Oolon Colluphid

Suppose I say that a train travelling at 120mph will arrive at a destination in half the time of one travelling at 60 mph. Does the fact that this is a tautology make the tiniest difference to our being able to use this information? You’ll be telling us next that evolution itself is a tautology because the fittest survive and reproduce, and the fittest are those which survive and reproduce! (See Dawkins’s The Extended Phenotype, chapter [somethingorother], ‘An Argument in Six [?] Fits’, which clears up this nonsense.) Wasn’t it Maynard Smith who pointed out that any two lines of algebra contain a tautology?

Aha, the crux. You see, evolution is true. Wanna discuss?

Huh? Stars? Planetary systems? I hope you meant ‘living things’, but I’m not certain...

We know that living things evolved. We know that man evolved. We know that man’s brain is a product of evolution. Therefore it is reasonable to discuss and speculate about the origins of brain processes such as the appreciation of beauty.

D minus. Must try harder.

It makes certain synapses fire, compared to others. What constitutes beauty, what makes the synapses fire, may be culturally conditioned, or hard-wired. Things with survival value are very likely hard-wired. Hence this discussion.

What else is involved then? What else is there apart from cultural conditioning and survival-enhancing things?

TTFN, Oolon

GeoTheo

How is droning on and on that "X y z evolved because it brought a survival advantage" more satisfying than 'goddidit'"?
Also you imply that creationists possess no intellectual curiosity. They simply invoke creation to explain everything. Only in a broad sense We say that. The same way you say it evolved. I actually find people on this thread less curious as to the very nature of beauty and Man's appreciation of it than most creationists I know. Basically it has been summed up by color recognition, some mechanism that disinclines us to eat our excrement and the desire to prefer to procreate with women that have vitality and smooth skin over women who use a walker and wear depends undergarments .
To quote someone earlier in the thread "it goes from there" I guess. See my explanation on how to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
To each his own I guess. I find it vastly more satisfying to discover how exactly God instilled in us an appreciation of beauty, what exactly is beauty and in what sense is it universal. Also what is the effect of this on us and what may be the reason God had for doing it. I think I have enough to ponder there for a lifetime.
So you seem to say that you are very fullfilled by breaking down every aspect of human behavior into the four 'f's- feeding, fleeing, fighting and [procreation].
That is not only unsatisfying to me, it is dehumanizing. I believe animal behavior can be broken down in such away but not the sum total of human behavior. There is a reason for this, and that is to teach us somthing about God. It is called natural revelation. A bit of theology obvious to everyone who takes time to ponder creation. Pondering this has an uplifting effect.
It causes mental ascent. Unlike dumb animals We appreciate beauty because it reflects the elegance of design as opposed to the ugliness of disorder and discord. It is reflected in our ability to create. It draws one to the conclusion that We share some characteristics with our creator. He is creative- We are creative. Creation of the Universe took wisdom, just as wisdom is needed for us to create beauty. So this mental ascent causes one to travel from the earth heavenward. The starting point is the recognition that We are in many ways animals, but that We possess that extra somting that connects us to God.
Evolutionary explanations involve a degredation.
our uniqueness is merely broken down into the basest of elements.
Beauty draws us to a concept of perfection. We find within our selves and all around us imperfection. Uglinness. Perfection is a thing We do not posess, it is a thing greater than us.
Thinking out side ourselves in such a way has a powerfull rejuvenating effect. Breaking beauty down into segments of uggliness i.e, white knuckled survival against predators and disease and also bringing in genetic errors being sorted by eons of death is uuuuggggleeeeee.
It is a vastly inferior concept.

GeoTheo

I can only conclude that you live in a very ugly and limited world. You also are extremly close minded which has the effect of imprisioning you in this hellish world of your own creation.

Oolon Colluphid

How the hell does having a solid rational explanation for something diminish its aesthetics? How does knowing that stars are vast nuclear fusion furnaces incomprehensibly far away make the night sky less awe-inspiring? How does understanding how the honeybee’s waggle dance works; knowing how spiders make webs and that they’re made of a range of silks; that some flowers are patterned to be seen in ultraviolet light by insect eyes; that the starlight we see has been travelling for dozens of years; that the mitochondria in our cells were once free-living bacteria; that inheritance is not a random jumble but precisely coded on an impossibly small thread, with a whole copy in each cell... how does any of these things make the world less wonderful?

(a) One should always keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

(b) Pot. Kettle. Black. Personally, I’m open to empirical evidence. Wanna give it a try?

(c) Feel free to piss off any time now...

I don’t find it hellish in the slightest, but utterly wonderful. But what a sad little world the creationist would have us live in. Merely thousands of years old, made at the whim of a somewhat elusive Big Sky Friend, where knowledge about the world is to be resisted at all costs if it conflicts with an old book.

TTFN, Oolon

Stephen T-B

I would ask GeoTheo to consider if the same things are deemed to be beautiful by every human being.
Does he think that a sight that takes his breath away and makes him grateful to god for giving him such pleasure will have the same effect upon, say, a Seram islander in the Indonesian archipelago, an Australian Aboriginal, a bushman in the Kalahari desert or a Tibetan monk?
Instead of jumping to the conclusion: “It's beautiful because God made it beautiful so that I might enjoy it,” why does he not ask: "What quality does it have which gives me this good feeling, and what explanation might there me, other than the God one, for that reaction it invokes?"
I was in a garden with a Fundamentalist who said, gazing at the gorgeous flowers: "God is just so LOVING to have made these flowers for our enjoyment."
Does GeoTheo think she was being just a teeny weeny bit whimsical?
Is it possible, GeoTheo, that we learn to discern beauty? You're a child, right? Your mother calls your father to the door: "Darling, come and look at this beautiful sunset!" You have a peek to see what the excitement is about. You see the sunset. You hear your father say: Wow. That IS beautiful."
Ok. So now you know it is a beautiful sunset, and when next you see one that's similar, you say to yourself: "What a beautiful sunset that is!"
Do you think a baby recognises a beautiful sunset, or a toddler? Do you think our appreciation of beauty is entirely instinctive? And how would you react if, as you and I stood side-by-side gazing at a featureless plain, dotted with abandoned and broken-down trailers spread out beneath a glowering sky of black and threatening clouds, I were to exclaim: "My, but that is just so BEAUTIFUL!"
Use your imagination. GeoTheo: see if you can come up with a reason why I should.
And would it have anything to do with god?

Oolon Colluphid

Because one is an explanation, the other is no explanation at all. ‘Goddidit’ leaves just about everything unanswered. You may as well throw up your hands and not bother asking.

Does the earth orbit the sun

(a) because gravity holds it in its path, or
(b) because angels move it that way?

Do people get leprosy

(a) because of Mycobacterium leprae infection, or
(b) because Goddidit (as in the bible)?

Do carnivores have slashing carnassial teeth

(a) because they are useful for shearing meat, and so offer a survival advantage, or
(b) because that’s the way Goddidit?

Does the laryngeal nerve loop under the aorta by the heart on its way from one side of the neck to the other

(a) because in the ancestors that was, at the time, the shortest route, or
(b) because that’s the way Goddidit?

If you don’t want an explanation, fine. If you do, how does invoking the unknowable help?

Please offer evidence of this creation.

Pondering a creator that’d create Plasmodium falciparum, Rickettsia prowazekii, Ebola Zaire and Ancylostoma duodenale has an uplifting effect on my lunch.

I have a list of elegant designs...
You’ve heard of tautology... but I guess you skipped the class on circularity, yeah?

What creator? Does he have a coccyx and is liable to inguinal hernia too?

He’s a vicious sadist - we’re... well, speak for yourself.

Thank you for that, Mr Oozulum bird.

What something? What god? You have evidence, of course...?

Shame it doesn’t draw you to a spellchecker.

Correct. That’s why we’re so liable to backache. Oh wait, didn’t you mention elegant designs...?

Well it was beyond the creator’s abilities too, apparently.

Yep. It makes one as credulous as a three-year-old.

Then why did the creator set it up that way for every other living thing? Isn’t there a word for someone who gets his, sorry, His, kicks out of watching pain and suffering...?

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> Shame it’s true then.

TTFN, Oolon

scigirl

GeoTheo,

You seem to be implying that because we look for a natural explanation, we are all robots or something without feelings. Do you make the same accusations of medical doctors? Or Meterologists?

"You doctors, who look for bacterial causes of disease rather than supernatural ones, you are all cold heartless unfeeling people."

See how silly it sounds, when you apply your theories to any other branch of science? Why are you picking on evolutionary biologists?

No this is not what I meant at all. The theory of YEC (Young Earth Creationism) has one explanation (goddidit). See oolon's post above for examples of how evolutionary theory and how creation theory deal with specific biological questions.

I'm sorry you feel that way about us heathens. Just know that you are wrong - we do appreciate beauty, we are angered by violence, and all that other stuff that makes you and I both human.

And "being made out of dirt in one day" makes you feel better about yourself? Ok. I don't understand, but whatever makes you happy, I guess.

Hey, that's fine. Just so you know that you believe in creationism because it makes you feel good, not because it is true.

Heck, I wish I could be the same way about things. It would make me feel better to believe that nicotine does not really cause lung cancer, because my brother smokes. But reality is reality - diseases happen, smoking causes cancer, and we evolved from dirty monkeys. I can't change those grim facts, but I can change the way I feel about it, or the way in which we use that knowledge.

Again, you want to believe that humans are 'special' because god made us from dirt? Go ahead. However, believing this nice pretty fairy tale for the last few thousand years has not appeared to improve humanity. I read the Bible - we were petty violent creatures in many ways back then, and in many ways we still are, despite being 80-90% religious.

Yes many of us did ponder that - now we are all atheists. When I study nature, and humanity, and the universe, I am left with the feeling that either A) there is no god or B) god is nothing like the Christian god.

Ok gotta go - someone needs this computer. I will be back.

scigirl

Doubting Didymus

Geo Theo.

Your first post states that Art is more than just survival factor, thus challenging the evolutionist to prove a mechanism that would explain its beginnings. This is what I have done in the post that you responded to. Your next post CRITISISES that post because it does not explain art's modern complexity.

Make up your mind for no gods sake.

My argument was not 'those that survive, survive' my argument was 'those that have artistic emotions left decendants with the same emotions' this is NOT a tautology. It does NOT assume what it is trying to prove.

As for art being more than sex and food, you just haven't listned. Did you read the part of my post where it said
"Additional note: This explanation fully allows for art to be grander and more spectacular than survival requires and does not reduce arts importance."


Again:
The survival value of art would not be 'food, food is pretty' or 'woman, woman is pretty'. It would be subconcious emotional reactions to symmetry, colour and form. Because of this, our artistic instincts can apply to many things that are not related to survival.

Do you get it yet? It means that art could have beginnings that are related to survival and still be what art is today.

In case you din't realise it, this is not tautology either. It is ordinary extrapolation. similarly:
Assuming gravity is true this ball will fall the same way everything else in the universe falls. We know this because everything else in the universe falls this way.

Typhon

Art is a gateway for more than self-expression.

It is easy to forget I think, that art is a chimera of sorts. It is a mistake to say that we create art for purely aesthetic reasons.

Art is used and has been used, and may have even originated importantly to this discussion, because it is a powerful, multi-use tool.

Art can communicate. We use markings to show boundaries, to designate special locations, to tell stories, and to display information that would otherwise rely on oral (or now written) mediums. The communitive attributes of art are profound and likely just one of the reasons why we developed this skill in our path to sentiency. The myths, stories, and cultural seeds of a people are often found within or at least richly displayed in the arts of a nation, or in this case, species.

Art can teach. Think of the number of field guides that still today rely on color plates, illustrations, and photographs. Early hominids had none of these available to them, and yet lived in a world where species recognition and naturalism were vital, life-or-death daily occurrences. To be able to represent ideas in symbolic form, is a crucial skill potentially, especially for groups which may have wandered over large ranges, using similar areas but often separate from one another, physically and by time.

Art can provide power over the unknown and the uncertain world. Magical thinking and confidence building rituals were likely vital to hunting and early societies. It was a dangerous, frightening world, in which man was often the prey not always the successful predator he is now. To be able to symbolically represent both man and the world around him, including importantly the unseen world of the imagined spirits and gods, is to a degree to claim power over them. What the mind believes it can accomplish has effect on the will and ability to do so. Paintings which show the success of the hunt may have been more than just decorations, boasts, or records of events passed down on the cave walls. These were temples of sorts, where symbolic displays of prowess were directly linked to real success, emboldening confidence and giving courage to the performers.

Art in many ways is an exercise in pattern recognition and abstract thinking. Both of these are likely vital traits in the struggle to survive that early man and other hominids once faced. The ability to tie both together may well have resulted in our earliest abilities to appreciate what we now consider aesthetics and symbolic meaning. Initially however, they may have not come about because of any advantage to such a sense, but because of the parallel and cooperative effects of these other two traits, each of which provide important skills and advantages to those who possess them.

Thus I personally think that the development of man's aesthetic sense and appreciation for art may have simply been a natural conjunction of other developing traits. It is hardly surprising however, that once this sense began to blossom, we found a host of advantages and uses for this talent.

.T.

Doubting Didymus

Brilliant!

This is the perfect example I have been looking for on how art could have escaped base urges.

Very well said indeed, Typhon.

For Geo Theo's benifit, I will spell it out for him.

1) We got an appreciation of symmetry, colour and form from practical survival instincts.

2) Later, we could apply these instincts to activites that transcend the base origins of such instincts. I think Typhon has outlined these possible activites very well.

3) Later still, our artistic abilities will have become so complex that we have art as it is today.

Typhon has given us the link between my description of arts early origins and Geo Theo's description of arts modern grandeur.