Can an Atheist Answer These?

[BigGofWi]

1.) Why is it that every form of life on this planet has a basic, fundamental desire to avoid death at all costs?

2.) Why does a species want to reproduce?

3.) What is the point of continuing on, of ensuring that the next generation comes into existence? Is it to be remembered? If it is to be remembered, why ?

• For what reason?*
  Why does a species like a virus have the same desire to survive that say, a human, or a sunflower has?

In other words, why does every species of life on earth want to perpetuate itself?

Well here are my thoughts on the matter.

1. instinctual response. The meaning of life is to reproduce
2. We have a drive to survive. There is no point in continuing besides creating more of the same species.
3. It is a basic process of life.

Life is unique and beautiful. However, that does not change the fact that it is completely pointless. Notice how religion is only found in creatures with high enough thought processes (humans). Giving life reason may help with the concept that everything that is and will be will be experienced within a short period of around 70 years.

 

[tonyrey]

1. instinctual response. The meaning of life is to reproduce.

Can you find no other meaning?!

1. We have a drive to survive. There is no point in continuing besides creating more of the same species.

How did that drive originate?

Life is unique and beautiful. However, that does not change the fact that it is completely pointless.

The fact that it is so beautiful and valuable shows that it is not completely pointless!

Notice how religion is only found in creatures with high enough thought processes (humans).

How could it be otherwise? Without the power of reason it is impossible to grasp any concepts at all, let alone the concept of the supernatural!

Giving life reason may help with the concept that everything that is and will be will be experienced within a short period of around 70 years.

1. How does reason help?
2. Why is the relative brevity of life a problem?
3. If we lived for a thousand or a million years would it make any difference to the fact of mortality?
4. If we lived in this world forever would it make any fundamental difference to our
   existential situation?

 

[Charles_Darwin]

How did that drive originate?

I must have explained this to you at least five times now… It reminds me of…

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[SonofMonica]

I must have explained this to you at least five times now… It reminds me of…

This is not Fark.com. You and I are welcome to participate, learn, debate and discuss here. But please join me in making every attempt to act like mature, well-rounded adults, and together let’s make the choice not to caricature or hurl insults at Catholics, members of other religions, or people of no religion. That’s all this board really asks of us, in terms of general behavior. I will do my best, and welcome you to try with me.

 

[kk23wong]

May I interrupt?

Imaginations because of fears and lack of understanding of the nature of our world.

Differences in-between the God and we generated many imaginations.

Hence, these imaginations created various religions and philosophy.

Both of them are valuable asserts in history.

The truth is that the God is a conscious Earth. In which, the Earth is our mother-in-common in biological prospective. As I mentioned a couple of times in many online forums after my discovery, planets are a higher level of lives.

The simple questions like “live and death” and “consciousness” of philosophy are coming to an end since physical existence take the lead.

Although the existence of the God is not something we expected, she is our mother-in-common from biological prospective.

In the meantime, the life cycles of the Earth have been shortened by over-population (in another word, the rate of reproductions is too fast.) The activities of the offspring have great impact on the life cycles of the Earth. The over-consumptions have vastly destroyed our vegetations and resources. When the pools of resources have been used up, the life cycles of the Earth is coming to an end. Another hypothesis is the plants and living organisms inside the planet (her living tissues) will be all dead because of the fluctuations of temperature or pollutions. The situation is similar to the Mars we can see nowadays.

Imaginations not only by philosophers, but also our scientists.

The establishment of space stations has to rely on the supplies on resources from the Earth (or any planets nearby). However, the planets nearby have their life cycles come to an end. The resources there may have been used up. I am not stating that all minerals have been run out, but it is difficult to find them. They should be exhausted.

In the meantime, we are thinking too much of the space colonies. When the life cycles of the planets have come to an end, the living organisms inside will be all dead. The generations of vitamins and other necessities for lives cannot be found.

Stop dreaming of space colonies because we witness the physical existences of the dead planets nearby.

The most significant part of my finding is that planets are higher level of lives.

Philosophers have to find another way out since “live and death” and “consciousness” are two great topics. Please face directly to the questions itself instead of talking non-senses.

I am not talking about religions here since it is controversial and did not help much about our future of the planet.

Scientists (if any of you are reading this) No matter you guys have religious background or not. Please think of the “planets are higher level of living thing” and we are trying to recover the life cycles of the planets nearby which are already dead. In the meantime, our resources are going to be run out soon. Aging of the planets is a process cannot be reverted. We cannot turn the clock back

What do you think?

Teru Wong

 

[liquidpele]

This is not Fark.com. You and I are welcome to participate, learn, debate and discuss here. But please join me in making every attempt to act like mature, well-rounded adults, and together let’s make the choice not to caricature or hurl insults at Catholics, members of other religions, or people of no religion. That’s all this board really asks of us, in terms of general behavior. I will do my best, and welcome you to try with me.

Well… to be fair, several people including myself have explained that exact topic to Tonyrey before. That said, the comic was an ad hominem and not needed.

In the spirit if giving, I’ll give yet another explanation. How can we evolve the will to live is the question. Lets consider coins. Say you have 100 pennies and 100 nickles. The pennies don’t care if they die, and the nickles do, so lets start flipping. If you flip heads for a penny, you put it aside, but for nickles you have to flip 3 heads in a row to put them aside. Start flipping, and it’s obvious which one gets the entire population put to the side first.

This is an example of randomness giving a preference to something due to the rules of the system. The rules of reality are that things that live get to keep on going, so things that die are not here to compare. Thus, you only see things that want to live because all the stuff that didn’t want to live ended up dying off.

 

[liquidpele]

May I interrupt?

Only if you post something that is comprehensible. That post was not.
If you’re trolling, please find something more worthwhile to spend your time on.

 

[SonofMonica]

Only if you post something that is comprehensible. That post was not.
If you’re trolling, please find something more worthwhile to spend your time on.

LOL, I agree. I will not even pretend to be able to understand that.

 

[SonofMonica]

Well… to be fair, several people including myself have explained that exact topic to Tonyrey before. That said, the comic was an ad hominem and not needed.

In the spirit if giving, I’ll give yet another explanation. How can we evolve the will to live is the question. Lets consider coins. Say you have 100 pennies and 100 nickles. The pennies don’t care if they die, and the nickles do, so lets start flipping. If you flip heads for a penny, you put it aside, but for nickles you have to flip 3 heads in a row to put them aside. Start flipping, and it’s obvious which one gets the entire population put to the side first.

This is an example of randomness giving a preference to something due to the rules of the system. The rules of reality are that things that live get to keep on going, so things that die are not here to compare. Thus, you only see things that want to live because all the stuff that didn’t want to live ended up dying off.

Well, I think your example sort of equates randomness with classic Darwinian principles of survival, but I think it would be more helpful to separate the two, as selection-as it has to do with survival of an entire species-is anything but random. I’ll address survival first, then go back and say something about randomness. Keep in mind I’m trying to be very simplistic, as this is is, after all a message board.

The survival meme explains how the will to live could become a commonly exhibited trait in a population. It doesn’t really explain how the first creature developed a will to live. So, the classic Darwinian “survival of the fittest” meme is for all intents and purposes a tautology–that which survives, survives. You could nuance it a little bit, maybe saying “that which is equipped to survive, survives” or something of that nature. But in the end, you’re not left with much of a profound idea. Natural selection seems painstakingly obvious to me in terms of how populations begin to exhibit a common trait. In the same way that artificial selection should obviously achieve the same result. But it doesn’t really say much, in and of itself about how the trait came about unless the potential is already there.

Where randomness comes in is more along the lines of the mutation which caused the first instance of the trait to appear in the first creature to exhibit it. But I don’t know that your coin flip example as applied to random mutation is of much help. In the coin flip example, the potential choices are set, and they are heads and tails. Where does the potential for the creature to exhibit the new trait come from? How could it have had the potential to exhibit the trait, whenever there had never been a reason to have it from a survival standpoint? The first creature’s potential to exhibit the trait could not have been the result of selection, if the trait was never exhibited and never contributed toward survival. So I’m not saying that random mutation plays no part or that it is impossible to arrive at the result you’re talking about, just that I don’t see the coin flip analogy as particularly helpful toward establishing a non-theistic worldview whenever your example has rules and set choices controlling the “randomness.” The result of each individual flip is somewhat random (although arguably controlled by external forces such as distance to the ground, force applied, etc.) but the choices of potential outcomes are not. Someone made the decision that there would be two sides to a coin, and not four, for example.

I may be looking at your example incorrectly, or from a standpoint which you hadn’t intended, and if so I apologize. It’s just that, I think the more profound question is something like this: how did the first creature come to have the potential to exhibit the will to live, such that the trait could be switched on?

 

[Leela]

You are saying in effect that if we disagree with a particular statement we shouldn’t point out why we disagree with it.

Come on. If you don’t know me better than that by now…

The point I was making is that if you always confine yourself to appearances you imply that the only things that are important are appearances.

I don’t confine myself to appearances, but I do confine myself to experiences. Just because I am not willing to postulate a reality that stands beyond the reality of our experience doesn’t mean that I think that everything is exactly what it appears to be. Nor do I limit my concept of experience to exclude anything that is actually experienced as empiricism seems to do by limiting experience to sensory (name removed by moderator)ut.

I agree it is impossible to give a complete verbal representation of Reality but if one ignores it altogether it is tantamount to regarding the universe as the sole reality.

The weakness of pragmatism is its interpretation of everything solely in terms of utility. Utility for what? What are the criteria by which we determine whether something is useful? They must be related to our concept of the nature of human beings. Whether we exist by Chance or Design radically affects our concept of what is useful…

This is a misinterpretation of pragmatism. Perhaps you are thinking of utilitarianism.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t confine myself to appearances, but I do confine myself to experiences. Just because I am not willing to postulate a reality that stands beyond the reality of our experience doesn’t mean that I think that everything is exactly what it appears to be. Nor do I limit my concept of experience to exclude anything that is actually experienced as empiricism seems to do by limiting experience to sensory (name removed by moderator)ut.

But would you agree that a pragmatist is inclined to neglect things which do not seem to be relevant to practical issues? For example, you wouldn’t spend much time considering whether this life is the only life we have… or even whether God exists…

This is a misinterpretation of pragmatism. Perhaps you are thinking of utilitarianism.

It depends on which variety of pragmatism you favour. For William James something is true only insofar as it works. If it works it is useful. So truth is only means to an end. Hence my questions. How do you assess utility?

 

[Charles_Darwin]

This is not Fark.com. You and I are welcome to participate, learn, debate and discuss here. But please join me in making every attempt to act like mature, well-rounded adults, and together let’s make the choice not to caricature or hurl insults at Catholics, members of other religions, or people of no religion. That’s all this board really asks of us, in terms of general behavior. I will do my best, and welcome you to try with me.

Not sure what Fark.com is, but i don’t see that participation, education, debate and discussion when you explain something to someone countless times, and they ask the same silly question over and over??

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Well, I think your example sort of equates randomness with classic Darwinian principles of survival, but I think it would be more helpful to separate the two, as selection-as it has to do with survival of an entire species-is anything but random. I’ll address survival first, then go back and say something about randomness. Keep in mind I’m trying to be very simplistic, as this is is, after all a message board.

The survival meme explains how the will to live could become a commonly exhibited trait in a population. It doesn’t really explain how the first creature developed a will to live. So, the classic Darwinian “survival of the fittest” meme is for all intents and purposes a tautology–that which survives, survives. You could nuance it a little bit, maybe saying “that which is equipped to survive, survives” or something of that nature. But in the end, you’re not left with much of a profound idea. Natural selection seems painstakingly obvious to me in terms of how populations begin to exhibit a common trait. In the same way that artificial selection should obviously achieve the same result. But it doesn’t really say much, in and of itself about how the trait came about unless the potential is already there.

Where randomness comes in is more along the lines of the mutation which caused the first instance of the trait to appear in the first creature to exhibit it. But I don’t know that your coin flip example as applied to random mutation is of much help. In the coin flip example, the potential choices are set, and they are heads and tails. Where does the potential for the creature to exhibit the new trait come from? How could it have had the potential to exhibit the trait, whenever there had never been a reason to have it from a survival standpoint? The first creature’s potential to exhibit the trait could not have been the result of selection, if the trait was never exhibited and never contributed toward survival. So I’m not saying that random mutation plays no part or that it is impossible to arrive at the result you’re talking about, just that I don’t see the coin flip analogy as particularly helpful toward establishing a non-theistic worldview whenever your example has rules and set choices controlling the “randomness.” The result of each individual flip is somewhat random (although arguably controlled by external forces such as distance to the ground, force applied, etc.) but the choices of potential outcomes are not. Someone made the decision that there would be two sides to a coin, and not four, for example.

I may be looking at your example incorrectly, or from a standpoint which you hadn’t intended, and if so I apologize. It’s just that, I think the more profound question is something like this: how did the first creature come to have the potential to exhibit the will to live, such that the trait could be switched on?

It is now understood that evolution is not about survival but about reproduction. The will to live is an evolved emotion that increases the chances of an individual reproducing.

It seems to me that your question is regarding the evolution of emotions??

 

[Shredderbeam]

Hi Shredderbeam and AnAtheist,

It looks like the conversation with Tonyrey is dieing down, so perhaps you will be willing to continue discussing some of these issues with me. You probably know that I will not take any lack of material explanation for such questions as have been posed in this thread to be proof a supernatural reality that stands appart from the reality of our experience. An inadequate explanation is just one that needs suggests we need a better explanation. It isn’t proof of some other explanation. Supernatural explanations need to be defended, not fallen back on as default positions when the current scientific explanations are insufficient.

Anyway, I wanted to take issue with a couple of things you guys have said such as what is quoted above. I think that such reductionism will always fail to give adequate explanations. While understanding of phenomena at one level are often aided by explanations at lower levels, if we always give such lower level explanations primacy, we wind up with absurd conclusions such as that all the information needed to create New York City must be contained within atoms. Whether string theory works out or some other approach to physics, once we have a so-called Theory of Everything, we won’t have a set of physical laws that will be at all useful for telling us what form of government is best or

Ideas are contained within brains but are not properties of brains just as a novel can be stored as voltages on a computer but the novel is not a property or expresion of the voltages. Turn off the computer and the novel is gone. Turn off a brain, and we can only guess. But we have some idea of what that is like when we consider patients with brain injuries and notice that they are no longer cabable of thinking certain thoughts and doing a lot of the things that tonyrey says can only be explained by appeal to something supernatural. It seems entirely reasonable to think that thoughts are entirely dependent on brains, but not so reasonable to think of thoughts as properties or possessoins of brains.

Ideas evolve and are maintained within culture based on rules that are in many ways independent of physical matter. We will never be able to explain the world of ideas or the values that hold a society together through organic chemistry or physics though the production of new ideas could never happen without brains and cells and chemicals and atoms.

In short, the whole IS greater than the sum of its parts. If that were not so there would only be one branch of science rather than physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, anthropology, and psychology. If the characteristics of the whole were always best explained by the parts it is composed of a Theory of Everything in physics would replace all these other sciences, but of couse we would never expect it to.

It may be helpful for some purposes to think of human beings as machines, but they are not just machines. A molecule is a collection of atom, but it is not just a collection of atoms. It has properties that atoms don’t have and that are not best understood by thinking of it as a collection of other things but rather as a thing itself. Living beings are not just collections of molecules. They are collections of molecules, but if they were *just *properties of these molecules we would need no science called biology to talk about them.

Finally, I would suggest dropping all talk about what a thing REALLY is (as in “a person is really just a machine” or “a molecule is really just a collection of atoms” or “an animal is really a collection of molecules.”). There are inexhaustible descriptions of a thing that can be used for different purposes, but there is no good reason that I can think of to take any one of those description and call it the essence of a thing. I think materialism or physicalism is often used as a version of such essentialism though it doesn’t have to be. It is essentialism that makes people want to ask such questions as “what is the essence of a person?” and cause them to posit such entities as souls and such questions as “what is the essence of Truth?” and cause them to posit such entities as God, so I think essentialism is something that atheists should try to avoid if they want to continue the Enlightenment project of de-divinizing their thinking without merely creating new replacement Gods such as Reason, Reality, Human Nature, and Truth.

Best,
Leela

Hi Leela,

I see what you are saying about an object being more than the sum of its parts, and I would agree, though I would be hesitant to phrase it in that manner (it seems to imply that there is something else present that is different from the material parts), preferring instead something along the lines of “the whole does not have the properties of the parts”. But I do take your point.

My apologies for replying somewhat infrequently - my class schedule has left me very busy indeed!

 

[SonofMonica]

It is now understood that evolution is not about survival but about reproduction. The will to live is an evolved emotion that increases the chances of an individual reproducing.

It seems to me that your question is regarding the evolution of emotions??

Well, I’m not really posing a question to be answered, per se. Just trying to note that the really exciting work being done is at the genome level.

What I am saying is that it is easy to understand (in my opinion) what could cause a population to exhibit a trait, and it’s called heredity. Whether it’s looked in terms of which traits “survive” or which traits are passed on via reproduction, the concept is essentially the same. Survival is reproduction, when you’re talking about a population.

But what I’m saying is that it is not quite as easy to understand (and indeed natural selection does not deal with) how such a trait became possible to carry in the first place. Genetics is where all the good “questions” are. One such question might be, how did the “will to live” get switched on, in the first animal to exhibit it? Where did it come from? Can it be isolated? Could we switch on a gene in an organism that does not currently exhibit a “will to live” and cause it to exhibit such a trait, then watch to see if it’s passed on?

I’m merely talking about how this stuff interests me more than how a “blind watchmaker” could cause a population could evolve to exhibit a trait on the whole, which is the stuff of selection.

 

[Touchstone]

Well, I’m not really posing a question to be answered, per se. Just trying to note that the really exciting work being done is at the genome level.

What I am saying is that it is easy to understand (in my opinion) what could cause a population to exhibit a trait, and it’s called heredity. Whether it’s looked in terms of which traits “survive” or which traits are passed on via reproduction, the concept is essentially the same. Survival is reproduction, when you’re talking about a population.

But what I’m saying is that it is not quite as easy to understand (and indeed natural selection does not deal with) how such a trait became possible to carry in the first place. Genetics is where all the good “questions” are. One such question might be, how did the “will to live” get switched on, in the first animal to exhibit it? Where did it come from? Can it be isolated? Could we switch on a gene in an organism that does not currently exhibit a “will to live” and cause it to exhibit such a trait, then watch to see if it’s passed on?

I’m merely talking about how this stuff interests me more than how a “blind watchmaker” could cause a population could evolve to exhibit a trait on the whole, which is the stuff of selection.

Checking in here after some time away, I see this thread is still going, and has come full circle, in a way. The first post asks:

1.) Why is it that every form of life on this planet has a basic, fundamental desire to avoid death at all costs?

2.) Why does a species want to reproduce?

3.) What is the point of continuing on, of ensuring that the next generation comes into existence? Is it to be remembered? If it is to be remembered, why ?

• For what reason?*
  Why does a species like a virus have the same desire to survive that say, a human, or a sunflower has?

In other words, why does every species of life on earth want to perpetuate itself?

To which my answer would be:

If you take shovel full of gravel, and put it in a sieve, and shake it out a bit, you will find yourself with a bunch of smaller rocks on the ground at your feet, and a bunch of larger rocks remaining in the sieve.

The questions above ask: why did these small rocks choose to fall to the ground?

Living things around use have an intense, and equipped desire to live, because that is the only way they could be here to muse about. Like the large rocks in the gravel that cannot fit through the holes in the sieve, any organisms that do not have a visceral desire to survive and reproduce, to “fit through the holes” of nature’s sieve, perish from the earth.

We see vigorous dispositions toward survival and reproduction because that’s a necessary trait for making it to the present day.

When you ask “how did the “will to live” get switched on, in the first animal to exhibit it?” I think you are asking nothing more than “why are the small rocks that fell through the sieve small?”. As life began – even before – the natural interactions of nature produce trial after trial, and the “will to live” is nothing more than whatever configurations succeed in the trials. If some variant strain of bacteria are more efficient at metabolism, they have no brain, and thus no conscious will to live; they are simply more able, more apt to live than their slower, less efficient cohorts.

A conscious will to live then, is the cognitive expression of the same dynamic. Humans have a will to live, because a will to live is advantageous to survival and the ultimate goal of nature perforce. Humans with mental instincts oriented around survival thrive and propagate. Those with less or without perish and become extinct.

-Touchstone

P.S. SonofMonica, I liked your personal story of deciding to become a Catholic. I doubt I’d agree with the details, but I can appreciate the honesty and practical of an answer like “atheism didn’t suit me”. In my experience, some people are better off as theists, for one reason or another, even if (as I believe) the core beliefs of the faith are mistaken. As someone who gets to hear a lot of really weak reasons for becoming a theist, I can salute the answer you gave.

 

[SonofMonica]

Touchstone,

First, thanks for the kind and understanding words. You’ve almost got what I’m trying to say, but let me see if I can clarify.

If you take shovel full of gravel, and put it in a sieve, and shake it out a bit, you will find yourself with a bunch of smaller rocks on the ground at your feet, and a bunch of larger rocks remaining in the sieve.

The questions above ask: why did these small rocks choose to fall to the ground?

To use your example, I’m not concerned with why rocks fall to the ground–only how the rocks came to be small.

You’re starting with a subset of two types of rocks and saying that rocks must either be large or small. Then you make the point that, well, it’s obvious that those that make it through the holes happen to be small. But, again, survival of advantageous traits is elementary, if you think about it–of course the rocks that are small will make it through.

But I’m talking about the potentiality of a creature to exhibit a brand new trait for the first time, not whether the trait will cause the creature to survive [fall thru the holes]. To talk about this, we need to be discussing the genome. Reproduction/natural selection doesn’t help.

Living things around use have an intense, and equipped desire to live, because that is the only way they could be here to muse about. Like the large rocks in the gravel that cannot fit through the holes in the sieve, any organisms that do not have a visceral desire to survive and reproduce, to “fit through the holes” of nature’s sieve, perish from the earth.

First, I don’t think you’ve established that only a creature with a will to live could survive. Some living things are not conscious at all. But the question is, how could any organism all of a sudden have a conscious will to survive, where none had previously existed? The fact that some have it now does not mean it was a foregone conclusion at all. Saying that it happened because it happened is only a superficial answer to a really bad question “Why?”]. I’m concerned with “How?”.

We see vigorous dispositions toward survival and reproduction because that’s a necessary trait for making it to the present day.

Again, the answers the question of why we see creatures with this trait, but doesn’t explain how the trait was first exhibited. If I asked “Why are we here?” then you would be well within your rights to say, “Because we made it.” But if I ask “How did we come to be here?” then the answer would not suffice.

When you ask “how did the “will to live” get switched on, in the first animal to exhibit it?” I think you are asking nothing more than “why are the small rocks that fell through the sieve small?”.

No, if I had asked “why is the will to live so prevalent in living creatures now?”, then it would be the same as asking “why are the rocks that fell through the sieve small?” But your answer doesn’t explain why the rocks are small, it only explains why they fell through the sieve. Likewise, as I’ve explained, saying that creatures with the will to live reproduce successfully only explains why so many creatures exhibit the will to live today. It doesn’t explain how the will to live came to be in the first instance.

As life began – even before – the natural interactions of nature produce trial after trial, and the “will to live” is nothing more than whatever configurations succeed in the trials.

Still, in your big/small rock example, you put the rocks in the sieve, and those rocks already had definite sizes. Putting the rocks through the trials says nothing about how the trait of any given rock came to be. It only says which ones will make it through the trial. Obviously if the size of the rock was beneficial to falling through the hole, then the rock with a small enough size would fall through. But this says nothing about how each rock came to be that size [or if rocks could reproduce and pass on the trait of ‘small size’, how the first rock came to be able to exhibit the trait]. Of course size of rocks is a bad example because all objects have mass, but not heredity. But I digress…

If some variant strain of bacteria are more efficient at metabolism, they have no brain, and thus no conscious will to live; they are simply more able, more apt to live than their slower, less efficient cohorts.

A conscious will to live then, is the cognitive expression of the same dynamic. Humans have a will to live, because a will to live is advantageous to survival and the ultimate goal of nature perforce. Humans with mental instincts oriented around survival thrive and propagate. Those with less or without perish and become extinct.

It’s not that I disagree with what you’re saying about survival of advantageous traits; it’s just that you seem to be answering a question that I’m not asking. Some humans today either lack the will to live, or that part of their conscious is interfered with, and they commit suicide. Obviously that is not an advantageous trait, and it is easy to see how humans without the trait would be selected out of the population. But this does not answer the question of how the trait came to exist where it did not exist before.

The difference between the question “Why do humans [usually] have the will to live today?” is different than “How did the trait of a conscious will to live appear on the scene where it did not exist before?” And again, I posit that we would need to talk about the genome, not reproduction.

 

[Touchstone]

To use your example, I’m not concerned with why rocks fall to the ground–only how the rocks came to be small.

You’re starting with a subset of two types of rocks and saying that rocks must either be large or small. Then you make the point that, well, it’s obvious that those that make it through the holes happen to be small. But, again, survival of advantageous traits is elementary, if you think about it–of course the rocks that are small will make it through.

But I’m talking about the potentiality of a creature to exhibit a brand new trait for the first time, not whether the trait will cause the creature to survive [fall thru the holes]. To talk about this, we need to be discussing the genome. Reproduction/natural selection doesn’t help.

Great. Well, I’m a lot more comfortable and familiar talking about genetics than theology, so that’s good by me. I’m not sure this thread at this point is the right place to digress much into that, but briefly… variation. I think the answer that gets trotted out too often is ‘random mutation’, but while that is a factor, that answer overlooks a much more basic and robust answer: genetic recombination. Bacteria, for example, can reproduce sexually or asexually, and whether the genes get combined through binary fission or conjugation, the process creates something new every time.

When you have “new every time”, you get diversity and distributions across variables. Some bacteria become “smaller rocks” that fit through the survival sieve easier than do others, just by virtue of the process of their production.

First, I don’t think you’ve established that only a creature with a will to live could survive.

I’m sure I don’t need to, if you mean by “will” something conscious, or even subconscious, or requiring a brain (stem) at all. Like I said above, bacteria that have traits more efffective in relation to other bacteria toward surviving the environment they find themselves in will tend to survive and reproduce more. There’s no “will”, just traits that have tendencies toward advantage, disadvantage, or some level of neutrality.

Some living things are not conscious at all. But the question is, how could any organism all of a sudden have a conscious will to survive, where none had previously existed? The fact that some have it now does not mean it was a foregone conclusion at all. Saying that it happened because it happened is only a superficial answer to a really bad question “Why?”]. I’m concerned with “How?”.
First, if you ever find yourself using the term “all of a sudden” in questions like these, check the question. “All of a sudden” is conspicuously out of place in evolutionary theory, and in my experience signals unfamiliarity with how things are believed to work, or possibly just rhetorical spin.

Consciousness, like so many other properties of organic life, is understood to have emerged in a step-wise, gradual fashion. It’s something like the “heap problem” – how many grains of sand must you place on a table together before you have a “heap”? What is the precise number that takes things “all of a sudden” from “non-heap” to “heap”? Like the pouring of sand where you have a heap, conscious evolved gradually, so far as we can tell, with some small “jumps” along the way that are more coarse than just even grains of sand, but nevertheless along something like a continuum.

Again, the answers the question of why we see creatures with this trait, but doesn’t explain how the trait was first exhibited. If I asked “Why are we here?” then you would be well within your rights to say, “Because we made it.” But if I ask “How did we come to be here?” then the answer would not suffice.

Well, if you are asking about abiogenesis, the formation of the first living, reproducing organisms, science has a handful of good plausible hypotheses, but not much more than that. It’s a fantastically hard, even intractable perhaps, forensic problem.

-TS

(con’t)

 

[Touchstone]

No, if I had asked “why is the will to live so prevalent in living creatures now?”, then it would be the same as asking “why are the rocks that fell through the sieve small?” But your answer doesn’t explain why the rocks are small, it only explains why they fell through the sieve. Likewise, as I’ve explained, saying that creatures with the will to live reproduce successfully only explains why so many creatures exhibit the will to live today. It doesn’t explain how the will to live came to be in the first instance.

It’s clear that animals with brains often think directly about their survival and their position vis. the surrounding environment. But I think we can just treat that as “gravy”, and understand that all living things have “will to survive”, where “will to survive” is simply a tautology: the configuration of genes filtered through natural selection is by definition “survival centric”. A jellyfish has no brain, (and a very unusual nervous system!), and no “will” in the cognitive sense. Yet, its responses, its morphology are honed over eons of trial and error to be those responses and structures which “look just like a will to survive”. It’s not cognitive, but rather configurational.

Still, in your big/small rock example, you put the rocks in the sieve, and those rocks already had definite sizes. Putting the rocks through the trials says nothing about how the trait of any given rock came to be. It only says which ones will make it through the trial. Obviously if the size of the rock was beneficial to falling through the hole, then the rock with a small enough size would fall through. But this says nothing about how each rock came to be that size [or if rocks could reproduce and pass on the trait of ‘small size’, how the first rock came to be able to exhibit the trait]. Of course size of rocks is a bad example because all objects have mass, but not heredity. But I digress…
That is genetics, changing shapes and sizes, constantly. Every new offspring is a different try. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so to speak, so the each new trial (offspring) will be new, but “in the neighborhood” of its parent(s). Because of the effects of the environment, populations “drift” into to new shapes and sizes, optimizing their features through natural selection.

So, the rocks are always changing sizes, a little bit different from their parent. In nature, the hole sizes and shapes of the sieve are dynamic, too (the rock/sieve analogy was a very simple bit of pedagogy, after all!).

It’s not that I disagree with what you’re saying about survival of advantageous traits; it’s just that you seem to be answering a question that I’m not asking. Some humans today either lack the will to live, or that part of their conscious is interfered with, and they commit suicide. Obviously that is not an advantageous trait, and it is easy to see how humans without the trait would be selected out of the population. But this does not answer the question of how the trait came to exist where it did not exist before.

The difference between the question “Why do humans [usually] have the will to live today?” is different than “How did the trait of a conscious will to live appear on the scene where it did not exist before?” And again, I posit that we would need to talk about the genome, not reproduction.

I don’t see how one could talk about the genome without reproduction. Especially if we hope to gain insight in to how things came to be. Reproduction is the gateway through which all biological change flows. A genome is only “genomic” because of the reproductive events which produced it.

-TS

 

[SonofMonica]

Consciousness, like so many other properties of organic life, is understood to have emerged in a step-wise, gradual fashion. It’s something like the “heap problem” – how many grains of sand must you place on a table together before you have a “heap”? What is the precise number that takes things “all of a sudden” from “non-heap” to “heap”? Like the pouring of sand where you have a heap, conscious evolved gradually, so far as we can tell, with some small “jumps” along the way that are more coarse than just even grains of sand, but nevertheless along something like a continuum.

Okay, this gets to the heart of what I’m talking about. I’ve asked how the aforementioned conscious will could be switched on, and you’ve essentially explained that you understand that it is actually many different things that were switched on over time. But explaining that something happens gradually, over time, only explains “how fast.”

I’m looking for the discussion to shift to the mechanism that can cause an individual trait to appear where it had previously never appeared. Saying it happens gradually doesn’t address the cause, nor the mechanism, by which it happens gradually. Which genes are switched to “on” from “off” and make up conscious will as we know it? (I realize that, like the rocks, the on/off switch is merely an imaginative device for ease of discussion).

And I don’t see that breaking the “heap” into “grains of sand” helps that much. What individual “smaller” traits make up conscious will to live? If we’re still going to have to explain how each grain of “sand” was first exhibited, then we’re really at the same problem. If the question were “how fast”, you’d have answered it. But I’m saying the real question is “how.”

So, it seems to me that the activation of genes is the only useful way to talk about the emergence of a trait. We need to talk about genes and their sequence and coding if we’re going to discuss the emergence of a trait, as opposed to its heredity. That’s all I’m saying.

And P.S., please do not take “all of a sudden” to mean that I don’t understand gradual processes. I simply meant it as in “the first instance” of a trait. Also, please do not think I’m trying to belabor anything or pick on you. It’s just that some folks get a hold of a Richard Dawkins book or two and think that the answer to every religious person’s question or objection is one of two things (1) “Duh, it happens over time” or (2) “No, they shared a common ancestor.” As we see with theology on this site, a person can have just enough knowledge about biology to be ‘dangerous,’ if you will Myself included, obviously, on both counts.