#56966: — 01/08  at  03:53 PM
From your response, JK, I think we agree more than I originally thought. I personally see no need to find meaning or purpose for life beyond what us humans ascribe to our lives, but perhaps most people are hardwired to think otherwise. The thing is that meaning and purpose are pretty much outside the realm of science. Evolution and science do not address ultimate meaning and purpose because they are not observable and testable, so they get necessarily left out of the discussion, and perhaps that "no purpose" message gets implicitly stated. I don't really know how to comfort people who read that sort of message into evolution.

#56970: — 01/08  at  05:03 PM
I think coming to grips with the 'no meaning' concept is an incredibly important step in the maturation process of our awareness of what we are, - an extremely abrupt shedding of any claim to specials status in reality many wish to ascribe to our/them selves.

Purpose, well that is much more simple on many levels, and I find it also an important concept that 'you better find one soon, and learn to appreciate what you got, because you are going to be dead for a long time'!

That there may be no 'purpose' to existing, but at the same time, on a certain level, there is a 'purpose' in that all matter seems to behave in a paradoxical way to both increase entropy, yet facilitate more complicated systems to develop resulting in our counciousnesses ...

Okay, I am not very good at putting that one into words right now, it sounds kind of whimsical and self congratulatory.

But perhaps we are "more evolved" not in relation to just other life on earth, but other matter in the universe, yet we are no better because ultimately we are composed of the same matter that has to behave the exact same way as all matter or it wouldn't, couldn't be (existant).

Perhaps there is an important step to take in our so called and self difined 'spirituallity' and this is the crux of my point, that in order to survive, (THE measure of a succesfully evolved creature or species), we must understand that there is a need to discover our own meaning, that it cannot be arbitrarily assigned in a dogmatic way be religion, or any other artificial 'assumed' method.

There is a great, great need to understand our place, and value it, or we will continue on to destruction. We see that, no matter the good and indeed, very importantly humane intentions of religion to address this need of ours, to have meaning and purpose, we have to discover that either we DON'T NEED one and that religion unintentionally sabotages our ability to do just that - understand the preciousness of life - or that religion furnishes the WRONG meaning and purpose of life -
We have to come to grips with what we learn through the way our realitry works, science/cause and effect and evolution

and Rey "I don't really know how to comfort people who read that sort of message into evolution."

not comfort or see a need to comfort anyone, or make excuses for evolition not providing this for people.

We may very well (which of course Carl sagan talked about all the time, coming to grips with our technological power emotional immaturity to handle it) 'evolving ourselves out of the equation' by evolving into a new enviornment (being scientifically and technologically capable to manipulate forces that can destroy ourselves instantly) for which we are not adequately adapted to survive!

I am sorry, I am trying to say that, paradoxically, we are both 'too evolved' and 'not evolved (adapted)' enough unless we now evolve our conciousness in a way that we haven't been able to understand through religion, or other artificial means.

(Sorry, this does not feel well tied together at all, I will have to pick this up later)

#56973: — 01/08  at  05:24 PM
I skimmed the comments and didn't notice anyone mention anything similar, so here's an interesting article about jellyfish evolution that ties into a lot of the discussion here.
(that link is to a community with the transcribed article, I don't have the original NY Times link).

I'm fairly new to this blog so I'm not sure if anyone's seen/read/discussed that particular article before.

#57007: Alon Levy — 01/09  at  12:06 AM
Not really. We cannot flasify our nature, we need to eat and we need antibiotics. We have the right to do what we need to do, but not to cause unnecessary suffering or useless destuction.

If you take this natural law view of the world, many social evils become permissible - murder, xenophobia, misogyny, rape...

#57011: — 01/09  at  01:54 AM
Alon, Why?

#57022: — 01/09  at  08:12 AM
Obviously, the jellyfish is "better adapted" to the ocean - humans are terrestrial creatures. But I think there's something truly marvelous about the fact that this human is happily swimming along with a jellyfish in an environment for which the human body is completely maladapted. It demonstrates how our ability to adapt culturally and technologically to hostile environments has overcome many of our biological limitations.

#57160: — 01/10  at  04:17 AM

there are 10,000 cnidarian species versus 50,000 chordate species.

But isn't it likely that the figures are distorted? Surely the chordates have always monopolised our attention and there are many more unidentified cnidarian species hidden away?

Just a thought. Always seems to me we still know so little about what we're destroying.

#57162: — 01/10  at  06:07 AM
"...about what we're destroying".

Just a thought. If we are destroying them, are chordates more or less successful than cnidarians?