BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 03:40 PM

"Joy is just matter tricking itself."

It may be...and it may not be. The questions of whether it feels like that or not is distinct from the question of whether it actually IS.

Even IF we learn all there is to know about genes and DNA and brain chemistry, the ultimate resolution of the free will/determinism issue is probably not any more solvable than "Why is there 'something' rather than 'nothing'.'
We can construct a philosophic system to explain how free will might be derived (in fact, Alfred North Whitehead made a start at one) but it seems to be kind of technically impossible to measure/view/diagram the point at which 'freedom' happens....like running around behind yourself and observing your own motives as they are happening.

All we can say for sure is... it FEELS like we have some free will in certain areas, and we need to act as though we do, or most of our other actions lose relevance.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 01:21 PM

<> all free will is simply an illusion. Also fair enough

No, it is not "fair enough". IF life, collectively, has any opponent in the universe it is the forces of entropic reduction and solidity that militate against creativity, ideals of any kind, ethics, and communication. If all these things are illusions, then we have complete justification for apathetic nihilism. Joy is just matter tricking itself. Ptui.

THis kind of mechanistic slavishness is pathetic in the extreme. There are better ways to live than getting stuck to the movie screen like a piece of mindless glitter.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 12:33 PM

If it were, no legislation would work.

A tendency is not a determined factor.

But maybe you're claiming that *everything* an individual does is "hardwired," i.e. genetically determined. That would include all posts on this thread and everything else that anybody has ever done.

Fair enough. In that case, all free will is simply an illusion. Also fair enough.

However, we do live in a world where, illusion or not, free will appears to operate. But maybe that's also an illusion. Doesn't matter. In that case, genetic determinism has determined that we act and feel as though free will were real.

That makes the entire discussion about free will and determinism and hardwiring and everything else pointless. The operation of free will becomes indistinguishable from the operation of determinism.

Either way, there's no way out.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 12:23 PM

If it weren't, then there would be no need to legislate against it as it wouldn't happen...

Want some data? It helps if everyone has more facts to shout at each other... (I am misquoting somebody with tongue firmly in cheek)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 10:24 AM

Rape in ancient societies was generally considered to be one of the worst of crimes.

As long as the victim was a member of that society.

The enslavement (and rape) of foreign women taken captive in war was regarded as perfectly normal.

With "instinct," "hardwiring," "genetic determinism," "genetic survival mechanisms," etc., all supposedly working together for thousands of years in a nearly ideal environment for success, how on earth did men ever legislate any kind of rape to be any kind of a crime?

Answer: because rape isn't hardwired into the human brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 09:44 AM


Amos, can you give any evidence that instincts are hard-wired?

Nope.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Ed T
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 07:58 AM

""Rape was legislated as a crime in ancient societies too. Both rape and sanctions against rape are human universals"".

I question whether rape was broadly legislated in "ancient times", or a "human universal" (verses a social norm). This may need a bit more context and definition for consideration of "rape" and "legislation" (a crime), or "social taboos".

Many "more recent" human soceties legislated against rape. However, I suspect the definition of rape and when and where it was (is) not a crime differs. For example, it seemed acceptable in some societies as long it does not involve members of that society. Additionally, laws against rape within a union (marriage) seems silent in some societies.

I recall reading that in many ancient societies, the taking slaves from the opposing side and rape during or following conflict seemed quite common.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: autolycus
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 03:17 AM

Amos, can you give any evidence that instincts are hard-wired?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 01:34 PM

Rape was legislated as a crime in ancient societies too. Both rape and sanctions against rape are human universals.

Not everything that works is the only thing that works so there is no reason for it to take over. But it *does* work and it *is* a human trait. No need to

All battered women, I would think, *want* to leave. Nonetheless, unfortunately, most of them stay. Learned helplessness, say the psychologists. Certainly, say the evolutionary psychologists, just as it's easier to acquire a phobia of snakes than of butterflies, it's easier to learn some things than others. Preparedness, it's called.

Doesn't excuse anybody *choosing* the *behavior* of rape. Never said it did. But it *does* show why all modern societies *need* safe shelters for battered women... it's harder to UNlearn phobias of snakes than butterflies, too.

Also, and this is not a quibble, we've had a LOT more than a few hundred thousands of generations of evolving, even from the other apes!

And Amos, I was kidding! BG! Don't do emoticons...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 01:33 PM

I think protecting one's spouse and young in orde to assure future survival is as hard-wired as any other instinct.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 01:23 PM

If rape and spousal abuse were hard-wired and so beneficial to evolution and survival, it's hard to understand why, after more than 10,000 generations of human evolution allegedly "selecting for" such traits, most all men aren't rapists, most all women in abusive relationships want out, and rape is legislated as a crime in every modern society.

Legislated, I should add, historically by men.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: autolycus
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 12:59 PM

"Now you're just baiting me! " [sorry, don't know how to italicise.]

I'm really really not. I simply want the maximum of clarity on this point, 'tis all.

I've often heard about this, that or the other thing being '[hard-] wired in the brain' yet I gather, not being a biologist myself, that there haint no sich thang.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 10:20 AM

SOme the notions you say we are hard-wired for are kind of outside the pale of social interaction there, Mrrz. Besides.,..I think blaming the wires for an unsuccessful system call is like blaming the janitor for bad code in the operating system.

SOmetimes one can get so interiorized into playing with data and pictures that he loses sight of who is doing the observation and the considering thereof, and can spin into total meatballery. The fact that sucvh a state of mind can be rationalized and justified to a faretheewell does not earn it the cachet of truth.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 09:58 AM

Now you're just baiting me!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: autolycus
Date: 13 Sep 11 - 05:15 AM

...so you're correct, there is no wiring in the brain :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 11:13 AM

Neurons are closer to literal wires than probably anything else in the body...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: autolycus
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 07:26 PM

Action replay.


I have been given to understand that there is no wiring in the brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 12:36 PM

JtS, you are a sweetheart.

Raping a 900 women a year (roughly three a day, which is maintainable), and taking care of one you don't rape, gets you a LOT more genes into the next generation than just taking care of the one you don't rape. And both rape and its proscription are human universals.

And women are wired to keep the strongest man around - and who is showing strength, the one who beats you or the other one? But you didn't argue with that one...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 10:03 PM

>>Rape, for instance, is hardwired into men, as it should be if we are to survive as a species. So is staying with batterers hardwired into women, again, to the greater survival ability of the species.<<


I am sorry, but that is a silly idea.

Raping women is about the least reliable way to pass on one's genes. Fatherhood and bread winning is what we have evolved to.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 01:53 PM

There are no genes that directly make your blood circulate; rather, the genes that build you, do so with a circulatory system. One could say that circulation is less genetic than homosexuality, for instance, where there actually is a candidate gene or gene cluster that directly impacts hyoperfertility in female carriers and homosexuality in male carriers.

Yes, you cannot choose whether to be gay or not, only whether to behave as if you were in or out of the closet. But that's all I've been saying - that nurture gives us the choice to override our natures.

It should have the chance make that choice intelligent and educated, not dogmatic nor out of fear of authority.

Especially if such authority will not manifest till after your death, one would think.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 09:11 PM

Those things we would do automatically without thinking if we had no education or manners are still hardwired. What teaching kids manners does is allow them to use their will to *overcome* their hardwiring.

If they weren't hardwired, it would not take education or manners to stop those behaviors. People just wouldn't do them.

Rape, for instance, is hardwired into men, as it should be if we are to survive as a species. So is staying with batterers hardwired into women, again, to the greater survival ability of the species.

Rape is condemned by human *society* but that doesn't make it not hardwired. It just makes it reprehensible *in an educated, civilized adult* (but not in those with neither manners nor education, for whom it would simply be normal). And the degree of education it takes for a woman to leave her batterer is even greater - and sometimes not enough. That is why we have safe houses and intervening friends.

And the brain is the ONE organ we have where the "wiring" can be seen as it is closest to literal!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 07:18 PM

By definition, you cannot decide not to do what you are supposedly "hard-wired" to do. You cannot decide, for example, to stop your blood from circulating just by concentrating on it. Circulation of the blood is genetically encoded; driving fast and eating candy bars are not.

If, for some reason, you want to use "hard-wired" simply to mean "able unless one would rather not," no one will stop you. But that will only add to the confusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 07:05 PM

Frank: With all due respect, sir, your certainty about the event of death might just mean you have forgotten all of your own experience with it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: autolycus
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 07:00 PM

I have been given to understand that there is no wiring in the brain.


A religious belief is a brilliant idea simply because, at a stroke, by being a believer, you solve to your own satisfaction, some of the deep problems of life. Thus you save yourself any amounts of worry, agonising and thinking for yourself.

You no longer have to worry about why you're here, what life's for or how to live.

Imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 06:56 PM

But we ARe hardwired to do all those things - we are ALSO hard-wired to think for ourselves and decide not to do what we're hardwired to do. Doesn't mean it isn't hardwired, like planes that are built to send out distress calls when they crash not meaning that they are built to crash.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 02:00 PM

Consciousness, a product of gene pools, building blocks of proteins that find itself in brain construction, given to species mankind, who know that they die, know that they are born, is limited to that brain function, not outside of it.

Your brain on any god is a product of your brain and not outside of it, which has never been proven to be manifested scientifically.

When the brain dies, all notions of god(s) disappear and what is left in the collective gene pool remains to be questioned by future human generations.

This doesn't mean that we can't all be moral, decent people, with values, embracing our role as benefactors in human society.

This is probably inherent in our gene pool because it ensures our own survival, a kind of collaborative "selfish gene" (hello Dawkins).

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 03:08 PM

Bill:

It would be arrogant to assume that consciousness means "we"; and besides Planck did not attempt that thorny issue; he said what he said, and IMHO it is far from trivial. But philosophically I think quite removed from your own sense of reality.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 01:31 PM

>Lighter, genetic potential doesn't mean that genes determine everything.

That's what I've been saying. That's why "hard-wired" is so misleading, even though newspeople like to say it on TV reports about evolutionary psychology, especially in questions: "Does that mean we're actually hard-wired to cheat on our spouses/ eat candy bars/ go to war/ drive fast, etc.?"

The answer is no.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 12:32 PM

"Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Ummm...Planck was a really bright guy, but I don't think he was up to speed in the details of philosophic logic.

His statement above is, as it stands, 'trivially true' in that we must BE conscious in order to "talk about" anything. Planck is no longer with us, and presumably not 'contemplating' anything, but we still contemplate him. If I could have interviewed him..(I was only 8 when he died).. I would have asked him what he thought 'existed' before we came along to experience it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 12:09 PM

"If people were "hardwired" to lie, wouldn't they be better at it?"

Jack, U.S. presidents and some dictators have been very successful at it. Have you looked at US Congress lately? Doesn't that make you wonder? :)

Lighter, genetic potential doesn't mean that genes determine everything. IE: an alcoholic potential might be genetically transferred but this doesn't mean one with those genes would automatically become alcoholic. It's a genetic potential and not a fixed outcome, here.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the "hard wired brain" which is yet to be discovered by scientists who are working on it.

One thing that seems to be in our DNA is behavioral adaptability. Which genes win out over centuries may be conditioned by the way our species behaves.

Can the genes of those who use violence and aggression to control and destroy other members of their species hold out over time?   I argue for adaptability and survival, not war and specialization.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:30 PM

The ability to have the knowledge to make that decision intelligently. The ability to choose to behave as your educated conscience dictates and not as your leaders tell you. The *desire* to have that choice.

Hear, hear!! I don't know about wiring but I believe this reflects some of the deepest impulses of consciousnessness --whether organic or not--and one of the fundamentals of civilization as it could become.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:26 PM

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Max Planck, As quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 03:40 PM

Right, Joe, the world just IS (and isn't that amazing).

I don't mind the term hard-wired any more since I've learned a lot more about molecular biology and how DNA actually *constructs* different beings, when all it can tinker with *directly* is prenatal/hatching development, that is, the going from one cell, usually protected by something made of tissue (eggshells and moms and sometimes dads and other stuff/beings), to an organism in direct contact with whatever's outside itself once it's out of whatever it was in before it was born/hatched/whatever into the actual *world*. (Not to say that we don't keep developing after birth or metamorphose from an eating to a sexual form, we being DNA products. But I digress.)

After sexual maturity, it's up to products OF the DNA to do stuff to replicate DNA within that world.

And *we* get to say, Overruled! like Fred Gwynne to Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinnie. I just *love* that.

And the movie too.

Anyway, in our case, our software (anything that rewires hardware through learning and postnatal experience) can result in behavior *other than* our hardware would dictate if we couldn't decide for ourselves.

I find it interesting that after we split off from the line ancestral to the chimp/bonobo line, said line split into two, each of which now exhibit a preponderance of using the behavior associated with one particular such basic emotion to run their society, each choosing one of the 7 deadly behaviors of humanity, if you will, in that they are those feelings which occur naturally and should be overriden by a civilized adult.

It's possible that their shared ancestor of chimps and bonobos, who is descended from our (all three of us current species)' shared ancestor, had both such strong motivations, and that it's the very exploiting different *behavioral* niches that split the line *int* chimps and bonobos.

Chimps are descended from those who were better at using Anger than Lust. Which means they were actually *better at reproduction* through something, anything at all, other than Lust. Think of that.

The bonobos, much more sensibly I think we all agree (kidding! kidding! about the agree part I mean!), are descended from those who were better at using Lust.

Humans seem to have started using both Sloth and Gluttony to excess - we already know it's likely we had both Anger and Lust already, we'd not have survived as a species without them nor had we not learned to handle them "appropriately" - whatever that means to the society into which we get softworn (I like that erm, I just made it up).

If we were bonobos, it would mean having sex all the time, without thinking about it.

If we were chimps, it would mean having fights all the time, without thinking about it.

I prefer thinking about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 03:01 PM

Lighter, I don't really like the term "hard-wired," but I used it because that was the term being used.
Still, I think that every sentient being (not just human beings) has a natural tendency to move toward "good." Yes, we're free to make other choices - but I think our natural tendency is to choose what we perceive as good. I suppose that puts me at odds with the fundamentalists, with their belief in the "total depravity of human nature." Certainly, there is dysfunction and evil in the world, but I don't see the world as a whole as evil or dysfunctional.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 02:33 PM

Oh, come on. I mean, I respectfully suggest that there are basic emotions hardwired enough to have universal facial expressions - like disgust - which evolved to communicate important things like Don't eat what I just tried. How could you go from a sensation - a sight, a sound, a taste- to a complex series of muscle movements automatically without hardwiring?

There are other basic feelings, like righteous anger, which evolved to punish dishonest behavior. Not to mention fear, a really useful one you can use on so many occasions.

All humans *naturally* weep from sorrow and all humans can *naturally* distinguish between sorrowful and other crying jags through sound and sight...

...and the fact that many humans set themselves on fire which must be about a zillion times worse than a hunger strike doesn't make the fact that there are basic harwired eMOTIons, which evolved as MOTIves, to MOTIvate goal-directed behaviors, conducive to replication of the DNA that is doing all the wiring of which we speak disappear. It just makes our ability to choose, despite all these moti words, whether or how to BEHAVE, more obvious.

And *that* is what the fundies are trying to take away. The ability to have the knowledge to make that decision intelligently. The ability to choose to behave as your educated conscience dictates and not as your leaders tell you. The *desire* to have that choice.

It's dehumanizing, and it's wrong, and wish noone would prefer enforced ignorance over the abundant use of knowledge, it seems to me, just because the last several thousand years have added to the knowledge base we had back when their holy books were written.

I wonder how to be kinder in asking, what did they expect was expected of them?

And yes, there is robust scientific literature on everything I've stated, which you'd find online I'm sure if you'd like to read more on what I'm talking about

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 12:48 PM

Sure, the mind may be "hard-wired" to experience motivation. In fact, without motivation and motives, we'd be motionless and utterly apathetic. No mammal can survive that way.

But there are an endless number of motives and motivations. Some are beneficial to others, some neutral, some destructive, some very mixed. No particular motive or motivation is hard-wired into the species; in other words, inevitable and insuperable for everybody.

People starve themselves in hunger strikes, and kill themselves in other ways, including, as Amos points out, for altruistic purposes,so (evidently unlike most other creatures not in the act of protecting their young) humans are not even hard-wired for individual physical survival.

Certainly most of us are strongly inclined in that direction, but talk about hard-wired or genetically encoded thought and behavior (beyond the mere ability to think and behave at all) just muddies the waters.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 12:18 PM

How does the placebo effect mean our motivations aren't bred into us?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 11:38 AM

In fact, if hard-wired were all of that, there would be no such thing as a psychosomatic remission, a well-documented phenomenon. There would be no placebo effect. There would be no case histories of heroism under duress. It would be a pthetic little belief system indeed. Not impressive.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 11:38 AM

I see it this way:

We are hard-wired for the MOTIVES (which are provided by our evolution) but have a choice, provided by our intelligence, when it comes to whether to exhibit the BEHAVIORS thus motivated, or other behaviors, or none. And it is the degree to which we exercise those choices that determines the degree to which we are civilized.

And *that* is my main argument against the fundies - that they voluntarily, seemingly, abandon that very capacity for evaluating and deciding, by choosing dogma over reason. It's dehumanizing, and that's what makes it so wrong to me. It's as if they have to revert to some atavism in order to deny evolution, and they thus make it true that they, at least, are refusing to evolve with the rest of humanity.

Because our current knowledge of the biologies is astounding, and we can bring all that knowledge to bear on a lot of important decisions that fall under the category of Should we act upon our urges.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 09:24 AM

Some beings use bodies, others simply settle in and identify with them. Others,some of each. Hard-wired predispositions can be overridden when the necessity arises.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 09:01 AM

Joe, if "hard-wired" has any useful meaning at all, it can only mean "genetically determined or encoded."

That means no choice. Your body makes the decision, and every functioning individual in the species does the same thing under the same conditions. They need to breathe, eat, digest, etc. Nurture and external conditions have little effect on genetically determined activities.

There is very little in conscious human behavior that could be interpreted as hard-wired.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Sep 11 - 03:04 AM

I think I'd say that all beings are "hard wired" to seek what they deem to be good - first their own good, then the good of their community, then their species, and then (perhaps) their environment.
Lying and stealing may sometimes be deemed as "good," I suppose, but I'd like to think not usually.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 11 - 04:12 PM

I can? Really? Can I refer to certain people as 'Primitive' also? ☺. There are a few I know who stretch the concept of 'evolved'.

As a card-carrying Pedant (4th order Brown Belt) I begs yer pardon....

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 31 Aug 11 - 04:01 PM

Goodness, kindness and charity etc are all hard-wired too - we ARE a social ape.

Oh Bill - no more "higher" and "lower" since we got rid of the ladder metaphor for evolution - We Pedants prefer Older and Younger species - we are young. Of course, bonobos and chimps are younger, since they split from each other after the Hominidae split off from the rest of the apes... so that doesn't put us at the edge of any diagram... but that's OK with me!

But you can still (or, rather, again) use the word Primitive, since it means Like the first, which doesn't have any judgmentalicity (?) to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 31 Aug 11 - 12:58 PM

I agree, Amos and Bill.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 31 Aug 11 - 12:52 PM

Confusing hardware with function is a deep error, IMHO. A dumptruck is not a Ferrari, and a buckboard wagon is not a rollerskate. An obsessive focus on structure instead of function would assert that they were all closely related as four-wheeled devices, a useless bit of associative thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 11 - 11:41 AM

You mean..*gasp" Desmond Morris deceived us all?

"The Naked Ape, which was serialized in the Daily Mirror newspaper and has been translated into 23 languages, depicts human behavior as largely evolved, to meet the challenges of prehistoric life as a hunter-gatherer (see nature versus nurture). The book was so named because out of 193 species of monkeys and apes only man is not covered in hair."

I am shocked!


(ummm...perhaps it's because it is so much easier to type 'ape' than "Hominidae" or "higher primate")

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 31 Aug 11 - 11:31 AM

To call humans "apes" serves only to blur the defining characteristics of each.

But you might as well call a German shepherd a chihuahua. I mean, how do *they* differ? I mean, really? Unlike apes and humans, they even belong to the same species.

Humans and apes may be grouped together under "Hominidae" for the purposes of cladistics, but that doesn't make their brains or their thinking or their spirituality (if any) the same. All it means is that apes and humans are more closely related than humans and monkeys, for example.

Try talking to a bonobo about symphonies or sports standings or the meaning of the universe and you'll see a difference right away.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 11 - 10:36 PM

I am sometimes puzzled by the energy with which people reject their better natures. Humans have always enjoyed an innate ability to contemplate ethics and right action, and to bother to choose an ethical path or a just decision in spite of impulses or habits. So if those lower impulses are "hard-wired". perhaps there is a part of our makeup that is not wired at all.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Aug 11 - 09:55 PM

Chimpanzees often engage in bullying, murder, stealing, deception for personal gain (especially in sex)...etc...Bonobos much less. (Bonobos use sex to defuse potential conflicts "Make love, not war!" )
It is not clear whether this involves DNA/hard-wiring, evolution, or a primate type of situational ethics. Perhaps a little of each. We certainly see aspects of ourselves when we observe them. Since 98% or so of our genes are the same, who is surprised?