If evolution is the truth and we argue that the qualities living things possess are the result of evolution, then can we say that qualities we do not like such as hatred, jealousy and greed serve or have served a useful purpose?
Even if all living things did come to be as they are through evolution, it doesn't follow that every particular trait of a living thing contributed to its ancestors' fitness. Indeed, there can be traits which confer a selective disadvantage, but which evolution hasn't managed to weed out: perhaps it is currently slowly being weeded out; perhaps the genetic changes that would produce an organism lacking the trait (and able to pass that lack on) are so unlikely that they haven't happened often enough, or at all; perhaps the changes that, together, would be needed to eliminate the trait don't confer selective advantage when they arrive one at a time; perhaps the trait is the homozygote flip-side of a beneficial heterozygote trait; perhaps the trait is just an inevitable by-product of another trait or traits that have increased fitness . . . One can readily generate plausible-sounding explanations of just how tendencies towards hatred, jealousy, and greed would have conferred selective advantages...
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