Quote:
Originally Posted by Athena  who's gonna be the most beautiful, the one who all the girls wanna jump on? probably the most fit, healthiest looking male with the best genes and diet.
so biological and evolutionary ideals can go together. |
They
can, but my point was that
they don't have to. This is one of the hardest (or most counter-intuitive) fundementals of evolution for a lot of people to grasp.
People are constantly asking, "how come evolution didn't select against stuff like heart disease and high b/p in later life? I thought evolution selected for the 'fittest'?" This is because evolution is a function of
reproductive fitness and not one of "perfect specimen" with long, healthy life.
I'm talking about evolution in a geographical area* where
everyone is subjected to the bad diet. All members of the group have a bad diet, get to reproductive age, spawn some babbies, raise 'em, and die. The effects of the bad diet may not be immediately noticable in reproductive-age individuals. The bad diet may only manifest as a problem to post-reproductive individuals, shortening individual life-span without harming the reproductive fitness of the group.
*The geographical area can be defined as an island, a region, a continent, or a planet.
It doesn't matter, because evolution isn't a function of morality, and morality isn't a function of evolution.
One of the troubles here is that people tangle up the concept of morality with the functions of "nature." The common belief in this line of thought is "if it evolved naturally, then it must be morally right." But this is an arguement for another thread.
See our favorite site's summation of the
Naturalist fallacy and
Appeal to Nature.