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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (94067)	1/19/2005 10:18:24 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

It is not an original idea of mine (how many of those do any of us really have?) that Darwinism led, by inference, to a denial of free will. I not looking anything up, but I would say that this is an argument of the Intelligent Design people. However, I fully agree with the inference. Prior to Darwin, there was no viable explanation of our existence, how the complex human being came to be, and religion was in full sway because it provided an answer. Darwin conceived of a theory that (seemingly) met all the standards of science, namely that evolution led to humans through purely natural events, i.e., nothing supernatural. The inference, then, is that each human is what (s)he is by random chance, not design. And each human has drives, impulses, preferences, desires, compulsions, and the like, as a function of their genetic makeup, over which they had no control. The fact that some people are able to exert more discipline and control over their urges does not confer any credit upon them. Their greater discipline is in itself genetically explainable. You stick to your diet, I cheat on mine -- and the reason originates from the genes we were dealt. You can help it, I can't, and that's just the way we were randomly slapped together. Doesn't this all follow from a Darwinist perspective? All the examples you wrote about -- love and commitment, hetero- or homo-, murder, even Hitler -- whether positive or negative examples -- all add up to the same thing, that each of us is acting out the way we are genetically wired to do. For the good of society, we may punish or reward behaviors, but deep down we should know that it really makes little more sense than if we do that with animals (and we do do it with animals, hoping some kind of low-level learning will occur). As I see it, Ion, you were not superbly or divinely crafted. Instead, you are an accident of nature -- the result of capricious chemical reactions, random mutations, and whimsical chance combinations of genes -- and you can take no credit for who you are or for your accomplishments, and deserve no blame for whatever your failings. All of the foregoing being so if we take inference from Darwin. It s**ks to be too intelligent to believe otherwise, which would mean giving in to "superstition." I'm glad I'm not that intelligent.