Are we Lords of Creation or simply deluded?

[Michael_Stones]

We're an odd lot - humans that is - aren't we. During a recent sojourn into the Canadian bush, miles from any sign of so-called civilization, with bears and moose as nearest neighbors, and when the 'Johny Walker Wisdom' (to use Leonard Cohen's phrase) was running high, discussion got round to the topic of what would make humans seem most distinct from other species when viewed from the perspective of a dispassionate observer from another universe. In the end, the answers devolved to two main characteristics:

1. Humans have the least compunction about killing members of our own and other species (and are the most skilled in doing so);
2. Humans have the greatest capacity for self-delusion, which is a distinctive manifestation of advanced cognition.

These two characteristics seem to feed off each other.

The following afternoon, with the effects of Johny's elixir finally dissipated, conversation resumed on that topic. The consensus about the former night's conclusions, however, remained intact. Are others on this forum sympathetic to these musings or were we were way off target?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Michael,

It is slightly less lonely now! I'm so glad to hear your fascinating discussion on our distinctiveness from other creatures.

We're an odd lot - humans that is - aren't we. During a recent sojourn into the Canadian bush, miles from any sign of so-called civilization, with bears and moose as nearest neighbors, and when the 'Johny Walker Wisdom' (to use Leonard Cohen's phrase) was running high, discussion got round to the topic of what would make humans seem most distinct from other species when viewed from the perspective of a dispassionate observer from another universe. In the end, the answers devolved to two main characteristics:

1. Humans have the least compunction about killing members of our own and other species (and are the most skilled in doing so);
2. Humans have the greatest capacity for self-delusion, which is a distinctive manifestation of advanced cognition.

These two characteristics seem to feed off each other.

The following afternoon, with the effects of Johny's elixir finally dissipated, conversation resumed on that topic. The consensus about the former night's conclusions, however, remained intact. Are others on this forum sympathetic to these musings or were we were way off target?

Michael, congratulations for arriving! At last enough Johnny Walker Wisdom broke the spell! This, again, is my poem from some years back on this subject. Essentially we all walk around in our own overlapping complex of bubbles of related fields of delusion, These are constantly consuming other delusions or breaking up to make new ones. We are linked by common bubbles and separated by others. I call this, "The Grand Delusionorium", the complex bubble of delusion that includes us all. To best introduce the poem, let me remind you of the ancient Towers of Babel, in what became Babylon. The following is a black and white photograph, (sorry Nicolas, no color then) of the pandemonium when God made everyone speak different languages so the people could no longer build the tower! Each man, now was limited in his own bubble of language, so to speak.

Note that the words in the poem are collapsed together to, (initially at least), achieve incoherence for example,

"Wehobblbent" is of course, We hobble, bent!

Engraving The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré (1865) Public domain Image from Wikipedia



The Grand Delusionorium

Howfar Havwegon
Fromthetime ofBabylon?
Wehobblbent fromnowon
Mazes ofdiversion

Electoniscorium!
Legstoheaven sensorium
PC decorium
Rivers Arsenicorium

Silicon Salvatorium!
Ape tohumanromanroad
Stoplight Righturnorium

Logarithmic Delusionorium!
Thisponzischeme mustimplode
Bybasic mathmatorium


May 21 2001

© Asher David Kelman



In the Bible story of the Tower Of Babylon, ancient Babylon threw the resources of its Empire to the construction of a massive tower to rise high above the ground, past the sky, to the heavens. This would be the greatest achievemnt of man, conquering the only remaining power, God! This was, for sure, an ambitous project; but do-able by Bible standards. After all, the pyramids showed that we could literally move mountains and make new ones!

On this occaision, however, God thought otherwise! (S)He solved the problem by scrambing the communications of the architects, engineers, craftsmen and workers, giving each man a different language. Soon building ground to a halt! In my poem, The Grand Delusionorium too, this is replicated. My interference with written language arrests communication. Like the engineers' workers in Babylon, all are present, but cannot express thoughts, intent or needs. The comfortable visual interface is lost. This loss relates to our own delusional sense of competence. In fact we suffer a psychosic of pragmatic omnipotence over nature.

Asher

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Michael,

discussion got round to the topic of what would make humans seem most distinct from other species when viewed from the perspective of a dispassionate observer from another universe.

I have long believed that what distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species is that only it writes down what it plans to do. (This of course from a systems engineer!)

 

[Michael_Stones]

Loved the poem Asher. You'd referred to it in an earlier post but I hadn't seen it before. Living in bubbles because of language differences; also, tweaking human DNA in minor minor minor ways to produce those minor minor minor differences that we call ethnicity. The latter surely was the devil's masterwork: ethnic bubbles being a main source of slavery and wars, to mention just two effects.

Doug, we debated language in our inebriated discussion. Language, in oral or written forms, serves communication between members of our species and facilitates planning. Other species communicate in oral, visual, and other ways but, as you say, do not write it down. Or do they? If the purpose of writing is to leave a record to be understood with its originator no longer present, my dog does this by lifting his leg and piddling. The message to other dogs is clear: "I have been here and staked claim; disregard my claim at your peril!" The difference between writing and piddling is in form, with the purpose comparable (i.e., communication extended into the future). Also, not all human societies developed literacy. If dispassionate observer from another universe visited our planet a few centuries ago, it would have found that most humans used a range of mnemonic techniques to facilitate communication over extended time periods, with writing practiced only by a small minority. Does this argument make sense?

Cheers
Mike

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Mike,

Language, in oral or written forms, serves communication between members of our species and facilitates planning. Other species communicate in oral, visual, and other ways but, as you say, do not write it down. Or do they? If the purpose of writing is to leave a record to be understood with its originator no longer present, my dog does this by lifting his leg and piddling. . . .Does this argument make sense?

Absolutely. There may well be things that legitimately counter my assertion! The differences, as with all alleged "fundamental" differences in this matter, may well be only a matter of degree or implementation!

 

[Ken Tanaka]

Hello Michael,
Well I'll offer some thoughts around your musing conclusions for you to consider.

1. Humans have the least compunction about killing members of our own and other species (and are the most skilled in doing so);

Well this is certainly not true at all. Animals and insects harbor no sentimentality about other creatures. They have no sense of life, per se. If you're a carnivore your "compunction" is simply expressed by your intestinal sounds. Animals' only remorse over killing another animal comes when they've taken a beating getting it. No, the animal world is much more basic and brutal than humans.

2. Humans have the greatest capacity for self-delusion, which is a distinctive manifestation of advanced cognition.

Well, I'm not sure that this is true, either. The very concept of "delusion" centers on an anchoring notion of reality and possibility which, in humans, is arguably often itself a delusion. Animals, however, operate on instinct and learned behavior to stay alive and stay fed. Anyone looking at an adult mountain goat standing on what appears to be only air on a mountainside would certainly imagine that the goat is delusional, particularly when it runs up the side of said mountain. And who wouldn't wonder about an octopus' delusional state when it suddenly disappears by changing its skin color and pattern to precisely match its surroundings?

No, I think you and you sotted buddies may just have selected the wrong word for this "revelation". I think the word you need here is "imagination".

I will however offer a third, and perhaps far more reliably distinguishing, characteristic of humans; we're the only species prone to sitting in forests, getting inebriated, and pondering our place in the universe.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hello Michael,

I will however offer a third, and perhaps far more reliably distinguishing, characteristic of humans; we're the only species prone to sitting in forests, getting inebriated, and pondering our place in the universe.

Hi Ken,

This is clean and hilarious!

However beyond that, I'm not sure we know enough to say animals have no sentimentality. I'll take that as a possibility, but where does that statement come from. Isn't is also possible that such an idea is just part of our culture. After all it's commonly held that we are made in the image of God and above the "beasts". We all have seen animal behaviors that do suggest sentimentality. I have 3 so far:

1. An ape hanging on to her dead baby for days and the others in the troupe eventually distract her and bury it.
   
2. Families of Elephants meeting one another in the wild stroke the necks and trunk of each of the relatives.
   
3. Elephants finding elephant bones stopping to stroke these remains as if they are precious.

Asher

 

[Michael_Stones]

Hello Michael,

Animals and insects harbor no sentimentality about other creatures ... No, the animal world is much more basic and brutal than humans.

Anyone looking at an adult mountain goat standing on what appears to be only air on a mountainside would certainly imagine that the goat is delusional, particularly when it runs up the side of said mountain. And who wouldn't wonder about an octopus' delusional state when it suddenly disappears by changing its skin color and pattern to precisely match its surroundings?

No, I think you and you sotted buddies may just have selected the wrong word for this "revelation". I think the word you need here is "imagination".

I will however offer a third, and perhaps far more reliably distinguishing, characteristic of humans; we're the only species prone to sitting in forests, getting inebriated, and pondering our place in the universe.

Love your third characteristic, Ken. You're absolutely right, of course. Self-reflection, reflection about our place in the universe, the meaning of life, and so on, is something humans love to do. With or without help from Johnny Walker. But I wonder if some other species don't do something similar though on a different scale. One meaning of the term reflection is 'consideration of subject matter, idea, or purpose.' My dog, for example, on first seeing beavers swimming about building a damn simply sat there and observed, forgoing the run through the bush that is his daily delight. He made no attempt to approach, never made a sound, simply watched. Is that reflection? Tolman back in the 1920-50 era studied the behavior of satiated rats pulled though a maze in a trolley. The maze had food at the end, although the satiated rats were uninterested in eating when they got there. But when hungry, the rats learned the same maze with food at the end more quickly than rats without such prior exposure. They had learned something (developed a 'mental map' in Tolman's terms) simply through exposure at a time when survival needs were quiescent. Doesn't that meet outcome criteria for reflection?

About the first characteristic ... If my dog is attacked, he'll lie down and bare his jugular. The attacking dog will cease fighting. Wolves do the same. Most species have a trigger mechanism to stop within-species fighting according to Ardrey and other ethologists. Only when circumstances prevent the activation of that trigger does fighting continue to death (e.g., doves confined to a cage where escape by flight is impossible). Milgram showed such a trigger in humans but we're learned to circumvent it by killing with weapons and from afar (rarely does a human beat another to death with fist and feet). Infanticide and (to some extent) geronticide are present across species, but not genocide. And the latter on what a scale! Most other species kill only what they need to eat and survive, but humans are happy to decimate entire species for reasons unrelated to survival (e.g., fashion fur, aphrodisiac potions). I think many of us think we are gentler and less brutal than other species because we circumvent triggers against killing by getting others (usually low status and poorly paid people) to do the dirty work for us. But to a dispassionate observer from another universe, mightn't this thinking seem delusional?

The distinction between imagination and delusion is interesting. Imagination, in its basic sense, refers to the formation of a mental image of something not present. Your mountain goat and octopus might behave as you describe because they perceived partial information about impending threat (e.g., through a sound or fleeting glance) and imagined a probable predator. Surely that's adaptive not delusional. Delusion refers to persistent beliefs or behavior despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. What is overwhelming evidence to the contrary? That obviously depends on context. A dog much more terrified of thunder than other dogs, despite nothing harmful ever happening to it in a thunderstorm, has problems that might seem delusional. Most psychiatrists would disagree, claiming that delusion refers to an integrated and logically coherent set of beliefs and behaviors unsupported by evidence; not just to a persistent Pavlovian fear reflex. Most psychiatrists, of course, accept cultural status quo beliefs as proxy for overwhelming evidence, whereas renegade psychiatrists like RD Laing and sociologists like Thomas Szas thought otherwise in the 1960s. Likewise, the Darwinian academic Dawkins dissents, as illustrated by the title of his recent book The God Delusion, as do so many other scientists. Terror management theorists in modern day social psychology occupy an intermediate position, providing abundant evidence that denial of mortality is a pervasive motivator in human life, with the degree and denial of terror an individual difference characteristic. So a delusion depends on frame of reference. On balance, I think our conclusions about delusions, drunk and sober, are not so far off the mark but very much respect contrary minded opinion.

Cheers
Mike

 

[Asher Kelman]

Mike and Ken,

We we can put the so-called "God Delusion" of Dawkins aside. So let's, for now, accept coherent and internally logical religions as equivalent to proven fact. Even then we'd be mired in delusions!

Simply take school kids, put them in different "houses" within one school, "The House of Ellis" The House of Radcliffe" and so forth and have all sports activities divided along those lines, tribal identification arises and each group really get to believe in their own inherent special place in the standing of things. That is, to my mind delusional since the assignments in the first place were random. Similarly the passion of folk for an Oldsmobile over a Pontiac when they all have the same parts or any one of so many strongly held positions.

How about ideas like multivitamins where physicians tell patients they have no value to them in particular or patients who refuse treatment for a curable cancer because a preacher has said they should trust God instead. One can talk till one's blue in the face, and only two years later when the cancer is spread to the lungs and bones and the pain is intractable do they return, too late, for the original treatment.

For all these reasons, I'm convinced there must be something very useful about delusions, with some adaptive advantage, for the phenomenon to be so widespread! Discipline and cohesion is important in human groups dependent on each other so as to maximize resources and safety. Maybe infectious delusion within a tribe simply allows witch doctors to efficiently control tribe members without need for the Chief to use force of arms. This facility for delusion would then appear to be a survival advantage. However, with it, we also seem to be equally vulnerable to petty delusions seemingly unrelated to tribal advantage.

Asher

 

[Michael_Stones]

Mike and Ken,

How about ideas like multivitamins where physicians tell patients they have no value to them in particular or patients who refuse treatment for a curable cancer because a preacher has said they should trust God instead. One can talk till one's blue in the face, and only two years later when the cancer is spread to the lungs and bones and the pain is intractable do they return, too late, for the original treatment.

For all these reasons, I'm convinced there must be something very useful about delusions, with some adaptive advantage, for the phenomenon to be so widespread! Discipline and cohesion is important in human groups dependent on each other so as to maximize resources and safety. Maybe infectious delusion within a tribe simply allows witch doctors to efficiently control tribe members without need for the Chief to use force of arms. This facility for delusion would then appear to be a survival advantage. However, with it, we also seem to be equally vulnerable to petty delusions seemingly unrelated to tribal advantage.

Asher

Hi Asher

Dawkins and many others deal with the function of delusions to maintain social control. This social function of delusions can be both adaptive and maladaptive. However, the idea of delusions as a means of personal control was overlooked by Dawkins despite nearly 200 research papers in recent years that mainly support a specific theory: terror management theory.

Terror management researchers focus on one concern: terror about personal mortality. However, their reasoning generalizes to other delusions. The basic ideas are that (1) awareness of personal death is a terrifying prospect, (2) denial is the mechanism used too keep thoughts and feelings about personal mortality from awareness, (3) when presented with evidence that raises such awareness, strength of denial increases as evidenced by stronger entrenchment in those beliefs that kept such awareness at bay, and (4) individuals differ in the degree of terror induced and the level of denial expressed. Researchers found support for various aspects of the theory in areas as diverse as health, health promotion, religion, war & terrorism, patriotism, appreciation (or lack thereof) of modern art and (hopefully) photography, to mention just some topics.

The premise that denial contributes to persistent beliefs without strong empirical foundation goes back beyond Freud, who considered such behavior pathological and of sexual origin. The present research focus is not on the validity of those beliefs but factors that heighten or weaken their strength. Terror of personal mortality is one such factor, with the denial considered a normal (i.e., non-pathological) means to enhance personal control over the content of consciousness.

Hope this helps as a partial answer to your question.
Cheers
Mike

 

[Asher Kelman]

There may be something to the terror management school but they may be immodest about its reach! There's something special about units of currency coming from witch doctors: sin, prayers and blessings and the huge BINGO prize, salvation (which may or may not be different from immortality).

The remarkable thing about some monotheistic religious is forgiveness for sins. Here pardons are guaranteed by the highest authority. It's like a bank note being guaranteed by the Federal Government, hopefully in gold, (well, imagine that at least, LOL)!

I think the complex relationships between laws, sins, prayers, good deeds, charity, tithes, prayers, indulgences and pardons constitute are a self-contained market. Just the currencies are good and bad deeds, instead of money and all quantitated and controlled by one source of power, often allied to the state. So I think that this level of control, while possibly culturally constructed for mutual benefit, may have at its root an adaptive evolutionary and genetic basis. This would give social tribes of men more cohesiveness and allow larger groups to be controlled with less force.

So I wonder if there's not a genetic basis for thinking in terms of sin and blessing units separate from ideas on mortality.

Asher

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

So I wonder if there's not a genetic basis for thinking in terms of sin and blessing units separate from ideas on mortality.

I think it's mostly a cultural thing, not genetic. The Taliban (or other fundamentalists) think it's okay to kill others to achieve a personal position in paradise, the rest of the world thinks otherwise.

Bart

 

[Michael_Stones]

There may be something to the terror management school but they may be immodest about its reach!

So I wonder if there's not a genetic basis for thinking in terms of sin and blessing units separate from ideas on mortality.

Asher

Hi Asher

Fully agree with the thrust of your musings. Both Freud and the terror management guys are one dimensional, although for different reasons: Freud thought humans are in denial about sex; the terror management people think humans are in denial about existential obliteration. Different times, I guess. It would have been difficult in the Victorian era to keep personal experience with death on the back burner of consciousness. Have you seen examples of photos of nicely dressed infant corpses that bereaved parents kept on their sideboards? Most kids in the Western world go through childhood now without ever seeing a dead body.

Another difference between the two camps is that Freud built biopsychological monoliths based on the believed (by him) universality of sexual denial. The terror management guys are more modest, choosing to research mortality fears but not excluding other sources of terror. The core of their model is about how people construct meaning in life, with no reason known to me why denial shouldn't apply to blessings as well as mortality.

There is indirect evidence for the latter from findings that predictions and evaluations by optimists are less accurate than those by pessimists against objective outcomes - poor judgment being a likely manifestation of denial. (As an incurable optimist, I can relate to that ). Whether the source is genetic or experiential is open to debate, but moderately higher correlations between identical that fraternal twins on optimism/pessimism measures suggests a limited genetic influence.

Cheers
Mike

 

[Asher Kelman]

Another difference between the two camps is that Freud built biopsychological monoliths based on the believed (by him) universality of sexual denial. The terror management guys are more modest, choosing to research mortality fears but not excluding other sources of terror. The core of their model is about how people construct meaning in life, with no reason known to me why denial shouldn't apply to blessings as well as mortality.

There is indirect evidence for the latter from findings that predictions and evaluations by optimists are less accurate than those by pessimists against objective outcomes - poor judgment being a likely manifestation of denial. (As an incurable optimist, I can relate to that ). Whether the source is genetic or experiential is open to debate, but moderately higher correlations between identical that fraternal twins on optimism/pessimism measures suggests a limited genetic influence.

Thanks Mike,

Well it would make sense for a sense of reality to be tilted in favor of good outcomes so this will more likely allow experimentation with new ideas. So there is a marginal tendency to think there will be a positive outcome.

However, nothing effects our lives more the importance given to religious beliefs when a religion is in a period of what I'd call zealous fervor. I wonder whether or not this is a fatal flaw which will finally do us in! Never before did zealots have the power to kill so many people. Imagine, for example that a nuclear power falls to zealots who love matyrdom more than we value life?

What existential danger, besides an errant space rock hitting earth, holds such a risk of catastrophe for us? Well I guess one could hazard a guess that not enough damage would be done with 10-20 nuclear weapons. So maybe I'm concerned for nothing. In the long run, our civilization might not even notice the damage.

Asher

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

Lords of Delusion

We have developed sequencing maschines to build base pairs in a Lab. This is the fastest growing technology on the planet at the moment.

Today the "HeliScope" performs sequencing samples in parallel, the machine takes just one hour to read 1.3 billion of the chemical bases A, C, T, and G that make up a strand of DNA.

The Human Genome Project now works on the data they etablished over a 13 years period.

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/timeline.shtml

So far we thought to find the base pairs is all that is needed and how wrong have we been. It turned out that the egg plays a vital role in triggering a complex chemical reaction that so far no one understands, and that switches DNA on or of.

However, scientists injected a virus in a birds egg on purpose to reactivate dinosaur DNA, successfully I might add. The bird grew a tail like his dino ancestors had, that's not engouh. Now they grew chicken with Teeth shaped like those in crocodiles, successfully.

While this took them something like 600.000 base pairs to establish, a fully engineered Dino bird consits of billions of pairs, the total DNA in a single human cell has approximately 3 billion pairs of the chemical building blocks, and most of all, the above described function of the fertile egg to trigger the right information sequence.

So, in something like 10 more decades we are probably there. Sequencing maschines will be fast enough, and engineered life will have reached a point where we can produce life on a scale beyond comprehension.

The great cycles of life is what we interfere here with, cycles we do not fully understand but start to push buttons and inject catalysts into the system, not knowing on the effect it will have on the whole.

I think, We life in a world where Bioinformatics becomes an integer part of "Homeland Security Strategy"!

I think we are "Lords of Delusion".

 

[Asher Kelman]

Georg,

You have fascinating ontological evidence quoted! I'd love to see the real origins.

Fascinating!

Asher

We have developed sequencing maschines to build base pairs in a Lab. This is the fastest growing technology on the planet at the moment.

Today the "HeliScope" performs sequencing samples in parallel, the machine takes just one hour to read 1.3 billion of the chemical bases A, C, T, and G that make up a strand of DNA.

The Human Genome Project now works on the data they etablished over a 13 years period.

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/timeline.shtml

So far we thought to find the base pairs is all that is needed and how wrong have we been. It turned out that the egg plays a vital role in triggering a complex chemical reaction that so far no one understands, and that switches DNA on or of.

However, scientists injected a virus in a birds egg on purpose to reactivate dinosaur DNA, successfully I might add. The bird grew a tail like his dino ancestors had, that's not engouh. Now they grew chicken with Teeth shaped like those in crocodiles, successfully.

While this took them something like 600.000 base pairs to establish, a fully engineered Dino bird consits of billions of pairs, the total DNA in a single human cell has approximately 3 billion pairs of the chemical building blocks, and most of all, the above described function of the fertile egg to trigger the right information sequence.

So, in something like 10 more decades we are probably there. Sequencing maschines will be fast enough, and engineered life will have reached a point where we can produce life on a scale beyond comprehension.

The great cycles of life is what we interfere here with, cycles we do not fully understand but start to push buttons and inject catalysts into the system, not knowing on the effect it will have on the whole.

I think, We life in a world where Bioinformatics becomes an integer part of "Homeland Security Strategy"!

I think we are "Lords of Delusion".

 

[doug anderson]

I have met some truly spiritual people in my life and few of them in churches. These people seem to be utterly uninterested in the afterlife because they're busy applying spirituality in their daily lives. They are helping others, attempting to work on themselves in positive ways -- one of which is to avoid religious arguments. When traditional religions denounce one another, or when atheists attack religion in general, they seem to be only interested in theology. God does or does not exist, masturbation or homosexuality is forbidden by scripture, etc. Unlike the former friends whom I believe to be truly spiritual, religious extremists spend most of their lives denouncing others.

I decided to read the Sermon on the Mount again just to reorient myself to the religion I was born into. It has nothing to do with denouncing anyone. It teaches helping the poor and cultivating one's faith. These practices seem wholly absent from much of contemporary religious practice. I remember going to an Episcopal church service with my mother in the year before she died. During the service, a very smelly homeless person wandered in and sat in the back row. In a few moments, his smell, urinous and foetid and long unbathed, pervaded the entire chapel. People's reactions were instructive. One couple left. Many made faces and only the priest, who was an activist for the poor, grinned. This is really an acid test for a religion that calls itself Christian. Ghandi said, "I love your Christ, but I do not love your Christians." He was referring to his own treatment while traveling in apartheid South Africa.

My own ideas are eclectic. I like many Buddhist ideas, I like the thought of Martin Buber, whose I and Thou I am reading slowly through for the third time. I like the Jewish practice of Midrash, by which a piece of text is improvised upon, as a musician might a piece of melody, in order to bring out its nuances.

I have tried to leave an always open window in my thinking so that I am never trapped within a belief system, but always open to fresh interpretations.

I like Sufism and some parts of Islam, although I deplore its fundamentalist iterations as I do the Christian. In Sufism and Hassidic Judaism there is the use of the story or parable in a way that is similar to Zen, and which produces insights by virtue of knocking the mind off its familiar tracks. There are great translations and versions of the Hassidic stories by Martin Buber, and of the Sufi stories of Idries Shah. And, of course, the great classical Zen stories.

I like Hegel's phenomenology because of its concern with consciousness defined by our relation to another.

I believe that morality is not a thing in itself, but born of the proper care for other human beings. This excludes the vituperation of homosexuals or women or abortion doctors, or the hatred of other religions. I believe as the Sufis do that at the core, all religions are the same, although their outward practices and images may differ strongly.

As regards a genetic predisposition to religion, I believe everyone, even atheists, long for something that integrates their being with something larger. I don't know if this is a matter of science or of poetry.


Hope this contributes to the discussion.

Doug

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

I have met some truly spiritual people in my life and few of them in churches. These people seem to be utterly uninterested in the afterlife because they're busy applying spirituality in their daily lives.

...

....Hope this contributes to the discussion....

No doubts!

Respect is the key to the solution of the generations not born yet, the latter we sign responsible for if you ask me. - Our failure to apply principle respect, they pay it! -

You have fascinating ontological evidence quoted! I'd love to see the real origins. Fascinating!

Asher, trust me, I am not talking through my arse!

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

The answer is 42...

... now what was the question again?

I can see the fun of such philosophical discussions when one is camping out there under the stars with a bottle of Scotch ;-). I am surprised that the discussion did not turn into even more important topics such as UFOs, Area 51, the chariots of gods, evolution vs Darwinism and most importantly, the whereabouts of Elvis. ))

Cheers,

 

[Michael_Stones]

Well it would make sense for a sense of reality to be tilted in favor of good outcomes so this will more likely allow experimentation with new ideas. So there is a marginal tendency to think there will be a positive outcome.

Asher

Exactly! This positivity bias pervades findings from survey research in any country.

How happy are you? On a 10-point scale, an 'average person' should rate himself/herself at the midpoint (i.e., 5) right? Wrong! Chances are that on a 10-point scale you will rate yourself (or anyone you know fairly well) as 7-8/10. When researching happiness some years ago, we intervened with anyone scoring <5 because of possible clinical depression or suicide risk.

How satisfied are you with your life? Same answer: 7 or 8/10.

How satisfied are you with your health? Same answer: 7 or 8/10 even among many people with chronic disability.

How satisfied are you with you income/family/work/home/whatever? Same answer.

How satisfied are you with OPF? My guess is that most members' ratings will be 7-8/10.

And if you change the stem of the question (e.g., 'Compared with ... age-peers/average-population-member/whomever ... how happy/satisfied are you with ... whatever-domain-you-choose'), the mean ratings are still 7-8/10.

This positivity trend in evaluative ratings has the technical term, 'negative skew', referring to the shape of a distribution with a tail in the negative direction. Is negative skew a species characteristic? There's lots of evidence suggesting that it is. The differences in mean happiness or satisfaction ratings across countries are small. People favored by fortune in life (e.g., lottery winners) or misfortune (e.g., accidents causing major paralysis) have ratings similar to survey means within a couple of years of the event. Identical twins are more similar in happiness than fraternal twins even when 60 years old, which prompted one pair of researchers to write that "trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller" (a statement they subsequently regretted making). So all things considered, humans have a positivity bias that transcends culture and seems likely to have genetic influence.

The flip side of this body of knowledge is that negative pieces of information make more impact than pieces positive information. Write a negative letter of reference about someone, and it will cancel the effects of two or more positive letters. Criticism tends to be remembered long after praise is forgotten. The media is full of negative stories or slants those stories in a detrimental way, and so on. Because positive expectations are the norm, negative information stands out. Remember that the return of the 'prodigal son' caused his father more joy than than did the dutiful behavior of his other sons.

It's easy to figure out that a 'sense of reality' biased toward the positive combined with heightened sensitivity for negative information are more adaptive toward individual and species survival than other combinations of these two characteristics. If positivity bias carries with it overtones of delusion, our evolutionary success as a species suggest it is worth the cost.

Cheers
Mke

 

[Asher Kelman]

...

Asher, trust me, I am not talking through my arse!

Goerg, I have no way of knowing how to translate that.

Still, just to be clear, I'd love to see the sources for your reports of gene switching to get prehistoric-recapitualtion of body parts. I'm not knocking anything you have said. I just find what you have reported is quite astonishing, not unbelievable in any way. I think its certainly plausible, just haven't heard this before!

Asher

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

here ya go

Dr. Hans LARSSON
Hans Larsson received a PhD in Organismal Biology and Anatomy from the University of Chicago where he studied, with Olivier Rieppel and Paul Sereno, the association between evolution and development of skeleton morphologies along a 250 million year long lineage of fossils that include modern crocodiles. He was awarded an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship to work at the University of Toronto with Richard Liversage and at Yale University with Günter Wagner. This work examined the early skeletogenic mesenchymal condensations of bird wings to finally solve a 150 year old question from which of the ancestral five fingers the three bony fingers of birds develop, developing a novel approach to examine the early patterning of skeletal anlage with which to address macroevolutionary questions. Dr Larsson joined the Redpath Museum of McGill as Assistant Professor in January 2003, is a Canada Research Chair in Vertebrate Palaeontology, and an adjunct member of the Department of Biology.

Research in the Larsson laboratory
Evolutionary change of organisms is fundamentally based on modifications to their developmental mechanisms. While some development is the product of environmental conditions, much is programmed and heritable. Most well studied developmental systems are not suitable for large-scale changes across long time scales. Research in the Larsson lab focuses on the relationship between macroevolutionary changes to vertebrate skeletons and what developmental mechanisms may be responsible for those changes. This work addresses: 1) the development and quantification of bone microstructure, 2) mechanisms of digit development, reduction, and identification in birds, 3) mechanisms that may account for the transition of the fish fin to the tetrapod limb, and 4) the large-scale patterns of association between the anatomical evolution and development of skeletons in crocodiles and birds. These research avenues aim to bring together the wealth of vertebrate fossil data with current research in skeletal developmental biology. Dr Larsson’s research is funded by NSERC, FQRNT, and the CRC.

Selected Publications (click here to view Publications 2002-present)

Larsson, H.C.E. and G. P. Wagner. 2002. The pentadactyl ground state of the avian wing. Journal of Experimental Zoology (Molecular and Developmental Evolution) 294:146-151.

Wagner, G. P., and H.C.E. Larsson. Fins/Limbs in the Study of Evolutionary Novelties; 28pp. in B.K. Hall (ed.), The Vertebrate Appendicular Skeleton, University of Chicago Press.

Larsson, H.C.E. MODES of Developmental Evolution: origin and definition of the autopodium; 57pp. in J. Anderson and H.-D. Sues (eds.), Major Transitions in Vertebrate Evolution. Indiana University Press.

......

Hans Larsson, a palaeontologist at McGill University in Canada, conducted an experiment in November 2007 into the evolution from dinosaurs’ long tails into birds’ short tails more than 150 million years ago.

Looking at a two-day-old chicken embryo, he made an unexpected discovery.


Expecting to see between four and eight vertebrae present in the developing spine, his microscope instead picked out 16 vertebrae — effectively a reptilian tail.


As the embryo developed, the ‘tail’ became shorter and shorter, until the young bird hatched with only five vertebrae.

Larsson says of the significance of the find: ‘For about 150 million years, this kind of a tail has never existed in birds.


'But they have always carried it deep inside their embryology.’

So, the blueprint for a dinosaur remained locked inside the modern-day bird.


Larsson decided to move from theory to reality.

He wanted to see if he could make a chicken grow a dinosaur’s tail, turning the clock back millions of years.

Manipulating the genetic make-up, he was able to extend the tail by a further three vertebrae.


Larsson had pinpointed a method for turning on dormant dinosaur genes.


If birds retained a dormant tail imprint, did they still retain a memory of dinosaur teeth?

In 2005, Matt Harris and John Fallon, developmental biologists at the University of Wisconsin, noticed something strange while researching mutant chickens.

Harris says: ‘Looking at an embryonic 14-day-old head, I came across the beak and these structures that were not supposed to be there.’

Could they really be teeth? Peeling away the beak in this tiny, mutant bird, the academics revealed sabreshaped formations almost identical to embryonic alligator teeth.

Next, Harris and Fallon attempted to trigger the formation of teeth in a normal chicken, by injecting the embryo with a virus designed to ‘turn on’ the relevant gene.

It was a long shot.


‘Making a tooth is complex,’ says Harris. ‘So the idea of turning on one gene that might be able to do this in an animal that hasn’t made teeth in over 70 million years, was somewhat of a stretch.’

Examining the growing embryo two weeks later, he called colleagues to look at what had happened.


‘You could see very clearly paired structures on the lower jaw.


'And so, a normal chicken can actually grow teeth.’

This was unexpected. Furthermore, the teeth had the same curved shape as dinosaur
fangs.


......

 

[doug anderson]

here ya go

Hen's teeth! I knew it.

I'm not sure I read the original post right, but I seem to have felt an anxiety of dehumanization by science in the discussion.

Somebody please orient me.

 

[doug anderson]

On delusion: it's mostly on the right these days. The reverend Hagee claiming that hurricane Katrina was the result of N.O. allowing a gay parade. And many others, including Pat Robertson, who believes like his hero Bush that God talks to him personally.

In terms of homo sapiens being the most skillful and prolific murderers, yes we are, and much of it is in the name of religion.

What I'm trying to sort out from all this is whether there is an innate spiritual sense in human beings that becomes quickly perverted the minute religions acquire costumes and a bureaucracy.

I think there is a spiritual hunger in great art and great science. Einstein would not have been the innovator that he was without allowing his mind to go places the average philistine won't go. And he played the violin! Well! And Da Vinci? His hunger was much greater than the corrupt clerics who paid him to paint.

Let's hear it for messy desks and free floating imagination.

 

[Nill Toulme]

...What I'm trying to sort out from all this is whether there is an innate spiritual sense in human beings that becomes quickly perverted the minute religions acquire costumes and a bureaucracy.
....

Maybe, maybe not: The God Gene

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

 

[doug anderson]

Maybe, maybe not: The God Gene

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

I think it's great that science is researching this. I think, however, the issue is easily addressed by poetry and art as well. What is it that makes us want to achieve wholeness, to find meaning, to make sense of our suffering? And what about our capacity for wonder without which life tastes like cardboard?

 

[Michael_Stones]

I think it's great that science is researching this. I think, however, the issue is easily addressed by poetry and art as well. What is it that makes us want to achieve wholeness, to find meaning, to make sense of our suffering? And what about our capacity for wonder without which life tastes like cardboard?

As someone in the science camp for pay and the arts camp at play, the similarities in aim and outcomes strike home far more strongly for me than differences in methodology. Good scientific discoveries are works of beauty, elegance, and wonder that rival those in good music, literature, and visual art (the double helix, for example). This applies to lesser levels of achievement as well. I get no less joy trying to extract the last ounce of elegance from a statistical analysis or research design than from using Photoshop to make a picture as nearly perfect as possible. Although I'm better at the former than the latter, the creative processes seem comparable to me.

A difficulty for appreciation is that advanced methodology in science tends to be beyond the ken of all but the few who practice in that field. The beauty is hidden by the necessity for technical communication, in other words. Inaccessibility can breed mistrust, unfortunately, just as lay viewers dislike works of art beyond their ken. Ideas build on earlier ideas in both art and science. Poet Ted Hughes, acclaimed as one of the finest English exponents of the 20th century, was once asked how he created his groundbreaking 1957 volume Hawk in the Rain. His answer was simple: that he'd read every accessible work, separated the good stuff from the mediocre, and went on from there. Any scientist asked about the process of discovery would probably say something similar.

Hey, and I've never tasted life as cardboard. Does it taste like that without a sense of wonder? (Just kidding!)

Cheers
Mike

 

[Nill Toulme]

...And what about our capacity for wonder without which life tastes like cardboard?

My dog wonders what everything tastes like. ;-)

Nill
~~
www.toulmephoto.com

 

[Michael_Stones]

My dog wonders what everything tastes like. ;-)

Nill
~~
www.toulmephoto.com

My dog knows what everything tastes like, Nill.

 

[doug anderson]

The dog is right on both counts.

There are people for whom poulet a la creme tastes like cardboard.