strubenuff

Honestly, I only read the original post, so maybe someone else already did this. But, I was thinking that we should send these people emails and discuss evolution with them. Particularly that spenser fellow. He's at spensulz@adelphia.net if anyone would care to join me.

Doubting Didymus

Actually, that is exactly what I said in my post. However, there is little point in pointing this out. Science can never really be said to have proven or disproven anything. Science can only make certain propositions more or less probable, until they move beyond reasonable doubt, at which point it no longer makes sense to say, 'but its not fully proven/disproven' because science can never do that.

My point, and Richards point, is that if science can be said to have 'disproven' magic unicorns, then science can be said to have 'disproven' god.

Oolon Colluphid

DD, love the rant! I agree completely! Thanks for saving me the trouble of writing something similar (and less well).

Me too...

Uhuh... you know of something else?

Codswallop. Dawkins has asked (I’ll find where if you like) -- and answered -- this question. It is because of replication and competition, leading to selection, repeated for a very long time algorithmically. Ask Dawkins why we are here, and I bet the answer would be “because none of our ancestors died young or failed to reproduce; and they have cumulatively made us good at being alive”. What more answer do you want? That the answer is not a cosy comfort blanket is neither here nor there, it happens to be the true answer. It is rejected by people who simply don’t like it and who don’t understand it, probably in equal measure. That people reject and dislike the “grandeur in this view of life” is their loss.

Totally unnecessary as explanations. However, we seem to be at least partly hard-wired to need some sort of comfort blanket, so they may serve psychological purposes for some people.

I guess that’s a compliment.

TTFN, Oolon

[ August 07, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

GeoTheo

Science is just a product of human evolution. It is caused by the genes related to curiosity and scepticism giving a survival advantage and being passed on. It therfore has no ultimate authority to answer any questions about the meaning of human existence.

Oolon Colluphid

Meaning? Who said it has to have any meaning, beyond what we bring to it ourselves? 'Wanting there to be' and 'is' are not the same thing!

Oolon

Doubting Didymus

I do not think science is a product of evolution at all, at least not directly. For science to have affected our evolution, it would have had to be around for much much longer than a few hundred pathethic years. There just hasn't been enough time for science to have become written in our genes.

However, having said that, it IS true that a hugely complicated and powerful brain is a product of our evolution, and that science is a product of that.

I am politely suspicious of GeoTheo's motives for saying that science is 'just' a product of our evolution and therefore not qualified to comment on spiritual matters, perhaps suggesting that religion is qualified by default?