Atheists and Non believers, How do you reconcile our (human) level of Consciousness with out God?

Question

I have read and studied a ton of writers on the subject of human consciousness. For example; Pinker, Eldeman, and many others that show how and why certain systems developed. However, those are not as comfortable when it comes to explaining the high quality functions that we are imbued with. They call it qualia and its stumps them. Love, Music, Feelings, Appreciation, Art, and so many more are not required for life to have sustained itself and continued its systems

Does it stump you?
Why do we have so much more than required for survival and evolution?

There are some truly bitter people in here. I thought this line of reasoning might appeal to some of you reasoning abilities. I thought that you might actually appreciate a question that would allow you to flex your brains a bit but, what I got was quite different.

Answer 1

No, it does not stump me.

There are two possible explanations that I can think of:

1) A sense of aesthetics does give an evolutionary advantage:

Love definitely falls into this category. Having love of a child helps protect that child. Having love of a partner helps protect that partner.
Feelings - same thing.
Art and physical aesthetics - maybe this helps in tool building. A tool with clean pleasing lines is probably more effective and/or durable than an unaesthetic one.


2) They are by-products of things that are an evolutionary advantage.

For example out sense of aesthetics in tool making may provide a sense of aesthetics of our surroundings. An appreciation of the symmetry gives rise to an appreciation of harmonic rhythm and music.


These things then get reinforced as evolving memes because it helps bond the society together.



We have evolved some things that can be actively bad for us. Sickle cell anemia for example. A single copy of the gene helps resist malaria. A double copy kills you. In regions that are high risk for malaria then this is an evolutionary advantage, it saves more than it kills which is all evolution 'cares' about. Out of the tropics though it is a disadvantage.

If this evolved:
We would see this in one group of people that were indigenous to a tropical region or band, but not in people indigenous to temperate areas.

If it was designed:
We would see a resistance that does not kill the host if they happen to receive a double copy of the gene. Even if it did, we would see in in all people indigenous to tropical regions.


What we actually see is that it is in people of African decent only. This matches perfectly with the evolutionary model and contradicts the design model. - A mutation in Africans caused the locally advantageous gene, but it could never spread out of Africa because as soon as you got out of the equatorial area it became a disadvantage and died out.

So, sickle cell anemia stumps the designer god hypothesis.

Answer 2

Certainly it is a puzzle. Whether you see it as something to be solved by science, or as evidence for a God, I suppose is up to you.

Personally, I agree with the idea that some of the things you describe are by-products accumulated while the parts of our brain necessary for survival were developing. It's easy to look around and assume that humans somehow transcend the animal kingdom, but you only have to look as far as the other great apes and some of their complex social structures to see that things like "love" and "feelings" may only be the subjective experience of behaviors that enhance survival in a social population. Can we really say that gorillas or bonobos don't feel something akin to love?

(This is more speculative)
You might be inclined, when you see a concert pianist perform, to think, "there's just no evolutionary value in this", but try to deconstruct what processes are involved:
Manual dexterity: certainly this could have accrued over time as a better tool maker has an obvious survival advantage.
Hand-eye coordination: we're not that big and we're not that fast, so we're just not able to track and kill large prey without some cunning. In a hunter-gatherer life, a person who can throw a spear accurately will be able to feed a family and thus send his genes to the next generation. Also, perhaps even moreso, for tree-dwellers, agility among the branches can literally be a matter of life or death.
Muscle-memory: concert pianists are really on auto-pilot when they give a performance. Their fingers have essentially "learned" the piece, freeing the conscious parts of their brain to focus on dynamics, tempo, etc. I don't know the evolutionary value of this, but perhaps it could have to do with passing control of routine behaviors that require precision to the unconscious parts of our brain, allowing us to do something the same way every time, once learned.

In any case, I wouldn't take such an anthropocentric worldview. We may have found our niche is a highly-developed nervous system, but plants have found that they don't have to do much at all, because they get their energy from the sun. They're doing pretty well for themselves.

Answer 3

This is a logical fallacy argument. Basically, what you are saying is I don't understand how this could be or came about so it must be God. It could equally or even more probably be that an alternative explanation is correct. Such as consciousness evolved because it was adaptive. Science on the development and working of the human brain is in its infancy but it has still some hypotheses how and why it developed. It may be that once a certain level of consciousness is acheived there are ancillary byproducts such as music appreciation that don't necessarily need to directly benefit survival themselves, they are byproducts. Like sickle cell anemia which at the surface seems just to make people less fit actually decreases the susceptibility of contracting malaria in those who have it. As far as emotions like love, empathy, etc... they do have an adaptive role in social groups. Many animals that live in social groups show what looks like basic emotional responses to love their young and care for and accept others in the group. I think you are employing wishful thinking to jump to a favored conclusion.

I recommend an interesting book on the subject.
"The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God" by Robert Linden

Along with "The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning About Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims" although it was expensive when I got it for a class. You might find it cheaper used or just pick up another book on critical thinking skills.

Answer 4

No it doesn't stump me, I'm agnostic not atheist, but animals have feelings also. Dog's, Elephants, Monkeys all exhibit many of the traits man exhibits to a lesser degree. New Scientist magazine often runs stories on research in these areas.

As an artist and educator, I feel that creativity arises from play and specifically pattern recognition. Neural networks in computers can exhibit creative looking choices or patterns when set up right. Dreaming seems to be about categorising, modelling and predicting. As a carer of someone with schizophrenia I know that when brain chemistry is wrong then the person recedes. All empathy and body lags drains from someone in that psychotic state. I suppose that living with someone who switches the higher levels on and off has informed me on the nature of consciousness.

I am also convinced that all these traits are necessary to survival. Religion and Altruism bond groups, it's the collective gene pool that is being promoted not just individual gene patterns. Play and creativity strengthen capability and invents new ways of doing things, it bonds groups, all these things strengthen societies. I'm confident that creative societies always win in the end. It's what gives me hope. Fundamentalism only weakens learning and societies making them less effective.

I also feel that saying God made it all is a complete intellectual cop-out. After all what made God? The mystery is not made any easier by invoking a human modelled first cause. Such a god would be so complex it is impossible to imagine how he got started. For me it's easier to imagine that a fluctuation in space/time inflated the Universe and that we observe it from a very privileged position as the most complex organism in the local vicinity.

Answer 5

Ummm who says that all that evolution produces is that which is necessary for survival? Evolution actually doesn't DO anything; it is a term used to describe the process by which traits that are reinforced by a population will tend to be reinforced.

Beings with traits that are reinforced, whether as essential for survival, or simply those that are appealing to a population will be reinforced. Women tend to like taller men, and the population today is tending to increase in stature. It stands to reason that if one could appreciate things and had a capacity to understand that vague concept known as beauty, then that capacity would gain in prominence over generations if it was deemed desirable by mating couples.

Today, there are still some that do not appreciate certain arts, and there is a great deal of variance in what is considered beautiful. In the end though, the question is this:

Do we really need to resort to a creator each and every time we are confronted by something which we don't yet fully understand?

Answer 6

I've posted this before about consciousness, I'll do so again for your review, written awhile back for my website......

Nothing has prompted more speculation among scientists and philosophers throughout history than the purpose and measurable properties of consciousness. Perhaps consciousness could be defined as an organism's ability to select and impose beneficial properties to their surrounding environment. By this line of thought, intelligence would be closely tied to the level of consciousness of a particular organism. This is particularly noticeable among higher order complex organisms, particularly mammals. As you go up the scale of intelligence from cats, dogs, dolphins, whales, to primates, the level of ability to manipulate the environment increases to reflect intelligence level. From the standpoint of evolution this could make sense as perhaps the most complex example of a survival mechanism. This particular speculation makes sense from a 'human' standpoint as well, after all, humans are essentially the most advanced and intelligent organisms on the planet, and we've survived quite well as a race. However, this is also dampened by humans' distressing lack of regard for long term consequences to the manipulation of the environment. While humans are quite adaptable to changing environments, much of the adaptability is the direct result of technological advances. Whether the technology destroys the human race remains to be seen, if so, eventually human-level intelligence would evolve among some other line of organism as the intelligence and consciousness is indeed a valuable survival trait. The ability to select the methods of environment manipulation that offers the biggest 'rewards' versus the initial investment may very well be nature's most complex survival trait.

Answer 7

Music, art, and feelings are also completely subjective, and to my knowledge have never been well quantified, as opposed to developing opposable thumbs or the ability to manipulate and then make tools. Love can be explained as a by-product of our necessity to protect and maintain a stable relationship to allow our offspring to grow and be productive and carry on our genes. My question would be why can't these other things just be a by product of larger brains that were necessary for our increased ability to hunt, remember things, and communicate to others in our clans?

Answer 8

My view is that humans have developed emotions and all emotions are for survival. From emotions, some humans produce expressions through music and art. Not all humans have the desire to produce music and art. But all humans derive pleasure from the appreciation of music and art and the pleasure/pain mechanism is an inescapable motivating factor for life. This is why humans did not continue to eat raw meat when they discovered fire, and why they prefered to spice their foods when they discovered aromatic herbs, this why, in my opinion, we developed cultures. Ultimately, all organisms operate under the natural law of the pleasure/pain mechanism. Conceptual beings, exploited that law to the maximum, and still do, by increasing sensuous pleasures at all given opportunities and decreasing pain in all its forms.

Answer 9

I haven't read the authors you mention so I can't comment on their specific arguments. However, I think all these "qualia" are things that contribute to social bonding. Since we are a social animal, things that bind us together strengthen the group and therefore have survival value.

I especially can't imagine that anyone would have a hard time finding a survival value for love, as love tends to lead to reproduction, and also binds the family unit together.

Answer 10

I don't know if I would say that we have more than what evolution should logically give us with, for example, music. Survival, maybe, but I recommend that you read the book "This Is Your Brain On Music". I just started it and I think that I would have a much better answer for that question had I not seen it until after I had finished the book.