invertin wrote:I found some flaws in evolution! (finally)
Really? By doing nothing but thought experiments, and without benefit of training, you've found some flaws?
Perhaps you just don't understand it. Perhaps you expressed yourself badly. Maybe you have discovered the fatal error overlooked by Darwin. Let's find out.
then wrote:*Why do we have emotions? Fear makes sense, but why would being so depressed you want to kill yourself be useful in the wild?
Emotions are like any response your body makes; they're chemical in nature. They have uses; fear makes you run (or fight), anger makes you fight (or run); love makes you protect and nurture your offspring.
Unhappiness is an emotion; it makes you want to change the thing that's making you unhappy (by running or fighting or something). Depression isn't an emotion. It's a chemical imbalance. If you can't change your unhappiness, it can lead to depression; your body keeps pumping out the chemicals, even though they just make it worse.
Animals and humans (a distinction without a difference) respond in similar ways: lethargy, obsessive behavior, aggression, etc. It’s why I don’t like zoos; I hate seeing animals pacing back and forth, or lying there like a stoner, or licking their own fur off. (Anti-depressants for humans were developed through animal testing.)
Animals don’t kill themselves; they aren’t self-aware, so they can’t conceive of it. Their actions might lead to death, but they can't know that (as far as we can determine).
We don’t know where self-awareness comes from; it might have to do with intelligence, so it’s related to your other question.
But animals will die from environmental pressures. The ones who survive longest tend to pass on their ability to survive to more offspring, so they enforce the techniques that help them survive.
Animals that can and do take effective action don’t get depressed unless they’ve inherited a flaw, or get stuck in a situation they can’t change (physical, like a trap, or social, like low status). This is true for people as well.
and also wrote:*Why is it that in the relativly short time humans have been on earth, we've become so smart when crocodiles have existed since the dinosaurs and before?
Don’t confuse intelligence with “the ultimate goal of evolution.” We aren’t the crown of creation (a bible-based idea), or the result that natural selection is trying to achieve. Natural selection has no goal, it’s not driven in any direction. It’s a very random process, and takes from a couple generations to a couple eons to accomplish anything.
We developed intelligence as a result of environmental pressures; it helped us survive. It’s also caused us problems (depression might be one) just like other characteristics of other animals cause them problems. Huge antlers don’t help deer or elk; it kills them more often than helps them. But it attracts more females, so they mate more, so they have more offspring, so more deer have big antlers, and so on.
As for crocs, they developed their characteristics to survive in the environment they were in. Your intelligence would help you hunt and kill one, but dropped naked into the Nile, you’d be croc chow in a heartbeat.
If you’re looking for the best-adapted, longest existing, most durable survivor of evolution, it’s bacteria: among the simplest organisms on earth. And they can survive the widest range of environments of any organism, and make up the largest portion of the existing biomass on earth. They’re the crown of creation if anything is.
and next wrote:(I think, I'm a bit sketchy on my animal history to be honest)
Yes, and evolutionary theory, too.
then finally wrote:While before I rejected evolution completly I'm a bit more open this time.
Evolution is accepted as the cornerstone of biology by scientists (and major religions) the world over, taught as such in every legitimate institute of higher learning, and backed up by over a century of observations and experimentation, with the only real detractors doing so on the grounds of religious belief, with no evidence or experimentation to back up their belief.
On what grounds do you reject it?