Poly, I don’t think that a ‘rich tapestry of life’ and a ‘dog-eat-dog world’ are mutually exclusive. They exist together in an enormously complex interwoven matrix !!

We can be fundamentally driven in the Darwinian way as expressed in this article AND have all sorts of other purposes in life as well. Most of us do, don’t we?

How would someone end up if they applied all their brain and physical powers to the goals of reproduction and intimidation?

I reckon they’d end up as a very shallow and disliked person, with a poor self-worth and ultimately a feeling that they have wasted their life. Yes?

from
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2305&page=0

from
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v9/i1/finch.asp

quote>>There is a very heavy burden of proof on those propounding the doctrine that bacteria have self-transformed into palm trees and fish,and the latter turned into tigers and nuclear scientists.

For one thing,it demands a natural process capable of generating vast amounts of new,bio-functionally significant,coded information.

To watch natural selection sifting and sorting through existing information,deleting chunks of it,begs the question of the origin of all that information.>>..<<What a pity that neither the researchers nor Weiner appear to understand the logical fact that,while natural selection may be an intrinsic part of a particular evolutionary model,

demonstrating it does not of itself demonstrate the‘fact’of evolution—if by that you mean a one-celled organism becoming today’s complex biosphere.>>..<<Weiner recounts how Darwin was able to apply selection to breed pigeons so different from each other that if found by biologists in the wild, they would not only have been categorized as separate species,but even separate genera.

This is of course a marvellous demonstration of the amount of variability built into each created kind,allowing it to respond to changing environmental pressures and thus conserve the kind.>>

<<After all the‘hype’about watching‘evolution’,one reads with amazement that the selection events observed actually turned out to have no net long-term effect.

For example,for a while selection drove the finch populations towards larger birds,then when the environment changed,it headed them in the opposite direction.>>

<<Evolutionists have long argued the opposite—that evolution is invisible in the short term, but would become visible if we had enough time. Yet according to Weiner, we can see evolution happening in the (very) short term, but any longer and it becomes ‘invisible’! The mind boggles at how evolutionists can be blind to this inconsistency.

Weiner quotes a researcher as saying that:

‘A species looks steady when you look at it over the years—but when you actually get out the magnifying glass you see that it’s wobbling constantly.’>>

YET ALL WITHIN THE SPECIES/genus MEAN

more at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2411

i should add a final note on the topic
EVOLUTION TAKES PLACE OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS[supposedly]

how does short term factors like 'wealth/poverty' even rate a mention?
[histry reveals the wealth generally lasts 3 generations [at best]but the evolutionists will continue to grasp at straws trying to create their evolving strawman[read god;less theory]

lets withhold belief till you mutate something into a new genus[as evolution must do to prove its THEORY[noting all the 'proofs' are in the same genus[wolves dogs=cannis]mutated bacteria are yet bacteria[virus yet virus[moth still moth[sea gulls yet sea gulls]

ring species are yet a [one ] species
why have you let science blind you to gods amasing creation?

we are prepared to trust these sharlitans, unconciously thinking if the get killed off they will just re evolve

[bull when a genus dies its gone]

no scientist has ever re produced [let alone 'evolved in nor out of their labs NOT A SINGLE EVOLUTION ,nor evolved non living matter into a simple cell skin[mem brain]

let alone evolved life into the cell membrane
nor evolved a single cell, into a multicell

but those too lazy to study the facts accept their lies

its another clear egsample of the delusion we swallow hiding great bias[against men poor,other races[in itself a bad fruity from the branch of darwinian [based racial purity pre-judice]read racism

anyhow the debait at link goes on
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2305&page=0

if evolution is a science reveal its proofs
i contend its a collection of facts we been conned
to be proving one thing when it dont

[is my collection of books a libary?that depends on how i describe it to you,or how many real liberies you got knowledge of to judge it by]

*In that absense of a Creator who says "love your neighbour as yourself" can anyone find any reason in the Darwinian approach to do that?*

Oh deary me, the godsquad have already moved in, before we have
even discussed the science.

Poly, please educate yourself a bit about basic evolutionary
psychology, it would help the discussion if you were just a little
bit better informed, rather then parrot on about religion yet once
again.

I remind you that empathy, altruism, reciprocal altruism, compassion
etc, are all evolved character traits. Dogs don't eat dogs, they
live in cooperative social groups, as do other social species.

I also remind you of the many Christian cults, where the cult
leaders apparently hear voices from up above, that they should
impregnate all the young female teenagers in the cult. In other
words, those with status in a group, spreading their genes around.

Now is it possible for once that we leave the religion out of this
discussion and stick to the science?

UOG, your posts are a heap of gobbldeygook, I don't bother to
read them.

Simple answer polycarp:

What benefits the species, benefits the individual. If it was 'dog-eat-dog' then it would be harder to survive as the species would have created more predators for itself.

Thus, this would be a negative evolutionary trait. Thus, our species has been selected as successful, because we don't usually eat each other, though the constant process of evolution, change and natural selection means that occasionally the individual motivators overpower the group ones.

This can potentially explain aspects of socialism as well, with the individual (as opposed to societal) motivating factors explaining why it tends to fail.

Pretty simple really. I'm hardly an evolutionary expert, but I can see a pretty clear logic there.

However, I can't see any logic in a story about a talking snake, a cursed apple and a deity which seems to get worked up over such petty things. Sorry.

Dear Yabby,

Thank You for a fascinating article.

It was interesting to note that "change"
doesn't necessarily mean "progress," or that
greater social complexity will inevitably
produce greater human happiness.

I suppose what matters is our abilitiy to
adapt to change.

As one poster remarked on the link you gave:

"So, who will survive...?
The strongest or the most intelligent?"