Thommo wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:I'm still puzzling over how it's significant that most theists think this, or most atheists say that, and how the popularity of an opinion turns it into an ideology. Well, no, I'm not puzzled. I think that's the kind of thing you expect to get from internet chat.

Hard to argue with that.

Maybe it's your ideology.

It probably is. My ideology is not to quake in my boots whenever someone accuses me of having an ideology. Look how laklak handles it: "Why, I believe I'll have another beer!"

Thommo wrote:Weirdly, I was under the impression that most Christians believed in the mathematical regularity created by physical laws and the Theory of Evolution as well.

I have no idea in what sense this "belongs" to atheism such that it could make atheism an ideology by proxy. And that's even accepting the rather stretched premise that believing in observable, testable results constitutes an ideology in the first place.

Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science. They believe that those exceptions are best described in terms of the will of God. In particular, most Christians regard questions around morality as being answered, in the end, by God rather than by science. Most Christians believe in Heaven (which doesn’t have scientific evidence behind it), and I think it’s fair to say that all religions have some sort of belief that bad actions get punished and good ones rewarded by some supernatural power – I think this applies to almost all versions of Buddhism and the Perennial Philosophy. This has always been the case, religions have never denied that there are plenty of regularities in the world which don’t require intervention from any god.

What I’m calling the scientific worldview is provisional acceptance that there are no exceptions to the mathematical regularities, including the evolved biochemistry which underlies human morality. As a worldview, this goes beyond the evidence, since we can’t yet prove it’s the case, so I don’t think it’s unfair for opponents to call it an ideology.

What I’m calling the scientific worldview is provisional acceptance that there are no exceptions to the mathematical regularities, including the evolved biochemistry which underlies human morality. As a worldview, this goes beyond the evidence, since we can’t yet prove it’s the case, so I don’t think it’s unfair for opponents to call it an ideology.

Even your own wording shows the fallacy. Provisional acceptance based on available evidence does not an ideology make.

zulumoose wrote:

What I’m calling the scientific worldview is provisional acceptance that there are no exceptions to the mathematical regularities, including the evolved biochemistry which underlies human morality. As a worldview, this goes beyond the evidence, since we can’t yet prove it’s the case, so I don’t think it’s unfair for opponents to call it an ideology.

Even your own wording shows the fallacy. Provisional acceptance based on available evidence does not an ideology make.

“Ideology” is a word which in ordinary use implies disapproval of the belief system in question, so I don’t think of my worldview as an ideology either, I agree with you that provisional acceptance based on available evidence is a reasonable extrapolation. But at the same time, my “provisional acceptance” isn’t merely academic, I live my life around it, including trying to work out how to reconcile ordinary morality with evolution; I do in practice go beyond the evidence (though of course I don’t think I go unreasonably beyond the evidence, but “unreasonable” is another term which is generally applied to opponents, not oneself). Perhaps I’m being too ready to accept the terminology of opponents? – I’m happy to argue that a Christian’s beliefs constitute an ideology, while expecting that Christian to reject the term and apply it instead to my belief system.

I’m contrasting what I’m calling the scientific worldview, which I think opponents may reasonably characterise as an ideology because it is a coherent set of beliefs which in practice goes beyond the evidence, with atheism, which I don’t think can be called an ideology even by opponents, since I would say that atheism includes any set of beliefs which doesn’t include belief in god. Perhaps it’s a mistake to allow opponents’ labels to stick, so perhaps I would do better not to try to argue that the scientific worldview can be called an “ideology” even by opponents. But I’m going to stick to the argument that the scientific worldview, considered as a personal belief system rather than an academic philosophical position, is unlike atheism in that it constitutes a coherent set of positive beliefs which, as in any other personal belief system, needs to go some way beyond the evidence if it’s to be useful.

I don’t think ideologies are necessarily totally inflexible in the face of any evidence, though I do agree that much modern religion has that trait. Even if a Christian was holding their belief system provisionally, I would still call it an ideology if they were living by its lights.

zoon wrote:

Thommo wrote:Weirdly, I was under the impression that most Christians believed in the mathematical regularity created by physical laws and the Theory of Evolution as well.

I have no idea in what sense this "belongs" to atheism such that it could make atheism an ideology by proxy. And that's even accepting the rather stretched premise that believing in observable, testable results constitutes an ideology in the first place.

Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science. They believe that those exceptions are best described in terms of the will of God. In particular, most Christians regard questions around morality as being answered, in the end, by God rather than by science. Most Christians believe in Heaven (which doesn’t have scientific evidence behind it), and I think it’s fair to say that all religions have some sort of belief that bad actions get punished and good ones rewarded by some supernatural power – I think this applies to almost all versions of Buddhism and the Perennial Philosophy. This has always been the case, religions have never denied that there are plenty of regularities in the world which don’t require intervention from any god.

What I’m calling the scientific worldview is provisional acceptance that there are no exceptions to the mathematical regularities, including the evolved biochemistry which underlies human morality. As a worldview, this goes beyond the evidence, since we can’t yet prove it’s the case, so I don’t think it’s unfair for opponents to call it an ideology.

And you think ties belief in evolution and regularities to atheism?

Fair enough, I guess we disagree. I genuinely don't even see how one would discern that God's influence (typically presented in the form of commandments and laws) would somehow be less "regular", than the randomness of a theory like quantum theory.

And tying evolution to atheism when it's official Catholic dogma also just seems weird. It's like tacitly saying that creationists are the only true Christians.

Thommo wrote:
And tying evolution to atheism when it's official Catholic dogma also just seems weird. It's like tacitly saying that creationists are the only true Christians.

Well they are, in a way. Most christians believe that some parts of the Bible are not to be taken literally. Which is somehow hypocritical, since they think the Bible is God's word. So only people who believe in their holy book 100% should be considered "true" believers. If that means anything.

Ah but...

aban57 wrote:

Thommo wrote:
And tying evolution to atheism when it's official Catholic dogma also just seems weird. It's like tacitly saying that creationists are the only true Christians.

Well they are, in a way. Most christians believe that some parts of the Bible are not to be taken literally. Which is somehow hypocritical, since they think the Bible is God's word. So only people who believe in their holy book 100% should be considered "true" believers. If that means anything.

Not to me, no. Saying that believing in evolution means you are an atheist is orders of magnitude more incorrect than anything that was trying to be cleared up here in the first place.

Yes, the pope is a Christian even if he accepts official Catholic dogma that evolution is a real thing. It's madness to suggest otherwise.

Thommo wrote:

aban57 wrote:

Thommo wrote:
And tying evolution to atheism when it's official Catholic dogma also just seems weird. It's like tacitly saying that creationists are the only true Christians.

Well they are, in a way. Most christians believe that some parts of the Bible are not to be taken literally. Which is somehow hypocritical, since they think the Bible is God's word. So only people who believe in their holy book 100% should be considered "true" believers. If that means anything.

Not to me, no. Saying that believing in evolution means you are an atheist is orders of magnitude more incorrect than anything that was trying to be cleared up here in the first place.

Yes, the pope is a Christian even if he accepts official Catholic dogma that evolution is a real thing. It's madness to suggest otherwise.

Sorry, it's my mistake. I was only responding to the last part of what I quoted from you. I agree with the bolded part. My only point was that, in a way, it could be argued that the "only true christian" (which is a fallacy anyway) is the one who believes in 100% of the Bible, as the "only true muslim" would be someone believing in 100% of the Quran and the Hadiths.
That doesn't mean people who accomodate their religious text with reality are no longer believers of that religion.

zoon wrote:Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science.

Do you live in the USA, or in a similarly benighted country? Or is that something you just made up because it seems logical or at least plausible to you?

Thommo wrote:

zoon wrote:

Thommo wrote:Weirdly, I was under the impression that most Christians believed in the mathematical regularity created by physical laws and the Theory of Evolution as well.

I have no idea in what sense this "belongs" to atheism such that it could make atheism an ideology by proxy. And that's even accepting the rather stretched premise that believing in observable, testable results constitutes an ideology in the first place.

Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science. They believe that those exceptions are best described in terms of the will of God. In particular, most Christians regard questions around morality as being answered, in the end, by God rather than by science. Most Christians believe in Heaven (which doesn’t have scientific evidence behind it), and I think it’s fair to say that all religions have some sort of belief that bad actions get punished and good ones rewarded by some supernatural power – I think this applies to almost all versions of Buddhism and the Perennial Philosophy. This has always been the case, religions have never denied that there are plenty of regularities in the world which don’t require intervention from any god.

What I’m calling the scientific worldview is provisional acceptance that there are no exceptions to the mathematical regularities, including the evolved biochemistry which underlies human morality. As a worldview, this goes beyond the evidence, since we can’t yet prove it’s the case, so I don’t think it’s unfair for opponents to call it an ideology.

And you think ties belief in evolution and regularities to atheism?

Fair enough, I guess we disagree. I genuinely don't even see how one would discern that God's influence (typically presented in the form of commandments and laws) would somehow be less "regular", than the randomness of a theory like quantum theory.

And tying evolution to atheism when it's official Catholic dogma also just seems weird. It's like tacitly saying that creationists are the only true Christians.

Your first question puzzles me, since you appear to be saying that the massive rise in atheism worldwide over the last century has not been driven by the equally spectacular rise in acceptance of scientific explanations. Are you claiming that the two phenomena are unrelated? Atheists on this forum have had many arguments with theists about evolution; you seem to be saying that this is just an odd coincidence, that there’s no link between atheism and acceptance of the theory of evolution?

I used the phrase “mathematical regularities” in my post above, not just the word “regularities”. Modern science is characterised by an underpinning of mathematical descriptions, starting with Newton’s laws of motion. As you say, God’s commandments and laws are, for theists, also regularities in the world, but we understand those regularities in social terms, in terms of God’s intentions, desires or threats, not in mathematical terms. The argument from design for God’s existence used to be a powerful one, because it took the regular appearance of design and functionality in the living world, and explained it in the way which our social brains find obvious: that a designer thought up the designs first, then created the living things, in the way that a watchmaker might design and create a watch. There is no obvious way to reduce the process of forethought and design to the laws of physics, even in principle. The theory of evolution by natural selection was recognised by both theists and atheists as a blow to theism, because it showed how the functionality of living things could have arisen without the need for forethought; the mathematical regularities of physics could potentially be applied to all living things, including us.

The mathematical regularities of science describe and predict many aspects of the world far more effectively than the social regularities of theism have achieved. You write of the “randomness of quantum theory”, but, as far as my limited understanding goes, this randomness doesn’t stop physicists from using quantum theory to predict the behaviour of matter with astonishing precision.

Certainly, theists can combine belief in god with acceptance of scientific theories. God can be defined very flexibly, to the point where he isn’t expected do anything whatsoever, so theists can combine belief in god and in scientific explanations to their heart’s content, but the success of science does tend to make gods redundant.

zoon wrote:

Thommo wrote:

zoon wrote:

Thommo wrote:Weirdly, I was under the impression that most Christians believed in the mathematical regularity created by physical laws and the Theory of Evolution as well.

I have no idea in what sense this "belongs" to atheism such that it could make atheism an ideology by proxy. And that's even accepting the rather stretched premise that believing in observable, testable results constitutes an ideology in the first place.

Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science. They believe that those exceptions are best described in terms of the will of God. In particular, most Christians regard questions around morality as being answered, in the end, by God rather than by science. Most Christians believe in Heaven (which doesn’t have scientific evidence behind it), and I think it’s fair to say that all religions have some sort of belief that bad actions get punished and good ones rewarded by some supernatural power – I think this applies to almost all versions of Buddhism and the Perennial Philosophy. This has always been the case, religions have never denied that there are plenty of regularities in the world which don’t require intervention from any god.

What I’m calling the scientific worldview is provisional acceptance that there are no exceptions to the mathematical regularities, including the evolved biochemistry which underlies human morality. As a worldview, this goes beyond the evidence, since we can’t yet prove it’s the case, so I don’t think it’s unfair for opponents to call it an ideology.

And you think ties belief in evolution and regularities to atheism?

Fair enough, I guess we disagree. I genuinely don't even see how one would discern that God's influence (typically presented in the form of commandments and laws) would somehow be less "regular", than the randomness of a theory like quantum theory.

And tying evolution to atheism when it's official Catholic dogma also just seems weird. It's like tacitly saying that creationists are the only true Christians.

Your first question puzzles me, since you appear to be saying that the massive rise in atheism worldwide over the last century has not been driven by the equally spectacular rise in acceptance of scientific explanations. Are you claiming that the two phenomena are unrelated? Atheists on this forum have had many arguments with theists about evolution; you seem to be saying that this is just an odd coincidence, that there’s no link between atheism and acceptance of the theory of evolution?

I used the phrase “mathematical regularities” in my post above, not just the word “regularities”. Modern science is characterised by an underpinning of mathematical descriptions, starting with Newton’s laws of motion. As you say, God’s commandments and laws are, for theists, also regularities in the world, but we understand those regularities in social terms, in terms of God’s intentions, desires or threats, not in mathematical terms. The argument from design for God’s existence used to be a powerful one, because it took the regular appearance of design and functionality in the living world, and explained it in the way which our social brains find obvious: that a designer thought up the designs first, then created the living things, in the way that a watchmaker might design and create a watch. There is no obvious way to reduce the process of forethought and design to the laws of physics, even in principle. The theory of evolution by natural selection was recognised by both theists and atheists as a blow to theism, because it showed how the functionality of living things could have arisen without the need for forethought; the mathematical regularities of physics could potentially be applied to all living things, including us.

The mathematical regularities of science describe and predict many aspects of the world far more effectively than the social regularities of theism have achieved. You write of the “randomness of quantum theory”, but, as far as my limited understanding goes, this randomness doesn’t stop physicists from using quantum theory to predict the behaviour of matter with astonishing precision.

Certainly, theists can combine belief in god with acceptance of scientific theories. God can be defined very flexibly, to the point where he isn’t expected do anything whatsoever, so theists can combine belief in god and in scientific explanations to their heart’s content, but the success of science does tend to make gods redundant.

Zoon?
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/creationism/how-atheist-ideology-messed-up-the-human-origin-story-t49049-2740.html#p2674570

Hermit wrote:

zoon wrote:Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science.

Do you live in the USA, or in a similarly benighted country? Or is that something you just made up because it seems logical or at least plausible to you?

Are you saying that the majority of Christians are clear that prayers are never, ever answered by a loving God? Or that they would be happy to argue that our brains are following, precisely, the laws of physics and chemistry when we are deliberating some moral question? It’s true that I haven’t asked any local theists those questions, but I should be surprised, even here near Cambridge in the UK, if they took the line that prayers are pointless or that morality is purely a matter of evolution, biochemistry and social interactions with other humans. Free will is definitely a dogma of the Catholic Church, and I doubt very much that it’s the compatibilist free will which I argue for. From the Catholic catechism here:

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."28

1734 Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.

1735 Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.

1736 Every act directly willed is imputable to its author

Would you say that the above extract from the catechism is an example of Christians accepting that the laws of physics and chemistry govern our brains without any important exceptions?

zoon wrote:Your first question puzzles me, since you appear to be saying that the massive rise in atheism worldwide over the last century has not been driven by the equally spectacular rise in acceptance of scientific explanations.

Is that even true? How do you measure that? I can't actually find statistics showing a massive rise in the acceptance of scientific explanations (in particular the Theory of Evolution) over the last 50 years, and certainly not in any place showing a massive rise in atheism over that period.

But you've shifted the emphasis here. So I will restate: The theory of evolution is not in the domain of atheism, believing it does not make you an atheist and you do not have to be an atheist to believe it. This is a tactical move in some sort of game with creationists, and a fundamentally self-defeating one. The problem with creationism is that it goes against the evidence, not that it goes against atheism.

Whether or not regarding the Theory of evolution as true makes something into an ideology it is pure nonsense to attribute that to atheism. Now, it might be that ideology results AND atheism results (although I think you would have a lot of work to do to show that), but that doesn't mean the ideology and the atheism are the same thing anyway.

zoon wrote:Would you say that the above extract from the catechism is an example of Christians accepting that the laws of physics and chemistry govern our brains without any important exceptions?

No, zoon, I would not. It's a doctrine published by church officials, and the rank and file believe what they will and perhaps keep that to themselves. That goes for what nominal Christians believe about the efficacy of prayer. We don't know, so that means you don't, either. It might be that most church members accept (or reject) scientific reasoning about such matters, but we just don't know, do we, and find out from individuals what they believe when they tell us. Even given that, they might be lying. Trying to assess the kinds of generalities you're after is pretty hopeless. Maybe you believe in the efficacy of wibble.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

zoon wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

romansh wrote:417"]
beliefs, ideas, ideals, principles, doctrine, creed, credo, teaching, dogma, theory, thesis, tenets, canon(s)

So evolution is an ideology?
Making a raft out of wood is an ideology?
Please be a bit more rigorous.

I am not bothered by theists using the word "ideology" to describe the scientific worldview that the evidence suggests things can be fully described in mathematical terms which are not unduly complex. I would say that the laws of physics are coherent enough to constitute a belief system, when they are taken as the basis of a personal worldview. This is in contrast to atheism, which I don't think can be described as an ideology, because it includes any belief system which doesn't include belief in gods.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

romansh wrote:

OK atheists have ideologies, I am sure you did actually work this out.

No I didn't, because their being atheists has nothing inherently to do with whatever ideologies they might hold to.
People, regardless of whether they are atheists, have ideologies.
Atheism is the absence of theism and as such does not provide a basis for any ideology.
That would require a positive claim or belief.

I agree with you that there's no positive set of beliefs, beyond the absence of belief in god(s), which characterises atheists in general. At the same time, I think it's fair to say that the majority of atheists in the modern world accept the scientific worldview, that the evidence suggests everything follows mathematical regularities.

My point is that said beliefs are neither dependent on nor inherently follow from atheism.
Rather the opposite.

I agree with you that those beliefs drive atheism, rather than the other way round. Have I suggested otherwise?

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

zoon wrote: In particular, most modern atheists accept that the theory of evolution by natural selection can account, again, as far as the evidence shows, for all the appearance of functional design in living things, and therefore counters the argument from design. In the opening post of this thread and in later posts, Jayjay4547 has clearly been identifying evolutionary theory with "atheist ideology".

Which ignores the existence of atheists that don't accept ToE and theist who do, thereby ignoring the fact that accepting ToE has nothing to do with atheism.

There are people who chain smoke all their lives and do not get lung cancer; there are other people who have never smoked and die from lung cancer. Does it follow that smoking has nothing whatsoever to do with lung cancer? Are you saying that there's no correlation between atheism and belief in the Theory of Evolution? You are saying that there are atheists who do not accept ToE; of course there are some, including all atheists who lived before the ToE was put forward in the 1800s, but I'm not aware of any sizeable group of atheists in the modern world who would seriously contest the ToE, do you have any such group in mind?

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

zoon wrote:
Of course, "ideology" is a word which ordinarily (outside academic usage) tends to imply disapproval, so people who accept the scientific worldview often won't want to call it an ideology, but since the scientific worldview, including the theory of evolution, is in fact a coherent and interconnected set of provisionally held beliefs about the world, it's not unreasonable to expect opponents to describe it as an ideology?

I never objected to calling scientific rationalism a worldview or ideology.
My objection is to the insinuation and assertion that it is an atheist worldview or ideology.

I am certainly not saying that atheism has to be associated with the scientific worldview. On the contrary, I would say that atheism is most happily defined, for atheists, as including any worldview which does not include belief in god(s). I am saying that in the modern world, atheism tends to be correlated with the scientific worldview, because scientific predictions tend to work better than religious ones, so the scientific worldview often sees gods as redundant.

I would say that acceptance of the scientific worldview drives atheism, rather than the other way round - as you say, many theists do accept the theory of evolution, but I would see this as an example of theism on the way out. One generation believes there is a god who didn't create living things, the next generation is more likely to ask whether such an inactive god is actually there.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

zoon wrote:
As an atheist who broadly accepts the scientific view of the world, I would say that Christians have an ideology, and I would expect them to regard my positive beliefs as an ideology which is characteristic of modern atheists, though not an ideology which is common to all atheists?

The fundamental difference is that the worldview of Christians is the direct result of their specific theistic belief, it is based thereon.
The same is not true for ToE or scientific rationalism, both of which exist independent of atheism and indeed seem more likely to lead to atheism rather than vice versa.

Yes, I certainly agree with you that the positive beliefs of scientific rationalism are what drive people away from the different positive beliefs of theism, I'm not at all trying to suggest that atheism drives scientific rationalism.

ETA, something odd has happened to the quote tags in the first part of this post, and I haven't managed to disentangle them, but I don't think it's had the result of attributing posts to the wrong people.

zoon wrote:I agree with you that those beliefs drive atheism, rather than the other way round. Have I suggested otherwise?

You just stated that those beliefs drive atheism, but you don't know that. Pull your head out of your ass for a minute or two and consider the possibility that people reject theism because it doesn't cohere, that is, it's empty, on its own account. Some people are able to overcome their emotional attachment to the vast significance they find in their tedious little lives, and some people find other ways besides god to invent their significance, even though it's not warranted.

The takeaway is that even people who don't believe in deities instead believe in all sorts of other undocumented shit, and they believe they've documented it.

Behold the goat-roasters of the field. They toil a bit, but they also toil a lot on spinning tall tales. Fuckwits.

I would say that scientific views, and in particular ToE, rather than driving atheism, simply help to remove some of what (for CERTAIN people) are obstacles to dismissing religion.

Many people believe what they are comfortable with, and NEED to believe something about origins, such that if religion provides any comfortable gap filler for them they lean towards it.

People who are comfortable with "I don't know" as a perfectly rational and reasonable answer to the great mysteries of life, the universe and everything, have no such tendency to lean on the side of religion in the first place. Such people are naturally dismissive of the religious tendency to claim to have answers, which are almost always vague and unsatisfactory to a rational mind anyway.

zoon wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:..
What’s this Cito? Sweat glands? Actual things with functions? Tell me more!

Are you saying here that in your view, sweat glands have a function: to help regulate the temperature of the individual?

Yes

zoon wrote:If this is your view, then what difficulty do you have with the view that they evolved through natural selection? A chance mutation in one gene of one individual made that individual slightly more likely to have damp skin and stay cooler in the heat, so that individual survived and had more descendants with the same mutation, and the mutation is eventually carried by most of that population. Over hundreds of thousands of years further chance mutations which improved thermoregulation appeared, and again gave the individuals carrying those mutations a better chance of surviving and passing on those genes. This process is not self-creation, since nobody's creating anything, but it does lead to the appearance of functionality. It's also a process without apparent purpose, since the functionality appears with no need for any guiding intelligence.

Your outline says how but it hides “why” in the phrase “improved thermoregulation”. Does a “damp skin and stay cooler in the heat” improve thermoregulation if it comes at the cost of losing up to 14 litres of water per day? (Wiki entry on perspiration). I read as a child that a damp skin hobbled the dry land evolution of amphibians. If the damp skin is so advantageous, why don’t other African mammals have similar skins to ours? This short-changing of why enables you to use how as springboard for claiming no apparent purpose and then, no guiding intelligence in human evolution.

Your explanation is the first data point in this my attempt to show how atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story. I need to say that in the face of others alleging that I have “no data”.

Other data come from this Smithsonian Mag article by science writer Jason Daley: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... 1xo4mme.99
After dismissing “the aquatic ape theory (it “hasn’t received much support from the fossil record and isn’t taken seriously by most researchers”), Daley writes:

“A more widely accepted theory is that, when human ancestors moved from the cool shady forests into the savannah, they developed a new method of thermoregulation. Losing all that fur made it possible for hominins to hunt during the day in the hot grasslands without overheating. An increase in sweat glands, many more than other primates, also kept early humans on the cool side. The development of fire and clothing meant that humans could keep cool during the day and cozy up at night.”

This explanation adds “why” to your “thermoregulation” but in doing that it raises credibility issues. When our ancestors came to the hot grasslands as hunters, what competitive edge did they bring to the cohort of hunters who were already reaping the full crop of herbivores? A damp skin? Primate smarts? They weren’t the only primates with smarts, nor were other grassland predators lacking in smarts when it came to killing.

Just as a major problem with the aquatic ape theory lies in its disrespect for animals that actually do live in water, so this thermoregulation story as presented here, disregards the great excellence in what competing animals of the hot grasslands can do. The imagined scene where humans are adapting, is effectively a scene unpopulated except for resources; a stage with one actor on it. What is missing is a sense of the environment acting on the pre-human actor, in the form of other hunters with no taboo against eating primates. When that is fed into the model, what is striking about our ancestors on the hot grasslands, is their lack of natural equipment displayed by other species, that impose caution on animals that want to eat them: no fangs, no hooves, no horns and no claws These all pose deadly dangers to predators. The picture of our ancestors in their natural context, including thermoregulation, comes sharply into focus when we suppose that when they moved out of the cool shady forests, they were already habituated and proficient at defending themselves using hand held weapons: sticks and stones. When the fight came to them they needed to be formidable, without necessarily being proficient as hunters themselves.

When you sharpen focus this way, the thermoregulation story does not go away, but it is also transformed. An animal that while it is alive, keeps prospective predators at a distance doesn’t need a skin so resistant to puncture, abrasion and tearing. Without that constraint, it can use precious perspiration more efficiently that say a horse can, that also sweats. According to the Wikipedia article on perspiration, animals like dogs (predators) cool themselves by passing air through the oral cavity and pharynx. Well our ancestors filled their skull with too large a brain to leave a big oral cavity and pharynx, or a carotid rete such as buck use for cooling.

So, when you bring other competing animals into the explanation as important parts of the model, our ancestors come into sharper focus as having satisfied the particular environmental criteria that led to them flowing BY NATURAL SELECTION into an innovative solution to a universal inter-species problem on the hot grasslands. And the model itself start to tingle messages for more exploration. Our ancestors appear hugga-mugga with the other animals, in a way well represented in the Australian Aborigine origin narratives.

Science seems to have gone backward here. In 1925 Dart proposed that Australopithecus, that unexpected missing link, used its hands for “offence and defence”. After that brilliant exposition Dart pursued the thread of offense, which went through some pretty torrid times as the hunting hypothesis at the hands of Robert Ardrey, and now appears in anodyne form in Daley's story. When science goes backwards that deserves to be examined closely.

I have to break here in discussing your most interesting post.
[edited grammar and dropped associating zoon with hunting hypothesis.

zoon wrote:

Hermit wrote:

zoon wrote:Most Christians believe, and it is central to their belief system, that there are important ongoing exceptions to the mathematical regularities which are described by science.

Do you live in the USA, or in a similarly benighted country? Or is that something you just made up because it seems logical or at least plausible to you?

Are you saying that the majority of Christians are clear that prayers are never, ever answered by a loving God?

Great. Another Cathy Newman wannabe.