Human Origins - Evolution - Religion

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Especially when it works so well on its own without divine intervention anyway!

google tells me that the english language word "religion" comes from a latin root meaning "mans' obligation to the gods". English is the only language I know so I can't research it in the languages that don't have latin roots.

Nonetheless, it is likely that the word "religion" in various languages is a variant on the same theme- human duty to honor that which is sacred and divine. I doubt that humans having their first disagreements was relevent at the time the concept of religion was created. Although religious disagreements are common now, and propel many into war, it is unlikely that paleolithic humans who were inventing the concept (seen in cave art and burials) would center it around what disagreements they had with each other about how to bury or worship. I think it's even more possible that at that early stage, there weren't real disagreements. Things would simply seem obvious. It is more likely that the concept from its very start was just like its more modern latin root, duty to honor the sacred.

If I were religious, that's what I would go with. God "wrote" the physical laws which govern the universe and when life arises on a planet, those physical laws govern evolution.

As those "laws" become investigated deeper and deeper by scientific enquiry they are less like "laws" in the human sense and are shown to be merely mathematics in action. So ultimately unless God wrote the "law" that 1 + 1 = 2 then it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is no role left such such a divine entity. The whole universe and evolution is mathematics in action. Just because a lot of the processes involve complex mathematics of which the vast majority of people have no education in and don't have a clue about is no reason to attribute those processes to magic or magical beings. Most people don't understand how a rainbow is formed, let alone the processes behind evolution. Maybe rainbows are "guided by God" to make the sky pretty?

Given that there are invariant principles along which the cosmos operates, who needs God? The cosmos unfolds as it will and should.

ruveyn

Who wrote those principles? Who decided how the cosmos "should" unfold?
The religious answer is a god or gods.

No argument ever proves or disproves the existence of God(s).
It is futile to attempt either.

then it should be readily apparant than no one should base their actions on such assumptions doesnt it?
especially when it hurts other people that did not make a conscoiuss choice to do so.

People should base their actions upon whatever seems best to them. One of the purposes of religion is to prod people into treating each other kindly. Like all other human institutions, however, religion is subject to corruption.

The unfolding of the cosmos is simply the unfolding of mathematical principles. Nobody wrote the laws of mathematics. They just are. From the simple statement that 1 + 1 = 2 a whole cascade of mathematical principles follows and more follow from them right up to mathematics regarding the formation and complexity of the universe and living organisms. Bear in mind that mathematics is discovered, it is not invented or created (though people may invent various techniques and tools to manipulate numbers or equations but that is not inventing the mathematics itself). So nobody, no god, decided how the universe should unfold. It is a natural consequence of mathematics, nothing more.

My guess is that religion came about in order to explain things about reality we did not know at that point. Now that we know so much about the physical universe, there is less and less left to explain by attributing it to a god. This is known as the "god of the gaps" model.

That is usually my explanation for how religion came to be.
To your second point: What we will do when we reach the limit of what science, technology, and human sensation can reveal to us?

I doubt they would seem obvious, but given that (a) this would likely have been animism of some sort and (b) there would be few dogmas or rigidly established protocols or formality to any of it, there would be little room for disagreement.

He's not in any hurry. He wants to be with us even though he is completely self-sufficient without us.

Did God tell you this personally?

ruveyn

I can't hope to respond to the whole thing, but this really caught my attention.

This sounds to me like a misunderstanding of what classic evolution is. Your environment does not "make" you what you are. It selects you according to certain traits as to whether you're going to actually survive. If race was the result of climate, then all the descendants of black slaves who migrated to Chicago should have started turning white.

What evolution actually says is that African blacks survived predominantly in Africa predominantly as a result of their better adaptivity to harsher, hotter climates, while white skinned human adapted better to colder climates with wider variation. Reality seems to be that sub-Saharan Africans are themselves numerous diverse races every bit as much as pale Europeans are diverse races. I mean, even within the British peoples you historically have distinct ethnic groups like Angles, Saxons, Celts (and their various split-offs), Welsh, Cornish... And if you trace those groups back far enough, you'll probably find that they represent a coalescence of other distinct races. Doesn't matter what race you are, we're all mutts who descended from other mutts.

What's lovely is the large genetic diversity it's given us and the ability to survive in extreme conditions. We've even figured out how to survive in outer space, something technically possible for anyone if only a reality for a chosen few.

But I don't credit the environment for MAKING us who/what we are. It just selects who is most likely to find himself welcome in any given environment.

Also, evolution doesn't really touch origins hypotheses, which I think is a shame. I'd find it a lot more convincing if it did, but so far life origins remain a mystery. About the best guess as to life getting here so quickly is that protein polymers formed in space and survived an impact with the earth soon after the crust cooled.

Oddly enough, Christians already believe that life has its origins off-world.

In regards to evolution and religion, what fascinates me is that evolution seems to have predominantly selected the faithful for survival.

Actually genetic diversity is not only present in Africa, it is vastly greater in Africa than anywhere else.

The Cambridge researchers studied genetic diversity of human populations around the world and measurements of over 6,000 skulls from across the globe in academic collections. Their research knocks down one of the last arguments in favour of multiple origins. The new findings show that a loss in genetic diversity the further a population is from Africa is mirrored by a loss in variation in physical attributes.

Lead researcher, Dr Andrea Manica from the University's Department of Zoology, explained: "The origin of anatomically modern humans has been the focus of much heated debate. Our genetic research shows the further modern humans have migrated from Africa the more genetic diversity has been lost within a population.

"However, some have used skull data to argue that modern humans originated in multiple spots around the world. We have combined our genetic data with new measurements of a large sample of skulls to show definitively that modern humans originated from a single area in Sub-saharan Africa."

The research team found that genetic diversity decreased in populations the further away from Africa they were - a result of 'bottlenecks' or events that temporarily reduced populations during human migration. They then studied an exceptionally large sample of human skulls. Taking a set of measurements across all the skulls the team showed that not only was variation highest amongst the sample from south eastern Africa but that it did decrease at the same rate as the genetic data the further the skull was away from Africa.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140829.htm