolved into early human ancestors called hominids.
One thing I feel should be brought up here that is often forgotten: humans are apes. We are great apes.
Quote:
It only works if you can prove a species can jump to an entirely new species.
You could not be more wrong. In fact, this is so off-base I have to recommend you go back and take an elementary school-level biology course, Because you clearly haven't the slightest conception of what you are talking about.
It only works if you can prove a species can jump to an entirely new species. It hasn't been proven. Until "scientists believe" is changed to "scientists have proven" then evolution is no better, or worse than "Christians, Jews and Muslims believe" in creation.
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Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge
Steven, you need to be quiet, now. There is no part of the theory of evolution that says a species can jump to an entirely new species. None.
Quote:
Originally Posted by steven_h
That was my point! Who should be quiet?
Ummm... It think that DC was trying to tell you that nowhere in the Theory of Evolution is there a claim that a species can "jump" to an entirely new species."
That's just not how evolution works.
Creationists just prove their profound lack of understanding of evolution when they demand proof of something ridiculous .... like a 'crocoduck'.
Originally Posted by steven_h Not at all. Your example is flawed because you pit a hard fact against a disproven notion. It's semantics and deflection.
This is the evolutionary meme:
Humans did not evolve from monkeys. Humans are more closely related to modern apes than to monkeys, but we didn't evolve from apes, either. Humans share a common ancestor (assumption) with modern African apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees. Scientists believe this common ancestor existed
5 to 8 million years ago. Shortly thereafter, the species diverged into two separate lineages. One of these lineages ultimately evolved into gorillas and chimps, and the other evolved into early human ancestors called hominids.
It only works if you can prove a species can jump to an entirely new species. It hasn't been proven. Until "scientists believe" is changed to "scientists have proven" then evolution is no better, or worse than "Christians, Jews and Muslims believe" in creation.
That was my point! Who should be quiet?
Did you miss this Steven? It is posted on this thread,,,,
"A small handful of European mice deposited on the island of Madeira some 600 years ago have now evolved into at least six different species. The island is very rocky and the mice became isolated into different niches. The original species had 40 chromosomes, but the new populations have anywhere between 22-30 chromosomes. They haven't lost DNA, but rather, some chromosomes have fused together over time and so the mice can now only breed with others with the same number of chromosomes, making each group a separate species." Are new species still evolving? › Ask an Expert (ABC Science)
There are hundreds of confirmed examples of speciation, but they generally take longer than this example.
Evolution isn't taught correctly, and nearly always as a derogatory hammer banging on creationism. Do species evolve, yes. Magically jumping to entirely new species, like an ape to a man, is just a theory. Why teach it as fact? It's fairly subjective to push a theory, while discounting another.
Religion can and does exist just fine with evolution. Evolution makes no room for any other belief. It is a totalitarian position.
The website you linked to by the Fundamentalist Christian "Discovery Institute" is so full of 'spin' it could be it's own planet.
It's not worth the effort to dissect all their bunkum as it's already been discredited so many times so, I'll just debunk their first claim about a 'peer reviewed' article by Stephen Meyers:
From the Discovery Institute piece:
Quote:
In 2011, the ID movement counted its 50th peer-reviewed scientific paper and new publications continue to appear. The current boom goes back to 2004, when Discovery Institute senior fellow Stephen Meyer published a groundbreaking paper advocating ID in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.
Stephen Meyers so-called 'ground-breaking paper' was retracted because it hadn't been peer-reviewed and didn't meet the standards. The editor Richard Sternberg (who later turned out to be a closet ID'er) got the boot:
STATEMENT FROM THE COUNCIL OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON
The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity.
The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS - AAAS News Release), which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity.
Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.
Of course...but is empathy an emotion or action? What significance does it hold? It's an ancient concept. We've not grasped it.
Empathy is nothing more than saying "glad it wasn't/isn't me"..
Can you conceptualize empathy in a world where the only person one has to answer to is themselves when it comes time to give up the ghost? I'd say it's rather Utopian. We've been a pretty insensitive existence in the face of being judged by the unknown and eternal torture as a consequence for thousands of years.
I'm all for it....don't take this as an endorsement for religion. But I just feel peoples agenda against religion is a totally loaded and self serving agenda.
The most knowledgeable individuals throughout history have proven that humans are not self-regulating.
Religious zealots may not "practice what they preach" when it comes to morality. But the concept in itself is very much religious.
You might find the work of Primatologist Frans De Waal on moral behavior in animals interesting.
"Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on primates and other mammals, that show how many of these moral traits all of us share."
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