Thou shalt no kill

[John Cuthber]

Are you trying to imply that evolution favours murder?

Surely nobody is that dumb so I must have misunderstood. Could you clarify what you meant by "The Crusades were un-Christian. Murder is wrong? Of course it is, but by what standard? The scientific survival of the fittest? No. The Judeo-Christian thou shalt not murder? Yes. " please?

 

Parallels have certainly been drawn between the so called War on terror and the crusades. It's not the same thing but the comparison is not without some validity.

[ewmon]

Are you trying to imply that evolution favours murder?

Surely nobody is that dumb so I must have misunderstood. Could you clarify what you meant by "The Crusades were un-Christian. Murder is wrong? Of course it is, but by what standard? The scientific survival of the fittest? No. The Judeo-Christian thou shalt not murder? Yes. " please?

Evolution favors murder

Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival.

 

The Crusades were un-Christian

In other words, what about the Crusades was Christian? Nothing. I'm not the one who must show proof. I can say that the Crusades were un-Martian, un-Venusian, etc, until someone comes along makes a positive declaration. If someone finds something in the Bible that points to the Crusades as being Christian, please let me know.

 

Murder is wrong

Why is murder wrong? Murder enhances one's survival, so it's not wrong in an evolutionary sense. Is murder wrong because John Cuthber or Moontanman or ewmon says so?

[Joatmon]

The Crusades were un-Christian In other words, what about the Crusades was Christian? Nothing. I'm not the one who must show proof. I can say that the Crusades were un-Martian, un-Venusian, etc, until someone comes along makes a positive declaration. If someone finds something in the Bible that points to the Crusades as being Christian, please let me know.

I don't know how the Bible could forecast the crusades - but a Pope should be authority enough?

Sorry about the blue writing - it comes from "copy and paste"

Pope Urban II, in one of history's most powerful speeches, launched 200 years of the Crusades at the Council of Clermont, France on November 27, 1095 with this impassioned plea. In a rare public session in an open field, he urged the knights and noblemen to win back the Holy Land, to face their sins, and called upon those present to save their souls and become "Soldiers of Christ." Those who undertook the venture were to wear an emblem in the shape of a red cross on their body. And so derived the word "Crusader," from the Latin word cruciare - to mark with a cross. By the time his speech ended, the captivated audience began shouting "Deus le volt! - God wills it!" The expression became the battle-cry of the crusades. ^{2, 3}

 

 

http://jesuschristsa...t/Crusades.html

Edited June 19, 2012 by Joatmon

[iNow]

Evolution favors murder

Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival.

Murder also tends to cause the murderer to be shunned and ostracized from the group. That makes them a lone wolf with less access to the resources of the tribe and potential mates, it makes them subject to potential retaliation and vigilante violence, and creates a situation for them wherein they are no longer protected from predators or enemy tribes by the numbers and cohesiveness inherent in the group they just wronged. This ultimately lowers their survival chances, and greatly diminishes the likelihood they will have viable offspring to propagate their genes into the next generation.

 

Your simplistic argument apparently fails to account for critical variables such as these, and it certainly appears that you don't seem to have a very firm grasp on this component of evolution. A central premise you are using to prop up your conclusion is quite broken.

[Joatmon]

Evolution favors murder

Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival.

 

Murder is wrong

Why is murder wrong? Murder enhances one's survival, so it's not wrong in an evolutionary sense. Is murder wrong because John Cuthber or Moontanman or ewmon says so?

 

 

You seem to misunderstand the phrase "Survival of the fittest".

It does not mean the fittest as applied to an individual in terms of strength, ruthlessness or any other attribute of an individual.

 

"survival of the fittest

n.Natural selection conceived of as a struggle for life in which only those organisms best adapted to existing conditions are able to survive and reproduce."

Could it be that a sense of cooperation, kindness, trust and care within early groups of humans were part of what made those groups fit for survival in the harsh conditions existing at the start of human evolution?

http://www.thefreedi...+of+the+fittest

Edited June 19, 2012 by Joatmon

[Moontanman]

Murder is wrong

Why is murder wrong? Murder enhances one's survival, so it's not wrong in an evolutionary sense. Is murder wrong because John Cuthber or Moontanman or ewmon says so?

 

 

No, we know murder is wrong because the social morals we evolved as a social species tells us it's wrong. Does this always work, no of course not, some people are not born with the social morals built in, we call them sociopaths or psychopaths. Some people are simply raised wrong and this broken training causes them to break the social morals we have evolved. But murder is considered bad because most humans think it so due to being a social species... Those of us to tend to cooperate and take care of each other are more successful in our group than those who are self centered and do not cooperate with the group.

[ewmon]

I don't know how the Bible could forecast the crusades - but a Pope should be authority enough?

No. Not that the Bible would forecast it, but command it (This kind of command: Thou shalt protect and control the Holy Land and keep the non-believers away from it.). And there's nothing that even faintly hints at it in the Bible. The Pope? Not for the majority of the Christians. We laugh at the Pope. The Catholic church (with its Mary worship, saint worship, and other fallacies) is considered it a cult or almost a cult by most Christians.

 

Murder also tends to cause the murderer to be shunned and ostracized from the group.

In a general sense, yes. Dictators, tyrants and despots aside ... don't get caught.

 

"survival of the fittest

n.Natural selection conceived of as a struggle for life in which only those organisms best adapted to existing conditions are able to survive and reproduce."

And one of the conditions is that individuals compete for food and other life-sustaining resources. When you eliminate the others that you're competing against (be it animals or humans), then you are better able to survive and reproduce. There was a recent case from research in the wild where, when a band of chimps would discover a source of food, one of the chimps had learned to make the leopard alarm call when the band found food, the rest of the chimps would run away, and the clever chimp would have the food to himself. You can't tell me that humans don't eliminate their competitors. Humans eliminate other individuals and other nations. When it's among individuals, it's called murder (and duels); when it's among nations, it's called war.

 

some people are not born with the social morals built in.

Social morals are not inherent; they must be learned. It's why different societies have different morals. Humans are born 100% selfish and must be taught to cooperate and share. Consider feral children. For that matter, consider normal children ... the fight over toys, candy, seating arrangements, dad's attention, etc.

 

Speaking of duels and social morals, duels were once considered as morally accepted and even chivalrous.

[zapatos]

No. Not that the Bible would forecast it, but command it (This kind of command: Thou shalt protect and control the Holy Land and keep the non-believers away from it.). And there's nothing that even faintly hints at it in the Bible. The Pope? Not for the majority of the Christians. We laugh at the Pope. The Catholic church (with its Mary worship, saint worship, and other fallacies) is considered it a cult or almost a cult by most Christians.

Most Christians are Catholics.

Largest denominations in the world

2.1 Catholicism - 1.2 billion

2.2 Protestantism - 670 million

2.3 Eastern Orthodoxy - 230 million

2.4 Anglicanism - 85 million

2.5 Oriental Orthodoxy - 82 million

2.6 Restorationism - 50 million

2.7 Unitarian Universalism - 0.6 million[149]

2.8 Nestorianism - 0.6 million

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members

[ewmon]

Most Christians are Catholics.

Maybe worldwide, but not in America. There's a list of wrongs that the Catholic church does, enabling pedophile priests being only one among many.

[John Cuthber]

Evolution favors murder

Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival.

 

The Crusades were un-Christian

In other words, what about the Crusades was Christian? Nothing. I'm not the one who must show proof. I can say that the Crusades were un-Martian, un-Venusian, etc, until someone comes along makes a positive declaration. If someone finds something in the Bible that points to the Crusades as being Christian, please let me know.

 

Murder is wrong

Why is murder wrong? Murder enhances one's survival, so it's not wrong in an evolutionary sense. Is murder wrong because John Cuthber or Moontanman or ewmon says so?

 

Just very very very wrong.

Please find out just a little bit about how evolution works.

 

Murder is wrong because, as it should have been explained to you while you were very young: "Just think what would happen if everyone did that!".

 

And, by the way, though a few Christian sects have gained some favour since the crusades, were they not all Catholic at the time (in the sense of owing allegiance to the pope in Rome)?

[zapatos]

Maybe worldwide, but not in America. There's a list of wrongs that the Catholic church does, enabling pedophile priests being only one among many.

Maybe in America, but not in Brazil...

 

What is so significant about American Catholics? Are they the only Catholics worldwide who matter?

[Joatmon]

.........................................When you eliminate the others that you're competing against (be it animals or humans), then you are better able to survive and reproduce............................................

But IMO the relatively physically puny early humans, compared to other animal life, had only their intelligence as their main asset. It seems to me that a small band (say of 10 individuals) could work together to provide more than 10 times the food that one individual could obtain. Also if you killed the other humans in your group who would protect you when you slept? I still think a small cooperative group using their only advantage, intelligence, would have had more chance of survival than an individual trying to exist on his own.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Joatmon

[ewmon]

Just very very very wrong.

Please find out just a little bit about how evolution works.

 

Murder is wrong because, as it should have been explained to you while you were very young: "Just think what would happen if everyone did that!".

 

And, by the way, though a few Christian sects have gained some favour since the crusades, were they not all Catholic at the time (in the sense of owing allegiance to the pope in Rome)?

Evolution

I know how evolution works, and being clever (and cleverly murderous) is part of it. That's why humans out-evolved other primates. That's why the chimp who cleverly sounds the leopard alarm gets the food. Survival is not always to the strongest or quickest. Clever is how Tonya Harding won the national figure skating championship and gained a spot on the Olympic team (but not clever enough to avoid getting caught ... oh well). (Almost) cleverly murderous is how Wanda Holloway's daughter almost had a spot on the cheerleading squad ... oh well × 2. Cleverly murderous is how "El Chapo" Guzmán is among the 100 most powerful people in the world (according to Forbes magazine).

 

What if everyone

What if everyone murdered? It would get rid of a lot of squeamish sissies. What if everyone was homosexual? It would be the end of human procreation ... and I guess that puts an end to the what-if-everyone philosophy. I never got answers from my folks to questions I had about this philosophy. What if everyone lived in our house? What if everyone ate our food? (Mom and Dad still aren't talking to me. Oh well.)

 

All Catholic

You're right, Christians were pretty much all Catholic back then, but that still doesn't mean that they did the Christian thing. There is no requirement or commandment in the Bible that the Crusades fulfilled.

[doG]

Evolution favors murder

Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival.

Your theory is flawed. If it was true then evolution would not have produced social species like ants, flocking birds, schooling fish, etc. There would be no buffalo herds or packs of wolves. I challenge you to provide something other than your opinion to support that assertion.

[Villain]

Murder also tends to cause the murderer to be shunned and ostracized from the group. That makes them a lone wolf with less access to the resources of the tribe and potential mates, it makes them subject to potential retaliation and vigilante violence, and creates a situation for them wherein they are no longer protected from predators or enemy tribes by the numbers and cohesiveness inherent in the group they just wronged. This ultimately lowers their survival chances, and greatly diminishes the likelihood they will have viable offspring to propagate their genes into the next generation.

 

Your simplistic argument apparently fails to account for critical variables such as these, and it certainly appears that you don't seem to have a very firm grasp on this component of evolution. A central premise you are using to prop up your conclusion is quite broken.

 

Or.... it makes you the 'alpha male' and you end up ruling the tribe by fear.

[dimreepr]

Or.... it makes you the 'alpha male' and you end up ruling the tribe by fear.

 

This doesn't necessarily follow as the subordinates will conspire against such a leader, especially in tribal situations.

 

 

Leadership is often confused with social dominance as we see in other social species. When animals compete for limited resources (food, territory, sexual partners), the stronger animals benefit at the expense of the weak. By submitting to its stronger peer they avoid an aggressive act from the dominant animal. The dominance hierarchy reduces violence in the group. This kind of dominance hierarchy is also characteristic of other great apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas.

 

Dominance is difficult within species in which cooperation is important (such as humans). Weaker animals can form coalitions to attack stronger animals, something we see happening for example in chimpanzees. In human evolution, cooperation has led to a reversal of the balance of power. Someone is not a leader because he is able to dominate, but because his abilities benefit the group. Studies of hunter gatherers (people who live like our ancestors) also show that there is no formal power relations, and attempts to dominate the group are punished. The leader leads by consent of the group. The position of leader has obvious evolutionary advantages. A good leader has great respect and prestige, and this may translate into greater privileges and more sexual liaisons.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia....adership_theory

Edited June 20, 2012 by dimreepr

[John Cuthber]

FFS

OK, so I kill all the other blokes and then I'm the only one who can father children.

So those children all have to commit incest

So My genes are goosed by inbreeding.

 

Evolution wipes out murderers quite quickly.

 

While I'm at it.

"What if everyone was homosexual? It would be the end of human procreation ... and I guess that puts an end to the what-if-everyone philosophy. "

Then that population didn't evolve, so it can't exist so it's not relevant.

What if the population has genes which in some combinations lead to homosexuality, but in other combinations lead to other traits such as helping to care for other people's children.

Well, in good times the gene hardly influences population growth- there are plenty of straight couples.

On the other hand, when times are hard, such "helpers" benefit the population enormously.

That is an evolutionarily stable set up.

I wonder if you can think where you might see it?

 

Like I said, learn about evolution.

[ewmon]

Your theory is flawed. If it was true then evolution would not have produced social species like ants, flocking birds, schooling fish, etc. There would be no buffalo herds or packs of wolves. I challenge you to provide something other than your opinion to support that assertion.

There are other equally or more favorable strategies, being social is one of them, as you and others have pointed out. And how about a mixture of the two? Sounds very Machiavellian. Just because humans are superior to the other great apes doesn't mean that we wipe them out, obviously.

 

FFS

OK, so I kill all the other blokes and then I'm the only one who can father children.

So those children all have to commit incest

So My genes are goosed by inbreeding.

People here are assuming that someone murders constantly and indiscriminately. Bad assumption. Humans can read and talk, which has helped us to evolve, but we don't read and talk constantly and indiscriminately.

 

So far, everyone has taken this to an extreme, which can be done with any evolutionary trait. A giraffe's long neck gives it an evolutionary advantage, but what if its neck keeps getting bigger and bigger forever. Having opposable thumbs is an evolutionary advantage, so why don't we have more of them? There is such a thing as an optimal effect of an evolutionary trait: one thumb per hand is enough. If murder/war is not in the mix of positive evolutionary traits, then why does it continue to exist in even the most civilized societies and not get bred out? It has its advantages when the circumstances require it. None of us are 100% cooperative.

[John Cuthber]

Intelligence is always a good thing. Propensity to murder - just like almost else that shrinks the gene pool- is a bad thing.

 

Incidentally re "Humans can read and talk, which has helped us to evolve,"

Nope, we evolved before we learned to read.

[ewmon]

Intelligence is always a good thing. Propensity to murder - just like almost else that shrinks the gene pool - is a bad thing.

Yet, murder/war is still with us. Survival of the fittest also shrinks the gene pool.

 

Incidentally re "Humans can read and talk, which has helped us to evolve,"

Nope, we evolved before we learned to read.

How do we know this? Did the ability to read halt human evolution? I'm not the type to believe that we've stopped evolving.

[doG]

There are other equally or more favorable strategies, being social is one of them, as you and others have pointed out. And how about a mixture of the two? Sounds very Machiavellian. Just because humans are superior to the other great apes doesn't mean that we wipe them out, obviously.

OK, we get it, in your opinion evolution favors murder. Again, have you got any support for your assertion other than your opinion?

[ewmon]

OK, we get it, in your opinion evolution favors murder. Again, have you got any support for your assertion other than your opinion?

Evolution doesn't automatically favor murder, but murder can enhance survival of the fittest. I'll go one step further: cannibals. We've all probably seen them — the BIG tadpoles among the regular-sized ones. They're not a different species; they're big because they're cannibals.

 

Some spadefoot toad tadpoles become cannibals while the rest eat the normal algae. If there is enough food and the water doesn’t dry up (which is the norm) the normals keep their numbers up and things are more or less in balance. If the ponds dry too quickly then the faster growing cannibals are much more likely to survive to adulthood and reproduce. If the proportion tips in favor of the cannibals they eventually have to turn on themselves and the population crashes. In the rebuild, the normals again come to the fore.

source

original study

 

And here's something I didn't expect to find in the source above:

 

... there are researchers who believe psychopaths are around us today because they survived the natural selection process of human evolution. These researchers call psychopathy “a nonpathological, reproductively viable, alternate life history strategy.” This theory is outlined in Coercive and Precocious Sexuality as a Fundamental Aspect of Psychopathy

[pmb]

Evolution favors murder

Of course evolution favors murder. Emphasis on "survival" of the fittest. You never heard that it's a dog eat dog world? A murdered person doesn't survive, and can't reproduce. A murdered person's offspring have one less parent to raise them, and so, have less chance of survival. An already-murdered person cannot murder the murderer. Etc. Survival.

 

The Crusades were un-Christian

In other words, what about the Crusades was Christian? Nothing. I'm not the one who must show proof. I can say that the Crusades were un-Martian, un-Venusian, etc, until someone comes along makes a positive declaration. If someone finds something in the Bible that points to the Crusades as being Christian, please let me know.

 

Murder is wrong

Why is murder wrong? Murder enhances one's survival, so it's not wrong in an evolutionary sense. Is murder wrong because John Cuthber or Moontanman or ewmon says so?

A lot of what I've seen plowing through this thread is about people using the term "murder" to be the same thing as kill. They aren't. God said Thou shalt not murder, not Thou shalt not kill.

There's nothing wrong in killing when its not murder. Sometimes you have to kill someone to save your life or the life of someone else. God told the Hebrews to kill when they came to the promised land and found it occupied. Evolution favors self-defense, even to the extend of killing, but it doesn't favor murder when murder works in opposition to the public good.

[John Cuthber]

 

 

How do we know this? Did the ability to read halt human evolution? I'm not the type to believe that we've stopped evolving.

You can do better than that.

We evolved into humans before we learned to read.

That we still evolve isn't the issue.

What you said was "Humans can read and talk, which has helped us to evolve,"

Nope, just plain wrong. For most of human history and all our precursors, we couldn't read. So no, there's no way it helped us evolve.

 

 

BTW, re the tadpoles

"Some spadefoot toad tadpoles become cannibals while the rest eat the normal algae."

At best, you have shown that, like some humans, some tadpoles are killers.

[immortal]

These men did what God wanted them to do. Does that mean they get to go to heaven? Just whose fault is it that they were crazy anyhow, theirs or God's?

 

Take Heinrich Himmler of the Nazi army for example, he always used to hold a copy of Bhagavad Gita with him so that he can remove his guilt of killing innocent people in gas chambers as Krishna forces the warrior Arjuna to stand up and do war against his own brothers on the basis of non-doership of actions as expounded in Bhagavad Gita.

 

Now do Heinrich Himmler goes to heaven since he killed innocent people with an attitude of non-doership saying that God did it? No, never.

 

No religion or any god ever say or order to kill innocent and righteous people, Arjuna was a warrior it was his duty to do war and he will go to hell if he refuses to kill people in the battlefield. Even Heinrich Himmler was a warrior and he only has the authority to kill people in the battlefield as it is his duty to do so but he has no authority whatsoever to kill innocent people and if anyone thinks that angels will be waiting for them in heaven even after slaughtering innocent people then there is no one more deluded than them.

 

How can someone call themselves as Aryans when they say that their race is superior than others? How can they call themselves as noble? Aryans always taught us to be humble and in fact they never performed any rituals for personal reasons or for a particular country, they always used to perform rituals for the good of the whole world, they taught us that the God of light shining in us is the same light shining in a prostitute, in a black man, in a servant etc. This is the culture of the Aryans.

 

Hitler's master race should never be called as the Aryan race, it should be called as Hitler's Non-Aryan Race. This kind of extremism should not be tolerated when someone kill innocent people in the name of God.

 

The same is with the misinterpretation of the scriptures of the Abrahmic God and the Sharia law of the muslims, no religion ever say to kill innocent people and it can never be a justification for killing innocent people.

 

So who's fault is all this? I think it is no one's, people who kill innocent people are in ignorance and I believe that we don't have free will so a person shouldn't feel guilty if he ends up as an evil ignorant person and in the same way a person shouldn't feel pride if he ends up as an innocent righteous person because evil is in the nature of things we can't do much about it, we have to fight it.

 

I don't believe in free will but I would act as though I have one and uplift myself and this thought of mine was predestined.