Any perspectives and thoughts about (the theory of) evolution?

[lmfao]

What feels like a long time ago, I heard the story of evolution. A layman's understanding of how natural selection works.  
For while I've never really thought about it, and it's a random little specialised sub domain if you're interested, since I see spirituality as ultimately about subtraction. So I have zero insights or any opinion to offer, I'm just making this thread for fun in case people want to post stuff about a topic I don't engage in with much.

A main aspect of the story being fed is one of randomness and dry logic, in terms of what is stated explicitly.



The story I was told was that sometime long ago on earth, the conditions were right for the first single celled organism to exist. And then evolution and natural selection occur over very long timescales, so that tiny steps within our reference frame for time add up to something extraordinary over those long timescales.

So what happens is gene mutations occur 'randomly'. If the mutation favours the survivability and chance to reproduce of your species, the organisms with that mutation outnumber the organisms who don't have the mutation. And these tiny advantages from tiny gene mutations, they add up over long timescales to the overwhelming dominance of some genes over others, until those other genes are extinct or branch off into something else completely. 

So there are all these 'random gene mutations' going on, and some set of genes is selected by the environment. The environment containing things needed for the survival of your species but the environment also containing things that threaten to kill your species. 


And so in a certain way, someone could see it as drab. Whatever the end result of evolution is will be selected by adaptability to survival and reproduction, and its drab because it's kinda tautological. What survives, indeed survives. Hence it is here. What doesn't survive, well it doesn't survive. Hence it is not here. 

----
But I don't think it's drab inherently. I think that's an illusory conception you can have if all you are concerned with are the words and bland textbook theory. Rather than looking at the beauty of and living nature of it. A tautology needn't be drab. Reality is a tautology, and it's an infinitely complex and vast one to explore.

Getting fixed on words like "randomness", "entropy" or "nihiliism" in the context of a non-articulated set of assumptions makes it so that you can have a pessimistic and dry view of things. And of course if the assumptions were articulated and brought explicitly into someones awareness in their psyche, they'd be less likely to be consumed by them.
 

Edited November 13, 2020 by lmfao

[Inliytened1]

@lmfao umm..reality is an Infinite Mind with Infinite Intelligence.  All that is random is imagined so.   Evolution occurs but is the result of Infinite intelligence.   Science has a long way to go.

[Nthnl]

1 hour ago, Inliytened1 said:

@lmfao umm..reality is an Infinite Mind with Infinite Intelligence.  All that is random is imagined so.   Evolution occurs but is the result of Infinite intelligence.   Science has a long way to go.

sure... if thats what you believe. 

[Member]

Evolution kicks the butts of the unnecessary ones, so that they become zeroes. It has nothing to do with the death of organisms as evolution favors life. So the mind/consciousness has decided that it wants to extend and never cease to exist. Randomness is just a lack of an explanation but there is a cause or a reason for everything (see the Principle of sufficient reason).

[lmfao]

On 13/11/2020 at 4:46 PM, Tim Ho said:

Can consciousness be accumulated and transferred in a form of DNA, quantum biology?  How consciousness affect cellular on quantum level?   When a baby have its first consciousness?   

This is one of those tricky things about materialism and causality. Whether material conditions cause consciousness. There are physical correlates and expressions to things, whether that means causality I don't know. Math can be an aspect about reality without being the essential nature of reality. 

I'm not into psychedelics. Leo claims that by taking these physical drugs you paradoxically become conscious of the limits of physicalism. 

[Moksha]

I see evolution as Consciousness creating infinite diversity, developing increasingly complex organisms, through which it is increasingly able to realize itself.

[Adamq8]

@Moksha Yeah makes sense as well cause conciousness is all.