re: #653 Cato

re: #560 jaunteNothing in ANY Darwinian or neo-Darwinian literature explains, for example, the Catholic nun who has given up breeding for herself yet aids in birthing other people’s babies.

That’s the completest straw nun argument I’ve ever seen.

Evolution does not claim to explain civilization. Civilization, on the other hand, may go a long way in explaining evolution.

The existence of cooperation among members of the same species to protect the weaker individuals is a commonplace. It definitely confers a survival advantage. Add conscious civilization to basic cooperation, and you have a recipe for a kind of directed evolution. Thus, for example, the use of clothing may account for why humans are now largely hairless, although we have residual reflexes like goose-bumps that go back to the time when we were hairy.

And so on.