scombrid

God of the gaps, snoor :yawn: You find emotions mysterious so goddidit. Somebody addressed how seemingly superfluous skills such as artistic ability might have represented a selective advantage and, thereby, been passed to offspring so you’re changing your argument.

<I’m going to be supersimplified now>

You realize that human courtship isn’t vastly different from avian mating dances don’t you? Among many animals that tend toward monogamy, long courtship ensures the future fitness and devotion of the mate. Romance is a part of sex. Love bonds social groups. There are many indications that love is a consistent endorphin high and the broken heart is endorphin withdrawal. We see a familiar friendly face we haven’t seen in awhile, we get a little juice of endorphins. Commit an act that wrongs our social group and we get that guilt feeling in the pit of our stomach (endorphin low). Please our group and get a favorable response, endorphin high. This feedback system to social stimuli is beneficial to an animal that is better equipped to live in cooperative groups than to go it alone. Watch another social animal. They respond to one another in ways very similar to humans indicating that they experience a lot of the same emotions that we do in a group setting.

We might not fully understand the mechanism by which the endocrine system responds to external stimuli to create emotion but we do know that it does; in humans and other animals.

Does that cheapen love and make us robots. Nope. It makes us animals with animal feelings. It still hurts to get rejected by the potential mate that you desire. It still hurts when a long-standing member of your social group dies and is lost. Understanding that there are biochemical explanations for emotions doesn’t make them go away. It just means that we don’t need the mystical explanation for them. It means that when someone is dead and that loss makes us hurt, we no longer need to pretend an afterlife to ease that loss (By convincing ourselves that the loss is only temporary humans seek to ease the endorphin withdrawal created by the loss of a friend).

As for the happy drug with no side effects? I’d be all over it after it’d been on the market long enough for others to have used it for a lifetime and been my guinea pigs on whether or not there are side effects.

Coragyps

Have you ever been to the zoo? Even in that artificial environment I've seen Papa Wolf nuzzling up against Mama Wolf while they watched the cubs play. It looked like "romance" to me, and I like to pretend that I'm a hardboiled old Bogart-y old fart. No, we're not that different from lots of other animals.

GeoTheo

That is not God of the gaps. Are you really snoring and yawning at somthing that bores you or somthing you don't understand? It is context, I am talking about. I don't deny any of the physical and chemical reactions you site here. I just have a larger context in which to view it. A context you apparently lack. God of the gaps would be to devise a story to explain somthing I don't understand. Not that all these chemical, social, etc. reactions are fully understood, but I don't deny there existence. That's just not the whole ball of wax. But I guess to you it is as evidenced by your last comment.
<strong>
As for the happy drug with no side effects? I’d be all over it after it’d been on the market long enough for others to have used it for a lifetime and been my guinea pigs on whether or not there are side effects.</strong>[/QUOTE]
That to me just reveals the evidence of a shallow unfulfilling life. Sorry.

Mageth

With your limited frame of reference I'm sure that's how it appears. Just like a person from a 3D world would appear to a Flatlander.

AFAIK, it's not possible for us to view or survive in a world with more than (or less than) three dimensions (four if you count time). Likewise, if there were a "flatlander" (from a 2D world, I suppose), the flatlander could not survive in or view our 3D world. So a person from a 3D world would not "appear" at all to a flatlander.

However, we can conceptualize and form theories about other-dimensional worlds. I suppose a "flatlander" could do the same.

Nevertheless, that's neither here nor there. What you're proposing is, IMO, not exactly analogous to other-dimensional worlds, unless you're proposing god is merely a creature from another dimension. Further, you claim god exists, at least in part, and is perceivable within our 3-dimensional reference.

GeoTheo

If I stepped into a 2D world the inhabitants, restricted as they were to length and width, would be able to trace the outlines of my feet.
They would be able to say that my feet are shaped such and such and are so many units long and so many wide etc. If I tried to explain that that is indeed true, but that there is much more to them than that, like height, volume etc. they would probably think I was mad.
They would say "You are just spouting off a bunch of nonsense. There exists only a single plane as far as we can percieve. If this "height" as you call it exists prove it by means length and width."
I might find that frustrating. Being forced to limit a 3D discussion to 2 dimensions. They might think they could contain me however by drawing 4 conecting lines around my feet. However all I would have to do is take a step and be out of their flat little world. To them for all intents and purposes I would have disappeared as soon as I lifted my feet off the plane.
These discussions of evolution vs. Creationism have only a very small area of interface for the participants. The supernatural cannot be invoked.
Thus in a sense limiting the demensions of the discussion in such a way that nothing can be proven on the part of the creationist.
It is the same as a 3D' er being made to limit all discussions of height and depth to the language of length and width as if We all lived life on a single plane.

So I never expect these discussions to go anywhere as long as you Guys set the peramiters. But once in a while someone touches on somthing that is kind of like a door to the other demension, almost like an event horizon, such as beauty. Then it becomes very sad, when people deliberately can't see it.
They describe it in such a limited way- pure biology and stating that that is all that is there. I know otherwise. I know a person is much more than the outline of his feet on a flat plane.

So it is preposterous to say that I have my head in the sand and don't want to admit i am an outline on a plane, As if the outline of my foot is some horrible thing. It's just that there is so much more to me than that.

Mageth

But once in a while someone touches on somthing that is kind of like a door to the other demension, almost like an event horizon, such as beauty. Then it becomes very sad, when people deliberately can't see it.
They describe it in such a limited way- pure biology and stating that that is all that is there. I know otherwise.

Whether natural or supernatural causes gave us our ability to perceive beauty, the ability exists. I don't believe in god and I can perceive and appreciate beauty, even though I understand that there may be a rather "mundane" natural explanation for that ability (but I think emergent phenomenon such as this are by no means mundane, and are "beautiful" themselves). So I think you're attacking a bit of a strawman there.

Mageth

As far as the dimensional thing goes, the flatlanders would have no way of knowing the outline of a foot was actually a section from a 3D object. It would appear in their universe as a 2D object. God supposedly appears and is perceivable as god in our 3-D world.

These discussions of evolution vs. Creationism have only a very small area of interface for the participants. The supernatural cannot be invoked.

Nor should it, because the supernatural is outside the bounds of naturalism and science. The reality of the supernatural is better discussed in the Philosophy or EoG forums, IMO.

Creation supposedly happened within our world, remember, and thus should be part of the "natural" world. Creation should have left evidence. "Creation science" tries to take the approach that science can be used to prove creationism. We've all been waiting a long time for any actual evidence in support of divine creation other than a few hundred mythical words written down a few thousand years ago. All the evidence I've seen supports evolution, not special creation. Nothing I've seen requires (or has the fingerprints of) divine intervention.

Typhon

GeoTeo asked:

Here's some examples for you of various painters from the animal kingdom...enjoy. I find them all quite beautiful and worthy of calling "art."

















Here are some web galleries for the artists above:

<a href="http://www.koko.org/world/art.html" target="_blank">artist</a>
<a href="http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_362.html" target="_blank">artist</a>
<a href="http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/kline_ext.html" target="_blank">artist</a>
<a href="http://www.elephantart.com/gallery.htm" target="_blank">artist</a>
<a href="http://privat.schlund.de/a/aston_gallery/main.html" target="_blank">artist</a>
<a href="http://www.phoenixzoo.org/zoo/todo/rubyshouse/rubyportfolio.asp" target="_blank">artist</a>
Really? Care to show us some of your art? I'd love to see them and compare. I'm big fan of most types of art, as there are amazing artists in nearly all genres, provided they have talent and skill in their craft.

.T.

[ July 11, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

scombrid

I’m yawning at your argument from incredulity. You find some feature of human biology/behavior incredible, assume that feature to be unique to Homo sapiens, and that leads you to belief in God. Somebody explains the biological trait in naturalistic observable terms and you dismiss that person as not seeing the whole picture. I would love for you to demonstrate the rest of the picture. Don’t just tell me it’s there and only you can see it.

As for my shallow unfulfilling life, I’m living it rather fully since I know that this is it. I wouldn’t jeopardize it with any chemical alteration. I said I’d do the drug were it to have no side effects, that includes not altering my life beyond making me feel good. Besides, for life to be fulfilling, should I deny myself pleasure? If so, how does that make life fulfilling? I’ve got news for you, anytime you feel fulfilled, that is a form of pleasure, you awful hedonist. Suffering doesn’t bring transcendence. I’ve had some great visions when really sleep deprived though.

Prove it. Incredulity on your part is not proof. Biology is all that is observable. If it isn’t observable it doesn’t exist. If something does exist but isn’t observable it’s existence is meaningless because we would never know it was there. It, in essence, doesn’t exist for those who are unable to observe it. Your argument from incredulity indicates that you’re living in a delusional state, have a sensory capability not available to the rest of us, or are simply making things up because you can’t stand the fact that this existence is all that we have. Again, show me this other dimension that you can see that us narrow minded metaphysical naturalists are so blind to. A fever made me hallucinate once. Was that a window to your fifth dimension?

GeoTheo

Typhon,
Why do you figure the elephants chose abstract expressionism and not realism, cubism, impressionism, sculpture etc?
Are you aware that abstract expressionism is a pretty advanced form of Art? It didn't arise until very recently. It would not have been accepted in earlier stages of history. Man did not start out doing Art this way. Abstract Art seeks a Universal ly defining priciple. Starting out like this is kind of like starting at the pinacle.
Are you saying elephants and gorillas are way more advanced than human artists in centuries past?