What are the Spiritual qualities of Evolution?

[logician]

Evolution has no direction or purpose, life went along for half-a billion years in a unicellular form before multlicellular forms came along. Ever changing environments and reproductive isolation spur the process of change over time.

 

[Random]

If, as has been said here, Evolution implies that life is meaningless and without direction, why should I pay any attention to Evolution? What is the point? The point of the veracity of the doctrine is moot if nothing has any meaning or content.

 

[UnTheist]

If, as has been said here, Evolution implies that life is meaningless and without direction, why should I pay any attention to Evolution? What is the point? The point of the veracity of the doctrine is moot if nothing has any meaning or content.

You don't have to.

 

[doppelganger]

If, as has been said here, Evolution implies that life is meaningless and without direction, why should I pay any attention to Evolution? What is the point? The point of the veracity of the doctrine is moot if nothing has any meaning or content.

Why do you feel something has to have a point, meaning or direction?

 

[MaddLlama]

If, as has been said here, Evolution implies that life is meaningless and without direction, why should I pay any attention to Evolution? What is the point? The point of the veracity of the doctrine is moot if nothing has any meaning or content.

Nothing has meaning until you give it one. Your life has no meaning other than the meaning you've decided to give it. The computer you use to come and post here has no meaning unless you want to give it one.

Evolution doesn't imply that life is meaningless. The theory makes no conclusions as to the meaning of life at all, the idea of the meaning of life is the realm of philosophy and religion, not science. You have decided that evolution is meaningless to you. However, declaring it personally meaningless doesn't render decades of scientific research useless.

 

[Random]

Why do you feel something has to have a point, meaning or direction?

I cannot say. Perhaps I just do not like counter-intuitive realities.

 

[Quiddity]

Can you give me an example. I can't quite wrap my pee-wee mind around it...

*bump*

 

[Quiddity]

Why do you feel something has to have a point, meaning or direction?

Because to not have a point is to contradict our innate need to attach meaning.

 

[doppelganger]

Because to not have a point is to contradict our innate need to attach meaning.

So we have an innate need to find meaning in things in order to appreciate them?

This doesn't mean things have a meaning other than the meanings we give them though, does it?

 

[doppelganger]

Can you give me an example. I can't quite wrap my pee-wee mind around it...

Everything in Oliver Stone's movie JFK is a true and factual account of historical events.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

That you are perfectly free to interpret does not imply that scientific theories are open to unconstrained interpretation.

Sure they are. What is the ethical argument against it? Scientific theories must be free to all interpretation however illogical and contraindicated.

You are twisting evolution into that which is in fact contraindicated. Put differently, you are distorting/abusing the term.

Is it contraindicated?

I actually don't think I'm distorting/abusing it in any way. But, my evolution education goes only into a years worth of college biology...

Still, I maintain that I am simply offering a suggestion--contraindicated it may be--that is perfectly within the scope of Random's thread. I find it an interesting idea; I hope others do. I am not committing some moral crime against science that I am aware of.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Because evolution is meaningless (surprise, surprise), humans strive to find a meaning.

Ah, but evolution is not meaningless! It has meaning because we (as observers) give it meaning by observing it. Our interpretation of it through science or otherwise makes it into a big, fat sack of meaning!

Just by naming it we provide it with meaning.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Ah, but evolution is not meaningless! It has meaning because we (as observers) give it meaning by observing it. ... Just by naming it we provide it with meaning.

Classic ...

Sadly, the gap separating "evolution as progress" and the more bigoted expressions of social darwinism is small indeed. We're here instead of afarensis, not because of progress, but because of Panama.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Classic ...

Why, thank you!

Sadly, the gap separating "evolution as progress" and the more bigoted expressions of social darwinism is small indeed. We're here instead of afarensis, not because of progress, but because of Panama.

I agree that evolution may not be progress as much as simply a series of changes, but it certainly means something to us, as emotional and analytic critters created through its process.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I agree that evolution may not be progress as much as simply a series of changes, but ...

You agree that "it may not", meaning, of course, that you cling to a sense that it is. But the fact that you invest evolution with wishful qualities says far more about you than about a process that is as indifferent to your desires as it is to your progress.

 

[Quiddity]

So we have an innate need to find meaning in things in order to appreciate them?

Absolutely...It's just how we function. People innately move toward pleasure and away from pain. To move toward something (pleasure), it must have some sort of value.

This doesn't mean things have a meaning other than the meanings we give them though, does it?

Correct...

 

[doppelganger]

Absolutely...It's just how we function. People innately move toward pleasure and away from pain. To move toward something (pleasure), it must have some sort of value.

So pleasure and pain are the "meaning" given to things? I'm intrigued. Tell me more.

 

[Aupmanyav]

There are many illusions in the world. Pleasure, pain, winning, loosing, even we ourselves are no better. Moving towards pleasures is dicey because they do not remain for ever.

Krishna:Geeta 2.38: Considering happiness or sorrow as the same, and similarly considering gain or loss, or a win or a defeat, engage in your duty, by doing so you shall never incur sin.

Geeta 2.56: One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold miseries (mental, physical, and time-given) or elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady mind.

Geeta 2.57: In the material world, one who is unaffected by whatever good or evil he may obtain, neither praising it nor despising it, is firmly fixed in perfect knowledge.

Buddha: All desires lead to sorrow.

 

[Quiddity]

So pleasure and pain are the "meaning" given to things? I'm intrigued. Tell me more.

No, pleasure and pain direct what you will or will not attach meaning to.

 

[doppelganger]

No, pleasure and pain direct what you will or will not attach meaning to.

Continue . . .