All of Desertopa's Comments + Replies

It's certainly not just sci-fi writers who go for this sort of reasoning. I knew a theology professor who would make mistakes like this on a consistent basis. For example, he would raise questions about whether there was an evolutionary pressure for babies to evolve to be cute, without even considering the possibility that we might evolve to find babies cute. It struck me as being much worse than the sort of unthinking assumption that goes into Attack of the Fifty Foot Whatever sci fi stories, since his preconceptions were actually hindering him in fairly serious attempts to understand the real world.

1DanielLC
There may also be evolutionary pressure for babies to evolve to be cute. There's certainly evolutionary pressure for males to be sexy. Some species have pretty bizarre looking males.
2bobthechef
In case you hadn't noticed, this is a general problem. And you're right, the observer is not some guy speaking from some immutable "neutral point of view" but it's an error made very commonly by certain "scientists" every day. His error was not one of theology, but one commonly made by "evolutionary psychologists". But let's consider this case: if evolution has free dibs on everything, and it lacks any teleological component whatsoever, then what are we to say about your status as a rational being?