The Problem with Christians

[TheRocketSurgeon]

You are the only person in this entire conversation who genuinely thinks that because something was Naturally Selected for the human race, in the past hundreds of thousands of years of our evolutionary development, that it's a good thing for our society. 

I didn't say it was a good thing, I was suggesting that for those who follow evolution and natural selection, that it logically follows that a species should reproduce as when it was physically able to.  

"It follows logically"??? How do you figure? Who told you that?

Evolution is a theory (or model, if you prefer) explaining why species are observed to change with each generation, while traits that help individuals survive better than others tend to be better-preserved in the gene pool of that species, and that the pools have been observed to split into sub-populations and eventually new species. That's it. People who tell you "evolution says we must _____" are generally full of shit.

Now, we can draw certain inferences from the theory about why we act certain ways, based on our observation that Natural Selection favors certain behaviors (for instance, our tribalism led to religion, a coalescing factor which seems to help tribes survive by giving a stronger sense of belonging to the "group effort", so to speak), but there is nothing, repeat nothing, which says that "____ trait evolved over the course of our previous _____ generations as Hunter-Gatherer tribes, therefore we must continue to act that way". Continuing to act as we always have is the opposite of evolution. We are an intelligent, social species, capable of innovating and learning. One example is that it was an evolutionary survival factor for us to prefer fat, sugar, salt, and carbohydrates because food was hard to acquire in the H-G tribal days; it gave us a dopamine high (literally) as a reward in our brains, to eat such foods... but once we developed agriculture and food became easier to acquire, it became a liability-- weight problems, blood pressure problems, etc. Now we try to avoid too many of those foods.

Xenophobia (tribalism) and hatred of "The Other" is wired into our genes, for the same reason--we developed as a tribal species--but it does not mean we should be trying to harm one another on the basis of their differences. We play sports like football, instead.

But xenophobia keeps the earth's population down to manageable levels. All those wars and starvation has to be good for the overall survival of the planet right? I mean, if the earth's population levels keep rising, there will be nothing left for anyone.

What!?!

While I agree that our population is expanding too quickly for the health of ourselves or our planet, I find it sick that you could even entertain the thought (even if you're just fantasizing that that's how we think!) that our hatred/fear of one another has a good purpose. It's a leftover from our evolutionary past that, if we can't get a handle on it, may indeed ruin us or drive us to extinction. Like our addiction to religious-group identities, once a useful or necessary thing, today we need to get over our xenophobia and inclination toward violence if we're to advance (and possibly survive) as a species.