Responding to More Awful “Proof of God” Junk
Added 2025-11-10 04:56:03 +0000 UTCHi all, sorry for the weird timing on this one. I think I'll publish it on Tuesday to make sure there's some decent EA. Anyway hope you have a good day.
Comments
What does EA mean in this context?
QuebecCity Oliver
2025-11-10 14:52:15 +0000 UTCThe "Argument from Ghengis Kahn" (one man was a brutal murderer etc, and he reproduced very successfully, therefore the rise of morality through natural selection is bunk) reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. It presumes that 1) evolution is happening on the individual level and 2) behaviour only comes from genetic inheritance. An extreme example of point 1 is Ray Comfort's "dead dog" argument: "When the first (male) dog was born, it had better find another (female) dog or he would be a dead dog (i.e. the species would immediately die out)". In reality evolution happens on the species level with populations at the very _least_ in the thousands and going up to millions, billions and more. For point 2 it is implied that all those many descendants of Ghengis inherit his brutal attitude. It ignores societal transfer of ideas and behaviour. That is like saying that the reason the sport cricket is played all over the world is because the British spread their genes there, so those places are now genetically predisposed to playing cricket. Also ignored are the character traits that led people to resist the conquests of Ghengis. Such as a tendency of not wanting to die, or see their loved ones suffer or die.
Orchidseed
2025-11-10 08:44:13 +0000 UTC
