Evolution Will Punish You if You are Selfish and Mean

There is so much irony in this that anybody should be able to see it. To me, it seems the evolutionist is grasping at wind trying to come up with some basis for morality which is not there.

Originally posted by micmerci
My question is why doesn't evolution punish the selfish in the animal kingdom? Male lions thrive on selfishness. What ever happened to survival of the fittest?

LOL - not really. Animals don't have self awareness and hence can't be 'selfish'.

Originally posted by micmerci
My question is why doesn't evolution punish the selfish in the animal kingdom? Male lions thrive on selfishness. What ever happened to survival of the fittest?

You are anthropomophising - animals have no sense of self and hence cannot be selfish.

Survival on the animal level is merely retreat or fight from/agaisnt pain and advance to pleasure.

Isn't this contradictory towards the basic idea of evolution though? My "prime-directive" to be so geekish, is to ensure my genetic code lives on. For that to happen, I would have to be selfish in nature to fight and combat any obstacle in my way to ensure such happens....

Originally posted by LittleByLittle

Originally posted by Unity_99
I wish they were publishing this for real instead it seems they are trying to say, don't be selfish give into tyranny for the greater good.

Nothing in nature survives for long if it can not find a stable symbiosis with nature. Every human on this planet would be dead if it was not symbiotically taken care of by another human in it's beginning.

Homeostatis.

Whatever it means seems dubious to me since selfishness is apparent all around us. If selfishness had no place in evolution then there'd be no sign of it, in my opinion.

I've always thought of selfishness as a form of ignorance. A selfish person doesn't see how they hurt others. They don't consider things outside their radar range - which is very small.

But because ignorance will always exist, irregardless of selfishness, our radar range will always be somewhat limited. So even a selfless person will still produce unwanted outcomes.

It doesn't require a genius to understand that when people work together they're stronger. We know from studies that people who live in communities live longer and are happier. It's not a surprise to me that cooperation is beneficial to the evolution of a species. But how much cooperation is needed? How far does one have to go before they become part of a collective?

And lets not skip past the idea that being part of a collective means you're #5123656232. A person in a collective has very little choice. They serve the collective's needs.

Think about that. You don't really need a unique name in a collective. You're part of a machine. You do as you're instructed. You don't go out on your own and be a selfish individual.

How inspiring is that? To be part of a machine? Not inspiring...

What about this:
www.globalpost.com -
Rich people more unethical, likely to cheat and steal, study finds...
www.livescience.com - Mere Thought of Money Makes People Selfish...

Could selfishness be hard-wired into us? When we're around money, we're irresistably drawn to be more selfish? Note that everybody was affected by the exposure to real/fake money. They became more selfish essentially at the mere sight of it. By "selfish" the article means they made more individual choices and chose to work with others less, as well as being less likely to help others.

.........
The scientists split 50 undergraduate students into two groups. One was primed with the concept of money; other served as a control and was not primed. A few methods were used to get the participants thinking about money: In some experiments, a stack of play Monopoly money was within a subject's peripheral view, or a subject would unscramble word phrases dealing with money, while in others a participant would sit in front of a computer screensaver showing pictures of floating money.

The subjects were unaware the money was even a part of the experiments as they filled out unrelated questionnaires.

Then scientists gave the subjects a challenging problem to solve with the experimenter letting them know he was available for help if needed. Sure enough, the money subjects persisted much longer before asking for help.

In one test, a participant sat in a lab filling out a questionnaire when a supposed student walked into the room and said, "Can you come over here and help me?" She explained that she was an undergraduate student and needed help coding data sheets, each of which would take five minutes. Some of the participants didn't help at all, Vohs said. The control group volunteered an average of 42.5 minutes of their time, whereas the money group gave about 25 minutes.

Another experiment gave participants the opportunity to lend a helping hand in a situation requiring no skills. In a staged accident, a random person walked through a room where a participant sat filling out a questionnaire, and spilled a bunch of pencils. The money participants picked up far fewer pencils than the controls.
..........

reply to post by 1questioner


I have always said the same. People say that nature competes with itself but in reality nature needs to cooperative to survive...

reply to post by jonnywhite

Could selfishness be hard-wired into us?

Good question. But I have a question too: Could we be unknowingly brain-washed and mind-controlled by our governments, religions, and educational institutions from birth into being selfish? By being selfish, we certainly become easier to control and be governed. You may think that's absurd, but look how those same governments and institutions have worked in concert to keep the truth of the UFO phenomenon from us. They could just as easily be guilty of keeping the true nature of our reality from us.

For example, I believe in reincarnation. It is a fact that the philosophy of reincarnation was intentionally removed from the teachings of Christianity by the Emperor Justinian to make his subjects of the Eastern Holy Roman Empire easier to govern.



I don't want this thread to devolve into a debate on religion. My point is that I think there may be much more sinister reasons for man's selfish behavior. It is my opinion that it's too easy and too convenient to say we're hard-wired. To say we're hard-wired into being selfish is actually doing the bidding of the controlling governments and institutions.

How interesting! The seemingly obvious here, at least from my perspective, is that science wanted to politically enforce a new idea, so their hypothetical analysis was corroborated by the studies they used. Science has become nothing more than a testing ground for the liberal progressives. Science has become a sham.