[Robaroni]

I just skimmed this thread.

As for why we feel love there is certainly evidence that it is a desired trait in social species.  It encourages altruism, caring for young and basically getting along.

If you are interested Gregory Berns did an interesting study on love and dogs.  The conclusion is basically to create bonds to promote social comfort and security. The same reason people love each other. The same chemical and brain responses.

I think the only valid argument for love being proof of God is he guided evolution so social animals would feel love.

I read a few links on Bern and I think he's doing interesting work. A couple of things, first, he's fMRI-ing patterns that show dogs have feelings just as humans do. We already know humans have feelings but science is basically naive when it comes to love. Scientists don't differentiate compassion from romantic love as we've seen often , the paper Jura cited is a prime example where the research solely explored romance.

Man can function completely without compassion, all his needs can be satisfied symbiotically. Even if we take it to the point where man can 'benefit' and the group can 'benefit' from an altruistic action by the individual we still haven't answered giving one's life for the sick which is not an anomaly and which evolution has no answer for. Compassion is clearly different.
If we look at Gandhi's Satyagraha where individuals didn't resist beatings by British soldiers and remained compassionate to them we see a completely different dynamic taking place. Bern was very compassionate to his dogs and he went out of his way to explain the importance of that in his experiments but what if he beat and forced the dog's to comply? Pavlov has already shown reward elicits favorable chemical responses in dogs but now we are in the realm of trade, not compassion.
The other thing we don't know is how dogs perceive death. A dog my a very well go to his death protecting his master but what does he know about the result of that action?

Again, my premise is that compassionate love is greater than the self. Even if we look at love from the aspect of companionship, man can have friends, be welcomed by the group and even be beneficial to the group but he will still yearn to be loved and to love, this a universal dynamic and so much so that the individual who believes he is not loved suffers immeasurably. This is an observable fact completely documented by analysts, ask any analyst about the problems children who grew up unloved have.

The other thing is that I don't see God as this anthropomorphic monotheistic force of the universe that sits on a thrown and asks you if you were a Protestant, my perception of God is closer to Jung's "Collective Unconscious". Socialized religion has made such a mess of spirituality that I understand completely the thinking of people like Jura who shun this nonsense. Even Hitchens argued against this frail religious dogma. So arguing the  possibility that something exists that is greater than the self often finds angry opposition. People just don't want this judgmental Christian snobbery, who can blame them!

R

[Robaroni]

Continuing to misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest" is doing you no favors. It is not a concept that applies to simple individual interactions, otherwise you would watch a bird fly in to a window and conclude, like a simpleton, that flight was not beneficial to survival in one's niche. The same goes for your notions of sacrificial love; occasionally yielding false positives is not a good argument against an overall benefit to survival.

Not worthy of my time or response.
R

[Rama Set]

Continuing to misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest" is doing you no favors. It is not a concept that applies to simple individual interactions, otherwise you would watch a bird fly in to a window and conclude, like a simpleton, that flight was not beneficial to survival in one's niche. The same goes for your notions of sacrificial love; occasionally yielding false positives is not a good argument against an overall benefit to survival.

Not worthy of my time or response.
R

Except that you responded.  You are not very good at this.

[Robaroni]

Continuing to misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest" is doing you no favors. It is not a concept that applies to simple individual interactions, otherwise you would watch a bird fly in to a window and conclude, like a simpleton, that flight was not beneficial to survival in one's niche. The same goes for your notions of sacrificial love; occasionally yielding false positives is not a good argument against an overall benefit to survival.

Not worthy of my time or response.

R

Except that you responded.  You are not very good at this.

Not worthy of my time or response to your statement. Get it now?

[Rama Set]

Continuing to misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest" is doing you no favors. It is not a concept that applies to simple individual interactions, otherwise you would watch a bird fly in to a window and conclude, like a simpleton, that flight was not beneficial to survival in one's niche. The same goes for your notions of sacrificial love; occasionally yielding false positives is not a good argument against an overall benefit to survival.

Not worthy of my time or response.

R

Except that you responded.  You are not very good at this.

Not worthy of my time or response to your statement. Get it now?

But see, now you are responding to my statement again.  If you want to ignore me, don't tell me you are going to ignore me, then you aren't ignoring me!  I thought you were cumma sum laude ffs! 

Anyway, please show Woody how you don't understand evolution, I can take the opportunity to eat popcorn.

[Jura-Glenlivet]

I read a few links on Bern and I think he's doing interesting work. A couple of things, first, he's fMRI-ing patterns that show dogs have feelings just as humans do. We already know humans have feelings but science is basically naive when it comes to love. Scientists don't differentiate compassion from romantic love as we've seen often , the paper Jura cited is a prime example where the research solely explored romance.
Bullshit!  (http://www.vislab.ucl.ac.uk/pdf/NeuralBasisOfLove.pdf)

[Robaroni]

Continuing to misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest" is doing you no favors. It is not a concept that applies to simple individual interactions, otherwise you would watch a bird fly in to a window and conclude, like a simpleton, that flight was not beneficial to survival in one's niche. The same goes for your notions of sacrificial love; occasionally yielding false positives is not a good argument against an overall benefit to survival.

Not worthy of my time or response.

R

Except that you responded.  You are not very good at this.

Not worthy of my time or response to your statement. Get it now?

But see, now you are responding to my statement again.  If you want to ignore me, don't tell me you are going to ignore me, then you aren't ignoring me!  I thought you were cumma sum laude ffs! 

Anyway, please show Woody how you don't understand evolution, I can take the opportunity to eat popcorn.

No, I never responded to your rebuttal to my premise. I'm not ignoring you I just don't find your rebuttals to my premise worthy of an answer. Respond to my hypothesis and see what you get back. Go ahead - test your hypothesis.

R

[Robaroni]

Bullshit!  (http://www.vislab.ucl.ac.uk/pdf/NeuralBasisOfLove.pdf)[/color][/b]

I gave you a rebuttal to this paper showing a peer disagreement with the findings. Also please give me the evolutionary support for my rebuttal to Darwin's natural selection.

Again to refresh your memory:
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms the phrase is best understood as "Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations."

Is the offspring with the defective heart in the "form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations"  No, the defect will repeat in future generations. Let the defective offspring die, don't give your life to save it have other healthier offspring.

R

[Rama Set]

Continuing to misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest" is doing you no favors. It is not a concept that applies to simple individual interactions, otherwise you would watch a bird fly in to a window and conclude, like a simpleton, that flight was not beneficial to survival in one's niche. The same goes for your notions of sacrificial love; occasionally yielding false positives is not a good argument against an overall benefit to survival.

Not worthy of my time or response.

R

Except that you responded.  You are not very good at this.

Not worthy of my time or response to your statement. Get it now?

But see, now you are responding to my statement again.  If you want to ignore me, don't tell me you are going to ignore me, then you aren't ignoring me!  I thought you were cumma sum laude ffs! 

Anyway, please show Woody how you don't understand evolution, I can take the opportunity to eat popcorn.

No, I never responded to your rebuttal to my premise. I'm not ignoring you I just don't find your rebuttals to my premise worthy of an answer. Respond to my hypothesis and see what you get back. Go ahead - test your hypothesis.

R

This has been dealt with ad nauseam. You claimed that the proof of God is love. It has been shown that there is an evolutionary framework which can explain love arising by means of natural selection. It is a more rigorous position than yours since you have not justified yours in the slightest. Is the exact process and mechanism fully understood for love arising through evolution? No, but there are many pieces that are well understood.

Your pseudo-scientific woo regarding God being the source of love is utterly wanting and devoid of substance. You haven't even put forth a decent syllogism for your position, not in any succinct manner a reader could hope to decipher. All we get is empty proclamations of victory and Socratic dialogues and your bold proclamations of academic credentials that are neither relevant nor substantiated.

So please, go and try to understand that "survival of the fittest" (natural selection) is not a 100% efficient process and showing a case where it is not beneficial to survival does not mean it is never beneficial. Please, go and learn what biologists mean when they describe reciprocity. Please, stop pretending that nothing has been presented that contradicts your assertions. It is uncomfortable for us to have to continue to shoot you down.

[Robaroni]

MISCONCEPTION: Natural selection acts for the good of the species.

CORRECTION: When we hear about altruism in nature (e.g., dolphins spending energy to support a sick individual, or a meerkat calling to warn others of an approaching predator, even though this puts the alarm sounder at extra risk), it's tempting to think that those behaviors arose through natural selection that favors the survival of the species — that natural selection promotes behaviors that are good for the species as a whole, even if they are risky or detrimental for individuals in the population. However, this impression is incorrect. Natural selection has no foresight or intentions. In general, natural selection simply selects among individuals in a population, favoring traits that enable individuals to survive and reproduce, yielding more copies of those individuals' genes in the next generation. Theoretically, in fact, a trait that is advantageous to the individual (e.g., being an efficient predator) could become more and more frequent and wind up driving the whole population to extinction (e.g., if the efficient predation actually wiped out the entire prey population, leaving the predators without a food source).

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#b4

Credits:
This site is a collaborative project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education.

R

[Rama Set]

Of course it acts through the individual, no one ever claimed otherwise and of course the knowledge that a trait benefit is always through hindsight. So what?  If anything this only reinforces what I was saying, that no trait is beneficial in every circumstance as you appear to believe sacrificial love must be.

All we have said is that a trait where one member of a species, tribe, whatever, wil give their life for another can provide a net benefit to the group and promotes the groups survival.

[Jura-Glenlivet]

Sloppy arguments!

Having the trait of giving one's life for the weak as many including myself are willing to do to save the sick child is in diametrical opposition to Darwin's hypothesis. It never benefits the group in giving one's life for the weak. It's not possible.

Isn’t even sloppy it’s retarded.

Evolution is a long term process, it has no goals, no agenda, no thought process. You can go around all your life throwing yourself into burning buildings to save babies and puppies to the adulation of others (well, in your case, mostly yourself), “Evolution” doesn’t give a fuck, it couldn’t care less, it doesn’t even have any aspect that could care if it wanted too.

Now there are reasons where this could work in a positive way for you genetically, the mothers around the area might think well he’s brave and liable to defend me, I’ll shag him, your reckless throw yourself in the fire gene is passed on, two weeks after shagging all the mothers, the fathers throw you into a burning hut and seal it up (yey). You are dead, but your genes carry on and so does evolution.

Looking after, a sick child could conceivably work in your favour, any mother who sees you acting so selflessly may figure you as a better parent than Ug in cave three who bashed his kids head in with a rock when it got sick.

The fact is that there are many subtle ways selection can work or it can be the blunt instrument of luck.

You don’t have to be the fittest, many people of African descent have sickle-cell anaemia, if both of your parents pass on the gene to you, your life is liable to be shorter and more painful, however if you have only one copy then the altered blood cells rupture when the malaria parasite enters, it can’t breed you don’t get malaria. The sickle-cell lottery! Thanks god.

Now, we have shown that love could reasonably be part of this and you have proved squat, your proof of god has metamorphosed into not a god as such but a Jungian collective consciousness.

You expect us to be rigorous with our proofs but you can dip, weave and cherry pick.  Anyway it’s unlikely to penetrate your prejudice I do this for the exercise.

[Robaroni]

Sloppy arguments!

Having the trait of giving one's life for the weak as many including myself are willing to do to save the sick child is in diametrical opposition to Darwin's hypothesis. It never benefits the group in giving one's life for the weak. It's not possible.

Isn’t even sloppy it’s retarded.

Evolution is a long term process, it has no goals, no agenda, no thought process. You can go around all your life throwing yourself into burning buildings to save babies and puppies to the adulation of others (well, in your case, mostly yourself), “Evolution” doesn’t give a fuck, it couldn’t care less, it doesn’t even have any aspect that could care if it wanted too.

Now there are reasons where this could work in a positive way for you genetically, the mothers around the area might think well he’s brave and liable to defend me, I’ll shag him, your reckless throw yourself in the fire gene is passed on, two weeks after shagging all the mothers, the fathers throw you into a burning hut and seal it up (yey). You are dead, but your genes carry on and so does evolution.

Looking after, a sick child could conceivably work in your favour, any mother who sees you acting so selflessly may figure you as a better parent than Ug in cave three who bashed his kids head in with a rock when it got sick.

The fact is that there are many subtle ways selection can work or it can be the blunt instrument of luck.

You don’t have to be the fittest, many people of African descent have sickle-cell anaemia, if both of your parents pass on the gene to you, your life is liable to be shorter and more painful, however if you have only one copy then the altered blood cells rupture when the malaria parasite enters, it can’t breed you don’t get malaria. The sickle-cell lottery! Thanks god.

Now, we have shown that love could reasonably be part of this and you have proved squat, your proof of god has metamorphosed into not a god as such but a Jungian collective consciousness.

You expect us to be rigorous with our proofs but you can dip, weave and cherry pick.  Anyway it’s unlikely to penetrate your prejudice I do this for the exercise.

Jura:

"Evolution is a long term process, it has no goals, no agenda, no thought process. You can go around all your life throwing yourself into burning buildings to save babies and puppies to the adulation of others (well, in your case, mostly yourself), “Evolution” doesn’t give a fuck, it couldn’t care less, it doesn’t even have any aspect that could care if it wanted too."

Absolutely correct! Evolution has no answer for human compassion.

Jura:
"Now there are reasons where this could work in a positive way for you genetically, the mothers around the area might think well he’s brave and liable to defend me, I’ll shag him"

She can't, you're dead. There is no way for you to pass on anything!

Jura:
"The fact is that there are many subtle ways selection can work or it can be the blunt instrument of luck."

This is a 'catch all' statement - evolution has the answer for everything, human compassion must be in there somewhere.

R

[Jura-Glenlivet]

Sloppy? retarded?

Worst case yet.

Columbo's on if you can't be bothered.

[Love]

 

Being 'smart" is nothing to be proud of.  Lots of criminals are 'smart'.   I can't tell you how many times I have heard about the high IQ's possessed by Bundy, Gacy, Manson, and so many more.  It would seem that in order to be a psycho criminal one would have to be a genius.
 There are a lot of miserable 'smart' people.  And there are a lot of so called 'stupid' people who lead rich lives and are well loved; because having a good heart is more important than having a good mind.
It's not the idiots who create most of the problems for the human race.  It is the well accomplished with their fancy college degrees; expensive haircuts and clothes.
 Stupid people can't create big problems.    Only brainy people can create big problems or be master criminals.  Stupid people can't enthrall the crowds with rhetoric of glory and create bizarre political movements or start wars.  Stupid people can't do white collar crime; which as I understand it costs society, in terms of money,  more than so called street crime.
"There once was a golden age because golden hearts beat in it.  If it returns it will be scarcely due to science."  Louis Imogen Guiney
Thank you for reading.

[Love]

Wanted to say hello to all! Hello, everybody!

[Love]

evolution is worthless except as a curiousity.    Applied mathematics=applied science.   A biochemist studying nucleotide chemistry using scientific method in the lab or field will come to the same conclusions whether they believe in evolution or not.  Ben Carson is a world class surgeon and a true genius; he knows more about biochemistry than any of us.  And he thinks that evolution is bullshit.  And he's right.


Mathematics is not the same thing as science.   The concept of 'theory' is useless in mathematics.
'

[Robaroni]

Being 'smart" is nothing to be proud of.  Lots of criminals are 'smart'.   I can't tell you how many times I have heard about the high IQ's possessed by Bundy, Gacy, Manson, and so many more.  It would seem that in order to be a psycho criminal one would have to be a genius.
 There are a lot of miserable 'smart' people.  And there are a lot of so called 'stupid' people who lead rich lives and are well loved; because having a good heart is more important than having a good mind.
It's not the idiots who create most of the problems for the human race.  It is the well accomplished with their fancy college degrees; expensive haircuts and clothes.
 Stupid people can't create big problems.    Only brainy people can create big problems or be master criminals.  Stupid people can't enthrall the crowds with rhetoric of glory and create bizarre political movements or start wars.  Stupid people can't do white collar crime; which as I understand it costs society, in terms of money,  more than so called street crime.
"There once was a golden age because golden hearts beat in it.  If it returns it will be scarcely due to science."  Louis Imogen Guiney
Thank you for reading.

I agree that compassion makes a better world but "smart" doesn't have to be destructive, it depends on who wields it. The fact that Bundy could manipulate people doesn't make "smart" a bad thing. What about Sabin and the oral pill for Polio? If you lived through that era as I did parents were terrified of Polio and the work of Salk and Sabin was seen as a blessing to mankind.

I think science has its place but the trouble is too many people who don't truly understand it have made it a God. Now we have Dawkins with his nonsense about the "selfish" gene. People who don't understand science hold onto this as though it was absolute truth. 'God doesn't exist, read Dawkins, that's proof!' Science has, unfortunately, closed many people's minds.

Here's what prominent scientists think of Dawkins:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mindbloggling/201105/how-generation-was-misled-about-natural-selection

"Reaction of Biologists

Other than those who profited from Dawkins' popularization of their ideas, most leading evolutionary biologists, particularly Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, Richard Lewontin, Ernst Mayr, Carl Woese, Freeman Dyson, and Stuart Kauffman, were unreceptive to Dawkins' ideas. Ernst Mayr, one of the foremost evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, claimed that the replicator notion is "in complete conflict with the basics of Darwinian thought". I once had the interesting experience of driving Ernst Mayr, who was almost 100 years old at the time, from UCLA to a place an hour and a half away. He was charming, but the mere mention of Dawkins unsettled him so much that I thereafter avoided discussion of anything related to him. Stuart Kauffman describes Dawkins' ideas as "impoverished", and claims that the replicator concept does not capture the essential features of the kind of structure that evolves through natural selection."

R

[Love]

Also, science requires mathematics but math doesn't require science.   The same with art.  Science requires art but art doesn't require science.


Grain alcohol goes a long way back.   Probably wouldn't be any such thing as agriculture if people didn't need copious amounts of fruit, potatoes, grain to make alcoholic beverages.    Whiskey (distilled spirits in general), I have been told was invented about 500 ad.   Liquor is a product of human creativity and trial and error; in other words 'science'.   I would say that consumption of alcohol is the most horrible scourge of the human race; the number one agency of human misery.  And it is a product of science.

[Love]

None of us are superior.   Intellect and talent are the cheapest commodities in the human experience.  If a person is a good person; and by that I mean they don't steal, practice extreme perversion or create mayhem, it has nothing to do with how smart or talented they are.


Consider those who work on a boat:  the smart ones are the ones who know how to swim.