[Vision2020] Evolution and cruelty

[Ralph Nielsen]

> From: Joshua Nieuwsma <joshuahendrik@yahoo.com>
> Date: Tue Sep 23, 2003  1:08:11 PM US/Pacific
> To: Troy Merrill <troy1@moscow.com>, vision <vision2020@moscow.com>
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Global Warming
>
>
> Fascinating. You know, the Indians thought it was just fine to drive 
> huge herds of buffalo off the cliffs. (I've been to some of the cliffs 
> in Alberta Canada. Thousands of buffalo died at one time, and only a 
> few of them were eaten). So should we copy the ethics of the noble 
> savages and apply them to the big game hunting industry and call it 
> sport hunting? The indians sure thought it was a thrill to kill 
> thousands of creatures at once and not make use of most of them.
>  
> If humans have really lived together for 100,000 years or so, and 
> during that time developed ethics, I wonder that we are here at all. 
> When I think of the modern-day examples of "primitive" tribes, they 
> would never have developed any sort of concern for animals. They had 
> enough to try to keep themselves alive in the vicious tribal wars. So 
> why did we?
>  
> So would you say, then, that the underlying "law" or "principle" is 
> that "placing some restraint on individual behavior increases the 
> fitness of the group as a whole"? If so, why?
>  
> Besides the fact that there are way too many examples of cruelty in 
> history for me to believe that men just naturally want to be ethical 
> to one another. Rather I think men just naturally want to be cruel to 
> one another. Each man for himself is what evolution tells them.
>  
> got to go for today...
>  
> -Joshua Nieuwsma
>

It was not only in southwest Alberta where the Indians drove buffalo 
over cliffs to kill them. Studies done by Idaho State University 
archaeologists show that the Indians by those means completely wiped 
out the buffalo in southwest Idaho before the palefaces came.

As for cruelty among humans, the followers of "God's Word" take second 
place to no one in cruelty to their neighbors. The tortures committed 
by some Indian tribes were fully matched by the sadistic cruelty of 
both Catholic and Protestant Christians.

Fortunately, the majority of humans seem naturally to be kindly 
disposed toward their fellow beings. Even monkeys have a sense of 
fairness among themselves, as we have read a few days ago. Joshua has 
evolution all wrong. He is confusing it with what conservatives like to 
call "social Darwinism" where  the rich and the powerful trample over 
the poor and the weak.

Ralph Nielsen