Because evolution is contrary to creationism and a taboo. Theism declares that Humans did not evolve, they were created fully formed via Intelligent Design. See the Kitzmiller v Dover School District trial.
Yeah but, boy think about the straightjacket one-dimensional awareness of our planet those people suffer under.
It’s such a fantabulous multifaceted interwoven incredible beautiful story, stories. Never ending for those with the curious to be present to it. The Pageant of Evolution that is.
What they are doing is not debate. The Dover trial was a kangaroo court. Scientists didn’t go because they didn’t want to lend it any crediblity. It’s indoctrinated people passing on the indoctrination. It can be understood, but understanding doesn’t automatically yield a solution.
That’s the no freewill approach. Scientific progress began with some creature that paused for a second while the moon came between the earth and the sun in the middle of the day. The birds just acted like it was night, probably without a lot of thought. But that creature wondered for a second, until something bigger tried to eat it, and it got away, and its ancestor’s evolved into beings like us, who erect huge buildings dedicated to understanding planetary motion.
Dawkins introduced the idea of memes, that language is a continuation of evolution. Progress isn’t something we invented because we evolved to be smart enough to do it. It is evolution. What’s the difference between evolving lung capacity to climb mountains and evolving an idea to climb an intellectual mountain?
Intellectual evolution (progress) is the building of one idea on top of another. That’s very different from genetic variation. We aren’t “smarter” than Einstein. But we have climbed his shoulders.
EPAS1, EGLN1, HYOU1 and HMBS gene differentiation came directly from the biological evolutionary pressures of life in low pressure environments.
Climbing an intellectual mountain is puzzle solving. This is a product of the mind, not biological evolutionary pressure. Even if you believe the mind has no free will, it should still be clear that these two things are different. Evolutionary pressures did not get us to split or fuse atoms.
Not where, but when. A mind becomes more than itself when it networks with other minds or builds upon previous (or current) minds/ideas. Science could barely exist without this. Societies become their own organisms. We don’t instinctively develop nuclear power plants.
IMO, generic evolution is based on the natural formation of a mathematical pattern that has superior survivability in its particular environment.
All evolutionary processes rest on the same principle of self-organization and growth of durable patterns in a dynanical environment, from the very beginning on.
It is all of a larger landscape of Natural Selection of inherent excellence in a pattern-formation compatible with its environment, from the Table of Elements up to crystal formation, to the gene pool of human biology.
It is this ability for self-ordering of just about everything in the known universe that suggests anabstract and generic mathematical aspect to this universe, for sure.
AFAIK, aside from creationism, there is no other hypothesis that is not mathematical in essence .
But that very evolutionary process also exists in human interaction and adaption to the environment, albeit on a very primitive level.
The personification of the unknown. The evolution of religion and worship. Little pockets of repeating patterns, each an evolved community of individuals with similar belief patterns.
There is a massive difference I know. Human scale networking is far beyond anything we know of in the animal kingdom. But for millions of years, we were not that different. At what point in history did we develop minds?
The importance of evolution, and that we are evolved from what we call “non-living” matter, is that it means each of us is not special. I’m not even special for knowing that each of us is not special. The parents I had, the school I went to, something I saw on TV that I don’t remember, Matt Dillahunty and Aron Ra, all added up to me thinking this is meaningful. Some people think it’s sad that I think meaning comes from those billions of years of protons rearranging themselves into my brain and my guts. But the people that think that, went to a different school and listened to different podcasts and their protons arranged differently. I had almost nothing to do with that.
Some people think it’s sad that I think I have almost nothing to do with how others act, that I should always be trying to make the most difference in the most lives. Again, different parents, different diet. Something made them want to be heard, to change the world. Others feel they make a big impact when what they do appears to have occurred only locally and to a few other creatures. This is probably getting to the most commonly held feelings, and not just of humans but all creatures. Anything that desires to shape its environment in the smallest way to make it more comfortable and to make it possible for more like itself to continue on is feeling some cosmic force.
Back to politics; by looking at ourselves as not special we can focus on those environmental improvements. If the goal is to have our progeny be happy, we will get there faster, and it will be easier in the long run, if we stop killing each other and every other living thing to make ourselves happy. Stopping destruction is just the beginning, stop punishment, stop retribution for the last generation’s mistakes, stop denigrating individuals for not being educated while also denigrating the education system. It’s true that there are people who need to be separated from the tools of a free and open society because they demonstrate an inability to use them without causing harm. We can do that with respect and work toward restoration. I don’t have all the answers and especially don’t have a century long plan for implementing any of this.
What I do know is, it begins with anyone who understands the basics of evolution, how we got here, and how caring for each other and the planet is how our ancestors survived long enough to dream of us being here now.
Help me parse this, please. Evolution implies each of us is not special, and you think this is meaningful. You find meaning in the fact that elements formed your brain and guts. Some people think that is sad because of their unique experiences.
Still parsing. Some cosmic source drives some people (and other animals) to desire to make an impact. But not you. Some find that to be sad.
Parsing continues. Recognizing we are not special allows us to concentrate on other things like the environment. Stop killing each other (even though we aren’t special) and other living things. Be nice.
Apparently, I did well on the first paragraph, but I had a feeling the second one needed work.
The “cosmic source” is sometimes called the survival instinct. We know there was some threshold in the past where there was no spacetime, and now there is. In spacetime, there is causality, actions have reactions, bodies in motion, but what causes the motion? Infinite regress implies we don’t know the ultimate cause, so I used “cosmic source” this time. It doesn’t just drive some people, it’s the universal laws of nature that drive everything.
What makes some people sad is that each individual has very little effect on the whole of the universe, or even on parts of this planet within their lifetime. We know a few names from history, but we don’t know much about their daily lives, and the ones we know are often like Ghengis Khan, notorious, not glorious.
“Be nice” is the most concise I can get. But, what does that mean? I start out by providing a rough plan, some answers, but end with saying I don’t have answers. It’s not a cop-out, it’s true for everybody. Or, maybe there is a guy in a cave somewhere who has the answers, but I’m not going to wait for them to come out.
“It” is the political will to change things for the better. For some that means finding the tools or building their skills. It might be putting your shopping cart in the return bin, or it might be dedicating your life to improving farming. It’s not up to me to say. I can say what is harmful and get near unanimous agreement on that often. The people who are harming even agree, but they have a “reason”, that looks more like an excuse to me.
I believe all universal dynamics are the remains of the BB. It is in the chaotic plasma state that the first self-organizing “patterns” appeared.
David Bohm called it the universal Pilot Wave.