Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [RELIGION] creation myths

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
> > Mike Miller wrote:
> >
> > > I thought I just explained it.  The purpose of life is to make more 
> > > life.
> >
> >
> > I think you are confusing function and purpose.
>
>
> There really is no "purpose" of the sort you have when there is a 
> designer.  Evolution works by trial and error and success is defined by 
> fitness, which is defined by survival and reproduction.  So we were 
> essentially "designed" by eons of selection to be optimized for 
> reproduction.  We were therefore designed by natural selection processes 
> for the purpose of reproduction.

Yes, but then you are basically saying that your answers about "purpose" 
were not the answers to the unanswerable questions of Popper.

I still say that you are ducking the question by defining it to not be a 
proper question.


> > There is a deep inner innate altrusism in most human beings (I think 
> > that the most wicked humans simply bury these desires) that goes 
> > beyond mere propagation of life.
>
>
> Altruism is one of the most-studied features of social organisms in the 
> past 45 years or so.  Read Hamilton and Trivers, for example.  Here's a 
> few ideas about it to get you started:
>
> http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/bgnews/2005/msg00094.html

That is very interesting, and I will have to look more at this person's 
writings.  I have come across this "selfish gene" concept before, but I 
always thought it was Dawkin's idea.  I guess I was wrong on this.

But I don't think that it offers anything like a full explanation for 
the kind of altruism that William Wilberforce or Mother Theresa shows. 
The kind of altrusism that Trivers talks about is that displayed to 
close genetic cousins, or a kind of reciprical back scratching activity.

Now I might see Wilberforces or Theresa's actions as a kind of aberation 
- perhaps the unselfish gene going too far.  And certainly as far as I 
know neither of them have any immediate offspring, so in a sense 
evolution is truly doing its job properly and removing them from the 
gene pool.

But what I don't understand is how everyone else looks upon their lives 
as being the life that  in retrospect we all wish we had lived.  Even 
you said in an earlier post that one of the purposes of life was to do 
good to others.  You are acknowledging that there is a kind of supreme 
pleasure that comes from performing genuinely altrusistic acts that 
seems to transcend "helping ones kin" or "I'll be nice to you so I can 
get something back."

Why is it evolutionary advantageous to find this supreme pleasure in 
being self-sacrificial?  Look at people around you.  Who is truly happy?

For example, Michael jokes about his lack of sex life.  We think that if 
only we could find a good woman, then life would be bliss.  But those 
who live that life find that the satisfaction it brings ultimately is 
fleeting.  The same is true of those who seek power or money.  Even 
those who seek the intellectual pleasures find in the end that it does 
not give the ultimate joy.

But look at those who live the self-sacrificial life.  Even at the very 
ends of their lives, even if they are in pain because of illness, even 
if they are mildly senile - all these people have a vibrancy emanating 
from their eyes that reveals that they just know that they have lived a 
life that is worth living.

Where does this desire for purpose come from?  And why is it that the 
highest personal satisfaction is only achieved when one feels that ones 
life really has had a purpose?

Stephen

--

Stephen Montgomery-Smith
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen

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