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April 16, 2008
On A Very Strange Question
For a number of reasons, none of them very good, I wasn't going to address Jim West's rather strange and naive "Question For Evolutionists."
If natural selection and 'survival of the fittest' are the core notions of evolutionary theory, why do you care what happens to the starving Africans in Darfur?
But try as I might, I just couldn't let this ride. First, "survival of the fittest" is a caricature of one aspect of natural selection neither an evolutionary principle nor a "core notion." Natural selection involves reproductive success. And reproductive success does not necessarily entail that the biggest, meanest, most self-centered individuals will be the most successful in propagating their genes. Sometimes just having a little red feather will go a long way to foster reproductive success. I'm being a little simplistic here; but Jim raised a very simplistic question.
This brings me to my second point. Biologists have known for some time that kin altruism enhances reproductive success in many species including our own. Should the brains of a species, through various natural processes, get large enough that their owners worry consciously about things like reproductive success and kin altruism, it isn't much of a stretch for individuals of that species to extrapolate both reproductive success and kin altruism to include an ever expanding definition of "kin." Such a definition just might include the oppressed and desperate people of Darfur. It is fairly clear that it is in the interest of H. sapiens' reproductive success that not only this greatly expanded "kin" group but also other living things and the planet itself succeed. I think Andrew Tatusko at Notes from off Center was getting at part of this. I assume that it is some mechanism like this which also leads some religionists to care about others including Darfurees. With very few exceptions, their core beliefs sure don't point in the direction of care for others. Even Jim offered anecdotal support for this observation in another recent post,
The Gospel is theocentric, as it begins and ends in God. All of these other 'socializations' of the Church are anthropocentric, having their beginning and end in ‘what’s best for man’. As such, these socializations of the Gospel are damnable heresy and their practitioners heretics (in the original sense of the word- not in the sense that they should be taken out and sunk in the Limmat with a pair of cement boots. Although….)
Like any good sermon, this brings me to my third and last point. The hidden premise of Jim's question is the false faith/ethics meme that I discussed the other day in a different context. There is not a shred of evidence that any religious belief fosters a more genuine ethic than having no religious beliefs at all. Anecdotally, one can cite many individual religionists whose lives are morally exemplary but one can cite many secularists of whom one can say the same thing. Religionists have killed in mass without compunction and so have secularists. Both have owned slaves. Both have been thieves. Both have let the hungry starve. Need I go on? I think it a rather significant moral failing to believe that only people who believe as you do (or as I do) can be moral or reach moral conclusions. All of us should delete this meme from whatever system that causes us to continue to repeat it.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 16, 2008 8:23 PM | Read more on Religion |
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Comments
Good answer, Duane. I find it very frustrating when my students think that because they know one or two phrases like "survival of the fittest" (which Darwin began to use—reluctantly—only after others made it popular) or "common descent," they know what evolutionary biology actually entails.
Humans care about other humans because we're human—regardless of how we became human. Yes, that's simplistic and tautological. But what I mean is that compassion for other human beings seems to be at least in part a biological impulse. Various evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists have offered possible explanations for how that happened, as have creationists. Yet the endpoint remains the same, no matter how one explains the path to this endpoint: humans have an innate tendency toward compassion and even altruism. (And maybe religion, but that's perhaps a slightly different topic.)
Given the opportunity, I might ask the person who posed the original question: What would you offer in place of evolutionary theory? Creationism? But that implies that the Bible is history, when "we all know" it's really theology. And if evolutionary biology is false, shouldn't we pull our kids out of public schools and teach them the truth somewhere else so they will grow up to be fine ethical citizens who care about people in Darfur? (As you know, I do not really hold to creationism against evolutionary biology; here I would be probing consistency of thought.)
Posted by: Christopher Heard at April 17, 2008 9:45 AM
Duane,
That was essentially my point but I jumped over the good stuff that you raise here. A while back I had posted about a fantastic article in the Economist which discusses empirical evidence is good detail that reveal not only the beneficial nature of altruism and benevolence in our evolutionary fitness, but that religion can actually promote stronger social bonds that facilitate this fitness.
Find that here if interested.
Posted by: Drew at April 17, 2008 12:02 PM
Chris,
Thanks. The funny thing is that I thought and still think that Jim is some kind of theistic evolutionist. But then, he might not want to call himself that.
Drew,
Thanks for your comments and the link. I tend to believe that religion can reinforce many natural tendencies, good and bad.
Posted by: Duane at April 17, 2008 12:25 PM
Yes, studies have shown that we are wired for compassion -- but, there's a catch. Compassion for one person; more than one and the empathy falls off drastically. People will go to tremendous effort to save one person trapped in a well or a cave, but if the number is three or higher, the ones in trouble become abstractions, faceless. Large numbers, such as 300,000 drowned in Bangladesh, are simply too big.
It may have something to do with more primitive numerical wiring: one, two, many. Many, of course, being abstract.
Posted by: rachel at April 18, 2008 10:43 AM
Rachel,
The phenomenon you are referring to, including the catch, is certainly real and well documented. I also think it is relevant to the discussion at hand. However, kin altruism is something different. Among primates, a common form is "aunting." Aunting is commonly seen in the females of a species taking caring for the young of near relatives. Whether one starts with hardwired kin altruism as I did or with hardwired compassion towards individuals or very small groups as you suggest, getting to a formal ethic of the larger "other" is a cognitive process that requires our large brains to workout what is right and what is wrong. This cognitive process may, over time, become codified in laws or more general precepts from which we then reason to ethical positions on a case-to-case basis. Sometimes we even discard or ignore the laws or precepts when they seem not to apply logically to a given situation or set of situations. It least that's how I see the process. Least you think that I see ethics as relativistic, I am what is sometimes called a neo-Kantian or as my philosopher daughter might say, "a deontologist." I think there are such things as facts of the matter concerning our duties. It's just we can't always be sure what our duties are.
Posted by: Duane at April 18, 2008 2:31 PM
Jim's "if ... then ..." question (or really, his 'implied statement') reminds me a bit of that old saying, "If your aunty had balls, she'd be your uncle". His statement has little to do with reality, and much to do with wishful thinking.
What does existence necessarily have to do with ethics, anyway? Nothing. (There's no 'ought' necessarily to be derived from an 'is'.)
Posted by: Deane at April 20, 2008 9:58 PM
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