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To: Stop Legal Plunder
Because evolution claims, via "natural selection" (in deliberate contrast to God's choice) to account for the development and characteristics of all kinds of life, including humans, it claims to account for the character traits that recognize beauty, love, morality and the like. So to be a viable system, evolution must either explain how these things evolved or, alternatively, why they're just fancies in our heads, having no correspondence with objective reality.

You're begging several questions here. The first one is that beauty, love and morality are entirely consequences of the biological structure of humans. That is certainly unproven; many would argue they're cultural constructs. Morevoer, once humans started to become capable of a culture, sometime in the evolution of the primates, the culture itself affected their evolution. For example, it's entirely likely once we started singing, women started having inordinate amounts of sex with musicians (still happens). Thence developed a dynamic whereby ever more complex musical abilities were selected for. Even without human intelligence, the same sort of evolution of complex 'aesthetic' behavior is seen in songbirds.

Fidelity, kindness etc. may similarly have been selected for as being more favorable to the raising of children. Those may be universal and innate human traits. If you can find a universal moral code that goes beyond very simple ideas such as 'thou shalt not kill', 'thou shalt not steal', you've certainly found something that's escaped the anthropological community.

271 posted on 05/07/2003 11:03:43 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
For example, it's entirely likely once we started singing, women started having inordinate amounts of sex with musicians (still happens). Thence developed a dynamic whereby ever more complex musical abilities were selected for.

Interesting theory. But not persuasive to me. Sex with musicians is no doubt at an all-time high today, but the quality of music composed may be at an all time low. At any rate, music was much more beautiful in the days of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & Co., when there was considerably less sexual promiscuity and the object of most then-new compositions was the glory of God, not the glory of man (or woman or sex).

274 posted on 05/07/2003 11:11:15 AM PDT by Stop Legal Plunder ("When words are many, sin is not lacking." -- Proverbs 10:19a)
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To: Right Wing Professor
For example, it's entirely likely once we started singing, women started having inordinate amounts of sex with musicians (still happens). Thence developed a dynamic whereby ever more complex musical abilities were selected for.

Interesting theory. But not persuasive to me. Sex with musicians is no doubt at an all-time high today, but the quality of music composed may be at an all time low. At any rate, music was much more beautiful in the days of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & Co., when there was considerably less sexual promiscuity and the object of most then-new compositions was the glory of God, not the glory of man (or woman or sex).

275 posted on 05/07/2003 11:11:15 AM PDT by Stop Legal Plunder ("When words are many, sin is not lacking." -- Proverbs 10:19a)
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To: Right Wing Professor
"...many would argue [beauty] is a cultural construct.

No doubt. Many do so argue -- or at least assert. But the beauty of a rose is no cultural construct; it's objectively true in all times, places, and cultures. And any "culture" that claims otherwise is barbaric.

276 posted on 05/07/2003 11:14:19 AM PDT by Stop Legal Plunder ("When words are many, sin is not lacking." -- Proverbs 10:19a)
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To: Right Wing Professor
If you can find a universal moral code that goes beyond very simple ideas such as 'thou shalt not kill', 'thou shalt not steal'...

These ideas aren't simple at all. They're profound. They certainly don't occur to animals. Yet evolutionists claim that our ancestors were animals. If that's so, then this allegedly basic morality must have evolved. If so, let's hear how. If evolution is correct, it shouldn't be that hard to postulate a reasonable account.

But there is none, because evolutionary pressures would always favor the guy who promoted reality in public but privately took whichever woman he fancied. (e.g. "Religion [and its morality] is the opiate of the masses.") If morality had evolved, humans should accept this hypocracy as ethical, but the vast majority of us is repulsed by it.

279 posted on 05/07/2003 11:20:30 AM PDT by Stop Legal Plunder ("When words are many, sin is not lacking." -- Proverbs 10:19a)
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