Mind

Does Evolution Explain Human Nature?

September 21, 2012 One Comment

Corey S. Powell, Editor and Chief of Discover Magazine, Kenneth Miller, Professor of Biology at Brown University, Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology Yale University, and David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, discuss how we got to be the way we are.

[embed_video youtube=”http://youtu.be/9Cz8ZwaJe24″ vimeo=””][/embed_video]

Published On: September 21, 2012

One Comment

  • Brain 4 Business says:

    Caution:  These commentators and this vid represents a very narrow and non-scientific/evidence based set of views are per Templeton’s ideological agenda.

    Templeton has an anti-science ideological agenda and lots of money to buy voices for dumb events like this.

    DSW has mainly crackpot ideas.  Culture and individuals are trivial.  How much impact does culture and individual differences have on the function of other organs of the body?  The brain is just another body organ and universal in function and operations.  Philosophers have nothing to add – but abstract word play.  Morality > meiosis!?  Crackpot.

    Non-kin “altruism” is not that common in humans either.  All social species, including bacteria and social insects exhibit optimal behaviors in sharing/social behaviors, duh.

    Who cares about Dover?  This is where Templeton’s agenda comes in.

    Oh Lord d”Chardin!!??  Off into the whoo and magical thinking.  Right, drag out the old human exceptionalism.  Gee,  I feel special!  You?

    Cultural evolution is mainly pop culture.  Who is really going to want to debate anything about that?

    You do see cultural evolution in other species—look at baboon research/Saplosky, etc.

    Religion = supernatural/magical beliefs.  The 40% # is dead wrong.  This has been debunked at http://www.whyevolutionistrue.com

    How could the blog owner publish this nonsense without a disclaimer!?

    It’s not a “god” module—it’s a magical belief module.  Most humans belief in demons and local spirits, ghosts.  Certainly not the US evangelical idea of a god. 

    Evolution also gave us belief in tooth faeries and alien visits – let’s study those.  80% of Americans belief the government is withholding evidence of alien visits, in guardian angels and Satan as a physical being.

    Natural language phenomena do not, by definition, have biological or behavioral significance.  These are undecided empirical questions. 

    Interesting Yale has forbidden comments on YouTube. 

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