@Kutty509 Admittedly I assumed god was a man. But I just can’t imagine a woman fucking things up this bad!? ‍

Where did you pop up from anyhow? You a troll?

You sure god isn’t a she? Because this sounds very much like my ex mother in law!?!🥺

Well said in devils advocate.....that is word by word....right???

@HankSherman straight from the IMDB quotes for the movie. One of my favorite lines.

I'd also include at least 85% of Texans in that as well imo.

BIG "if."

@Flyingsaucesir Indeed.

Other animals are more humane to one another.

@creative51 Yes but they do not torture one another. They do not kill for no reason. They only kill to eat, and only take what they need. They do not try to inflict pain. When they kill, they do it as expeditiously as possible.

@Flyingsaucesir "They do not kill for no reason"

. . . I don't think so :

[ranker.com]
[wildlifeinformer.com]
[journeyz.co]
[animalworldfacts.com]
[sierraclub.org]
[livescience.com]
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@creative51 A fox in a henhouse is s really poor example. It is an artificial setting, a man-made problem. In a true state of nature, a fox or raccoon could never trap so many birds in a confined space.

A lion starts eating its prey before it's quite dead. A ladybug starts eating an aphid before it's dead. A strangler fig envelops another tree of a different species and slowly chokes the life out of it. A tarantula wasp lays its eggs inside the body of a tarantula. When the larvae hatch out, they immediately start eating their host...alive.

None of this is done with malice. There is no intent to inflict pain. It's just animals and plants (and bacteria, and fungi) making a living in a very tough world. Nature is indeed red in tooth and claw.

When you were young did you try to teach your grandma to suck eggs?

@FearlessFly I meant wantonly, maliciously. Obviously there is always a reason. Usually it is for survival, to eat. Sometimes it is to make a female come into heat. Or to drive off competition. I have seen a male lion kill a hyena, the leader of a clan that was harassing the pride. But it's never killing just for killing's sake.

@Flyingsaucesir Each of the links in my comments (and there are plenty more) contradict your comment(s), I suggest you peruse all of them.

@FearlessFly ok the bottle nose dolfins killed some porpoise, but the article did not rule out competition. I haven't read the other articles yet. Stand by.

@FearlessFly I have seen orca play with a seal a bit before eating it. Not sure if that is malicious. It seemed more like a celebration.

@FearlessFly Apparently foxes have been "reported to attack small babies in our homes." Is there any compelling reason to think that the fox's intent was nothing more than a simple attempt to get food?

@FearlessFly honey badger in the henhouse is like fox in the henhouse, not a good example because it's a man-made environment.

@creative51 Well I haven't finished yet. But if you have been reading my latest, I am reading the articles Fearless recommended, and finding all kinds of holes on the proposition that animals kill just for fun. I have neatly refuted the fox in the henhouse claim. We have seen orcas kill seals and play with them like a football before eating them, and multiple dolphin are known to play keep away with prey fish before eating them, or kill porpoises who are in a contested area and compete for the same prey fish. I'm not comfortable assuming that kind of behavior is malevolent, evil, or ultimately wasteful. I think it is simple joy of the hunt. Any sport hunter or fisherman will know what I'm talking about. There is a sense if exhilaration and accomplishment when you are able to catch your dinner. Now a good sportsman, while enjoying the challenge and bringing all necessary skills to bear, he also respects every life he takes. Not all human hunters are good sportsmen, but probably most are.

Now the last thing I read was an article about how aggressive and warlike chimpanzees can be. And I know that is true and agree that it is malicious behavior. And yes, chimps are animals, but it should come as no surprise that they display the same kinds of malevolence as humans. After all, we share 98.5% of our DNA. We are members of the same family (Hominidae). We share a common ancestor with chimps that lived only about 8 million years ago. I'm going to read more of what FF recommended, but what I have seen so far is not very convincing. I'm just calling them as I see them.

@creative51, @FearlessFly This entire article you provided refutes the idea that animals kill for no reason or just for fun.
[animalworldfacts.com]

@creative51, @FearlessFly This whole article you provided is about the various species that HUMANS hunt for no reason other than just for fun.
[sierraclub.org]

@creative51, @FearlessFly This article talkd about female spiders that eat their mates (the nutrients from daddy's body nourish the next generation), and male otters with raging hormones and no females around to mate with raping baby seals. If it's true, it sounds much more like desperation than fun. Then there are the meercats ...which kill each other frequently, but for control over territory and limited resources or to establish a social hierarchy (pecking order). This kind if behavior has evolutionary advantages. It insures that the area does not become so overpopulated and resources so scarce that all die of starvation or disease, and that only the best genes get passed along to the next generation. Did you read these articles you recommended? They don't help your case. They may use words like "murder," but the behaviors they describe are anything but.
[livescience.com]

@Flyingsaucesir
Dude ... unless you are an animal psychic, how in the world would you know for a fact that animals never kill "... wantonly, maliciously"?

Do you have a Ph.D. in psychology? Do you have experience with animals at all? If you have ever lived on a farm, you will know that almost every animal species has its share of bullies, submissives, pranksters, etc.

On one of the first expeditions to the south pole, they witnessed penguin homosexuality, but they suppressed that information for almost 100 years because of christianity.

Let's make the assumption that ALL animals with more than a couple of million synapses can think and act like a human ... because they can.

@Flyingsaucesir
If humans are writing the articles, don't you think you should be interviewing the animals to get the REAL perspective? Maybe they would tell you they kill for fun.

@Atheistic If you read what I have written, you will see that my position is that I'm not seeing the evidence supporting the proposition. i read all the articles that were suggested, and what I found there was misleading language (e.g. the word "murder" ) used liberally, but the behaviors that were described tend to support different interpretations. So no, I am not convinced that animals kill merely for fun. The fox-in-henhouse cases do not qualify, because it is an artificial environment. And I did make an exception for our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, Pan troglodytes. Now you do raise a valid point. How could I, or anyone, know for sure what is in the mind of an animal? I am not pretending to know. I am maintaining a healthy skepticism.

I'd like to see you flesh out that idea.

@Flyingsaucesir
Our current biology-based instincts, urges, and intuitions were forged over a couple million years on the African savannas, in very small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers, who had become quite well-adapted to that particular ecological and social environment.

Everything we know of as civilization today - sedentary life in groups of thousands of strangers, with whom we must co-operate peacefully - is the result of the invention of agriculture, only eleven or twelve thousand years ago. Which, in itself is only the blink of an eye in evolutionary time, but brought to its current fever pitch arguably only in the last two or three generations.

Most of the fuktupness that we see going on everywhere is due to that mismatch between our Pleistocene instincts and our very new artificial environment.

[en.wikipedia.org]

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@skado That was very clearly stated. Thank you. I'm not sure I agree completely, but at least now I understand where you are coming from.

Here is something that tends to support your position: companies tend to work more efficiently when the workforce is under a certain size, around 150 workers, if memory serves. Above that number, it's hard to get to know your coworkers well enough to form bonds of trust (or so a reason is hypothesized).

Question: is that limit simply due to limitations of brain processing power, or is it due to an evolved bias in favor of small groups?

People tend to get along reasonably well in culturally homogeneous groups. Most of the fuctupness seems to come from clashing cultures.

I would argue culture is a much bigger factor than size of group or even "race." I put race in quotes because today there is only one race, Homo sapiens.

My parents had their DNA sequenced and analyzed a few years back, and it turns out that we, like many other modern humans, have some Neanderthal DNA in our genome.

When Homo sapiens interbred with Homo Neanderthalis, that was true mixing of different races. Racial mixing is literally in our DNA.

If you have ever been to big Grateful Dead concert, you might have rubbed elbows with 50,000 or more people. The large size of the crowd is no impediment to feeling bonds of brotherhood with everyone there. (Sure, the music is a big factor, and a little weed helps too.) And believe me, it is a fantastically diverse crowd, with every ethnicity, gender identity, and age group represented. But there is a common culture. The size of the group is irrelevant. It's the culture that matters. So that tends to go against the proposition that our troubles stem from an evolutionary bias toward small groups.

Obviously I do not have the final word on this interesting topic.

@Flyingsaucesir

It’s complicated.

There’s no one factor that drives it all, but the convergence of many evolved traits clashing with many environmental changes.

Loyal Rue paints a more comprehensive picture in his book, “Religion Is Not About God”. He mentions the likelihood of early “coalitions” in which various tribes would come together briefly to exchange ideas, and women, but would not be able to sustain it for more than a few days. Very reminiscent of the modern music festival. Works great for a few drug-saturated, sex-frenzied days, but very prone to chaos beyond that time frame.

As it turns out, 150 was the typical max size of hunter/gatherer bands. So it is very likely we are evolved to function with that many real, in-person relationships over extended periods of time.

It’s known today as the Dunbar number.

[bbc.com]

It’s not strictly 150, but in that range. The Mormon Church, for example, limits its congregations to 200 for similar reasons.

And yes, culture is a big piece of the puzzle. Cultural differences are huge obstacles to group cohesion and tolerance. But evolutionary mismatch is much more complicated than just group size or even culture. I didn’t mean to suggest group size was the most powerful aspect - just mentioning that as an example. It affects everything we do - the foods we eat, the work we do, our mating habits, our gut biome, our levels of physical activity, our psychological disposition, literally everything.

Actually, for the most part, whether it benefits their interest or not.

@jlynn37 True.