Are humans somehow "unnatural"?

[Saint Frankenstein]

What I mean is, is there anything about humans that could not have come about through natural evolutionary processes?

Some claim that the minds and abilities of humans are so advanced and complex to the point that they could not have come about through natural processes alone. Some view this complexity as the result of aliens or mysterious deities.

I disagree with this opinion and think there was no intervention, agreeing with the current scientific evidence that humans are merely the product of evolution as all species on Earth are.

What say you? Present evidence and state your reasoning, if you can be so obliged.

 

[Terese]

Well, I sure feel special now after reading your post

 

[Politesse]

Depends what you mean by natural I suppose. To me, anything human is natural, simply because we are a part of nature. But it is also true that we have unique qualities. As do all species. I don't see what makes this "mere".

 

[Quintessence]

In my experience, the sorts of people who can entertain this sort of idea have several things going on:

• They have been raised in a culture whose mythology teaches them that humans are categorically distinct from other animals. Often there are other dualistic teachings in these same cultures, such as presuming that spirit/gods are divorced from matter/nature.
• They hold to a value system that puts humans on a pedestal above other animals, other non-animal organisms, and abiotic aspects of reality. They believe humans are an "apex" and "better" than everything else; hierarchical thinking is emphasized over holism and interrelation.
• They are unfamiliar with the reams of literature in the sciences that completely destroy the idea that humans are categorically distinct from other animals, much less nature. Often they are on the whole unfamiliar with biology, and in particular biodiversity and ecology.

That said, I don't think any of this is incompatible with the idea of deities, at least not with respect to my theology where the gods are the stuff of reality. But I hail from a non-dualistic view of the world that doesn't put that wedge between spirit/gods and matter/nature...

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Well, I sure feel special now after reading your post

What do you mean?

Depends what you mean by natural I suppose. To me, anything human is natural, simply because we are a part of nature. But it is also true that we have unique qualities. As do all species. I don't see what makes this "mere".

I mean "mere" as in "only". In the context of thread, it means that I believe that humans came about through natural processes like all other species, without intervention by supernatural or alien sources.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

What I mean is, is there anything about humans that could not have come about through natural evolutionary processes?

Some claim that the minds and abilities of humans are so advanced and complex to the point that they could not have come about through natural processes alone. Some view this complexity as the result of aliens or mysterious deities.

I disagree with this opinion and think there was no intervention, agreeing with the current scientific evidence that humans are merely the product of evolution as all species on Earth are.

What say you? Present evidence and state your reasoning, if you can be so obliged.

in a word; yes.

Our sentience, creative intelligence, free will, is in at least one sense supernatural, in that it can achieve what nature alone never can, i.e. truly create something, untethered by an infinite regression of 'natural' cause and effect.

Consider that out of millions of species that have lived on Earth, only ONE achieved our capability. Dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, massive cranial capacities, social interaction etc, roamed the entire Earth for vastly longer than humans, yet the great 'evolutionary advantage' of our intelligence never arose. While we acquired our's within a geological blink of an eye. At the very least, we know that intelligence is not the sort of thing evolution tends to achieve in a species, even given vastly greater scopes of time and space to do it.

This staggering 'coincidence' along with a long list of others, makes us the only means we know of, by which the universe can literally contemplate it's own existence also, explore, study and appreciate itself.

Technically of course this could all be one vast coincidence in turn, but I just think there are far less improbable explanations

 

[Terese]

I meant in a joking way
But the ability to understand our world fluently is quite a special quality that only humans have.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

the more humans study animals, the more we find that humans differ in degree in only a few areas from many other species.

There are, for example, many species that have appendages that either can currently or with only minor changes be used to manipulate objects, in the way human hands do.

There are many species that demonstrate intelligence--the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems they confront. Sometimes this problem solving involves the use of tools, even among creatures that don't have effective manipulative appendages--such as crows and other birds.

We are finally recognizing that a number of species use language--some of them quite intricate (such as elephants and cetaceans). Even creatures with relatively small brains (prairie dogs, for example) can actually describe human individuals to each other in some detail.

Humans are a social species, and there are lots and lots of social species, and most of them are capable of using their social nature to improve their ability to survive. Some, without recognizable "intelligence" similar to humans, are able to construct remarkable physical structures.

That humans uniquely combine sociability, language, intelligence, and the ability to manipulate the environment (use tools), is still explainable through evolution. We are unique in our combination and degree of skills, but many species on Earth share in these abilities in some degree and combination.

 

[George-ananda]

What say you?

I think, not just humans, but even the simplest life forms did not occur through only the forces currently understood by western science. Humans I see as just more of the same to a higher degree.

Present evidence and state your reasoning, if you can be so obliged.

My evidence is the mind-boggling complexity of even simple cells and the unlikelihood of that happening through just the forces understood by science. Secondly, the evidence of sources I respect on the involvement of a hierarchy of nature beings/spirits in the development of physical life.

 

[1137]

What I mean is, is there anything about humans that could not have come about through natural evolutionary processes?

Some claim that the minds and abilities of humans are so advanced and complex to the point that they could not have come about through natural processes alone. Some view this complexity as the result of aliens or mysterious deities.

I disagree with this opinion and think there was no intervention, agreeing with the current scientific evidence that humans are merely the product of evolution as all species on Earth are.

What say you? Present evidence and state your reasoning, if you can be so obliged.

You misrepresent the position, you ask if there is a part of the mind that is unnatural, then say "What I mean is, is there anything about humans that could not have come about through natural evolutionary processes?". These are two different discussions. Something unnatural is, by definition, simply something abnormal, something able to do otherwise than unthinking nature would do on its own. With this proper definition, humans very much do have an unnatural aspect of the mind, even if it's only an emergent property. Further, just because humans are the only ones we are sure are like this, it doesn't mean other species or life out there can't have a similar mind. In fact, we're starting to show that some species do have higher cognitive abilities than we thought. So now we have vastly different brains creating a similar mind that, because it can act abnormally, is definitionally unnatural. That just makes the position more solid.

Good thread btw.

 

[1137]

In my experience, the sorts of people who can entertain this sort of idea have several things going on:

• They have been raised in a culture whose mythology teaches them that humans are categorically distinct from other animals. Often there are other dualistic teachings in these same cultures, such as presuming that spirit/gods are divorced from matter/nature.
• They hold to a value system that puts humans on a pedestal above other animals, other non-animal organisms, and abiotic aspects of reality. They believe humans are an "apex" and "better" than everything else; hierarchical thinking is emphasized over holism and interrelation.
• They are unfamiliar with the reams of literature in the sciences that completely destroy the idea that humans are categorically distinct from other animals, much less nature. Often they are on the whole unfamiliar with biology, and in particular biodiversity and ecology.

That said, I don't think any of this is incompatible with the idea of deities, at least not with respect to my theology where the gods are the stuff of reality. But I hail from a non-dualistic view of the world that doesn't put that wedge between spirit/gods and matter/nature...

Interesting that I hold such a position, and don't agree or fit in with any of that.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Interesting that I hold such a position, and don't agree or fit in with any of that.

From what you've said on this subject, you fit all three bullet points.

 

[1137]

From what you've said on this subject, you fit all three bullet points.

You're free to elaborate on that for discussion, or you can just be passive aggressively insulting.

 

[EtuMalku]

I don't entertain the 'alien' concept, but I do agree that humans are special in that we have an Isolate Intelligence guiding us

 

[1137]

I see a very common misunderstanding/misinterpretation/straw man when discussing this topic. Unnatural doesn't imply that something is somehow separate from nature, it implies that it's abnormal within nature, contrary to the statistical average of how nature acts.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

You're free to elaborate on that for discussion, or you can just be passive aggressively insulting.

Basically, your viewpoints are just a recycling of Descartian nonsense. You espouse substance dualism, believe that the universe is a mechanism, believe that animals are basically automatons, believe that humans are at the top of a hierarchy in terms of species, believe that some outside agent (a deity, etc.) has set humans apart, etc. Those are your positions, as I see them. Am I incorrect?

This is just the same Abrahamic crap that mixed with Greco-Roman philosophy centuries ago. It's been the mainstream mode of thought in the West ever since.

 

[vaguelyhumanoid]

We absolutely are not. I do not believe that anything exists outside of the natural universe. Does that mean I'm a materialist? Hel no. But mind is a natural quality; spirit is a natural quality. Even the paranormal is not "supernatural" to me.

 

[EtuMalku]

We absolutely are not. I do not believe that anything exists outside of the natural universe. Does that mean I'm a materialist? Hel no. But mind is a natural quality; spirit is a natural quality. Even the paranormal is not "supernatural" to me.

Proto-man was just one of many animal species fighting for survival over the millennia. If his brain could evolve through processes of natural selection, then why did the brains of other creatures not similarly evolve - at least a little? The fact is that the brains of other creatures have remained practically the same size while man’s has “evolved”. This is inconsistent, and it will be recalled that the hallmark of the objective universe - and deistic proof of God - is its consistency. By the law of averages - which applies to natural selection as much as to anything else - there should have been at least some species other than man evolving in intelligence at least partway to the human level. There is none.

By the laws of nature that we have observed over time, by all accounts another species should have developed at least a brain remotely close to ours. And none have, for the most part every single surviving creature has remained exactly the same except us.
So what has taken place?

We are left with the explanation: Deliberate Cause
And this implies an isolate intelligence working through our physical being (brain / body)

 

[1137]

Basically, your viewpoints are just a recycling of Descartian nonsense. You espouse substance dualism, believe that the universe is a mechanism, believe that animals are basically automatons, believe that humans are at the top of a hierarchy in terms of species, believe that some outside agent (a deity, etc.) has set humans apart, etc. Those are your positions, as I see them. Am I incorrect?

This is just the same Abrahamic crap that mixed with Greco-Roman philosophy centuries ago. It's been the mainstream mode of thought in the West ever since.

You're extremely incorrect, and I've clearly stated my position contrary to this within just the last hour.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

You're extremely incorrect, and I've clearly stated my position contrary to this within just the last hour.

You did? Because it doesn't seem that way, from what you've posted.