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What is the prevailing evolutionary explanation for each of the following:
1. The intense pain experienced by women during childbirth.
2. Homosexuality
3. Addictive self-destructive behavior
4. Belief in fanciful religious doctrines/stories
5. Cancer
My simple explanation would be to control the population or cycle of life same as in wild life. All life has preditors. It is believed that bees commit suicide when there is lack of food.
Maybe others have a more sophiisticated explanation
Pain in childbirth and mental illness could be a symptom of mal nutrition or a weakness in the energy field caused by pollution and toxins and human hate. Hate is also a destructive behaviour
These are pretty random questions but interesting none the less!Quote:
Originally Posted by Bake_McBride
1) I don't think there is a reason as much as there is no selective pressure not to be in pain. It hurt as it is a physical trauma but pain doesn't reduce the evolutionary fitness i.e. it doesn't stop the baby being born or the mother having any others. Also we are bipedal and have large heads which doesn't help matters it is an evolutionary trade off between a large birth canal for easy labour and being able to walk.
2) Several theories
a) the gene which makes males gay also makes females more fertile. Therefore it aids offspring production 50 % of the time
b) Gay males are statistically the younger males in the family- older males (in the past) would have first access to females as a resource- they would be older and stronger. Therefore a younger male may aid the passing of his own genes better if he helps his sisters raise children instead of wasting his energy trying to reproduce and compete with his brothers.
Another theory explaining this phenomenon is the older males destroy competition by changing the womb's chemical composition to make male siblings gay.
c) Female homosexuality could be explain in female bonding increasing their offspring’s survival - two mums!
3)Addictive behaviour
This is down to reward pathways in the brain. Drugs are not natural and override normal chemical levels. Addiction to food is down to the body regarding food intake for obvious reasons. Addiction to self harm is form endorphins released upon pain to suppress pain. Addiction generally biologically a normal system that has been disrupted in some way. I'm not sure what evolution really has to do with this unless you want me to go into the evolution of the brain and reward systems? Could take a while...
4)Religious belief/stories. Very useful for children to believe everything they are told- suppose they do not believe that eating deadly nightshade is well... deadly. Bam out of the gene pool there. Humans retain childlike characteristics we are neonates. It is useful as it means we retain our curiosity and playfulness, this has aided our spread as a species. Religion can also be thought of as a meme (thanks Prof Dawkins)- a cultural gene. It was a cultural idea which spread itself as it destroys other ways of thinking and has systems in place to spread itself. Personally I believe it has nothing to do with evolution it is just a highly effective means of controlling people.
5) Cancer- is cells dividing out of control. Evolutionary we have developed means to stop cancers in our immune systems and cell checkpoints to stop uncontrolled growth. However it only takes a couple of mutations in important controlling proteins by chemical, oxidation, radiation, mutagens all of which we encounter everyday to cause a cancer. The reason these things don't cause cancers all the time is we have means of stopping it. As we age our immune systems wear out and we gather more random mutations that is why people are more prone to cancers when they get older.
It was a giant question so these are just quick synopses post back if you want to know more about any of them.
Some religious leaders teach that childbirth pain is a sign of the end of the times or the end of the earth.
PMS and menstrual pain can be completely eliminated with nutrition, calcium/magnasium, meditation, yoga, homeopathy, etc. The body and energy field can be stregthened enough to avoid pain. I believe the same can be applied to childbirth.
Many years ago, The Dr. Phil Show, showed a woman in labor surrounded by her family and she did not have any pain. I seem to remember that that was part of the goal of the show to demonstrate an alternative method of giving birth that redused or eliminated pain. There are people who know how to avoid labor pains with a variety of methods.
As the planet gets more and more contanimated with all sorts of chemical pollutions and from human hate pollution and when there will be a lot more people on the planet that there will also be lack of food which will lead to all sorts of deseases including cancer and childbirth pain.
4. If religion is a due to a "meme," it still does not explain the origin of humanity's initial thought of a God. If according to evolution we are reduced to chemicals, mutations and the environment, what led the first human to think about God in the first place? What led the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. person to accept this concept from the first person. What was the selective advantage initially?
I read other theories that it initially evolved as a protection mechanism. If you believe in x happened because of y and it was out of your control then it can remove guilt which would otherwise render you unfunctioning.
However I have never liked that theory, personally I think it came from human's natural desire to put everything in order, to notice patterns and give things meanings. We couldn't just let things happen, if you go way back to the norse and greek gods you can see people's attempts to explain natural phenomenon where they lacked the ability to work out why things happened. We are natural storytellers and I think the thought process that initial gave birth to religion, curiosity and the wanting to know why and how is later gave birth to science. Which is probably why they fight so much!
This is all my opinion of course, but at somepoint you have to admit you don't have the evidence to support the claims being made. I know of some studies that have gone into finding the 'religious' part of our brains and to work out it's evolution but unless something has happened without me noticing (very possible) then they are not quiet there yet.
I was once at a evolution lecture and the lecturere said you can reason anything with sociobiology- it doesn't mean it's correct.
So there you go, my elaborate answer of "I can't remember science says about this but here's my opinion anyway!"
I had written another ansswer.
Why was it deleted?
Is there any policy in place that contacts the author for an explanation?
Dana - sometimes there are blips in the site and stuff gets deleted randomly/ doesn't get posted up correctly. The author of the question cannot delete your answer, only moderators and they only tend to do this when something particularly offensive has been written.
Humans attributed to gods what they could not explain. That's why the greeks and romans had gods of thunder, fire, agriculture, water/seas, etc. As man gathered knowledge he stopped worshipping these gods. Now gods are used for comfort.Quote:
Originally Posted by inthebox
Where did this desire by humans to seek explanations come from?
Do any other animals display this trait?
What is the natural selection advantage of having to explain meaning or purpose?
How does that get you food, clothing, shelter, water, and protection from predators or enemies?
How did this get encoded into the genome and then passed down from generation to generation? Why does every civilization past and present worship something, whether that is God or gods or idols or material things or one's self?
As to comfort:
Why would missionaries give up their comforts here to go to third world countries?
Christian martyrs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You would think that before Constantine that being a Christian was a DISADVANTAGE and a major DISCOMFORT and yet Christianity grew?
How about these uncomfortable ideas of Christianity,
Sexuality. No fornication or adultery or lust or homosexuality. All sins.
Materialism: tithing , the story of the rich man [ told to seel all he had ]
Pride: love your enemies, forgive, do not judge, revenge is for God. Trust God. Be obedient to God. Be humble.
These are but a sample.
The fanatic's need to convert others to their thinking. They believe they are "fixing" others when the others aren't "broken".Quote:
Originally Posted by inthebox
These are not solely christian values (well except for the homosexuality one). Please tell me you do not need a bible to tell you not to commit adultery. Many christians are filthy rich, I do not see that as a value that's being applied. The rest can be rolled up into the Golden Rule which transcends all religions.Quote:
Originally Posted by inthebox
I do need the BIble to tell me about tithing ;)
I was a Big Brother for 6 1/2 years. I did it out of sense of returning something to the community because I had a good childhood and wanted to help someone who was not as fortunate. I'm different that many of the neo-con types here in that I'm a little more optimistic about mankind.
I think we seek explaations due to our intelligence and curiosity, both of whiich allowed us to outcompete all the anilas on the earth to become the dominant species.Quote:
Originally Posted by inthebox
Do any other animals display these traits? I don't know how could you test that. Scientificaly you can't even say animals experience pain- they just have a response to noxious stimuli.
It could give you resilience, instead of giving up or blaming yourself for failure you can assign it to the gods. Also on a sidenote not everything has to be explained by evolution- if something doesn't offer a selection disadvantage it won't be selected against so can persist whilst being completely useless. Also a phenotype can hitchhike on the back of a useful phenotype is they are closely related i.e. in this case perhaps finding random meanings is a by product of us being smart and pattern finding. Pattern finding could be very useful for finding resoures avoiding preditor but it could also sometime misfire.Quote:
What is the natural selection advantage of having to explain meaning or purpose?
How does that get you food, clothing, shelter, water, and protection from predators or enemies?
Imagine people ate a red fruit, they made them sick, some of them died. An intellegent person might decide we should never eat red fruits. Now not all red berries are poisonous so their avoidance of say tomatoes (this happened until recently) would be useless but selected for and promoted as the people who continued to eat red fruit would sometimes die.
This behaviour could be encoded in the genome or as we are cultural beings passed down via our culture as a meme. In this way we have allowed ourselves to escape the rigours of natural selection to some extent, as the positive behaviour of one can be taught to others without messing with thte genome.
When I was referring to comfort I meant mental/spiritual comfort "there is a point to all this/my life isn't meaningless etc rather than physical comfort.
Where is this religion gene?
Has it been isolated?
Do mutations in this gene cause atheism or agnosticism?
How does the need to find meaning and purpose , or worship a 'god[s]', how did that initial mutation, because according to evolution everything good and bad comes from mutations, confer a slective advantage?
How did it make life better or an organism reproduce better, when it came from nothing?
Before this gene caused this phenotype expresssed as religion, early man was not thinking of anything other than to reproduce, eat, not be eaten, and compete with the cavemen joneses, just like any other animal. Then all of a sudden a god/ religion gene came to be ?
Are there neurochemical differences in the brains of religious vs non religious, much like there is a difference in depression, schizophrenia, parkinsons, or alzheimers?
I'm not sure where you are getting that. In Genesis 3:16, God said He would increase the pain of childbirth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dana2007
Regarding the "End Times", it is COMPARED to childbirth, both being called a time of travail.
However this really doesn't have anything to do with the original post "Evolutionary explanations of phenomena" and is therefore off topic.
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