Quote: "Conversely a positive mutation causes increased survivability and will mean the individual carrying it has a greater chance of producing successful offspring, who have the same competitive advantage. So the proportion with the positive mutation increases over time."
That's an excellent explanation. In case people still don't quite understand, I'll explain the simplified example which made me see how Evolution could work.
Let's say there are some horses who are living near some tall trees. Most of the horses have normal-sized necks and so eat as much as they can reach. One horse happens to have a genetic mutation which gives it a longer neck. This allows it to reach the higher branches and eat enough to survive. Most of the other horses starve because they can't reach the upper branches. The horse with a slightly longer neck doesn't die because it has enough food; it reproduces and its offspring also have long necks. Over time, the horses which happen to have longer necks tend to do better than those with shorter necks, which means that, over many generations (taking thousands of years) the species's necks get longer. Eventually you get giraffes.
Quote: "
If one of my Christian friends is right, as long as we've behaved ourselves, even though I'm a non-believer, I could be joining you in heaven."
The way I was taught in Sunday school, you can only get into heaven if you are completely free of sin. That means you never got angry, you never swore, you never had negative thoughts towards anyone, you never told a lie etc. This is actually impossible for a human being. This means that everyone who died before the coming of Christ - so everyone in the Old Testament - went straight to hell, because no matter how much God favoured them, they still sinned.
Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was effectively a way to bypass this. When he died (or possibly during his suffering on the cross, I was never sure on that point) he took all of mankind's sins onto himself and suffered for all of them. This means that people can go to heaven.
But they can only do so if they ask God to forgive them for their sins and are truly sorry for them. And God, being omniscient, knows whether you're truly sorry. As long as you repent after your sins, you will go to heaven when you die. But, if you sin again (which you probably will), then you're going to have to repent again.
I suppose this might seem a bit unfair, since someone who happened to repent at the last moment would go to heaven, while someone else who had repented dutifully day after day but was hit by a car after swearing at someone would go to hell. But, ultimately, I got the impression that God was in charge and God was completely just, so that ultimately you would go to heaven if you deserved it and everything would work out.
By the way, I don't believe this anymore but I do think it's very interesting. Also, this is just what I was taught; there are Christians who have different views to these.
Quote: "I see what you are saying. The only flaw in your argument is that you are assuming that moral diversity means there is no absolute standard. That is much like saying that if 20 students are given a complex algebra problem and all 20 of them get it wrong, we therefore ought to make up our own answer. But perhaps this is not what you meant. "
I see what you're saying. But let's say 20 students have the question "Find x if x+y=0 and y=6" and all get it wrong. It is empirically true that x must equal -6, and no other answer can possibly yield a correct answer. The only way you could somehow change the answer would be to completely redefine the way we think about numbers, and say that the plus sign doesn't actually mean "add", or that the symbol "6" doesn't mean "the integer between 5 and 7" but actually refers to some other number. Even with all this alteration, though, you would only have changed the way the problem is presented; whichever way you look at it, there must always be a particular answer to this particular problem, even if you were to try to disguise that fact by writing it differently.
Morals - as I understand them - are different. If there is no God, then there is no external force telling us that certain things are bad and certain things are good. Instead, there is only the universe, which is a lot of particles moving and interacting in space and time. The universe has certain laws, like those of gravity or thermodynamics; the laws of mathematics are similar in that they cannot be changed, and are linked to the universe's essential, inherent nature.
Morals are something created by mankind, though. If you talk to someone on the street and ask them whether killing is wrong, they will probably say that killing is wrong. But if you were to ask someone from 500,000 years ago this question, they would probably say "Killing someone from my village is wrong, but killing someone from outside the village is right." Asking a Roman would probably get you "Killing a Roman is wrong, but killing barbarians is right." Even today, some people would say that killing an innocent person is wrong, but killing a serial killer is right; presumably, some people out there must be of the opinion that killing anyone they disagree with is right, or even that killing anyone who is not *them* is right. And who are we to disagree? We have no absolute moral standard: after all, what does "right" mean? It is only a concept, and concepts only exist inside people's heads, so if someone else believes that something is right then, for them, it must be, even if we find it completely disgusting. I don't think there is an absolute standard in morality because I just don't see any evidence for one. People just seem to reinterpret the rules as they see fit. A bunch of people could found a society nowadays whose first rule is that killing anyone outside the group is good and must be done at any opportunity. To an extent, this is already happening: terrorists (whether Islamic or not) seem to work on this basis, that they are right and that everyone else is so utterly wrong that killing them is good. To us, this is wrong, but does that really mean anything? To the terrorists, this is right. So who is right: us or them? At the end of the day, both sides are just groups of people with particular views; there's nothing which makes either side more "right" than the other.
Having said that, I think that there is a common basis for morality which is probably derived from our evolutionary past. Scientists have seen evidence of altruism among animals towards their own offspring and others of their own tribe; they attribute this to what Dawkins calls the selfish gene. This is where a gene causes its carrier to behave altruistically; this may result in the death of this particular carrier, but it will probably result in the survival of the carrier's offspring or relatives, who probably also have the gene, and will therefore result in the gene being carried on through the generations. I think this is probably the root of our instinctive kindness.
Which is not to say that, just because kindness has its origin in evolution, that it's a bad thing. I personally think love and kindness are wonderful things, and I'm very glad that they did develop. I don't think they were given to us by a deity, but we've got them all the same so we might as well enjoy them and bring each other happiness.
Also, this is just my opinion. I respect others' opinions; in fact, if there's one thing I can be more or less sure about, it's that I don't have all the answers. So please don't take this as my absolute, rock-solid conviction about how life fits together.
Secretary of Unknowable Knowledge for the Rock/Dink administration '08
