Post by chun on Jan 24, 2015 19:42:06 GMT
1. Why is the theory of evolution so important in understanding how human beings behave?
In the book "The DNA of Consciousness", the author starts off by introducing how we made - a baby (Shaun is used as an example in the book) is the result of "two genomes - use books as a metaphor, recombined which results in a unified outcome of 25,000 plus genes (pages), 23 chromosomes (chapters), all written in DNA (a four letter alphabet)"(1). The book mentioned that Shaun's history actually starts from thousands of millions years back in time. It has gone through the sexual selection, genetic mutation, and natural selection. By knowing the theory of evolution, we understand how our brain works, functions, and changes. This would help us to jump to the understanding of "consciousness", which helps us to solve a lot of human behaviors questions which we did not answer before. In the book, the author mentioned that "consciousness is the brain's way of making chance/chaos more plastic, more beneficial to the host organism" (27). In fact, the world is not an illusion. Our consciousness is. Dream is one of the good examples to explain why you may "experience" something that is not going to happen in reality. It is because "consciousness does not have to work" at that time. It is in a relaxed state. That's why it allows to mix up every things in your mind.
2. Which questions do you think evolutionary theory cannot answer?
In the book "The DNA of Consciousness", the author highlighted the term "mutation" at the beginning of the chapters. We learn that there is two fundamental ways to mutate a gene - either environmental damage (such as radiation), or DNA replication. Because of the errors created, it created a huge problem to a person's life. Our body has its own self-recovery mechanism to suppress (or recover) those mutations. However, everything sounds like a random process. The natural selection seems to be less supportive in explaining why these genes are mutated but not those genes. If it is a really random process, why it would be random?
In addition, evolutionary theory states that there is a transition which one species mutated or evolved into another. But how does the very first species come from? The theory only proves us that we may come from other species. But what make the first species, or very first organism, to live in the world?
In the book "The DNA of Consciousness", the author starts off by introducing how we made - a baby (Shaun is used as an example in the book) is the result of "two genomes - use books as a metaphor, recombined which results in a unified outcome of 25,000 plus genes (pages), 23 chromosomes (chapters), all written in DNA (a four letter alphabet)"(1). The book mentioned that Shaun's history actually starts from thousands of millions years back in time. It has gone through the sexual selection, genetic mutation, and natural selection. By knowing the theory of evolution, we understand how our brain works, functions, and changes. This would help us to jump to the understanding of "consciousness", which helps us to solve a lot of human behaviors questions which we did not answer before. In the book, the author mentioned that "consciousness is the brain's way of making chance/chaos more plastic, more beneficial to the host organism" (27). In fact, the world is not an illusion. Our consciousness is. Dream is one of the good examples to explain why you may "experience" something that is not going to happen in reality. It is because "consciousness does not have to work" at that time. It is in a relaxed state. That's why it allows to mix up every things in your mind.
2. Which questions do you think evolutionary theory cannot answer?
In the book "The DNA of Consciousness", the author highlighted the term "mutation" at the beginning of the chapters. We learn that there is two fundamental ways to mutate a gene - either environmental damage (such as radiation), or DNA replication. Because of the errors created, it created a huge problem to a person's life. Our body has its own self-recovery mechanism to suppress (or recover) those mutations. However, everything sounds like a random process. The natural selection seems to be less supportive in explaining why these genes are mutated but not those genes. If it is a really random process, why it would be random?
In addition, evolutionary theory states that there is a transition which one species mutated or evolved into another. But how does the very first species come from? The theory only proves us that we may come from other species. But what make the first species, or very first organism, to live in the world?