offspring?

[Stormy]

The thread about Starscream and his new baby got me thinking.

As always, when I think, questions come to mind.

Tell me your thoughts on maternal instinct.

This is what I am thinking.

That evolution was the natural way, chosen by God, to produce life upon this Earth.

But is it all that is needed?

Why would an animal care for their young? Why not eat them instead? I know this happens at times... but why is it not the norm? An animal has no ability to reason that doing this work could possibly be of benefit months or years down the road. So, here we have a crying, screaming, demanding burden that could easily be turned into a meal. Then the animal or for that matter the human could go on with their life without the drudgery of taking care of the young. So why would any life form want to put themselves out to care for another?

My conclusion is that LOVE is from God. His creatures were instilled with love so that they would nourish and protect their young...even to the point of their own death.

This revelation...if you will

Has answered other questions in my mind.

Why I am so against abortion ??

It is not our nature to kill our unborn. We have been programmed instead to protect and love. It is not only a turning away from God... it is an undesirable change within ourselves. Maybe that is why many of us feel a personal sense of lost when it is not our bodies that have been stripped of the child. There is a larger picture here. Man is creating his own destiny. He is turning from what God has instilled within his heart... LOVE

So Starscream... maybe the birth of your child was not a miracle.

Your little girl is a natural product from the reproduction cycle of man.

But when you looked at her for the first time...

When your heart swelled to the point of breaking and your eyes began to cry... there is your miracle.

LOVE

God has given his creatures a part of himself.

The power and joy that is LOVE.

Praise the LORD.

 

[LewisWildermuth]

Sorry Stormy, this argument doesn't work either, science has delt with this already. If some one else has not answered this by the time I wake up again I'll give my answer for it.

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by LewisWildermuth
Sorry Stormy, this argument doesn't work either, science has delt with this already. If some one else has not answered this by the time I wake up again I'll give my answer for it.

I would appreciate it. Thank you

By the way I do not understand what you mean about "argument not working".

I am not trying to "work" anything... rather I am just sharing my thoughts.

 

[JohnR7]

Originally posted by Stormy
Why would an animal care for their young? 

Oh, that is simple, adults give into the demands of their offspring so they can have some peace and quite. Otherwise if you do not take care of them the little buggers keep screaming and screaming. There does seem to be a "instinct" of some sort built into some people that they think a helpless little newborn is the neatest thing in all the world. I never understood it myself. But they put pressure on the rest of us, to take care of our kids.

Of course people who do not take care of thier offspring would have died off a long time ago. If we were not good at reproducing ourselves, none of us would be around.

With animals there is always the cuteness factor. If you find a abandoned baby animal, there is just something about them that makes you want to take care of them. I remember a little runt from a litter of puppies our dog had when I was growing up. It just did not seem to have enough strength to fight the others to get to the milk. So my sister and I bottle fed it some formula and it turned out to be a really nice & very healthy little dog.

I had a cat like that once. It almost died in a cat fight, so we bottle fed it back to health, and that was one loyal cat. It really appreciated what we had done, for the rest of the time we had it.

Some people are like that also. We have people come into our ministry who were in really bad shape. Some of them dying. If they are able to get their healing or miracle from God, they are really grateful to the pastor and the ministry. Even many years later, 20 or 30 years later they will show up to thank the pastor.

Or my dad was a doctor for 50 years. From time to time someone will come up to me and tell me how grateful they are for some help they received from him, even up to 50 years ago. One person said, our daughter would have died when she was a child, if it were not for him. Then I ask, how old is your daughter. They will say 60 years old. I think, wow, that was a while ago.

 

[sulphur]

I had dog called george,he was trained to a level that I only had to give hand signals. My two boys grew up with that dog and by the time they were in primary school I would let the two of them go off with george safe in the knowledge that if anybody tried to hurt them george would give his life for them.THAT is unconditional love by an animal.

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by JohnR7
Oh, that is simple, adults give into the demands of their offspring so they can have some peace and quite.

When time began and the laws of man were not in force... it would have been much simpler and provided a much more durable peace... to have ate them.

Of course people who do not take care of their offspring would have died off a long time ago. If we were not good at reproducing ourselves, none of us would be around.

Do you think that in prehistoric time man had the brain power and foresight to look past his own existence to the future? But even if somehow he did... how would that explain the LOVE. Taking care of the young is not a cold-hearted mechanical endeavor. You do have children... right?

This caring of the young leaves me in even more wonder when applied to animals. I have seen many a worn out mother bird in my yard searching for food to feed her hungry brood. How much easier for her to just fly away.

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by sulphur
I had dog called george,he was trained to a level that I only had to give hand signals. My two boys grew up with that dog and by the time they were in primary school I would let the two of them go off with george safe in the knowledge that if anybody tried to hurt them george would give his life for them.THAT is unconditional love by an animal.

You have seen the LOVE... You have seen God.

 

[sulphur]

Stormy did you read my offering.I think it answers alot of your questions

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by sulphur
Stormy did you read my offering.I think it answers alot of your questions

I do not understand what you want me to read. If it is your post on this thread ... it only confirms my thoughts.

 

[JohnR7]

Originally posted by Stormy
Taking care of the young is not a cold-hearted mechanical endeavor. You do have children... right? 

It is at 3 o'clock in the morning.

I have two son's one is 4 and one is 24. The older one is very close to getting his degree in Electronic Engineering. The younger one of course is in preschool learning social and motor skills. His teachers have done a outstanding job of teaching him.

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by JohnR7
It is at 3 o'clock in the morning.

I have two son's one is 4 and one is 24. The older one is very close to getting his degree in Electronic Engineering. The younger one of course is in preschool learning social and motor skills. His teachers have done a outstanding job of teaching him.

That is terrific!!

It sounds like you have provided well for them. Their teachers are doing an excellent job of educating their minds.

But they would be nowhere if there had not been LOVE.

It is the most important ingredient to sustain life. It is what we all search for and desire... but it has no natural physical existence.

Love is outside of nature.

It is from God.

 

[JohnR7]

Originally posted by Stormy
But they would be nowhere if there had not been LOVE. 

That is what they keep hammering into us in church. Everything God does is done though faith and love. It is His eternal, everlasting love that is at work in us to prepare us for eternity.

The only way to receive from God, is through Faith & Love. The only way to serve God is in faith and love. The only way to please God is though eternal, everlasting, faith and love.

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by LewisWildermuth
Sorry Stormy, this argument doesn't work either, science has delt with this already. If some one else has not answered this by the time I wake up again I'll give my answer for it.

Lewis: I am still waiting for you to wake up and shoot me down.

 

[LewisWildermuth]

Sorry Stormy, Because of work I tend to keep bat hours

 

[Jerry Smith]

Stormy...

Can there be a selective advantage to taking care of, rather than eating, your young?

Can there be a selective advantage to eating, rather than taking care of, your young?

If your answer was "yes", to both, then you would be on the money. It depends on the situation. The bluefooted tangerine fish (which I just made up) lays 100,000 eggs each time it spawns. There is no way that 100,000 btf's can survive to reproduce in the pond that the btf's live in. Baby btf's have enough instinct to swim and eat successfully until they reach reproductive maturity. They therefore need no parental care. However, they are good enough at it that they will quickly consume all of the food in the pond if all of the offspring mature. By eating the baby btf's she can catch, mama btf ensures the survival of some of her offspring, and her own survival (which helps her spawn more, with a variety of mates. This also carries a selective advantage in many cases, but I won't discuss that now).

Natural selection has the power to explain baby-eating behaviors that do, in fact, occur in nature.

Obviously, when the offspring are not so many as to overburden the local ecology, and when the offspring are subject to predation, illness, or starvation without help - there is a great selective advantage to taking care of the offspring.

Natural selection can explain baby-raising behaviors that do, in fact, occur in nature.

So you are right - if God did ordain natural selection, then He is responsible for the parent-child relationship in humans... through secondary causes from our evolutionary history.

There are other questions about parent-child relationships (for instance, abnormal behaviors like infanticide in humans)... these may be explained by disease or genetic mistakes that crop up occassionally, or (in some cases) they may actually have an evolutionary explanation all there own. I don't think that is a pleasant subject to delve into, though. I will therefore avoid discussing the alternatives. Suffice it to note that there are alternatives.

 

[LewisWildermuth]

Okay, lets look at the creatures that have no problem eating their young vs the creatures that don't.

Most of those that have no problem eating their young produce offspring in mass and have very little energy involved in reproducing and one induvidual. They do not raise them and spend only the energy to make and lay the reproductive cell, be it egg or sperm. Each induvidual of these types of creatures usualy produces hundreds if not thousands of offspring at a time so the loss of a few would have little impact on the numbers of the creature in the wild. So there is little advantage and little preasure to stop this behavior.

But there are some disadvantages to this style of reproduction... Since the offspring must be able to survive from day one of it's own there is little time and energy avalible to devote to larger brains or more specialised organs so most of these creatures tend to be rather dull. Also, since the parents do not raise the ofspring there is no passing down of knowlege beyond the hardwired instincts from generation to generation.

Now along somes a different concept in reproduction... One that invests more energy in the offspring. This type of reproduction had some definite advantages. Now learning could be passed from generation to generation, allowing much more complicated behaviors than inctincts alone. The offspring now also had more time they could develope before having to fend for themselves allowing larger and larger brains to develope.

It has some disadvantages in that since the mass production of offspring can hedge off extinction easier in cases and such, but I'm glad that some of the advantages out weighed that.

So there "Love" as humans know it is fully explainable as a product of evolution.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Good synopsis there Lewis. I'd like to point out that just because love is explainable (at least in principle), that its importance is not one whit decreased!

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by LewisWildermuth
Now along somes a different concept in reproduction... One that invests more energy in the offspring. This type of reproduction had some definite advantages. Now learning could be passed from generation to generation, allowing much more complicated behaviors than inctincts alone. The offspring now also had more time they could develope before having to fend for themselves allowing larger and larger brains to develope.

It has some disadvantages in that since the mass production of offspring can hedge off extinction easier in cases and such, but I'm glad that some of the advantages out weighed that.

So there "Love" as humans know it is fully explainable as a product of evolution.

You have merely confirmed that this concept of reproduction does exist. You have only explained what advantages the offspring would have by the parents investing their time and energy.

My question was why would the parents act in a maternal way? What advantage is it to them? It seems that by itself, this plan would have never gotten off the ground. The parents would have to somehow be motivated.
They would have to feel love.

How can that need be supplied by evolution alone.

 

[Stormy]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith
Good synopsis there Lewis. I'd like to point out that just because love is explainable (at least in principle), that its importance is not one whit decreased!

LOL

So you think that LOVE is explainable?

 

[stray bullet]

Animals have abortions all the time. It's illegal to go into many bat caves for just that reason, intruders will cause pregnant bats to get scared and abort their pregnancy.

How can that need be supplied by evolution alone.

Sure it could, very few groups of animals get pleasure from sex. Most simply do it out of instinct. Same way with taking care of children, instinct.