I just did. Meaning is what makes it worth getting up in the morning. It makes it worth all of the risk, cost and effort that goes into raising offspring.
Meaning = what makes
it (?) worth getting up.
What makes
it (?) worth getting up? Meaning.
It's vague circular reasoning. Again, you're not saying anything.
You mean, economist, do you not?
Okay, economist. Dollar amount.
And tell me, how can you be both a rationalist and a religionist?
I'm trying to become a rationalist. I
want to believe. It's just difficult getting over these intellectual hurdles.
Not with the baggage the word 'belief' has in these forums; as I see the term used here, it means to hold tightly, unwaveringly, and when challenged, entrench. That is not what I mean by "tentative".
Fair enough. Tentative beliefs then.
I am not sure what you are asking here. Can you be more specific?
How does behaviour (as inherited traits) fit the description of deriving meaning from what we do as living organisms?
Not at all. Take the example of two similar groups/populations, in competition for the same resources, where one finds greater meaning - worth - in the raising and protecting of their young - giving one group an advantage over the other, sufficient that it results in the extinction of one of the groups.
I am not talking of the advantage, or the extinction. It may be that the more effort put into raising the young actually puts that group at a disadvantage; that is why it is not the same thing.
When it comes to natural selection, there is nothing else to talk about but advantage and extinction. There's nothing else to it.
Allow me to rephrase. For an organism such as a wolf, the raising of their young is
one of the most important meanings in their lives, if "life" is defined as the ability to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce. If an organism loses one of those abilities... extinction.
http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Life
The problem is you're saying what things do, and calling it meaning. 99.99% of all species that have existed are gone forever. Does that mean they had meaning and lost it, or what?
Also, you're focusing on one thing that organisms do - raise young. They do a lot of other necessary things to survive as organisms, so as I asked before, why don't you ascribe meaning to defecation, to having certain colors, to fighting and vomiting and everything else an organism does?
Your argument would actually make a bit of sense if we applied it to machines, i.e., the meaning of a vacuum is to vacuum, the meaning of a car is to transport humans, and if it loses that ability it loses meaning. But that works only because machines are
intended to do something. Nothing is intended by biology.
I have used that example dozens of times in these forums, and received no such reaction. Are you an evolutionary biologist?
Does the disbelief in god claims qualify one as an evolutionary biologist?
No and no.
I had trouble making out the lyrics, and the visuals did not seem to match your description of it. Do you have a better example?
And what about your opinion about gods; why do we need them? What is a god anyway? Or are you trying to sweep that under the rug?
Yeah, sorry, that's not a clear version. Kind of slips by if you don't know what to look for. Not important.
He's intriguing, and just had a different world view. It doesn't trouble me if someone doesn't think as I do, about God, or a god.
