I'm not saying that our genetic predisposition and what is best are the same things, but humans have evolved as a social, cooperative species, not solitary like tigers.
Man: natural born killer
- Thread starter gaseousclay
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Humans tend to be somewhat violent as a species and we're not the only primates to have wars/terrorism, etc.
As for the meat argument, most evolutionary biologists/archeologists believe that we developed our big brains as a a result of the extra protein provided by an omnivorous diet. Also the extra brain power required from our relatively weak bodies to cope with getting said protein i.e. tools/cooperative hunting etc.
As a species we do cooperate, we are very much social animals. However we do have a tendency to think along with a group/tribe and can become quite violent in protecting/expanding it.
Your're correct in stating that the murder rate is down over the last few decades, no one truly knows why but some theories say better medical/trauma care, longer jail sentences, legalized abortion, etc. It's good to know that we in America are killing each other less, though according to the media it certainly doesn't seem that way does it?
Evolutionary debate is a whole other topic in of itself, I'll gladly take a run at it if you'd all like but only if someone wants to make it a separate topic.
As for the meat argument, most evolutionary biologists/archeologists believe that we developed our big brains as a a result of the extra protein provided by an omnivorous diet. Also the extra brain power required from our relatively weak bodies to cope with getting said protein i.e. tools/cooperative hunting etc.
As a species we do cooperate, we are very much social animals. However we do have a tendency to think along with a group/tribe and can become quite violent in protecting/expanding it.
Your're correct in stating that the murder rate is down over the last few decades, no one truly knows why but some theories say better medical/trauma care, longer jail sentences, legalized abortion, etc. It's good to know that we in America are killing each other less, though according to the media it certainly doesn't seem that way does it?
Evolutionary debate is a whole other topic in of itself, I'll gladly take a run at it if you'd all like but only if someone wants to make it a separate topic.
So the theory here is that the murder rate can be reduced by killing people off before they're born?
Not intending to take the convo off the rails, or get on your case, but that quoted factoid by you really jumped out at me as a logical contradiction.
As you say, the whole evolution debate is best left to another thread, and probably is best not even broaching for the sake of our mods...
Yeah, those discussions can really devolve into unpleasantness.
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Devolution?
Thanks. I'm here all week.
There's your mistake - humans have no purpose, ultimate or otherwise.
The duty of man is too love man and his maker
"love thy neighbor as thy self"
with love of ones self and love of others comes happiness in happiness comes cheer.. for the love of others we will share the cheerful spirit!
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All living things have only purpose: To preserve the survival of one gene's.
To preserve the survival of one's genes all living things must procreate in some way or another.
To have the energy to procreate, all living things must have energy.
To get energy, all living things need to consume something, or a combination of things, whether it's sunlight, cardon dioxide, nitrogen, water, bacteria, plankton, microscopic organisms, plants, animal cells, or animal parts.
Any given species will use whatever is the most optimal way to get energy to get energy and procreate, based on the resources available.
If this means attacking human blood cells, killing the host in the process, so be it.
If this means being rooted in the ground and drawing water from the soil and energy from the sun, so be it.
If this means eating nuts and berries, so be it.
If this means attacking and eating other animals, so be it.
If moving from a solitary hunter status to a societal arrangement (herd, flock, tribe, village, city) makes it easier for a species to find food, prevent themselves from being killed, and thus lasting long enough to procreate, so be it.
If one's local resources make it more efficient for a society to move from a hunting and gather nuts and berries system to one based on agriculture and domestication of animals, so be it.
All lifeforms kill in some way or another as means of getting food to provide the energy they need to procreate. It's all about preserving, as Richard Dawkins so eloquently said, "the selfish gene."
It is in the nature of all lifeforms to exploit the food sources around them with no conscious efforts toward making sure that the life substances they're eating replenish themselves. That's partly why 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth are extinct. Preserving life and managing the continued existence of food resources is a recent phenomenon.
Thus, we're born to do nothing other than eat and multiply. Everything else is the luxury package.
J-I-B
To preserve the survival of one's genes all living things must procreate in some way or another.
To have the energy to procreate, all living things must have energy.
To get energy, all living things need to consume something, or a combination of things, whether it's sunlight, cardon dioxide, nitrogen, water, bacteria, plankton, microscopic organisms, plants, animal cells, or animal parts.
Any given species will use whatever is the most optimal way to get energy to get energy and procreate, based on the resources available.
If this means attacking human blood cells, killing the host in the process, so be it.
If this means being rooted in the ground and drawing water from the soil and energy from the sun, so be it.
If this means eating nuts and berries, so be it.
If this means attacking and eating other animals, so be it.
If moving from a solitary hunter status to a societal arrangement (herd, flock, tribe, village, city) makes it easier for a species to find food, prevent themselves from being killed, and thus lasting long enough to procreate, so be it.
If one's local resources make it more efficient for a society to move from a hunting and gather nuts and berries system to one based on agriculture and domestication of animals, so be it.
All lifeforms kill in some way or another as means of getting food to provide the energy they need to procreate. It's all about preserving, as Richard Dawkins so eloquently said, "the selfish gene."
It is in the nature of all lifeforms to exploit the food sources around them with no conscious efforts toward making sure that the life substances they're eating replenish themselves. That's partly why 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth are extinct. Preserving life and managing the continued existence of food resources is a recent phenomenon.
Thus, we're born to do nothing other than eat and multiply. Everything else is the luxury package.
J-I-B
Richard Dawkind definitely has the selfish gene.
My world view is Christian, so I would dispute the evolutionary foundations of your premise (though not the overall idea that man is a killer by nature), but I am not inclined to debate that on this thread.
I must, however, jump to defend Herbert Spencer. Though he is often credited as the coiner of the phrase "survival of the fittest" (there are other contenders for the origination of the phrase), he most emphatically did not apply the concept to human society. A few historians have basically created a fictional Spencer - the 'Social Darwinist' - out of whole cloth.
Read his "Principles of Ethics" and "Social Statistics", available online here to get his actual perspectives.
I must, however, jump to defend Herbert Spencer. Though he is often credited as the coiner of the phrase "survival of the fittest" (there are other contenders for the origination of the phrase), he most emphatically did not apply the concept to human society. A few historians have basically created a fictional Spencer - the 'Social Darwinist' - out of whole cloth.
Read his "Principles of Ethics" and "Social Statistics", available online here to get his actual perspectives.
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All living things have only purpose: To preserve the survival of one gene's.
To preserve the survival of one's genes all living things must procreate in some way or another.
To have the energy to procreate, all living things must have energy.
To get energy, all living things need to consume something, or a combination of things, whether it's sunlight, cardon dioxide, nitrogen, water, bacteria, plankton, microscopic organisms, plants, animal cells, or animal parts.
Any given species will use whatever is the most optimal way to get energy to get energy and procreate, based on the resources available.
If this means attacking human blood cells, killing the host in the process, so be it.
If this means being rooted in the ground and drawing water from the soil and energy from the sun, so be it.
If this means eating nuts and berries, so be it.
If this means attacking and eating other animals, so be it.
If moving from a solitary hunter status to a societal arrangement (herd, flock, tribe, village, city) makes it easier for a species to find food, prevent themselves from being killed, and thus lasting long enough to procreate, so be it.
If one's local resources make it more efficient for a society to move from a hunting and gather nuts and berries system to one based on agriculture and domestication of animals, so be it.
All lifeforms kill in some way or another as means of getting food to provide the energy they need to procreate. It's all about preserving, as Richard Dawkins so eloquently said, "the selfish gene."
It is in the nature of all lifeforms to exploit the food sources around them with no conscious efforts toward making sure that the life substances they're eating replenish themselves. That's partly why 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth are extinct. Preserving life and managing the continued existence of food resources is a recent phenomenon.
Thus, we're born to do nothing other than eat and multiply. Everything else is the luxury package.
J-I-B
Well said. What we call humanity, is the sum of all of our instincts and experience. We have the luxury of being able to formulate complex thoughts (most of us at least), record them and then manipulating those thoughts to create more ideas.
Does man have the propensity to destroy? In my opinion, no more than the propensity to create. The story all along, it seems, has been to constantly divide ourselves: Human vs non-Human, Racial, ethnic, national, political ideology, Rich vs Poor and Atheist vs Theist and the list goes on. War, death and hate are dealt based on those divisions.
Here's the study:
Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime
I was just stating that it's one of many proposed theories.
- Thread starter
- #36
I guess I should rephrase my comment. I don't know that man has evolved to be violent, rather, I think it's a learned behavior that is passed down over generations. children learn it from other children who learn it from their parents, etc, etc. again, nature vs nurture
The issue with this perspective is how the propensity for violence started. Someone had to be the first to pass it on - how did he acquire it?
This also goes agianst the grain of history as it relates to ethics. Historically, cultures, by and large, have emphasized the values of peaceful conduct in the education of their youth, not violence - primarily to overcome the natural tendency of youth toward violence. Certainly, there existed warrior castes in societies that deliberately taught violence (Sparta and feudal Japan being the two obvious examples) but this eduction in mayhem was often combined with lessons in formal peaceful cordiality to comrades and non-combatants. You'd be hard pressed to find a society that universally praised and rewarded a child's propensity to assert his will with kicks, scratches and bites.
Deadly violence is normative in all of nature - I think the question really is: Why does man so value peace?
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I think this is more true to the heart of it, it's a cruel world out there, human society helps stem some of the cruelty, and by making more of us live longer we keep it stronger. If things begin to break down though we seem to devolve into fairly violent tendencies, i.e. Haiti, New Orleans, after Katrina, Somalia, etc.
Hey most Christians of the world actually do believe in evolution, the Catholic church being one of the major institutions to do so. I think your world view would be listed as something else in this sense.
Sorry to make such a big deal of it but it's slightly offensive to lump all Christians into this category.
Correlation does not always equal causation.
An example:
http://m.npr.org/story/123463752
Stats are easily manipulated to make a particular point if one chooses to do so.
A more likely causation would be economic trending over those time periods.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-recessions-increase-crime
Again, I'm not trying to get on your case, but trying to point out possible flaws in that theory.
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