You Animal You: How Darwin Hardwired Humans
You are what you are because you were what you were. Now you understand. Do what comes naturally, evolutionists say.
Humans are hardwired to dismiss (coronavirus) facts that don’t fit their worldview (Live Science). Isn’t it funny how evolutionists never apply their ideas to themselves? This is the Yoda Complex at work in the skull of author Adrian Bardon, a Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. Let’s see now; if people are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview, then Dr Bardon is hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit his worldview, too: like creation. His thesis is just an artifact of the way he was hardwired; therefore it is not a truth claim. (Cue sound of short circuit.)
What primates can teach us about managing arguments during lockdown (The Conversation). Most parents try to teach their children not to act like monkeys, but Nicola F. Koyama, a Senior Lecturer in Biological & Environmental Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University, looks at it the other way. We should argue the way monkeys do. After all, “behavioural strategies have evolved that can minimise the risk and costs of conflict.”
Conflict management strategies are widespread across primate species and are part of our evolutionary history. As social, cooperative beings, we have evolved coping strategies to use in such situations and there are many practical resources out there to remind us how to deal with a conflict before it happens.
Practically, this must mean that parents should teach their kids to screech at each other, scream, jump around, and then calm down and pick ticks off each others’ backs. If the neighbors complain, tell them they are just acting out their evolutionary history. This strategy should also work for writing scientific papers: when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. It passes peer review every time. It should at least. Peer review is another part of our evolutionary history, signifying nothing.
Monkeying with the piano (Peter Stern, Science Magazine). Evolutionists taught some macaques to play the piano (not tuneful melodies; just random noise). They found that macaque brains can make auditory-motor links with sounds they produced. And yet they don’t speak. What does this mean? It can only mean one thing: “the origin of speech in humans may have required the evolution of a command apparatus that controls the upper vocal tract.” Come again?
How Darwin can help us with cancer and corona[virus] (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). With its cameo of the Bearded Buddha, this article asks us to rely on the Stuff Happens Law when sick. Why? “some organisms evolve and others don’t.” Such amazing insight this Darwinism gives. The grinning Darwin disciples in this article have lost all ability to reason. Tossing around Darwinese like “evolvability” and “selection pressure” ad nauseum, they dodge the very question in the headline: How can Darwin help us with cancer and coronavirus? Their answer is, essentially, ‘He can’t. Get used to it.’ Talk about a science stopper.
Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory Could Help Fight Cancer (University of Southern California, USC). These scientists try a little harder to help people with applied Darwinism.
“Tumors are made up of a heterogenous collection of cell types, all competing for resources, with varying degrees of chemo-resistance,” Newton said. “Our models use evolutionary game theory to design treatment schedules that adaptively control the competition without letting a resistant species take over, which often happens with the strategy of killing as many tumor cells as possible as quickly as possible. Evolution matters.”
But if evolution matters, then why fight it? The cancer has higher fitness. What’s the matter with you guys at USC, are you trying to doubt that Stuff Happens?
Scientists trace the origin of our teeth from the most primitive jawed fish (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, ESRF). Evolutionists struggled to understand how the teeth of jawed fish evolved. They scanned them with the ESRF, and the light went on. There had been no evolution. Darwin be praised!
“These findings change our whole understanding of the origin of teeth” says co-author Per Ahlberg, professor at Uppsala University. And he adds: “Even though acanthothoracids are among the most primitive of all jawed vertebrates, their teeth are in some ways far more like modern ones than arthrodire dentitions. Their jawbones resemble those of bony fish and seem to be directly ancestral to our own. When you grin at the bathroom mirror in the morning, the teeth that grin back at you can trace their origins right back to the first jawed vertebrates.”
Feeling insecure about your relationship? Your biology may play a role (McGill University). Evolutionary psychologists in Montreal asked a hundred couples to keep diaries of their feelings in their romantic relationships. The psychologists snooped on these diaries, correlated them with samples of their spit, and used them as divination devices to see the image of Darwin.
This work is part of a broader literature suggesting that, in the course of our evolutionary history, primitive pain-regulating mechanisms may have been “borrowed” to regulate our attachment to close others, on whom we depend on nurturance and survival.
Why nature, history and American culture all make social isolation difficult (University of Southern California). So which is it? Nature, history, or culture? Joe Polakovic leaves himself three options to make his thoughts immune from falsification, but his heart is with Darwin. Leaning on USC psychos, he says, “The human need for connecting with other humans is rooted in our psychology and evolution.”
Most mammals are solitary, but social behavior is ingrained in primate societies and was passed along to human societies. Humans evolved while deriving great benefits from socialization, including the development of hunting and survival skills, which were passed on to children, and political skills, said [Craig] Stanford, co-director at USC’s Jane Goodall Research Center.
You got your behavior from the apes. No sense trying to change your behavior, if it is rooted in a gene somewhere that got selected. Same for political skill. This genetic determinism pulls the rug out from any sense of moral responsibility.
Researchers trace evolution of self-control (University of York). If self-control is a product of natural selection, then so is Darwinian thinking (cue sound of short circuit). “Human self-control evolved in our early ancestors,” this article begins, “becoming particularly evident around 500,000 years ago when they developed the skills to make sophisticated tools, a new study [prepare to be hoodwinked] suggests.” Darwinians; they love to use the power of suggestion to hypnotize their readers into believing they are hearing something scientific.
“Self-control is not unique to humans, but may have played an important role in our evolution. It’s key to many of the traits which define modern humans such as pro-sociality, cooperation and caring for the vulnerable.”
Let’s see; what gene for “caring” was mutated and selected by a blind, unguided, amoral process? If that is how caring evolved, is it really “caring” at all? These evolutionists could apply the same Darwinian reasoning if society used their “sophisticated tools” to bash in the skulls of the vulnerable. Such behaviors “may have played an important role in our evolution,” too. In fact, some humans have behaved that way (see John West relate some history about Darwin genocides at Evolution News). Who could tell them they were ‘wrong’ to do that?
Our animal inheritance: Humans perk up their ears, too, when they hear interesting sounds (Universität des Saarlandes). Human ear muscles are not vestigial after all; they do move toward the direction of a sound the person wants to focus on, and their nerves become activated. But instead of finding design in this fact, the evolutionary scientists want to envision humans slowly evolving from animals that point their ears, like your dog, cat or horse. If so, it represents devolution, not evolution. OK; maybe the evolutionists they understand that. No; “The question why pinna orienting was lost during the evolution of the primate lineage has still not been completely resolved.” It’s hard for them to argue for a loss when the human ear works extremely well (12 May 2015, 17 May 2018).
Is it any wonder that certain people who have been taught this from childhood will join groups that scream irrationally with profane hate and bash in windows to loot others’ property? What do you expect? It’s all about power. It’s all about fitness. It’s all about stuff happening with no purpose or goal.
Exercise: Take each trait mentioned in the above articles and look at them through the lens of creation by a loving and just God dealing with a world in rebellion. How would the explanation change? What would be the moral consequences for society?