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Creation-Evolution Headlines
10/26/2009
Picture an evolutionary anthropologist and a Biblical theologian sitting on a park bench having a lively discussion. The theologian claims the scientist believes in evolution because of pride that came through sin at the Fall. “Your conscience and innate knowledge of God has been corrupted,” he asserts, “therefore you choose belief systems that rationalize your desire to live autonomously from your Creator.” The scientist counters that the theologian only believes in God because religion was naturally selected in a primitive ape-like ancestor. “Deep in prehistory, early hominin populations reinforced beliefs in supernatural beings that provided comfort against natural mysteries,” he claims. “But now science is shedding light on those mysteries and undermining those primitive beliefs.” Whose position should have privileged status in a society? Should the scientist’s explanation automatically be granted epistemic privilege by a culture simply because he is a scientist? Perhaps some recent examples of evolutionists at work trying to explain human behavior can inform the discussion.
1. Altruism: PhysOrg printed a press release from UC Davis debating which kind of evolution – cultural or genetic – explains the human propensity for altruism (sacrificial charity). “Why do people willingly to [sic] go to war, give blood, contribute to food banks and make other sacrifices often at considerable risk to themselves and their descendents? Evolutionary explanations based on both genes and culture have been proposed for this human behavior, which is unique among vertebrates.” The article went on to argue for social vs. genetic causes, but the statement makes it clear that non-evolutionary explanations were completely off the table for consideration. The report in Science Daily spoke of an “equation... that describes the conditions for altruism to evolve.” Sometimes the explanation mixes causes and results in a “gene-culture coevolution of human prosocial propensities.” Similarly, National Geographic News tried to show chimpanzees expressing a form of altruism, saying “this adds to evidence that chimps are more similar to humans than previously thought.” Altruism even applies to amebas, wrote Science Daily: “In Amoeba World, Cheating Doesn’t Pay.” It becomes clear looking at their explanation that altruism has no external essense, but is a mere manifestation of selection pressures – a “characteristic” that can be observed from ameba to man. They did not consider the converse hypothesis. Is it possible that the scientists are imputing human moral characteristics on non-sentient beings and interpreting animal actions in terms of internally-assumed abilities? If altruism is a physical trait, why is not the act of explanation? Why aren’t chimpanzees and amebas writing papers on human behavior?
2. Leadership: Science Daily reported on a paper from Current Biology called “The Origins and Evolution of Leadership” that puts Darwin in the lead. The authors “argue that due to ‘a hangover from our evolutionary past’ factors like age, sex, height and weight play a major part in the determining [sic] our choice of leaders.” Here’s what Dr. Andrew King (Zoological Society of London) had to say:
"Evolution has fashioned principles governing leadership and followership over many millions of years. We need to ground the complex, even mystical, social phenomenon of leadership in science. Through empirical observation, theoretical models, neuroscience, experimental psychology, and genetics, we can explore the development and adaptive functions of leadership and followership. This analysis of data, combined with an evolutionary perspective on leadership, might highlight potential mismatches so we can see how evolved mechanisms of leadership are possibly out of kilter with our relatively novel social environment."
Dr. King failed to explain how science escapes being an evolved mechanism or gains any power over evolutionary “principles.” His co-author Dr. Dominic Johnson (University of Edinburgh) thinks it’s about time evolutionary biology tackles this overlooked question, “arguably one of the most important themes in the social sciences.” He sees overlap between human and animal leadership behaviors that point to evolutionary origins. He said, “By identifying such origins and examining which aspects are shared with other animals offers us [sic] better ways of understanding, predicting and improving leadership today.” His evolutionary approach goes beyond explanation, therefore, and advocates social action.[1]
3. Sex and War: In Science this month,[2] Hillard Kaplan, an anthropologist at University of New Mexico, reviewed Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden (BenBella, Dallas, 2008). The book explores the “phylogenetic origins of human warfare” and describes armed conflict, no matter the players or their causes, in strictly evolutionary terms. The scope of their explanatory project must be considered when evaluating every conflict from withstanding playground bullies to decisions to liberate Nazi Germany. Kaplan opened, “They argue that group aggression by males is a fundamental feature of human evolutionary history, whose roots are well developed in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.” This would seem to eliminate any rationality for the concept of a “just war,” e.g., an altruistic rescue of an oppressed people (since altruism also falls within the domain of evolutionary explanation). One can sense the tension between morality and determinism in their explanation:
"The book begins with Potts’s own experiences in 1972, attending to (and providing abortions for) women who had been raped and abused during the war in Bangladesh. He recounts the cruelty enacted by groups of men, united in an armed struggle for power, on thousands of women. He then presents the book’s main thesis: such acts of violence are far from isolated incidents and modern aberrations due to extreme conditions—rather they are the norm for our species. What Potts calls “behavioral propensities to engage in male coalitional violence” are products of a long evolutionary history, in which males who engaged in such behavior produced more genetic descendants than males without such propensities. He further argues that coalitional violence by groups of males evolved at least as far back as the common ancestor before the chimpanzee-human divergence and is a direct manifestation of sexual selection on male-male competition. Such behavioral propensities did not evolve in females of either species.
"The term “behavioral propensity” is used throughout the book to highlight the idea that a propensity can be controlled by cultural and social means. Propensities to form coalitions among males against other males are in some sense genetically programmed into chimpanzee and human psychology, but there are also norms for culturally appropriate behavior as well as social institutions that can serve to counteract those propensities. In fact, the solution to decreasing violence and warfare in modern times comes from the recognition that our biological heritage has produced very different behavioral propensities in human males and females."
The book makes the point that the males’ evolutionary propensities to be violent can be restrained by “empowering women to be leaders in cultural, social, and political spheres.” This seems to beg the question of the origin of morality. Why would the products of an evolutionary process restrain what the process produced? The reviewer and the authors differed only on the methods likely to be most effective. Kaplan said, “We still lack a definitive understanding of group-level violence and its variation in different societies and during different historical periods. But I agree with Potts that such an understanding will likely require a joint theory of our biology and social history.” In evolution, though, is there a difference?
PhysOrg also reported on “When Being a Cuckold Makes Evolutionary Sense.” We’ll leave it as an exercise whether or not “evolutionary sense” is an oxymoron.
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1. Science can say, “The earth appears to be warming.” Explanation says, “The earth is warming because of human industry.” Activism says, “Because humans are warming the earth, we need to redistribute the wealth and start a depression.”
2. Hillard Kaplan, “Anthropology: Sex and War (and Ecology),” Science, 9 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5950, pp. 232-233, DOI: 10.1126/science.1176071.
1. Altruism: PhysOrg printed a press release from UC Davis debating which kind of evolution – cultural or genetic – explains the human propensity for altruism (sacrificial charity). “Why do people willingly to [sic] go to war, give blood, contribute to food banks and make other sacrifices often at considerable risk to themselves and their descendents? Evolutionary explanations based on both genes and culture have been proposed for this human behavior, which is unique among vertebrates.” The article went on to argue for social vs. genetic causes, but the statement makes it clear that non-evolutionary explanations were completely off the table for consideration. The report in Science Daily spoke of an “equation... that describes the conditions for altruism to evolve.” Sometimes the explanation mixes causes and results in a “gene-culture coevolution of human prosocial propensities.” Similarly, National Geographic News tried to show chimpanzees expressing a form of altruism, saying “this adds to evidence that chimps are more similar to humans than previously thought.” Altruism even applies to amebas, wrote Science Daily: “In Amoeba World, Cheating Doesn’t Pay.” It becomes clear looking at their explanation that altruism has no external essense, but is a mere manifestation of selection pressures – a “characteristic” that can be observed from ameba to man. They did not consider the converse hypothesis. Is it possible that the scientists are imputing human moral characteristics on non-sentient beings and interpreting animal actions in terms of internally-assumed abilities? If altruism is a physical trait, why is not the act of explanation? Why aren’t chimpanzees and amebas writing papers on human behavior?
2. Leadership: Science Daily reported on a paper from Current Biology called “The Origins and Evolution of Leadership” that puts Darwin in the lead. The authors “argue that due to ‘a hangover from our evolutionary past’ factors like age, sex, height and weight play a major part in the determining [sic] our choice of leaders.” Here’s what Dr. Andrew King (Zoological Society of London) had to say:
"Evolution has fashioned principles governing leadership and followership over many millions of years. We need to ground the complex, even mystical, social phenomenon of leadership in science. Through empirical observation, theoretical models, neuroscience, experimental psychology, and genetics, we can explore the development and adaptive functions of leadership and followership. This analysis of data, combined with an evolutionary perspective on leadership, might highlight potential mismatches so we can see how evolved mechanisms of leadership are possibly out of kilter with our relatively novel social environment."
Dr. King failed to explain how science escapes being an evolved mechanism or gains any power over evolutionary “principles.” His co-author Dr. Dominic Johnson (University of Edinburgh) thinks it’s about time evolutionary biology tackles this overlooked question, “arguably one of the most important themes in the social sciences.” He sees overlap between human and animal leadership behaviors that point to evolutionary origins. He said, “By identifying such origins and examining which aspects are shared with other animals offers us [sic] better ways of understanding, predicting and improving leadership today.” His evolutionary approach goes beyond explanation, therefore, and advocates social action.[1]
3. Sex and War: In Science this month,[2] Hillard Kaplan, an anthropologist at University of New Mexico, reviewed Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden (BenBella, Dallas, 2008). The book explores the “phylogenetic origins of human warfare” and describes armed conflict, no matter the players or their causes, in strictly evolutionary terms. The scope of their explanatory project must be considered when evaluating every conflict from withstanding playground bullies to decisions to liberate Nazi Germany. Kaplan opened, “They argue that group aggression by males is a fundamental feature of human evolutionary history, whose roots are well developed in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.” This would seem to eliminate any rationality for the concept of a “just war,” e.g., an altruistic rescue of an oppressed people (since altruism also falls within the domain of evolutionary explanation). One can sense the tension between morality and determinism in their explanation:
"The book begins with Potts’s own experiences in 1972, attending to (and providing abortions for) women who had been raped and abused during the war in Bangladesh. He recounts the cruelty enacted by groups of men, united in an armed struggle for power, on thousands of women. He then presents the book’s main thesis: such acts of violence are far from isolated incidents and modern aberrations due to extreme conditions—rather they are the norm for our species. What Potts calls “behavioral propensities to engage in male coalitional violence” are products of a long evolutionary history, in which males who engaged in such behavior produced more genetic descendants than males without such propensities. He further argues that coalitional violence by groups of males evolved at least as far back as the common ancestor before the chimpanzee-human divergence and is a direct manifestation of sexual selection on male-male competition. Such behavioral propensities did not evolve in females of either species.
"The term “behavioral propensity” is used throughout the book to highlight the idea that a propensity can be controlled by cultural and social means. Propensities to form coalitions among males against other males are in some sense genetically programmed into chimpanzee and human psychology, but there are also norms for culturally appropriate behavior as well as social institutions that can serve to counteract those propensities. In fact, the solution to decreasing violence and warfare in modern times comes from the recognition that our biological heritage has produced very different behavioral propensities in human males and females."
The book makes the point that the males’ evolutionary propensities to be violent can be restrained by “empowering women to be leaders in cultural, social, and political spheres.” This seems to beg the question of the origin of morality. Why would the products of an evolutionary process restrain what the process produced? The reviewer and the authors differed only on the methods likely to be most effective. Kaplan said, “We still lack a definitive understanding of group-level violence and its variation in different societies and during different historical periods. But I agree with Potts that such an understanding will likely require a joint theory of our biology and social history.” In evolution, though, is there a difference?
PhysOrg also reported on “When Being a Cuckold Makes Evolutionary Sense.” We’ll leave it as an exercise whether or not “evolutionary sense” is an oxymoron.
------------------------
1. Science can say, “The earth appears to be warming.” Explanation says, “The earth is warming because of human industry.” Activism says, “Because humans are warming the earth, we need to redistribute the wealth and start a depression.”
2. Hillard Kaplan, “Anthropology: Sex and War (and Ecology),” Science, 9 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5950, pp. 232-233, DOI: 10.1126/science.1176071.
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