If you really want to boil it down to the absolute basics, I believe the reason we are alive is entropy. It’s the only “force” that ensures that things will change, and change is absolutely necessary for the existence of life.
Before society developed and codified it, religion existed (in a metaphorical sense) for millions of years. The mammals that learned to live in strict hierarchies were the ones most likely to survive. Even in the primitive world, multiple minds worked better than one. And from an evolutionary perspective, the only thing that really matters is survival.
Q: How does evolution explain why men tend to outperform women in mathematics and spatial reasoning?
Q: How does evolution explain why men tend to outperform women in mathematics and spatial reasoning? A: Our species has a long biological heritage of men going out to do the hunting while the women stay at the camp to do the gathering. The men that tended to get lost because of their terrible spatial [ Read More ]
Q: Why has evolution programmed us to believe we have immortal souls? A: Because (in a sense) we do have immortal souls: our DNA. Every strand of DNA in every living cell of every organism is a genetic history lesson. We share our respiratory, circulatory, digestive, system as trillions of other animals, and we are [ Read More ]
Q: Should we interfere in the process of evolution? Me and my friend were talking about baby sea turtles in which I told my friend that sometimes they die if seagulls or predators come and eat them on shore when their born. She then told me what if you go and try to help them [ Read More ]
Q: Fellow atheists, I really need some help on this one. I (against some recommendations by others) decided to take an opportunity to tell my mom about my “conversion” or should I say my “reversion” to atheism. She’s fine with it. She had me tell my dad. Last night I found myself in a major [ Read More ]
Q: Can someone tell me why men and women eat differently? A: Though we are the same species, our differences in gender play a huge role in how our bodies use energy. Males tend to be larger and do more physical labor, so they tend to need more energy. Females tend to be smaller, and [ Read More ]
Q: Does anyone know what percent of humans will one day be fossils? in a debate with a creationist. I remember hearing it at one point its microscopic. A: It would be hard to pin down a number but just consider this… Dinosaurs existed for hundreds of millions of years. Every year there were hundreds [ Read More ]
Q: Spiritually speaking about midichlorian evolution…? If midichlorians are symbiotic flora that communicate with the Force, and is present in Jedi who have emerged from genetically unrelated races that evolved from different planets across the galaxy far far away, where did midichlorians come from? How can the same genetic material evolve on multiple planets simultaneously? [ Read More ]
Q: If man is more than just an animal how come the Alpha male syndrome is so prominent in our society? Females also display this syndrome as well. A: We’re not more than animals, and anyone who thinks that is deluding themselves. Need proof? Rape, murder, war, assault, abuse, etc. If we were better than [ Read More ]
Q: Why do people follow the bible so fanatically? The bible’s influence on the majority of the population is on par with Hitler’s influence on his own people. If you force lies in a person’s face over and over again, eventually the truth will be perceived as a lie. This has been used before with [ Read More ]
Why is it a logic leap to say that existence implies a creator, but statistical inevitability is not? During a discussion I was having with one of my very good friends, a question came up that I had to stop and think about. It’s a delicate matter, with an important subtlety that has to be [ Read More ]
It was generally held for a long time that hunting, the act of stalking live prey and then killing it, contributed a great deal to our natural aggressive tendencies. After all, it seems perfectly natural to imagine how this ruthless ability to assault another living creature would serve our ancestors capture much-needed food. The problem [ Read More ]
There are three pervading hypotheses about the emergence of modern humans. While I was reading the summaries of the three hypotheses, I began to I favor the so-called multiregional hypothesis, which states that our species evolved relatively simultaneously in several parts of the Old World. I understood the logic behind the “Eve†hypothesis, which supports [ Read More ]
Evolution is a product of the scientific process. It is often touted by critics as being “only a theory.†The irony is that if they truly understood the word theory, they would not be so quick to call it that. Our text describes the word as “an explanation of natural phenomena, supported by a reliable [ Read More ]
We may not have been the first species to invent language, but we have honed our own language to extend beyond grunts and yells. We started with sticks and clay then moved to scrolls, then to codices, then parchment and paper, then fixed-type, then type writers, then computers, and now the Internet. The tools of [ Read More ]
Information is important to Life, and Earth is positively rippling with both. Quasi-intelligent beings that never see the light of day live on inside us, While mindless molecular machines copy our biological biography With the guided precision of a skilled craftsman. All living creatures store libraries of information in their genes, But many beings are [ Read More ]
Before the Sun rose and set in the sky of Earth, A giant blue-green rock spun lazily around its star. Then a being, mostly calling itself Man, Gave names to these gods of the ground and sky. Our solitary sun floats with its family of planets. A grain of sand in a beach too massive [ Read More ]
Ethereal lights in the sky, unexplainable phenomena, And alleged astronauts older than any nation Lead many to believe we’re inundated with uninvited guests. Though I wish it were so, it probably just isn’t true. It could be that we have not been discovered, And our xenophobia causes us to see lights in the sky. Besides, [ Read More ]
I’ll read this note aloud to you now, So you can laugh at me later. It won’t take long, so don’t interrupt, In fact, it’s halfway over. Come cruise with me onboard the Eclipse, And bake the bread of knowledge. I learned today of the coelacanth, Heresy, it seems, is taught in college.
I imagine the Cosmos, infinite and remote. I reflect on our sun, the perfect planetary host. I consider our world, the pale blue home of the Earthlings, I think of this forest, and of this path I tread. Intentionally lost among Appalachian giants, I wander a chaotic, forkful path. Willfully losing myself in the grandeur, [ Read More ]
To make it perfectly clear, this is an analogy, as I do not have enough evidence to prove otherwise. We are born, and according to our DNA, in there is how we would respond to every question that could ever be asked or every event that could come before us. Whether or not it is [ Read More ]
My girlfriend’s younger brother is doing homeschool this semester, and we just happened to stop by and see his textbooks. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then I actually read the thing. This book, supposedly a learning tool, does its best to defame science as a working tool to understanding our universe. I [ Read More ]
Some people fear the idea of some form of artificial intelligence taking over the world and killing everyone. While this is probably the most extreme outcome, it is generally our worst fears that motivate us most. If we were to create a true kind of artificial intelligence that was actually able to think for itself [ Read More ]
Whether you like it or not, human cloning is on it’s way. In fact, it is so much on it’s way that it is quite possible that at the time of this writing, a human being may now be growing up as a direct result of being cloned. These ethical implications and moral questions are [ Read More ]