Gregg

There are several things that make me feel at least a vague sense of awe--mainly, the sight of a tornado or a massive thunderstorm, the power of rushing water, and "purple mountain majesties."

When I was a kid, LOTS of things gave me feelings of awe, awe of an almost religious sort. I mean, it took very little (in hindsight) to set off these feelings. A lighted Christmas tree in a dark room. A "Winter Wonderland" train ride. A thick, unbroken carpet of snow (I really miss those twelve-inch snowfalls we had when I was a kid). I can still remember once on vacation, seeing some sort of domed white building set among trees on a hillside about a mile away, and for some reason the sight just affected me in a practically spiritual way. We actually visited that building (I have no idea what or where it was) and the dome was painted with clouds and such, and THAT gave me a feeling of awe.

Many times I wish I could recapture that feeling on a regular basis. A kid's view of the world can be truly magical.

Anyway, when someone says that feelings of awe have no "survival value" I have to laugh. Not only could these feelings have helped human beings show proper respect for their surroundings, but they could have helped highly intelligent, self-aware creatures to ENJOY LIFE instead of being beaten down by it. That doesn't confer a survival advantage?

Gregg

Gregg

I wonder if it might be just plain old fascination and curiousity, though. Like "WTF is this???" Of course, curiousity and fascination might be part of the overall "awe" emotion.

Gregg

Albert Cipriani

Dear D,
You ask,
I’ve moved on as a result of mankind’s collective experience having moved on in such a way that the heavens are not as awesome as they once were.

Yes. Ignorance is a necessary component of awe. Without ignorance (of which, thankfully, we are never in short supply), we could not experience awe.

However, our knowledge of what our ancestors were ignorant of does not limit our potential for awe. It increases our potential for awe because, like an ever-widening ripple, the more we know, the more we are aware of that we do not know. Ergo, today we have less excuse than the cavemen had to be jaded.

The theistic conception of an infinite God and finite creatures in a finite creation means that creatures are destined for unlimited awe. The materialistic conception of a finite universe and finite creatures means that creatures are destined to eventually know all that can be known such that awe will go the way as the dinosaurs and mankind must become jaded.

You assert:
Not so fast! Ignorance leads to superstition and magic, the irrational means of manipulating events beyond our rational control -- not religion. Awe, of which ignorance is but a subset, leads to worship and to sacrifice, the twin pillars upon which all true and false religions are built. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic
Albert's Rants

Doubting Didymus

Neat, but not much to do with evolution. Keep the topic at least vaguely close to the opening post. Its the evolution of the awe emotion that we're supposed to be discussing... and T Rex's

Gregg

Huh? Now that we know that the Universe stretches out to infinity, that the nearest star other than our sun is hundreds of light-years away, that we are living on a speck of dirt circling a medium-sized star on the outer edge of a galaxy of billions of stars, which is just one of billions of galaxies, the heavens are somehow LESS awesome? Wow. To me, the facts are way more awesome than the fairy tale.Speak for yourself, Albert. What I know about the Universe fills me with just as much awe, if not more, than the ancients experienced, when they imagined that the stars were the light of heaven shining through holes in the Celestial Tent.Well, that's about the only thing you've said that I agree with.You do recognize that this is your personal philosophy, don't you? It isn't a "fact," much less "truth."

First, intelligence and self-awareness are not givens. Second, intelligent creatures aren't "destined" to know all there is to know. On the off chance we don't wipe ourselves out (or the bacteria don't get us first) the Universe is big enough that we could spend a million years exploring it and still not know all there is about it. I'm sure it would be a long time before we got "jaded."

Third, just because you like your theistic conception better than your (not "the"--it's yours, you made it up) materialistic conception, doesn't make it so.Prayer is NOT an attempt to manipulate events beyond our rational control? Believing in Jesus is NOT an attempt to defeat Death? Worship and sacrifice are NOT attempts to placate angry gods? Miracles are NOT magic?

You cannot separate "superstition and magic" and "religion" so easily. Basically, you're just making up your own special definitions of these terms so they seem more different than they really are.

BTW, religion is hardly the only thing that inspires sacrifice. Also, how do you determine "true" and "false" religions?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Scigirl,
You rumminate:
Don’t you mean to ask me to:
I know that according to your myth, T rex preceded us by some 160 million years, but who’s counting?! You guys are, not I. In short, I don’t buy your timeline. Dinosaur prints and human footprints have been found in the same bedrock.

But for what it’s worth, I love your myth of evolution. Have written poems about it. It is the stuff of science fiction, but in reverse. Instead of an unimaginably bizarre future, you guys have come up with an unimaginably bizarre past. I love it like I love Ovid’s myths of the Greek and Roman world. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic
Albert's Rants

scigirl

It's not my timeline either, it belongs to simple chemistry.
Nope.

Yeah I guess it is pretty bizarre to assume that we evolved from chimps when we have evidence of their chromosomes in our own DNA. What a bunch of weirdos us scientists are.

scigirl

Gregg

(Sigh) I thought Albert might be worth talking to, but it turns out he's a raving YEC. Even a lot of creationists have abandoned the Paluxy tracks, Albert. You're way behind the curve.A more bizarre past than the one where a god condemns billions of people yet unborn to eternal torment after his first two human creations eat an apple? More bizarre than the one where the same god drowns millions of people, not to mention billions of animals in a global flood (but somehow misses the civilizations of Egypt and China, which were around at the time most YEC's place the flood)? Where the same god, after the flood, causes animals to evolve at rates hundreds of times faster than anything scientists have ever proposed, in order to diversify from their basic "kinds"? Where the same god, for some reason, puts all the marsupials in Australia and New Zealand and nowhere else (if they'd had to migrate all the way from Mt. Ararat, you'd think we'd find a few of them elsewhere)? Where the same god, when making humankind, the "pinnacle" of his creation, sees fit to use something like 98 percent of a chimp's genetic material?

That's quite a past that you, or your religious forebears anyway, have dreamed up, Albert. I salute your imagination.

Gregg

It explains a whole hell of a lot, 'Bert. The thing is, we can only speculate as to why we developed the emotion of awe. We can't say for sure because 1) We don't fully understand how our brains work yet, and 2) We don't have a lot of well-preserved human brains from the past several hundred thousand years to dissect, and 3) A lot of unknown variables (most of which will forever remain unknown) were involved in the process, and 4) Unlike creationists, scientists are willing to say "I don't know" instead of making up fanciful explanations for things they don't understand, then calling those explanations "religion" and persecuting anyone who doesn't agree with them.Chuckle. It's funny when somebody who thinks the Paluxy tracks are real tries to sound smart. Kind sad, too, though.

scigirl

Gregg, this quote of yours is priceless!

Excellent!

scigirl the traditional scientist