Mindscape 206 | Simon Conway Morris on Evolution, Convergence, and Theism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ส.ค. 2022
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Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript:
Evolution by natural selection is one of the rare scientific theories that resonates within the wider culture as much as it does within science. But as much as people know about evolution, we also find the growth of corresponding myths. Simon Conway Morris is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist who’s new book is From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution. He is known as a defender of evolutionary convergence and adaptationism - even when there is a mass extinction, he argues, the resulting shake-up simply accelerates the developments evolution would have made anyway. We talk about this, and also about the possible role of God in an evolutionary worldview.
Simon Conway Morris received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Cambridge. He is currently an emeritus professor of evolutionary paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge. Among his awards are the Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences and the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London.
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This is a very interesting discussion. If I understand Morris' deism argument, it seems to be an elaborate argument from personal incredulity. He seems to think because humans seem so distinctly creative relative to other animals, this must have been designed by something that is also distinctly creative rather than unintentional evolution. Without evidence of what that thing actually is, that seems like an elaborate god of the gaps fallacy.
all these intellectuals keep having deists on. sean, and lex with a recent podcast. it's fucking insane. the podcasters don't challenge the deists beliefs enough. these deists are able to skirt around unprovable statements like oympian ice skaters. what am I suppose to do with a podcast like this? Shouldn't I just be reading the bible? the podcast and the bible are 1 way communication mediums, where our brains are filled with spurious arguments.
@@ai_serf Did you actually listen to it? There wasn't much theism/deism discussion. Biology, evolution, and institutional science were the primary topics.
Morris seems to thoroughly understand biology and evolution, so I think it was certainly worthwhile. It shows that intelligent people don't necessarily have a more credible perspective, but they're capable of forming more elaborate arguments to support it. To me that's what Morris does here.
@@alankoslowski9473 I only listened to 20 minutes and gave up on it. I appreciate your insight : "It shows that intelligent people don't necessarily have a more credible perspective, but they're capable of forming more elaborate arguments to support it"
I'm just upset that so far no deist has ever convinced me why deism is good. I'm just angry at the way deists and interviewers argue. this podcast didn't have any deisism talk in the first 20 minutes, and that's a problem for me. if you're a scientist that believes in god for rational reasons, i.e. no emotional reasons, then convince me. If it's just emotional, what can I learn from these people? Rational discussion about biology, evolution and instiutional science? That's great, but this guy mentions he believes in god with absolute certainty, I would think he should be up in arms about proving it.
So far the arguments for the existance from god from deists are all bullshit, and there's tons of philosophy on why so. Let's get into that.
@@ai_serf "then convice me." Maybe it's just that, why should a de/theist have to convince you of anything? Put differently, are you hoping to be convinced? Its can be exhausting for one to constantly have to justify their views, especially given the general hostility of discussing the topic in forums such as this.
@@ai_serf I don't remember him saying he's a certain deist. I don't even think that's conceptually possible. I deistic god supposedly may have initiated the universe/cosmos, but doesn't interact with it/us.
Deism seems entirely pointless while theism seems absurd since there's no evidence of an interactive god. There are some good scientists who have a major intellectual blind-spot in this regard. Morris seems like one of them.
This guy rules! Sean you are the Grandmaster of great questions that don’t make people offended if you disagree!
It's like the deepest instinct we have to look at the world around us and force ourselves into the center of it all. It's like the alternate concept is just too incomprehensible to most of our drives to exist and persist.
Some of his opinions are very colored by his theism. Like with the animal experiments he didn't mention the experiments in apes and monkeys that show they have values like fairness. Instead he talks about birds and pebbles.
This was fascinating. A very interesting chat!
Well done for getting the most english man possible😂😂😂😂
Not really he does not swear once !
@@ianmarshall9144 there are two types of brit, the drunk and the sober.
@@HarryNicNicholas Read it again it says English not British and I don't drink . Prick
I think he is using that image of the old boozy English countryside gentleman to get away with murder, using his status and reputation to sneak religious doctrine into an almost scientific argument. Almost.
@@marrs1013 I didnt get that at all , what is an old boozy English countryside gentleman ? Having lived for 54 years in big cities , towns and the countryside in England , the image you are trying to conjure up really doesnt exist , lets not forget that Prof Carroll asked the leading questions , he just answered in his " honest opinion " . Maybe i missed something !
i listened to a part of this discussion a couple days ago and i have returned to leave a comment expressing my discomfort with theist scientists - and it looks like i'm not the only one. my gut tells me this fellow is on the pretentious side. he's not a comedian but seems to think it's important that he act as one during this discussion. if i had the choice of learning from an atheist professor or a theist professor there is no question in my mind i would pick the atheist. i don't see how one can discuss or teach these ideas coming from a religious perspective and not have that religious perspective unnecessarily seep into the subject matter. i would've rather heard, from the get go, why he thinks his "god" is manifesting in our universe (specifically in our biology) and the reasons he thinks that. i don't feel like i can care much about what else he has to say until that is out of the way. it makes me very uncomfortable that any person - scholars included - should start from a place of religious faith when approaching the study of the natural world... i just can't get beyond that. his religious faith is in fact the foundation of his thinking - i don't see how it could be any different -maybe someone could convince me otherwise
You are close minded and base your assumptions off your feelings
@@sllimshadyy theism is a foundational belief. it's not unreasonable to be concerned that theism will color his view of unsettled science, at least.
this "god" that christians and muslims etc etc try to decribe would have to be something so far beyond our understanding that it would be folly to "think" about it... wasteful of time at the very least. i have found that life is in many ways the same, being an atheist as it was being a theist. you use your brain, make decisions, interact with others, realize that others can feel distress, work to minimize their distress and your own, be humble, make mistakes, try to learn from them etc etc etc... i don't see where a "god" needs to be in this picture. if there is a "god" and it is interacting with me then so be it. i will never pretend to understand the nature of such a being or such an interaction. it is pure arrogance to think otherwise...
@@calldwnthesky6495 Good thing that no one really cares about your closed-mindedness and bigotry. Take your 'discomfort' and shove it.
I was so confused by the discussion on intelligent life in the universe. What was his argument for why aliens don’t exist? That he enjoys a nice poem? I think Sean was confused as well and pressed him a couple of times then let go of the issue and moved on.
Simon Conway Morris is probably my favorite source when it comes to convergence and evolution in general.
I know some of his theories are controversial but they just seem to resonate with me and my personal views.
But just be aware that the universe is under no obligation to conform with your personal views on anything.
Of course not.
I never implied that it would.
Where did you even get the idea that I was?
@@MarcusAgrippa390 it just seems implied when you credit your accepting a scientific theory partly because it agrees with personal views. I can’t imagine what personal views I would have that would lend themselves favorably or unfavorably to any scientific idea.
@@Darwin42ME
And again I'll say that I never implied that whether it seems like it or not.
And I don't know what you want me to say as far as you not being able to imagine any given situation.
We will have to agree to disagree perhaps?
Which part 'resonates' with you, if I may ask? The creation part? In that case I understand the general worry.
I suppose you need a god if you still believe in human exceptionalism.
what sets us apart from other animals is arrogance. not much else
@D Heyman I'm gonna pretend that isn't dripping with sarcasm and say thank you
Fun interview. Thanks guys
Interesting. Simons side portrait. I’ve got a wig just like that. Mines not very good either! JK This was great! Thanks Sean
Also, AI wired to learn will always seek patterns and find meaning even where there isn't any (as humans do). Animals do teach, they teach knowing others are watching just as humans did before formalized education. Cats, dogs, mice, all learn to play by playing with the others and gauging responses. Dolphins, cuddlefish, whales, crows, parrots, all kids of animals teach behaviours to others of their kind. Such a strange argument to try to make in light of the overwhelming data.
The better argument to make is that very few animals can tell our inference of communications like a dog looking where we point, or horses attending to our intentions - but still, those are examples of the things he's claiming to be attributed only to humans. It's such a strange approach to know a premise false but feel determined that the opposite is still a scientific hypothesis despite the evidence all around us over centuries.
Very interesting conversation, with some good and interesting ideas. But this guy just reinforces the 'god of the gaps' approach. If we don't understand something, that must be god. If we get that understanding, we push back god a 'bit to fill the new gaps in our understanding.
Plus his view on the 'are we alone' is just so religious. No, it's just us, we are the only crown of creation(biology can't develop much further than us) in the image of the creator himself(we are very much creative, just like the creator himself. But not as much, of course, we don't want to anger daddy too much. We are soo humble!). So self centered!
I didn't pick up on any of that at all and I'm a militant atheists. I think ur sphincter just tightened when u heard God and I'm a Christian. He says nothing to prove a creator beyond "look at the trees therefore god" I have quote unquote religious experiences daily. if u think about waves moving thru quantum fields creating all the matter we see and don't see, it's kind of mind blowing. I don't believe in a God but truly, the more u know, the more magical everything is. I finally was able to see the world on a quantum level a few months ago. it's beautiful. I hope everyone gets there one day.
@@aprylvanryn5898
Keep popping those pills bud, they do good for you.
@@marrs1013 good reply but I don't do drugs
@@aprylvanryn5898 you should try :D
And the bigotry comes out, not surprising at all...
The human mind will eventually evolve to be independent of the body.
(A body is so inconvenient, requiring costly maintenance etc.)
Then we shall be as gods, knowing how to solve any equation.
Infinite regression or brute existence. Are they any other alternatives out there as to where all this stuff came from ? I only ask as both alternatives seem unfathomable to me .
Try to practice the most difficult ansew there is: I don't know, and would rather not speculate to spin the story for my own benefit. A real gamechanger.
I'm confused. Does he think alien intelligent life is likely or unlikely?
What I thought was going to be a “Moving Naturalism Forward” rematch turned out to be something much more profound.
Paul Dirac “plucked from thin air” a relativistic wave equation that predicted negative electrons. Since antimatter was not then dreamed of in nature, this aspect was ridiculed and ignored by the establishment. When the positron was discovered, Dirac was awarded a Nobel.
In a counterfactual world, Dirac was eaten by a sapient dinosaur.
I'm very cautious of the patterns that seem to come about from British people making blanketing claims about "all other cultures" and how they're fundamentally "missing" something the British/Europeans/Chistians have.
you lot all are, we are the grown ups of the world, the rest of you act like children, that's how we conquered more than anyone else, we're organised, the rest of the world squabbles.
Talking about blanket statements! By 'British people' you mean English? Welsh? Scotish? Irish? Multi generation immigrants holding British passports by birthright? Muslim British have it too? Jewish? Atheists? What about non-British Europeans?
I'm with Nietzsche; humankind may be on its way out of the Animal Kingdom, but is by no means actually out of it. And our backsliding again as a species into an era of global Right Wing neoNazism shows we're not so sure if we want to go forward or be pulled back in.
This Simon guy is just too much
You should have added "man" at the end of your sentence
He has ideas that sound wacky, but not as wacky as the ideas of Drs. Donald Hoffman or Rupert Sheldrake. He himself started to sound a bit less wacky as I listened to him longer. But as far as I am aware, the availability of evidence has to rule until we have some other, newer paradigm for evaluating hypotheses.
I doubt convergence is as big a phenomenon as this guy claims. I would like to see a planet populated only by organisms with a crustacean body plan develop a technological society. As for his religious propensity, I am simply left breathless and unable to understand it.
I don't think that sort of scenario will happen. I mean crustacean body plan and technology. The cost and benefit equation is just unskippable. How much it cost to have brain this size? How many legs you need to move around? Two, everything else cost too much to grow and maintain. How many arms and hands to manipulate? Same reasoning. You must cut energy consumption elsewhere to be able to grow a brain this size and complexity. Brain must be close to sensors for quick decision making and on top of body for maximum use of cover for hunt or fight. Two eyes must, but enough for stereo vision. Two ears for the same. More info needs more processing requriment to make sense. Evolution is basically the cheapest investment with the greatest benefit. And that's us. And you must be on dry land to be able to make fire to smelt metals to make tools to use and make even better tools. No way around it.
@@marrs1013 That was what I was trying to say. Convergence, while a real phenomenon, is overstated by this guy and in the case of a crustacean planet would never result in a technological civilisation. Certain body plans, developed early in a planet's evolution, will severely constrain future evolutionary possibilities.
As a British person, that was just embarrassing
Why?
lol, i imagined him riding a vicars bike while recording this. he had some very interesting things to say, and the science parts were new to me, but he is a bit of a rambler. like your mad uncle turning up at the cosmology conference.
@@yaserthe1 because when he sticks to science and evolution with its testable claims he is plausabe, the moments he tries (and he does try hard) to rationalise his belife in a god mixed up with science this go down hill all the way and it so obvious. This is especially awful as he is such a smart guy.
@@haroldwilson8081 Atheism is irrational though. In fact atheism leads to metaphysically absurd views of rationality such that one cannot even account for the abductive reasoning that undergirds science
Did Morris suffer severe emotional trauma at some time? To hold such ideas when one considers that man arose at what amounts to the very last second in time. Simply bizarre.
Hello
Shawn. May we offer scienceman our buk anser its big questons planit erth.
Ugh! One’s scientific credibility crumbles when they play the religion card. Once you believe in a Big Sky Daddy , what other mythical beliefs do you cherish?
Imagine thinking of god as a sky daddy, that's the stupidity of internet atheists on full display there.
so what is it again, that this guy is proposing as the driving force or process that imbued humans with an intelligence which, he says, could not have arisen by evolution? and don't tell me a "god". that is a non-answer. that is as useful as saying the flying spaghetti monster did it
My understanding about evolution, it is looks like based on demand then the question is how this demand Works and how many different scale and in what pressure and if this gose in time then time is individul in a cosmology. This is all me
He needs exposure to the work of Dr. Robert Saplosky.
i have hydrocephalus
@@Angels_Are_Vengeful that would hydrocephalapods (or is that detergent?)
I prefer Merlot cephalus
@@HarryNicNicholas Ouch! For shame!😉
THE WORLD RULER TRIES TO KILL ME
And then a voice of the world ruler came to the angels: “I am god and there is no other god but me.” But I laughed joyfully when I examined his conceit. But he went on to say, “Who is the human?”
And the entire host of his angels who had seen Adam and his dwelling were laughing at his smallness. And thus did their thought come to be removed outside the majesty of the heavens, away from the human of truth, whose name they saw, since he is in a small dwelling place. They are foolish and senseless in their empty thought, namely, their laughter, and it was contagion for them.
The whole greatness of the fatherhood of the spirit was at rest in its places. And I was with him, since I have a thought of a single emanation from the eternal ones and the unknowable ones, undefiled and immeasurable. I placed the small thought in the world, having disturbed them and frightened the whole multitude of the angels and their ruler. And I was visiting them all with fire and flame because of my thought.
And everything pertaining to them was brought about because of me. And there came about a disturbance and a fight around the seraphim and cherubim, since their glory will fade, and there was confusion around Adonaios on both sides and around their dwelling, up to the world ruler and the one who said, “Let us seize him.” Others again said, “The plan will certainly not materialize.” For Adonaios knows me because of hope. And I was in the mouths of lions. And as for the plan that they devised about me to release their error and their senselessness, I did not succumb to them as they had planned. And I was not afflicted at all.
Those who were there punished me, yet I did not die in reality but in appearance, in order that I not be put to shame by them because these are my kinsfolk. I removed the shame from me, and I did not become fainthearted in the face of what happened to me at their hands. I was about to succumb to fear, and I suffered merely according to their sight and thought so that no word might ever be found to speak about them.
For my death, which they think happened, happened to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death. Their thoughts did not see me, for they were deaf and blind. But in doing these things, they condemn themselves. Yes, they saw me; they punished me.
It was another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the wealth of the rulers and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance.
This level of lack of critical thinking skills seems almost dangerous!!! Whether conscious or not, it seems like an obvious attempt to push irrational belief systems! I wish Sean would have pushed back a little more! I know Sean's all jazzed up about giving people a platform and having mutuality in discussion... but there's just tons of sloppy thinking being expressed... and being expressed for the sole reason of advocating for magical religious thinking that has no evidence
Were your evidense befour big banger? Abogenetic life fron slime? Scienceman inventored mutiverse explan it's no evidense. We laffing
@@onlyonetoserve how does the flu virus change every year? What is your explanation for this?
Science has cured genetic diseases eradicated all sorts of diseases, build computers, built all the technology you are using right now... Yet you can't even begin to give the first answer to any alternative explanation???
What is your alternative answer???
All the evidence says that everything in this universe evolves!!! What is your alternative???
And I can actually give you answers to all the questions you tried to ask that you thought would be trying to prove some point ... by just copying me!
No life doesn't just spring from slime but over billions of years it evolves!!! when you have regular cycles like the Sun and the Earth and the Moon and all the chemicals on Earth mixing together for billions of years... you get complex patterns emerging after a long time
We don't live on a ball live inside a ball you can't go to outer space. Isn't God funny guy.
God is hilarious when he isn't committing genocide
it is ah raining not here also.
Evolution is “obviously” true. You sound like a fanatic. I had a lot of respect for until you diverged from the scientific method making science the new religion.
“Convergence” in evolution is a huge problem to solve. And the math doesn’t add up for the Cambrian explosion. You do a HUGE disservice to future scientists by making false claims that the science behind evolution theory is “true”.
The origin of life is still 100% in question.
Evolution and the exact mechanisms are not yet solved.
How can you expect young impressionable people to want to pursue these questions if you are telling them effectively that evolution has been solved, case closed?
So very arrogant, unfortunate and inappropriate.
Where have you been for the last 163 years?
What's your alternative? You think an invisible magic person is constantly creating new stuff? What's your explanation for why there is a new flu virus every year? Or how the coronavirus kept reinfecting people?
What's your explanation for why we have all these new breeds of dogs and cats? Do you think an invisible magical thing is making all this happen?
When it rains do you think God is crying? I mean how do you explain weather patterns? You think there's an invisible magical thing behind that
Evolution is just like the weather is just saying that there are natural processes that make all this happen!