How much faith do you have in chance?

Question

Evolution does make sense to me but I do not understand how people can believe that the world formed just by chance. I think having faith in God takes is much more thinkable than believing the world formed by itself. Aren't athiests supposed to be skeptics?
IF traits were aquired by adaption to environments, why is it that humans have morals? Evolution says that the gene tries to spread itself and those genes that produce most success in survival and reproduction survive. but why did we develop these traits that make us feel guilt when we do wrong? and why didn't the same happen to other animals? If the eye can be formed randomly by 2 unrelated species, why are humans so different?

with much respect to your beliefs, i just wanted to know what people think of evolution, especially the ones who do not believe in God. And i'm not saying i dont believe in evolution, i do. I just dont believe it happened by its own. thank you

but mutations cause the changes dont they? and dont they occur on chance? i know the process took a loooong time but still there is no aim in evolution, nature doesn't have a mind.

yeah, i've read about altruism. but doesn't it basically say that even while protecting other animals, its main reason for doing that is to spread its genes. an animal would die more likely to save its brother than to save a cousin. why? because it shares more genes and the goal is to reproduce those genes. even while the animal is unselfish, the gene Is selfish.
i dont understand how complete unselfishness (is that even a word?) has evolved solely through natural processes.

Answer 1

I don't go to Las Vegas and the formation of the Earth is cosmology, not evolution.

Altruism, where you do not pass on your genes but your close relatives who share many of your genes do is common in nature. I'm going to separate morals and guilt. Morals are the societal beliefs of right and wrong. Guilt is the feeling associated with violating these rules. Some people do not have a sense of guilt; they are sociopaths. Guilt is a form of psychic pain -- a negative feeling associated with breaking societal rules. Why do we have pain? To teach us what not to do. It can be inferred that the evolution of guilt implies that adherence to societal rules was a survival trait. Many apes (not just the great apes) have social structure and there are rules for who grooms whom and other things. The best observations suggest that they have a sense of guilt when they break the rules (it's tough to tell guilt from fear of punishment).

Do the societal rules of apes reach the level of a moral code? For purposes of this answer, I'm going to say no, but I'm not sure of that. Moral codes are not biological instincts, they are learned ideas that are passed down. Societies gain survival advantages from the ideas they have as much as genes. While technology, like iron working made a difference in Biblical times and nuclear technology now, are important, law and morality have longer reaching effects. The term "meme" (to complement "gene") has been suggested for the social ideas that are passed down. Social evolution has a greater short term impact than biological evolution, as can be seen by the technological advances in a generation's time.

I suspect I see humans as less "different" than you do.

Answer 2

Evolution has little to do with chance. Only the initial mutations and genome changes are chaotic: natural selection weeds out the vast majority of these from evolutionary lines, using a rigid "logic".

Morality (or more accurately the genes which code for a nervous system capable of thinking morally) has been selected because it is more adaptive than the alternative: individuals and groups are more likely to survive and reproduce if they have this trait than if they don't.

Answer 3

Natural processes are not the same as chance.

There's no one known on the face of the earth that has your fingerprints or is just like you. What's the chance of that happening? What's the chance of you being born? To those particular parents?

It's just the way things work. Tossing in supernatural beings just overcomplicates things unnecessarily.

People like to call a human birth a "miracle". However, in the US, there is a baby born every 8 seconds and they are all unique. Not much of a miracle, is it? It's more common than fleas on an alley cat. I'd also bet most of those pregnancies weren't planned. Accidents.

Answer 4

All pack animals have certain kinds of behavior towards each other that single animals do not have. There's your morality.

As for why humans can do things like write operas, quantum physics, feel guilt, we have no idea why those things came at random from our ability to reason.
But you have to remember that if not for that last major die-off, we never would have even had a chance. Dinosaurs ruled for about 250-300 million years. Do you understand how long that is? If we rewound it all to run again, we might never have evolved.

Answer 5

Given enough time anything is possible. The age of the earth is incomprehensible. We think in human terms, and our collective experience only goes back 4 or 5 thousand years. This planet is 4 or 5 Billion years old. A lot can happen in that time.

Answer 6

are the complex biological systems we merely see the results of winning the bio lottery? not a chance!!

1 random processes cannot give rise to information

2 small gradual changes cannot explain the many cases of irreducable complexity seen in nature

3 it isnt a case of a small probablity... its like shooting an arrow at the moon... shoot all you want you aint gunna hit it

Answer 7

humans have morals because we are social creatures and a society that works together has a better chance of survival. and this trait has been found in other animals. i found a different link to moral molds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism#Altruism_in_ethology_and_evolutionary_biology

Answer 8

wow thats a long question

Answer 9

How much faith do you have in chance?

ZERO...none.