The God Delusion

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Then if it's evolutionary, it must promote the copying of the gene which encodes that response (or makes any given response more likely), and is selfish since it promotes an increase in its own frequency, at the expense of other alleles in the population.

For about the tenth time, that is YOUR position: evolutionary = selfish. That is not the position of many scientists has I have shown by repeated citations.

Your arrogance and myopic views are constantly on display here.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
I thought we were talking about the evolution of altruism. There is no requirement that it did not happen in our progenitors.

If abuse is all you can muster, why do you bother posting at all?

That's not what your god Dawkins is saying, unless you think Lucy lived in a village.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
CONTEXT?!? You have [b]GOT to be kidding! Of all people, YOU are talking about context?!? Louis, baby, that is rich![/b]

Got a point?

I'm all for context. You can't tell me that two contradictory exclusive statements are both correct though. For example. I am black. I am white. This IS NOT contextual - I must be one or the other! When talking about context specific words like "recent", "ancient", "near", "far" etc. then they must be defined. For example, a historian talking about "ancient" artifacts, may be talking about something 5,000 years old. A paleontologist talking about ancient fossils may be talking about something 500,000,000 years old! That's five orders of magnitude difference!

Originally posted by no1marauder
For about the tenth time, that is YOUR position: evolutionary = selfish. That is not the position of many scientists has I have shown by repeated citations.

And I'll ask you again, how can a non-selfish behaviour (one that promotes the reproduction of another organism which doesn't share the same genes) evolve, since it promotes copies of other, rival, genes, at the cost of its own rate of reproduction?

Originally posted by no1marauder
That's not what your god Dawkins is saying, unless you think Lucy lived in a village.

Or a small social group;

" Although there is considerable debate over how large the degree of sexual dimporphism was between males and females of A. afarensis, it is likely that males were relatively larger than females. If observations on the relationship between sexual dimorphism and social group structure from modern great apes are applied to A. afarensis then these creatures most likely lived in small family groups containing a single dominant male and a number of breeding females.

There are no known stone-tools associated with A. afarensis, and the present archeological record of stone artifacts only dates back to approximately 2.5 Ma."

From wiki article on "lucy"

Originally posted by no1marauder
For about the tenth time, that is YOUR position: evolutionary = selfish. That is not the position of many scientists has I have shown by repeated citations.

Your arrogance and myopic views are constantly on display here.

How is making a simple statement about evolutionary theory arrogance exactly? Does this make you arrogant every time you talk about law?

Originally posted by scottishinnz
How is making a simple statement about evolutionary theory arrogance exactly? Does this make you arrogant every time you talk about law?

You are arrogant because, as I have shown repeatedly, you pretend that your position is the ONLY one scientists hold. This is either A) A deliberate falsehood; or B)Incredibly arrogant. Take your pick.

Originally posted by no1marauder
You are arrogant because, as I have shown repeatedly, you pretend that your poisition is the ONLY one scientists hold. This is either A) A deliberate falsehood; or B)Incredibly arrogant. Take your pick.

No, just the majority view.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
And I'll ask you again, how can a non-selfish behaviour (one that promotes the reproduction of another organism which doesn't share the same genes) evolve, since it promotes copies of other, rival, genes, at the cost of its own rate of reproduction?

How many times do we have to go over this? A) Your definition of selfish is non-standard; B) Gene centered theory is incorrect and simplistic - human behavior is far more influenced by group and cultural dynamics; C) Altruistic behavior exists in reality so if your theory says it can't exist the flaw is in your theory; D) There is ample evidence in the real world that people do what you deem "unconditional altruistic" acts without ANY expectation of reciprocal benefit (ask 'em).

What else?

Originally posted by scottishinnz
No, just the majority view.

Perhaps among biologists. But certainly not among those fields of scientific discipline most concerned with human behavior.

Originally posted by no1marauder
How many times do we have to go over this? A) Your definition of selfish is non-standard; B) Gene centered theory is incorrect and simplistic - human behavior is far more influenced by group and cultural dynamics; C) Altruistic behavior exists in reality so if your theory says it can't exist the flaw is in your theory; D) There is ample evidence in the r ...[text shortened]... uistic" acts without ANY expectation of reciprocal benefit (ask 'em).

What else?

SO you're not going to answer me how a behaviour which you say has evolutionary benefit came to exist then?

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Or a small social group;

" Although there is considerable debate over how large the degree of sexual dimporphism was between males and females of A. afarensis, it is likely that males were relatively larger than females. If observations on the relationship between sexual dimorphism and social group structure from modern great apes are applied to A. a ...[text shortened]... of stone artifacts only dates back to approximately 2.5 Ma."

From wiki article on "lucy"

That's irrelevant; Dawkins was talking about humans who lived in villages. That certainly wouldn't include anything but modern homo sapiens.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Perhaps among biologists. But certainly not among those fields of scientific discipline most concerned with human behavior.

Humans, and human behaviour, evolved just the same as everything else.

Originally posted by no1marauder
That's irrelevant; Dawkins was talking about humans who lived in villages. That certainly wouldn't include anything but modern homo sapiens.

Backtracking now?

Originally posted by scottishinnz
SO you're not going to answer me how a behaviour which you say has evolutionary benefit came to exist then?

I have many times in this thread i.e. altruist groups would have a evolutionary advantage over non-altruistic ones. Your response is that altruism is impossible because you say so.