Starting with the assumption that human males can attract mates in a lot better ways than music, doesn't mean that music doesn't help males (and even females) attract mates. It isn't just the "groupie" phenomenon. Its thinks like music, chanting, and/or dancing helping two people to get close or attracted to each other.
And it doesn't directly have to be mates attracting each other. Music might help groups form bonds that help them work together or avoid attacking each other.
The assertion that humans came to create and appreciate music because it would help humans attract mates seems extraordinarily simple-minded to me. You might as well say the human appreciation for aesthetic beauty (I'm not referring to sexual attraction but to the appreciation of things like sunsets, flowers, the starry night sky, etc.) also evolved for the same reason. We are social animals and have a very strong sexual drive. We don't need music etc. to get close to one another or form bonds. We're pretty good at those things.
Music might cause emotions that help people relax, or gets them fired up for hunting or battle.
No "might" about it. Music definitely can help people relax. Or it definitely can stir one up emotionally including help one prepare emotionally for battle. But I can't imagine how any music would help prepare one for hunting. One thing you left out is that music can help inspire religious devotion (another of those things with no natural explanation). All of this shows that music is tied to human emotions and moods - a very wide range of emotions and moods. This wide range is all the more reason simple-minded explanations are inadequate.
Sure. Anything we haven't thought of yet might exist. Or might not.
Which means arguments for ignorance are at best weak and generally considered logical fallacies.
You mean "from ignorance".
If we can't explain how something could happen naturally that isn't evidence that it didn't happen naturally. Nor is it evidence that it did happen naturally. The inability to explain something isn't evidence at all. Thus the assumption that everything we can't explain must have happened naturally is a logical fallacy.
Even if there isn't traits can evolve with no survival benefit.
Via what evolutionary mechanism? Not natural selection.
In addition to normal natural selection for fitness to the environment you have sexual selection, exchanges of genes or "gene flow", and genetic drift.
Mutations happen. Many of them are very negative and die out. Others are very positive and tend to get selected through "natural selection". Others can be slightly positive to slightly negative and not have any strong selection but can randomly survive anyway. Say you have a thousand noticeable traits that evolved randomly, without any of them being favored by natural selection, the odds of each specific one perpetuating itself through the species might not be great, but the odds that one or more of them do isn't that small, and can be increased if the species goes through a population bottleneck. If at any point only a small percentage of a species survives (which apparently happened with homo sapiens about 70,000 years ago do to an eruption of the Toba super-volcano, and may have happened with our species or its ancestors before that) its possible that the small group has a high predominance of a specific trait not common in the previous general population, and passes it along to the eventual larger general population.
So maybe then the human appreciation for music just happened as a result of random mutation. And we just by chance happen to all be descended from the human with the musical appreciation mutation because he was one of the happy few that happened to survive the climate changes resulting from the Toba super-volcano.
At least appeal to random mutation and the founder effect doesn't rely on far-fetched arguments about how music helped our ancestors attract mates, relax around the campfire, rally for battle against enemies, etc.
Sure, the argument from ignorance is a fallacy both ways. If you argue it must be supernatural because we can't explain it, that's a faulty argument. If you argue it must be natural, because we haven't found a way to explain and understand the supernatural that's also an argument from ignorance.
Good.
OTOH. All that combination means in relation to music is that music doesn't prove or disprove the supernatural. Colson seemed to be stating that music does prove, or at least provide strong evidence for, the supernatural.
He also seems to endorse the argument from ignorance as valid.
"Then again, a non-bogus answer, such as “beats me,” won’t cut it, either. That’s because the biggest challenge to the materialist orthodoxy of the kind on display in the Boston Globe article is its inability to satisfactorily account for those things — like music, ethics, and altruism — that are most distinctly human."
If its the biggest challenge, that still doesn't mean that "beats me" doesn't cut it. He's saying you have to have an explanation or it is unreasonable not to accept the supernatural and he calls non-acceptance a “ridiculous slander”.
Ah, back to the Colson article:
"A worldview that insists that we are merely animals must be able to explain those traits that most set us apart from animals in terms that are consistent with that materialistic worldview. That leaves us with Stone Age groupies and “kumbaya” as preparation for hunting mammoths. What nonsense!
Truth is, these “explanations” are the best you can do if you will not entertain the possibility that the imago Dei, the image of God implanted in humans, is what makes us distinct from animals and makes us capable of appreciating truth, beauty, and goodness. It’s what gave Bach his creative genius for us to appreciate."
- I think he's saying you have a choice between 1) attributing things like music as being implanted by God or 2) illogical claims that music evolved because of Stone Age groupies. I guess as you point out there is a third alternative, the "beats me" agnostic answer.
|
