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On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
Mike Miller wrote:
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.
I wouldn't say that questions like "what is the universe here for" are
"improper," but I would say that we have no method for verifying that any
proposed answer to that question is correct.
Your method is to simply accept one of the proposed answers as the truth.
I see little merit in that approach. There are many other answers that
are at least as sensible as yours, yet you reject all those answers.
There is no logical basis for doing that. You like your answer, so you're
sticking with it.
Once you've decided that it is God that created the universe and gave
meaning to life, you then pretend to know much more about God and his
wishes for humanity and so on. You don't know such things. You just have
some answers that someone made up and you're going to stick with them.
It's really a completely lame approach. Your religious approach is no
better than any other religious approach and it certainly isn't as honest
as simply admitting, as I do, that you don't know why the universe exists
and you don't know of any special "meaning of life." You don't know any
better than I do. You're just pretending.
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.
Dawkins had some original ideas on the topic, I believe. He was certainly
a popularizer.
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.
One of the ideas is that we are competing with one another to be the most
generous in order to show off our greatness and attract mates.
http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/handicap/handicap_principle.html
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/gilbert.roberts/Roberts1998.pdf
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."
I don't believe that a suggested purpose to life like "doing good for
others" (I really said "doing good things" - however that is defined for
you) is a true or given purpose. It is appealing to me, probably because
I grew up with Christianity not with Hinduism (where helping the poor is
sometimes frowned upon).
Why would people want to be like Wilberforce or Mother Theresa? Well,
they are world famous and highly respected people, right? Apparently
people don't want to be like them in the sense of giving up all worldly
possessions because anyone could do that, if they really wanted to, but
they don't do it, so I conclude that they don't want to. Giving it all up
is taking a big chance. You might never get on the cover of Time and you
might be forgotten dying of some infectious disease in a hut in Africa
somewhere. But you might become world famous and win a Nobel Peace prize
and get your picture in the newspaper and everyone will love you and say
that you are great. People want to gamble only if they know they will
win.
Individual psychology can play into it, of course. Maybe Wilberforce and
Mother Theresa were both homosexuals who believed that God would punish
them unless they made extraordinary sacrifices.
Why is it evolutionary advantageous to find this supreme pleasure in
being self-sacrificial? Look at people around you. Who is truly happy?
Most people seem pretty happy to me. I think married people with families
might be happier on most days than single people living alone.
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.
Huh? "all these people" -- were you there or have you seen photos? I
think you're romanticizing and imagining things.
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?
I don't know, but not everyone has this problem of a need for purpose.
Some people are busy enough getting food to eat that they don't think
about it very much.
Let me guess, you're going to say that it is because of God or a lack of
God in their lives that they have these feelings. People have been saying
that for thousands of years and trying to impose Christianity on millions
of people all over the world and our problems are the same as always.
Mike
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