Science vs. Religion: (Chapter 5) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, August 01, 2011, 22:49 (4658 days ago) @ David Turell

David begins to go for the jugular rather early, combining what I suspect is his Adlerian background into building a case that we're smarter than we need to be.
> > 
> > My reading is early and very preliminary, but I have a simple question to ask:
> > 
> > Could it not be the case that as soon as our primitive ancestors--under pressure from the Ice Age you discuss--began to identify their geniuses and began a program of selection of their own? 
> 
> Cute start to your comments. But(!), H sapiens is in Africa, and not as cold. Attraction to sex is still attraction to sex. No one in the Rift Valley is thinking about IQ.-I really, really hate that you're blowing my idea off: How long does it take before humans are aware that they are aware? How long before they notice that their best hunters are begot by their best hunters, and their smartest shamans beget smarter shamans? How long before they select for the prettiest girls?-We've done this with dogs for millenia, and if you prepare a revision for your book, though you don't agree, I implore you to consider the role of artificial selection: it is the strongest challenge to the idea of a UI, simply because as I said once a long time ago--it creates a tapestry that is impossible to unwind! But we KNOW man has done this to himself!-Consider Plato's republic. Have you considered how strongly it models Spartan society? Sparta's policy of infanticide turns noses to modern morality, but I hardly think that they were the first group of humans to engage in the practice; and if you consider that it took only 12,000 years to go from the wolf to the Chihuahua, the wall of your argument begins cracking. -When I said a couple years back that in order to infer a UI you first must be able to differentiate between human and nonhuman intelligence--this is EXACTLY what I had in mind.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"