Sally Redux

Telling kids that someone is watching them at all times and knows all their thoughts is extremely creepy.

bc_guy

I actually know someone who staunchly believes that the ultimate goal of space agencies around the world is to search for god in space, just like on that episode of Futurama. Seriously, you have to wonder about these people's cognition processes at times. I guess that they'd assume that god exists outside of this universe's space-time fabric or better yet, he lives outside of the multiverse (if current theoretical cosmology is correct). But the whole idea of god living up in the clouds is too loopy a concept in modern times.

bats

It used to scare the shit out of me.

Shard

As I understand things, his claim is not entirely unfounded as the other primates act in this fashion. What he misunderstands is that we humans have developed a sense of morality which underpins our society. He will attribute the morality to the great bearded one, whereas in fact it has simply evolved with our complex brains.

Alan2005

I think it is unfounded and a bit nonsensical.

All behaviours evolve because they increase fecundity. Just because any given species has evolved a specific set of behaviours doesn't mean that this is applicable to another. Saying it's ok to rape because some apes have evolved to act like this is as crazy as saying it's ok to kill and consume your partner if you're feeling a bit peckish because some spiders do it.

Shard

I don't think he was saying anything about it being ok. He seemed to be saying that rape should be a consequence of evolutionary theory, and to some extent he is correct. If you replace the highly charged word of rape with say promiscuity, the theory remains in tact.

Sally Redux

He doesn't understand evolution, pure and simple.

Shard

He understands the propagation of genes. He misunderstands morality.

Novocastrian

Only male ones apparently. He's a cretin.

Alan2005

Rape is only a necessarily a consequence of evolutionary theory if you are a buffoon. He is not correct. Morality is a consequence of evolution, not some separate thing.

kimilseung

I can only assume, that he is so welded to his own thoughts, that even when he thinks beyond creationism, he believes whatever alternatives, must also have a plan, and been put in to place with purpose.

Sally Redux

I think a lot of it comes back to ego, as we've discussed before. Hard for some to accept that “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” (Douglas Adams again).

Novocastrian

I've got a better quote, which I've been saving for the several years since I first read it.

From “Saturday” by Ian McEwan

"The primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in accord with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. Such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis."

Says it all really.

Sally Redux

Yes and I think we're seeing that psychosis up close with the Rapture/End of Days bods.

Novocastrian

They're a bit nearer the temple than creationists and catholics and jihadists I suppose. But the latter two, at least, are just exploiting the other fools on the spectrum to exercise organized power on their own behalf,