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re: Tim Tebow is such a good person
Posted on 2/12/18 at 11:30 am to Teague
Posted on 2/12/18 at 11:30 am to Teague
quote:
You don't have to see or touch something to have actual evidence it exists. "Love" itself is a social construct to explain emotions controlled by chemicals that have evolved and proven beneficial to the human (and some other social species') species. We can prove those emotions, chemicals, and actions exist. "Love" is just the concept we use to explain them, mainly because we weren't scientists when we began to explain it.
quote:
Your argument is going to be that you "feel" god therefore you know he exists, just like love. And, I'll agree that "god" is similar to love in that it is a social construct that we attribute to emotions and needs.
Actually, that wasn't where I was going to go.
Where I was going to go was that while you are correct that the release of oxycontin and dopamine in our brains that builds neurological connections that science explains as "love." But the emotion of love goes way beyond the release of those chemicals. If your explanation is true, then how do you account for the emotion of "love" going beyond rational and even into behavior that compromises an individuals fitness, in the terms of what Mr. Darwin taught us? I'm talking things like homosexual love or people risking their life to save a pet because they "love" it. If love is simply biochemical, shouldn't natural selection eliminate these types of behaviors from the population?
I'm not saying the things you state aren't real. I'm saying that Love is a much more complex than the simple release of certain neurotransmitters from the pituitary.
2
Posted on 2/12/18 at 11:49 am to Lonnie Utah
And I will add this. As a scientist and a christian, I have a strong belief that God reveals scientific discoveries as human kind is ready for them. Primitive cultures did not have the basic scientific understanding to comprehend DNA or astrophysics. These things were not revealed to us until we were ready.
Many, many moons ago, when I was in grad school the evolution class, as part of their curriculum, was required to stage a series of debates on the great topics of evolution. One of these, predictably, was creationism vs evolution. The debates where held weekly in-front of the entire biology department and all in attendance got to vote on the "winners" at the end of the debate. Now given the venue and audience you might be surprised when I tell you that creationism won every one of these debates while I was there.
Now I tell that story because one of the best arguments to bridge the gap between religion and science I've ever heard was made during one of those debates. Lets, for a moment, get away from the literal translation in Genesis and assume that the story of the universe and human evolution is not that in the Bible but the one that science has presented. Does that make it any less miraculous? No it doesn't.
It is a well documented scientific fact that we cannot see beyond a certain time in the universes creation and we do not know what existed before the creation of the universe. We also do not know the mechanism for creation of life itself. It is an interesting coincidence that all of these can be read in congruence with a universe created by god as described in Genesis. Maybe not a verbatim translation of the JK version, but hey, the whole text has been translated numerous times from various languages so we're splitting hairs there anyway.
And furthermore, for all sciences bluster, it sill cannot prove that god DOESN'T exist. They can prove what they can see and observe in the universe and world, but none of it DISPROVES the existence of God. People can choose to believe or not. God is ok with this. It's why he gave us free will. He loves all of us, and wants the best for us, but he wants us to come to him on our own.
Many, many moons ago, when I was in grad school the evolution class, as part of their curriculum, was required to stage a series of debates on the great topics of evolution. One of these, predictably, was creationism vs evolution. The debates where held weekly in-front of the entire biology department and all in attendance got to vote on the "winners" at the end of the debate. Now given the venue and audience you might be surprised when I tell you that creationism won every one of these debates while I was there.
Now I tell that story because one of the best arguments to bridge the gap between religion and science I've ever heard was made during one of those debates. Lets, for a moment, get away from the literal translation in Genesis and assume that the story of the universe and human evolution is not that in the Bible but the one that science has presented. Does that make it any less miraculous? No it doesn't.
It is a well documented scientific fact that we cannot see beyond a certain time in the universes creation and we do not know what existed before the creation of the universe. We also do not know the mechanism for creation of life itself. It is an interesting coincidence that all of these can be read in congruence with a universe created by god as described in Genesis. Maybe not a verbatim translation of the JK version, but hey, the whole text has been translated numerous times from various languages so we're splitting hairs there anyway.
And furthermore, for all sciences bluster, it sill cannot prove that god DOESN'T exist. They can prove what they can see and observe in the universe and world, but none of it DISPROVES the existence of God. People can choose to believe or not. God is ok with this. It's why he gave us free will. He loves all of us, and wants the best for us, but he wants us to come to him on our own.
This post was edited on 2/12/18 at 11:53 am
Posted on 2/12/18 at 12:19 pm to Lonnie Utah
quote:
how do you account for the emotion of "love" going beyond rational and even into behavior that compromises an individuals fitness, in the terms of what Mr. Darwin taught us? I'm talking things like homosexual love or people risking their life to save a pet because they "love" it. If love is simply biochemical, shouldn't natural selection eliminate these types of behaviors from the population?
I explain that by saying that we didn't evolve as individuals. We evolved in social groups.
So, an individual risking his life to save other members is good for the whole group. Even if that person dies, he's helping to save others in the group. Since these groups were small, family groups, they shared much of the same DNA. So, most likely, the individuals that are saved also carry the same traits that make them prone to this savior behavior. Therefore, as Mr. Darwin taught us, the traits that were most advantageous to survival (for the group, not the necessarily the individual) carried on.
All that said, there are many traits that are not necessarily always best. They may be best in some cases, but fail in others. For example, having the instinct to protect offspring from a jackal is almost certainly driven by the same trait/dna as having the desire to protect offspring from a pride of lions. So, while it may be terribly disadvantageous in some cases, if that individual comes across more hungry jackals than lions, overall, it's still a trait that benefits survival of the species.
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