Let me apologize for my behavior on my last post. I was a bit upset over something that had nothing to do with what you posted or even anything here at IF, but I ended up taking my frustration out on you. However, that's no excuse, so please accept my apology.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

I don't know if it was the same species you're referring to, but a few months ago Scientific American had a very interesting article about ravens and how smart they really are. Matter of fact, my wife and I were talking about this several days ago. When we travel around our place in the Upper, where I am now, we see ravens all the time on the roads going after road kill. The older birds know enough to just step slightly off the highway when they see a car or truck coming, but the younger ones tend to fly off, probably returning shortly later. IOW, the flee instinct with the older ravens is being trumped by their knowledge that the car or truck will stay on the highway.

OK, so it's not exactly rocket science, but it obviously does involve some thought process that goes beyond mere instinct and conditioning.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Accepted. All is well.

I think Evolution is not directed upward. Evolution does not produce perfection. It just produces what works.

It is the natural selection of traits most adapted for survival in changed conditions. A major factor in Evolution is the fact that Earth has suffered 7 major mass extinctions either from impact catastrophes, volcanism (tectonic winter), CO2/Methane induced global warming episodes, climate fluctuations, Ice Ages including two separate stages of total or near total global glaciation (the First Cryogenic Age and Second Cryogenic Age which twice extinguished all but microbial life in the ocean pockets.

Evolution does follow natural laws of instability of Nucleotide links in DNA leading to frequent mutations. Most mutations either fail to survive birth or hatching or fail to compete successfully. A tiny percentage of mutants prove better adapted and survive. Impose on this major climate shifts and global catastrophes and natural selection is wide open to fill a bunch of recently vacated niches. Remember that Evolution never produces perfection. It only produces organisms that can successfully adapt to changed conditions. It produced speed and acute responses to make antelopes survive. It produced size and strength to make Elephants successful. It produced powerful claws and teeth to make Tigers, Grizzly Bears, wolves, and hyenas. It produced intelligence and social behaviour that made dogs, lions, hyenas, ants, hornets, and humans successful.

Mankind survived and prospered due to an unprecedented series of increases in brain size and complexity. This was more likely selected out because man was not strong, fast, clawed, or fanged. Man had to face drying out of East Africa. He had to leave the safety of the forest for the high risk of predators on the open Savannahs and Steppes and eventually desert. Humans who formed cohesive social groups, intelligence, refined perception, planning, and language (communication) survived better than humans who were less intelligent, less social, and less forward looking. Gradually over 7 million years, humans were repeatedly selected by the Ice Age Climate changes, drying out of Africa, the volcanic eruption of Mount Toba 75,000 years ago all selected out the more intelligent, rational, and better communicators over the lesser ones.

Because of the rapid changes in climate and ecology of East Africa, humans had to evolve those cognitive traits relatively fast, as well as the bipedal gait that allowed greater vision in high grass and bushes, and the freeing of the arms-hands for carrying babies, food, and weapons. So in a mere 5 or 6 million years hominid apes developed the intelligence of our board members with 1300 cc brains. We started out 6 million years ago with a 500-600 cc brain like our common chimp-human ancestor.

Our rapid evolution of brain, communication, skilled hand movements, and bipedal gait did not lead to perfection. It left us dominant in the world but we had to deal with a too small pelvic opening for the larger headed babies. Uprightness was too upright. Our spines are the same basic design of all quadrupeds. The soft disk material, the stabilising ligaments, and the weight on the vertebrae are not sufficient to our upright posture. The result is disk herniation, vertebral fractures with spinal compression, paraplegia, or quadriplegia, chronic sometimes disabling back and neck pain, with a neck that is easily bent causing paralysis and/or death.

Our hip joints were fine if we had 4 of them but two joints to support the entire upper body placed heavy wear and tear on the ball and socket joints. The frequency of hip fractures, hip dislocations, and arthritis requiring hip replacement surgery are directly the dues we paid for walking upright. Knee joints parallel the frequency of hips. Remember that in bipedal gait the entire weight is on only one hip joint, one knee, and one foot at any given moment when walking long distances.

The much better engineered bipedal gait of a Tyrannosaur or Velociraptors makes a bloody hell of a better design for bipedalism. In these dinos, the spine is held nearly horizontal which lets the spine do its real thing, turning and bending safely. The long evolution of larger dinosaurs was over many more millions of years producing a heavier, more stable hip joint. The dino gait also utilised partial flexion of the knee so that muscles rather than bone bore most of the weight. Their fee were basically strong toes and metatarsals with the ankle joint merely being a second "knee" supported more by muscles and ligaments and not the bones. If the comet had not struck, perhaps Therapod dinosaurs like Velociraptors or T. rex might have evolved intelligence rivalling man's with a closer to perfect body design. Of course humans would have never evolved in that scenario.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

Addendum to my above post. To me the fact of Evolution has nothing to do with God. I see no conflict in accepting the fact of Evolution and debating the mechanisms and also believing in some kind of god, conscious or non-conscious. Where it conflicts with Christianity as in the USA, it does not conflict with god belief but in the clearly fictional fables called Genesis in the Bible. Most Christians in my region believe in God and accept Evolution as they do gravity, plate tectonics, modern astronomy, the Heliocentric Solar System, and the existence of billions of galaxies. A majority here also have no conflict with biological neurocognition whether or not they believe in souls. They compartmentalise religious belief in the faith circuits and science in the rational, analytical, sceptical, and science circuits.

The former director of the Human Genome Project is a Christian who has no conflict with genes, mutation, and selection.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

You have accepted the idealized Christian view of perfection. Perfection is what works. This is a systemic universe and every system within it is perfect.

“The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” (James Jeans)

Time is the movement between the birth of an idea and it fulfillment. The movement is not linear or predetermined, but “wavy” or “fuzzy.” The picture only becomes clear when we stand back: By whatever name you call it—"God," "Brahman” the "Ground of All Being," or "Quantum Consciousness"—it appears that the movement has been in the general direction of the One making local representations of Itself.

Neo-Darwinism’s absolute dependence on upward causation leaves too much open to interpretation. So much so, that it has been reduced to a dogma that needs to be defended out of the guilt of not being able to live up to its demands.

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"Esse est percipii."

Maybe you can clarify the above. What are you referring to by "neo-Darwinism", who is supposedly using it, and who's "guilt" are you referring to?

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Evolution is the physical manifestation of spiritual advancement.

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Only Love Prevails,
Don