Building better monkeys

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Most of my thoughts for this post come from an article in The Republic out of Columbus, Indiana.  It was titled "Building a Smarter Ape?"  and can be found here: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/SCI-EVOLUTION_5848336/SCI-EVOLUTION_5848336/

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Of course it talks about the new Planet of the Apes movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  It reports that increasing the size of the brain alone wouldn't allow apes to attain most human qualities.  Agreed.

It also claims that apes can be trained to use sign language.  Disagree.  Apes can learn signs, but that is very different than sign language, which is an entire set of languages with complex grammar, dialects, etc.  American Sign Language is one of these, a full language.  Signed Exact English is where people spell out the letters to make words in English, and very different from ASL, or any of the other sign

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languages.  Apes can learn signs.  Not sign language.  For example, the given example from Gary Marcus "They say they want more bananas, or they want to be tickled, not, "I wonder what would happen if France defaulted."  The apes wouldn't say (or sign) "I want a banana."  The sign would be more like this "banana I I I banana want banana I banana want want banana banana" The English language usually structures sentences subject verb object (I want a banana).  I thought I heard that American Sign Language usually has a different setup (like I banana want).  The ape never learns the preferred structure.  It throws out the needed words at apparently random intervals.  I'm not totally sure it would even get the verb word in there.

The article makes some interesting points about how some humans, because of developmental defects, have chimp sized brains, but that they, even with deficits, are much more advanced than apes.  The author also explains that neanderthals had larger brains than we do, but had no art or symbolic thought.  I read a research article that seems to refute this, saying that neanderthals were smarter than we give them credit for, but whatever. 

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The author of the article then gets into questions of advantages of a bigger brain.  Some theorists suggest that "varied climates required early hominids to be craftier" which is ridiculous to me at least, as there's all kinds of animals that lived in varied climates.  Maybe they are craftier, but they are certainly no closer to being human than the apes are.  Others, the author says, think that bigger brains allowed them to get more mates.  Again, this strategy would be equally effective for every other species that mates, but humans are different from all of them. 

A final thought with regards to why the bigger brains is that having the father involved in child care allowed more kids to be raised, and for kids to have longer developmental periods (no other animal has an 18 year development period. :)  This leads up to my favorite quote of the article "the no-strings-attached mating strategy of male chimps might be limiting their brainpower."  I love it. 

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Of the listed reasons for a bigger brain, it is the only one that I can't immediately rule out.  The others though seem to be possible driving causes for a bigger brain, whereas this one doesn't show a cause, but rather, a way that would allow for bigger brains to develop. 

My reasoning on the issue, which is equally scientific (that is to say unscientific, just as these others are as yet unproven hypotheses) is that we have bigger brains, because we needed bigger brains, to allow us to do the things that God our father in heaven wants us to do.  Or to not do those things, according to our wishes. 

Actual science on this issue would require us to recreate human beings at multiple points on our proposed evolutionary path in the same environments that they were in, and then get out of the way and see what they do in terms of does the smartest guy get more girls, or are smart genes picked up over time by moving to different environments, or is there a point at which the males start helping to

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care for the children, at which the brain starts to grow and other uniquely human traits begin to develop?  This is one of those few cases where animal models can't really help, because the issue under investigation is how humans became different from the other animals, and so only human subjects will do.  Unless actual human experiments are done, this whole field is left to grasp at ideas and let others critique them, with individuals stating their opinion without being able to test it.  Not science.  Kind of like religion, except for the different beliefs with regards to provenance of knowledge. 

Anyway, the article finally gets into the issues of genetically altering apes to make them more human.

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While this couldn't definitively answer issues of how humans got to where we are, it would be very interesting, and could give some strong clues.  I think it's a great idea.  Mwa ha ha!

Does religion cause all wars?

I've heard this comment thrown in or argued for several times.  I'd never even considered it, and I think that anyone with a grasp of history would argue against it, if for no other reason than that "all" is pretty difficult to defend. 

So I started thinking of wars.  The closest I can come up with may be the Crusades, and possibly the wars of Islamic expansion from centuries ago.  My understanding is that most historians think that the crusades were more about reducing destruction in Europe by diverting armed and violent men to the middle east than actually fighting for religion's sake.  I have to take that with a grain of salt though, because the few things I have read that were written by the Christian participants make me think that they really believed that they were "fighting for Christ."  Even this being the case, I don't think religion "caused" the conflicts.  I think it was used as an excuse for the conflict.  Anyone that reads the New Testament objectively knows that physically initiating violence was not Jesus' way, or the object of his teachings. 

The wars of the expansion of Islam can probably be seen in a similar fashion.  In name they were to increase the religion/destroy the infidels, but in reality most of the teachings of Islam are peaceful. 

Today's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya can be viewed at a glance as a war between Christians and Muslims, therefore a war between religions, therefore religion caused the wars, but a view with any depth reveals that religion has nothing to do with the cause of these conflicts.  At least not the West's part in them.  The US went in due to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, for oil, to promote democracy, because it's in US interests, to protect the innocent, to remove dictators, because George Bush Sr. didn't finish what he started, etc.  Lots of reasons thrown around for the cause of the conflict, but is religion one of them, really?  The US certainly doesn't act like it.  The wars may benefit one Islamic group over another, but it doesn't benefit Christians.  In other areas where Christians specifically are persecuted and killed (like Sudan), the US doesn't do anything so radical as direct military intervention. 

While it may be true that Osama Bin Laden claimed religious reasons for attacking the Great Satan, 99% of muslims share a belief in Islam but don't even consider initiating violence against the US.  Osama Bin Laden's violence wasn't because he was a muslim.  Being a muslim allowed him a reason to express and direct his violence. 

In other words, "religions don't kill people, people kill people."  There are many terrorist groups that have no religious element at all to provide a reason for killing innocents.  Ask any Colombian.  What really upsets me is when people use this argument in an attack on religion.  usually this comes from someone who's made science their religion.  In World War II millions of Jews and others were killed because "science" indicated they were from inferior races. 

The "science" they used was flawed and misinterpreted.  Again, I would say it wasn't really science that caused these terrible events.  Rather, it was people that used it as an excuse to do what they wanted to do. 

It could be argued that science created the weapons that end life during every war in history.  Science and religion are both tools that get used by those that hate, or desire power, to get what they want. 

Nazis trained dogs to read and speak. And the existence of God.

I still can't believe they actually tried to do it.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8532573/Nazis-tried-to-train-dogs-to-talk-read-and-spell-to-win-WW2.html 

But I guess it makes sense, in a misguided sort of way.  If you don't believe that there is a fundamental difference between animals and people in a religious sense, for example, that people are children of God, while animals are creations of God, and if you don't have a good grasp of modern evolutionary science, which would also indicate the impossibility of training dogs to talk (without theoretical genetic mutations), then you might think... hey, dogs are smart.  Let's teach them language. 

Picture from: http://www.jeffbaj.com/2010_07_01_archive.html (on a blog titled: reflections of God)
I think the funny thing is the major error in Hitler's mind wasn't that he overestimated the intelligence of dogs, but rather, he severely underestimated the intelligence of humans. 

For me, one of the best evidences that God exists is us ourselves.  No dog, ape, or parrot will argue the issue with me.  There have been lots of studies by people to show how smart animals are.  Many of these studies focus on chimpanzees or bonobos, on the assumption that, because they are our closest genetic relative, they may be more intelligent than other species.  But I think most of the studies that show their increased intelligence could be replicated in other animals. 

As I read through the original article about what these dogs could do, as far as tapping out words and that, and I think it's a lot like the ape studies with talking apes.  If you really get into it and look at the communication abilities in context, you find a giant gap in speech, language, and cognition.  Does anyone really expect to find otherwise?

Image from; http://emergingsoul.com/blog/2011/01/21/marriage-your-presence-is-your-present-to-each-other/
So this article about the Nazis training dogs to speak is done by Brits, as far as I can tell.  Probably not a coincidence, as the obvious implication is that the Nazis and Hitler weren't very smart after all.  All the exceptional technological innovation that they had, and yet, here they are, trying to train dogs to speak. 

All the scientific advancement that we have today, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing at all that indicates that God doesn't exist.  It might be said that there isn't any that He does exist either... and then I think we get into probability theory over mountains of inconclusive but probable evidence, in my view. 

God of the Gaps

From my old Myspace blog From November 25th, 2008

About eight years ago I was very interested in how science and religion interact, and I was looking at science critically. I'm not at all critical of science, though obviously some people do use science wrongly to get desired results, or make conclusions from what they can see of science without proper evidence.

I was watching NOVA and they were talking about dark energy. The theory was that the big bang created this rapid expansion, and the laws of nature that we know would dictate that this expansion would slowly decrease in velocity, eventually stopping and falling back inward towards the beginning point. What goes up must come down, after all. The evidence shows that actually there is no sign of a decreasing velocity of expansion, and there is a little bit of evidence of an increase of velocity instead. This is explained by dark energy, which is the unknown force that is causing this. I thought to myself that, call it what you will, this is something that God is doing.

As I learn more, though, I understand that the idea that God's power is manifested in this dark energy is really a misunderstanding about what God does. Things become better understood through science every day. Science is simply a system of learning through evidence what is observed and how it works. Eventually, dark energy will be understood. Just like gravity, light, relativity, DNA, atoms, etc. Would this mean that it was not God after all?

We often think of God as doing everything that we do not understand, and nothing that we do understand. This is the God of the gaps. We know that two dogs mate, and the female is inseminated, and then the puppies are born. We think that, because we understand the process, it is not God's doing. But I think that these things are God's doing. If God created all things, didn't he create the puppies? Below are some verses that have informed my understanding.

D & C 59:21 And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.

Mosiah 4:9 Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Moses 6:63 And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.