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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (2793)	10/16/2006 7:36:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

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. I didn't limit it to just attracting mates. A direct quote from my statement - "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." Once appreciation of music (or any other aesthetic appreciation) did evolve it would tend to help interpersonal and group interaction. One thing you left out is that music can help inspire religious devotion (another of those things with no natural explanation). Music can convey ideas an emotions. Religious devotion would be a subset of that not a whole separate argument. The exact mechanism that it coveys emotions (other than conveying ideas or emotions through the words of the lyrics) might not be fully explained, but I think it stretches things to say it has no natural explanation. And once again even if there really is NO known explanation at all, even a partial or vague one, trying to get from there to the idea that it must be supernatural is an argument from ignorance. 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. The same way it would prepare one for battle. Hunting large game with spears is a difficult and dangerous activity. You would be working with a group, facing risk, and in many ways acting like you would in a battle. Thus the assumption that everything we can't explain must have happened naturally is a logical fallacy. I'm not making that argument, only denying the argument that we logically must have the supernatural because we can't explain everything naturally. 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. I don't think any such arguments are really far fetched. I think it did all of those things and such things have some survival value. Also the ideas aren't exclusive. The trait could have arisen randomly, gotten stronger more common because of the founders effect, and then kept from fading away because of the natural selection benefits. Any one of them could have explained the origin of the appreciation of music, or they could have worked together. "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. If that's what he's saying that I'd say he is incorrect. 1 - Groupies, or kumbaya are not the only proposed natural selection arguments. 2- They aren't nonsense at least not if you don't take them too literally. Obviously stone age hunters didn't sing "Kumbaya", and probably didn't sing anything that closely resembled it. As for sexual attraction and bonding, shared appreciation and shared experience can help attraction and bonding, so it isn't just a groupie thing, but the groupie thing itself isn't all that unlikely. Birds get mates through there songs, and some songs are considered more attractive than others. Certainly humans could develop and then expand on a similar mechanism. 3 - If those two proposed explanations where nonsense, and if there was no other proposed natural explanations, than there could be some unknown natural explanation. Not being able to explain something naturally is not evidence that it is supernatural.