Everyone knows the experience: you happen upon a wreck and know you shouldn’t look but can’t help it. While there is a chance of seeing something disturbing, you look regardless. There should be a word for this and in the absence of one, I will call it car-wreck voyeurism. I felt something like this after [...]
Tags:adaptation·ancestral environment·ASD·Aspergers·autism·autism spectrum disorder·autistic·EP·evolutionary psychology·fantasy·fitness·foraging·gathering·hunting·Jared Reser·Just So Stories·maladaptive·orangutans·Panglossian·Panglossian Paradigm·parsimony·peer review·pleiotropy·Plio-Pleistocene·Psychology Today·Satoshi Kanazawa·sociality·solitary forager hypothesis·spandrels·speculation·Thomas Hobbes
In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published his wonderfully imaginative Just So Stories. What child does not thrill to learn “How the Camel Got His Hump” or “How the Leopard Got His Spots“? When I was six years old, my grandmother read “How the Whale Got His Throat” to me and I swallowed it hook, line, and [...]
Tags:adaptationist·desire·empiricism·epigenetic·evolutionary psychology·imagination·Jaak Panksepp·Jonah·Jules Panksepp·Just So Stories·modules·myth·neuroscience·Panglossian·Rudyard Kipling·science·seven deadly sins·Seven Sins·spandrels·speculation·storytelling·tales·whale·wish fulfillment
In this classic video, Kirk Cameron explains — in all seriousness — how God perfectly and exquisitely designed the banana for human use and consumption:
Although the banana’s functional and optimal design features may not cause nightmares for those who understand that bananas evolved like all other plants and were domesticated (i.e., selected) by humans, they [...]
Tags:adaptationist programme·adaptationists·atheists·banana·bananas·creation·design·Dr. Pangloss·Eden·functionalism·group level selection·group level selectionists·Homo antecessor·Homo heidelbergensis·Kirk Cameron·morals·Paleolithic religion·Panglossian Paradigm·paradise·prosocial·rituals·spandrels
I recently found an excellent blog, Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion, written by the German scholar Dr. Michael Blume. After I linked to his blog, Michael came over here for some reading. He also had a question, which I answered, and he responded. The issue we are discussing — higher fertility rates [...]
Tags:adaptive assumptions·cultural evolution·earliest religions·fertility·group level selection·Homo religiosus·hunter-gatherers·Michael Blume·Neolithic Revolution·Panglossian Paradigm·religion as adaptation·religion as byproduct·reproductive fitness·Richard Lewontin·Sarah Hrdy·shamanisms·shamans·spandrels·Stephen Jay Gould
