I don't find this so shocking, but it does put the knife in the idea that Tom nad Peter have THE TRUTH, or, if they do, where they got it.

Once again, Christianity is shown to be incoherent and therefore invalid as a guide to conduct.

I worship a whale with 10" hind legs and I want a government subsidy.

"Darwin's theory of evolution... has, for those open to the possibilities, expanded our notions of God."

I'll say. Just about any creature is beatified once it is recognized as a "missing link", although I understand full-fledged divinity is reserved for common ancestors.

I'm curious. What is the Catholic Church's position on Evolution?

Heaven knows. They can't keep their minds focused for more than 15 minutes at a time, and probably no longer believe in anything they insisted on when I went through their mill.

But at that time, the dogma was that evolution by natural selection was an acceptable way of describing the natural world, as long as you believed that at some point God intervened to insert an immortal soul into each human.

When that happened -- whether case by case or by some sort of genetic intervention that was then inherited by all of us -- was unspecified.

As a practical matter, the schools used textbooks that were straight darwinism.

Harry:

Before we all die of coronaries from laughing hysterically at that teaching, would you care to venture a conjecture as to why primitive man suddenly began painting on cave walls?

Peter:

Primitive man, or Neandertals?

Jeff:

OK, I'll bite. Your choice and why does it make a difference?

Peter:

Neandertals are not primitive man. Yet (and I hope my memory isn't steering me wrong here) they painted on cave walls.

The reason I asked is that I wasn't quite sure what the question's point was.

You weren't quite sure? I have no idea what the question's point was.

However, the painters at Altamira and similar spots were Cro-Magnon, the date is too late for Neandertal.

Except that they co-existed.

Harry/Jeff:

The point of the question was to ask you to conjecture what in evolutionary theory could explain man's desire and capacity to create art.

Peter

I suppose that the question is a loaded one, designed to show that evolution can't account for human behaviour such as cave art, and that the most obvious or default explanation for it ought to be 'God gave them the gift of art' or some such.

However, I shall take your question at face value and assume you mean 'what are the anthropological or sociobiological theories about why early humans painted on caves and rocks?'

There are lots of theories, and most of them are probably wrong. However, some or a combination of them may be right. They include:

1) utilitarian explanations - ie. theories that the paintings had some sort of use, such as teaching the science of hunting to children. I think these theories have been largely invalidated though, since lots of paintings such as those of the Magdalenians depict animals that weren't hunted...and anyway, the best way to learn to hunt is to practice it.

2) that they have some religious/shamanistic/magical symbolism - but again, this is oversimplistic, since most early religous art places the emphasis on man and sacrifice, but Magdalenian cave art barely features man at all - it's all horses, mammoths, reindeer, wolves etc.

3) that there is no obvious utility or religious significance - ie. that they just did it for pleasure, to pass the time, for the sake of having communal possessions, or a community focal point, or perhaps because man just likes to make sense of his environment and impose order on his world.

It's an interesting question. Evolutionists don't claim to have the answers, but there are plenty of good guesses.

Brit:

Thank you. Number 3 strikes me as the most plausible, but that of course leads to other questions.

Are all questions that call darwinism into question as a complete, self-contained explanation of existence "loaded" in your mind?

Well yes, since it doesn't claim to be a complete, self-contained explanation of all existence - only a few aspects of existence.

Brit:

Tell that to Mayr and Dawkins.

I don't need to; they already know.

Certianly Mayr knows his limits, but even Dawkins with his memes doesn't presume to say anything about the billions of years before the first appearance of life on earth; or about the size and nature of the universe; or how and why we have the physical laws that we do; or how and why 'matter' exists; or what the universe will be like a million years from now; or whether Citizen Kane is better than Star Wars; or whether Cezanne or Renoir had a bigger impact on popular 20th Century art tastes; or....

Brit -- I thought we were beyond thinking that every trait needed an evolutionarily beneficial explanation. Art doesn't kill us, so why not have art?

David:

How could we get past it? Why would species develop traits and behaviors that are evolutionarily neutral if all survival is driven by adaptation or maladaptation?

Brit:

Indeed, one of the things that makes the scientifically minded dubious is that Darwin can't even offer a theory for how life arises in the first instance.

That's the old style, teleological view of evolution that imagines a process of advancement of which we are the summit. We must reject such chauvinism, you specieist.

All we have is a pool of cells, some of which are agglomerated into bigger organisms and some of which are not, that share some genetic material but also have unique genetic material. Except in their ability to survive, we cannot say that any one cell type is "better" than any other cell type, and even that is a chimera because it all depends on a stable environment. Given different environments, different cells are more fit.

Every once in a while, the genetic material changes. Every once in a while, this happens to a zygote. Every once in a while, such a zygote meets another zygote and forms a gamete. Every once in a while, the organism that develops from that gamete reproduces, if, along with many other uncertainties, the change allows for the survival of that organism to maturity. The change will survive and propagate so long as, given the environment in which it finds itself, it is not incompatible with survival and propagation.

Darwin and the early Darwinists did believe that nature, red in tooth and claw, was so harsh that only changes that brought about real benefits would survive at all, and that resources were so scarce that organisms benefiting from these changes would drive out and extinguish the old style organisms from which they arose. This leads to the idea of "survival of the fittest", rather than the modern "death of the unfit", and contributed to the idea that, even with evolution, we are the jewels of creation.

We now scoff at such pretensions.

David:

"I thought we were beyond thinking that every trait needed an evolutionarily beneficial explanation. Art doesn't kill us, so why not have art?"

Agreed.

OJ

"...one of the things that makes the scientifically minded dubious is that Darwin can't even offer a theory for how life arises in the first instance."

I see, and do these 'scientifically-minded' chaps also apply this commendable doubt on Newtonian physics becuase it 'can't offer a theory for how life arises'? Or relativity for the same reason. Or electronics, geology, music theory, military history....?

There are actually lots of theories about the origins of life. See the chapter in your copy of Mayr. But their truth or falsehood does not affect the validity of the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution.

These people need to agree on having a separate Philosophy class so they can debate this as much as they want.

But keep science class for science. That means the scientific method.

David:

So now we're all agreed that evolution is entirely random and survival pressures play no role?

Brit:

None of them are biological theories.

Chris:

Agreed. Stop teaching both Darwin and Creation.

OJ --

I'm still back at the whole thing is trivial.

It might help if the critics actually bothered to read Darwin.

"Survival of the fittest" is Spencer. Spencer fancied himself a theorist of biology but no biologist today accepts him.

Darwin emphasized conflict, but if you read him you will find that he acknowledged cooperation as well. (And wrote a two-volume book about it before he died, too.)

"De Candolle, in an eloquent passage, has declared that all nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature. Seeing the contented face of nature, this may at first well be doubted; but reflection will inevitably prove it to be true. The war, however, is not constant, but recurrent in a slight degree at short periods, and more severely at occasional more distant periods; and hence its effects are easily overlooked. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied in most cases with tenfold force. As in every climate there are seasons, for each of its inhabitants, of greater and less abundance, so all annually breed; and the moral restraint which in some small degree checks the increase of mankind is entirely lost. Even slow breeding mankind has doubled in twenty-five years; and if he could increase his food with greater ease, he would doble in less time. But of animals without artificial means, the amount of food for each species must, on an average, be constant, whereas the increase of all organisms tends to be geometrical, and in a vast majority of cases at an enormous ratio. ...Where man has introduced plants and animals into a very new and favourable country, there are many accounts in how surprisingly few years the whole country has become stocked with them. This increase would necessarily stop as soon as the country was fully stocked... Malthus on man should be studied; and all such cases as those of the mice in La Plata. of the cattle and horses when first turned out in South America of the birds by our calcualtion, &c., should be well considered. Reflect on the enormous multiplying power inherent and anually in action in all animals; reflect on the countless seeds scattered by a hundred ingenious contrivances, year after year, over the whole face of the land; and yet we have every reason to suppose that the average percentage of each of the inhabitants of a country usually remains constant. Finally, let it be borne in mind that this average number of individuals...in each country is kept up by recurrent struggles against other species or against external nature..."