Here’s a scientifically based cartoon from SMBC about the relationship between ecology and immortality in Heaven. (One might call it “ecological theology.”) Sadly, the r versus k distinction has lost momentum over the years, as they are two ends of a continuum, and there are alternative as well as mixed reproductive strategies for single species. More important, there is a huge biological problem with one of the artist’s assumptions. Can you spot it?
h/t: Gregg
The ecology of Heaven
August 6, 2015 • 9:00 am
sub
we don’t have gills.
We have gill arcs, so that idiom is hanging on by its nails.
Assumption that mammals are k not r? Mammals like mice are pretty tilted to r I would think.
Also tape worms. Are their body sections that each have all of the parts necessary, not really applicable to r and k terminology because of asexual reproduction (which isn’t what r and k is about?)
Let us not forget those that reproduce by fission. Nature is just loaded with more than just “K” & “r” strategies. As was pointed out some have two means like the gall midge. One is benign, the other is horrifying.
Or should we go the theological portion of our problem?
Nobody’s got it yet.
So, if the microbiome community goes to heaven, the whole place is also a neck-deep bacterial slurry…(but then the phage come along…)
Expect an artificial environment. But then the writers of all that knew nothing about microbiomes the whole web of life was much simpler. No disease, no death so no reproduction——if all the rest of life are included in this Heaven on Earth.
Tapeworms need hosts. With a complex life cycle they can’t vastly outnumber their mammalian hosts
But it’s heaven.
God will provide them with glorified tapeworm bodies that require no host.
When one thinks “because magic” is a legitimate reply, they will never run out of ad hoc answers.
I am with Belinda Carlisle!
“Oooo, Heaven Is A Place On Earth”!
According to the Revelation of St. John the divine Heaven is a finite cube,
“Oooo, Heaven is a finite cube”.
(1) Heaven is a place on Earth (B. Carlisle, though I don’t have the exact reference to hand);
(2) as demonstrated above, heaven should be chock full of disgusting parasites and rancid intestinal biota.
Therefore Heaven is one of
The US Congress
The bottom of my septic tank.
Nigeria, Port Harcourt area.
Insert your suggestions …
Is it that it assumes that things are reproducing in heaven? Otherwise, the numbers of r strategies should not keep increasing. Also, the reason that r and K theory has waned is because it was not really a good mechanistic hypothesis for the evolution of life history traits. It is a good shorthand description of life history traits but the assumptions about evolutionary mechanism (density-dependence versus density independence) seems not to apply. It seems that the more recent approach is based on link between fecundity, mortality and together these combine to maximize the population growth rate, a proxy for fitness. I think the term fast vs slow life histories is often used instead of r and K. Incidentally, experimental tests of r and K selection with Drosophila, based on selection with different density-dependent regimes, did not lead to the evolution of r and K traits.
This is why it is bad to mix Science and Religion. Religion had no idea about what-is-what in the world. They knew so little.
As a layman, it seems to me that the bacteria in our guts are symbiotic, not parasitic.
They are assuming that we need to digest food in heaven, which is obviously ridiculous.
Clearly heavenly ambrosia does not need our gut bacteria to digest it. The very idea.
The idea is not that it is only the r-strategist tapeworm offspring who find hosts who get to heaven. ALL the offspring who die get to heaven – that’s the point.
Yes, that’s pretty much it. It assumes that the offspring, not the adults who survive to reproduce, to go heaven. One might call oak trees r strategists: they spew hundreds of thousands of acorns a year on the ground. Yet for each tree, on average, only ONE of those acorns survives to become a reproducing oak tree. (This assumes that the population size of oaks is stable.) So animals that behave like oak trees, if they went to heaven as adults, would be no more numerous than the so-called K-strategists that have fewer offspring but in the end, like r strategists, maintain a stable population size. There would only be a difference if the stable population of reproducing adults of K strategists was smaller than that of r strategists. That’s possible, and even likely, but is not the premise raised in the cartoon.
I though heaven was supposed to ber immaterial?
(In that it does not exist!)
The artist seems to imply that all the acorns go to heaven, not just those that grow into oaks. In a different crowd this could deteriorate into a beginning of life abortion debate.
Absolutely. We know that a foetus will go to heaven, so clearly acorns etc must go to heaven too.
However not until the Second Resurrection will everyone dead get up to be judged. Curiously so many Christians are taking thee Pagan route of cremation. So selfish of them. And of the fetus? Also all below age children who die? Why they will get a mature body, though what about experience to go with it? A complication the scribes did not think about in writing about such things.
I don’t wanna go to heaven if it’s full of foeti. Couldn’t move without treading on them. Uck.
cr
Foetus earrings might be the answer!
http://www.rickgibson.net/freezedry.html
That is gross!
cr
With a sea of acorns, squirrels would feel they had died and gone to heaven.
I don’t understand, Prof. CC. You seem to be saying that only adults go to heaven? Am I missing something? My interpretation of the cartoon is that if two spiders produce thousands of baby spiders, most of which die soon after they’re born, thousands of baby spiders end up in heaven. They will vastly outnumber, say elephants, which don’t produce thousands of offspring. No?
This was my take on things too
Mine, too.
Ditto.
In case anybody is still following this thread, it turns out that Jerry’s logic holds even if babies go to heaven. The numbers are always increasing, of both types, but the proportion of the two types remains constant.
Cueing up the Choir Immortal for a rousing chorus of “Every Sperm is Sacred”.
Music, and lyrics.
Everyone got their song sheets? [taps on music stand]
I agree w steve. The assumption that all mammals are best classified as K-strategists is false. Small rodents are historically described as r-strategists.
But why assume only adults go to heaven.human children who die are assured of a place in heaven. And baptism assures that also.we could reduce this discussion to when the soul enters the body–at conception, fertilization of the egg, the splitting of one bacterium into two? Or only at sexual maturity. Then we could get very ad hoc.
Before talking about “souls” shouldn’t we have a quantified assessment of it? Its topology and make up?
The the argument of Traducianism vs Creationism of souls comes next. In the first the soul as well as body are created from the parents, the latter via a deity before birth or a year after birth. Who won that war I wonder? [How would you know?]
Regarding the immortal soul, the concept is so imbued into modern culture that it’s easy to forget that Christianity initially only espoused bodily resurrection of the dead, not some immortal soul that fled to heaven immediately upon death. The immortal soul concept, from what I understand, was originally a pagan concept.
If things don’t die they don’t evolve but maybe that’s not a problem for heaven – the static place of many mice.
It has been shown that Evolution reacts the fastest when there is lots of ongoing change. The least in static places. When Heaven is established on Earth Evolution will stop. So will we all, just mind screwed slaves who love being slaves. No creativity, no innovations only ecstatic worship. And it will be an exclusive one. That means the rest of us are going to be in the Godawful Sheol to suffer for eternity.
Thanks Jerry. As soon as I got to r-strategists in Heaven I laughed and couldn’t at first finish the rest. Please, someone send this to Pianka. The Heavenly implications of r-K selection indeed.
I was struck by the mom, so easily shifting theology, as long as it would satisfy her kid. It strikes me many religionists are focused on maintaining happy campers at almost any cost. Integrity all over the ground, like torn ride tickets at the carnival.
Brilliant!
Monty Python has taught us that every sperm is sacred. From that we can assume that every sperm that fails to fertilize an egg ends up in heaven as a half-souled entity. This would make mammalian males r-strategists. Or maybe r/2 strategists if you want to get technical.
I’d have thought the cartoon was assumming all babies get to heaven, but for it’s conclusion it seems to assume heaven includes babies being made and really some form of competition (“No Mammals”).
(without those assumptions)
Celestial Fruitflys would be over-represented by a factor of 500,000 (500 eggs*1000 generations) but only that (rather than the exponential growth).*
while the number of humans would also go up by a factor but much less.
(depending on the ‘rules’ assumed, you could probably argue it up to around 100? i.e. failed implantations, though at that point you need to do the same everywhere).
Also you’d need to add around 20** the amount of humans, 3m fold generic mammals and 12m fold dinosaurs. Which would be far more significant.
*Of course, technically, her claim of ton’s would be still correct, from the expression I think we can claim that as a metaphor for lots of lots.
**or whatever the current estimate is for dead outnumbering living.
(it was still a funny cartoon though)