The consequences of Charles Darwin's "one long argument"

November 12, 2005 10:05 AM

Intelligent Evolution...Today we live in a less barbaric age,[than the age of Copernicus and Bruno] but an otherwise comparable disjunction between science and religion, the one born of Darwinism, still roils the public mind. Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favoring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything...
posted by Postroad (75 comments total)

So cutting out all the long words and general pompousness. People = Stupid. Great.
posted by alexst at 10:11 AM on November 12, 2005

my opinion is that people reject the man-from-monkeys proposition because they want to believe their existence is part of a great Divine Plan. No Special Creation --> No Special Creator --> No Savior --> No Heaven --> No Hope
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:11 AM on November 12, 2005

So what if there's no hope? As John Cleese uttered, "it's not the despair I can't stand, it's the hope." At least despair has an end, hope is interminable.
posted by ryanhealy at 10:15 AM on November 12, 2005

At least despair has an end, hope is interminable.

That makes no sense at all. So if you do hope, and you die, you keep hoping. But if you despair and you die, you just die?!
posted by alexst at 10:17 AM on November 12, 2005

Do Europeans or Asians have this problem?

Methinks Americans make a bit much of this. A cynical political power has seized upon the evolution issue to sway a bloc of ignorant voters in America. Is that actually a bigger trend, or is that an America-only thing?
posted by teece at 10:25 AM on November 12, 2005

In past ages the posture provided an advantage. It united each tribe during life-and-death struggles with other tribes. It buoyed the devotees with a sense of superiority.

This is the point. The religious mindset evolved (the ultimate irony) because it confers tribal advantages. It produces a more efficient killing machine. Simply wash away your sins of torture and murder with the notion that God is on your side and your victims are evil. Unlike sociopaths, true believers are nice as pie in the off-season.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:35 AM on November 12, 2005

People = Stupid

That's not what I got from it. I thought it implied people were extremely smart ("god-like intellect") but that intelligence arose from millions of years of evolution.

Heywood's spot on. The most disturbing notion of natural selection for anthrocentric religious folks is that evolution is still happening. Humans are not the ultimate expression of life, nor created for any specific purpose.

The revolution in astronomy begun by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543 proved that Earth is not the center of the universe, nor even the center of the solar system. The revolution begun by Darwin was even more humbling: it showed that humanity is not the center of creation, and not its purpose either.

It remains to be seen whether the understanding of natural selection is in itself a favorable trait that will continue to affect our evolution. I certainly hope so.

"the residue of hoped-for default" is a wonderful phrase. I quite like Wilson's writing. When it was over, I wanted more.

Here's something I don't understand: why can't randomness be the universe's intelligence?
posted by mrgrimm at 10:40 AM on November 12, 2005

I have always thought that those Bible-thumpers who accuse us secular humanists of having our own "religion" were a bit off the mark, but E.O. Wilson's argument can be read as agreeing with the fundies, that those of us who look at the world and see its still developing beauty without seeing it as the work of a Mighty God (or a few of Them) do have our own religion.

The Buddhists have shown you can have a religion without a god, after all.

Religion offers the joy of knowledge and the comfort of knowing where one fits in to the universe; secular humanism does this too. (Although it does not offer the comfort of Heaven, 72 Virgins, or another life after death -- and the solace of knowing our dead loved ones are "in a better place," always one of the first-named benefits of religion.)

And we even have the sense of superiority that other religions have -- the Christians say we're going to hell if we stubbornly hold onto our godless beliefs; we say you guys are going to war if you keep on holding onto your God-belief systems.
posted by kozad at 10:49 AM on November 12, 2005

mrgrimm: "why can't randomness be the universe's intelligence?"

Intelligence is generally considered the property of a goal-directed actor. Randomness, by definition, isn't. What would be the "intelligence" of randomness?
posted by Gyan at 10:51 AM on November 12, 2005

I disagree with the premise.

There's no more need for most people to "accept" evolution than there is for most people to "accept" quantum mechanics or to "reject" the Oxonian school of thought that Shakespeare didn't write the plays we know by his name. Scholarship doesn't require mass endorsement, and it never has.

And it's hardly the case that those who proclaim to be creationists are really resisting biology in any coherent fashion, or they'd be rejecting modern medicine and the abundant cheap food which biology has made possible.

And as far as the elementary and secondary schools where they want to water down biology instruction to suit their tastes and emotional limitations, that would just make it like every other subject taught in the vast majority of American elementary and secondary classrooms: so grossly sub-par or off-base as to be basically unrelated to the true discipline as it is taught in colleges or universities.
posted by MattD at 11:02 AM on November 12, 2005

Is that actually a bigger trend, or is that an America-only thing?

America as in the United States specifically, not in the continental sense.

They need to fight it out among themselves, remember if it wasn't thunk of in America, it wasn't thunk of. Example, Britain outlawed slavery years ahead of America who later went ahead and almost self-destructed over it before deciding, yeah ok, we think it's a bad idea too.
posted by scheptech at 11:16 AM on November 12, 2005

What would be the "intelligence" of randomness?

In that it creates the widest range of possible interactions of matter. I can't explain it well, but I'll see if I can find someone who can. "Natural selection," though random, seems very intelligent to me. Perhaps I have some terms confused ...
posted by mrgrimm at 11:36 AM on November 12, 2005

mrgrimm : "In that it creates the widest range of possible interactions of matter."

That would be unintelligent, IMO. Lot of dead ends -> inefficiency. Is "randomness" "aiming" for a goal? If not, intelligence seems the wrong term.
posted by Gyan at 11:45 AM on November 12, 2005

I'm still only in the foyer of the rabbit hole, but methinks I meant "chaos" instead of randomness. I'll let you know if I learn anything ...
posted by mrgrimm at 11:47 AM on November 12, 2005

Why is inefficiency unintelligent?
posted by mrgrimm at 11:48 AM on November 12, 2005

mrgrimm : "Why is inefficiency unintelligent?"

inefficient: Lacking the qualities, as efficiency or skill, required to produce desired results

If 'randomness' has a desire (goal), it's inefficient hence unskilled, hence unintelligent.
posted by Gyan at 12:00 PM on November 12, 2005

It remains to be seen whether the understanding of natural selection is in itself a favorable trait that will continue to affect our evolution

Comprehension of evolution by natural selection is not a trait, in the evolutionary biology sense, as it cannot be inherited.
posted by docgonzo at 12:02 PM on November 12, 2005

I think the idea of the "randomness" question is that if, for example, an ant were sentient and you asked it about our behaviors, it would find them all silly, wasteful, and random. After all, it spends all day working - finding food, leading others to food, helping provide for the colony. What do those HUMANS do that's of any use?

So extrapolate that upwards.

And as far as religion vs science, I think the big fundamental schism is this:

Scientists embrace uncertainty. No theory is ever proven, only disproven. There are no solid facts (outside of mathematics) that could not one day be proven otherwise. The joy of life is figuring out these things as we go along.

Christianity (and most of the Abrahamic disciplines in general), on the other hand, is all about truth and absolutes. This book IS the word of God. What is said in it IS fact. So has it been, so will it ever be. Life is worth living because we KNOW what it's all about.

And that's the big problem. And why, in fact, I don't think western religion and science will EVER co-operate. That schism divides everything.

(and that's also why Buddhists tend to get on fine with scientists; their fundamental worldviews are the same.)
posted by InnocentBystander at 12:20 PM on November 12, 2005

That makes no sense at all. So if you do hope, and you die, you keep hoping. But if you despair and you die, you just die?!

It makes perfect sense. Despair has a beginning, middle, and end. You know, the stages of grief. Of course, if you happen to die while in the second stage of grief then I guess despair has no end. But that's kind of beside the point. Hope, as we usually know it, is an attachment to an image of how we want things to be. While it may suck at first to accept things how they are, it usually doesn't suck forever. Therefore, "it's not the despair I can't stand, it's the hope".
posted by ryanhealy at 12:24 PM on November 12, 2005

InnocentBystander: Well, I think that one of the problems on both sides is overly-sweeping generalizations in which humanists are portrayed as soulless and joyless skeptics living in a mechanical universe devoid of wonder, while believers in "western religion" are clinging to a vanishing remnant of hard and fast biblical certainty.

I grew up in a mainstream Amercian Christian church that was more than comfortable with theories other than Young Earth Creationism ranging from a strong ID to outright deism. About the only common thread I see in "western religion" is the existence of a god, but that god's relationship to the universe ranges from fundamentalism to an Einstein/Spinoza deism. I think it's important to note that large chunks of Christianity and Judaism have made their peace with Evolution.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:29 PM on November 12, 2005

i see no conflict here. certainly a wonderful, mysterious God, who is beyond our understanding, was pleased to explain creation in parables when he dictated His Holy Word to the prophets, and to make men from apes which He also created. dubyuh is proof.
posted by quonsar at 12:30 PM on November 12, 2005

Comprehension of evolution by natural selection is not a trait, in the evolutionary biology sense, as it cannot be inherited.

tend to disagree. Culture goes hand-in-hand with evolution, just ask the social insects.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:32 PM on November 12, 2005

Why is inefficiency unintelligent?

What is intelligence? A useful analogue is chess-playing programs. Generally speaking, the more efficient they are, the more challenging they play, since they can avoid wasting time analyzing stupid plays.

Hard-core evolutionists (26% of the pop) think evolution is a brute-force approach; soft-core evolutionists aka IDiots (22% plus whatever percentage of Special Creationists believe in ID for non-humans) lack the perspective and critical thinking skills to understand hard-core evolution.

The efficiency < -> intelligence angle is I guess a measure of how capable a design process is. Genius is getting it in the first go. Less intelligent people have to work, and work, at it.

Evolution is basically randomly filling out millions of scantrons and picking the one that gets the highest score. Clever? yes. Intelligent? no.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:43 PM on November 12, 2005

Is that actually a bigger trend, or is that an America-only thing?

For the purpose of this discussion, I will ignore the conflation of "United States" with "America" (The emergence and propagation of which is evidence, I posit, of certain goal-directed adaptations within USian discourse).

The problem with evolution, as many have already pointed out, is that in the fundamental randomness of mutation and natural selection because of limited environmental resources it has no direction. This is not convenient for cultures or ideologies immersed in and dependent upon a historical dialecticism, such as Communism, or Christianity, or Hinduism, or Islam, or Capitalism. The list goes on and on, and if you look deeply, you will find a rejection of the mechanism of randomly directed natural selection in favour of some sort of teleological perversion in favour of "process", or "improvement", or "echatology", or "self-actualization", or "efficiency".
posted by meehawl at 12:51 PM on November 12, 2005

meehawl : "This is not convenient for cultures or ideologies immersed in and dependent upon a historical dialecticism, such as ... Hinduism"

Come again?
posted by Gyan at 12:54 PM on November 12, 2005

Heywood Mogroot: tend to disagree. Culture goes hand-in-hand with evolution, just ask the social insects.

Hrm, explain further?

It is one thing to say that evolution helped to shape the basic forms of cognition that makes culture possible. It is quite another to say that a specific theory or cultural artifact is directly linked to genetics, and therefore is in within the scope of the theory of evolution.

In other words, why should we think that the theory of evolution is any different from the lyrics to "Happy Birthday?"
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:55 PM on November 12, 2005

Kirk: Well, at this point in human development it appears "natural" selection is buffered by human selection, be it sexual selection, behavioral selection (marching off to war, "Darwin Award" winners), or medical intervention allowing deleterous genetic traits to propagate.

In researching the number of school-age kids in the US I found an interesting standout -- several states have 12% kids, but only one state, Utah, has 13%. There you go.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:59 PM on November 12, 2005

The most disturbing notion of natural selection for anthrocentric religious folks is that evolution is still happening.

Personally, I file that fact under "really, really exciting" but I guess that goes to show I'm not as anthrocentric as I thought. I assume you mean it's disturbing for them because it suggests the end is not written, thereby calling the total power and foreknowledge of the Author into doubt. I also wonder which comes first: the belief (hope) that there is a linear plan more or less charted in advance for us, or the eschatological obsession with endings itself. Belief in static sepcies and the like fits nicely with doctrines like original sin and the idea that this whole enchilada (we, included) are irreparably broken or sullied (hence the whole need for a truly out-of-this-world redeemer to set things aright). How can that lead to anything BUT resignation (individually or collectively)? Where's the passion for improvement, for moving-forward, for demanding more and better from us and this? We're the first species (that we know of) to comprehend (however dimly) the mechanism responsible for life as we know it - and the idea that we can now consciously mainpulate that mechanism is utterly astounding.

I know, I know: the Unitarians and deists are with me, but so far as I know they both think the idea of a personal man-god redeemer is myth at best.
posted by joe lisboa at 1:01 PM on November 12, 2005

Culture goes hand-in-hand with evolution, just ask the social insects.

Not sure I get your point. Is it that having a culture -- i.e. social interaction, shared goals, kinship, etc. -- is under some evolutionary control? Well, yes, sure.

I was trying to say that understanding evolution is not a trait as these specific cultural practices are not under the control of natural selection.

I get nervous when biological process are boiled down to simple determinism and applied to human behaviour.
posted by docgonzo at 1:02 PM on November 12, 2005

* "manipulate," of course.
posted by joe lisboa at 1:03 PM on November 12, 2005

Heywood Mogroot: Well, at this point in human development it appears "natural" selection is buffered by human selection, be it sexual selection, behavioral selection (marching off to war, "Darwin Award" winners), or medical intervention allowing deleterous genetic traits to propagate.

How are these different from natural selection? Certainly, there are parallels for many of these things found in other species.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:03 PM on November 12, 2005

Just to make the point clear, the theory of evolution is fundamentally agnostic about the types of physical or behavioral traits that influence reproductive success. So you can't really say that "natural selection" is no longer applicable to Homo sapiens.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:11 PM on November 12, 2005

For the purpose of this discussion, I will ignore the conflation of "United States" with "America"

Sorry about that, but understand that when you grow up in America (*ahem*, the US), you refer to your homeland as America, so it's hard to remember to use "the US" in situations where "America" might annoy and offend folks.
posted by teece at 1:14 PM on November 12, 2005

So you can't really say that "natural selection" is no longer applicable to Homo sapiens.

I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I was reacting to this:

"Comprehension of evolution by natural selection is not a trait, in the evolutionary biology sense, as it cannot be inherited."

Culture, in higher animals at least, is not entirely inherited via the genes, but is inherited via parenting and socialization. Utah's relative fecundity is evidence of a component of human culture (religious precepts) affecting evolution.

wikipedia agrees with you that natural selection == ecological selection + sexual selection + ... so I was wrong about that I guess.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:27 PM on November 12, 2005

I enjoyed the article, too, but what's with Wilson's massive false trilemma? I mean, I understand that orthodox "scientific" Marxism is safely behaviorist and all that, but no less so than much of what passes for contemporary non-Marxist, say, psychology. Is Wilson just ignoring the folks who've united secular humanism and socialist political thought?
posted by joe lisboa at 1:38 PM on November 12, 2005

joe lisboa: I suspect that might be a relic over the entire blow-up over Wilson's Sociobiology. Thankfully, Wilson does not spend enough time on the "blank slate" to fall into Pinker's trap.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:04 PM on November 12, 2005

Culture, in higher animals at least, is not entirely inherited via the genes, but is inherited via parenting and socialization. Utah's relative fecundity is evidence of a component of human culture (religious precepts) affecting evolution.

Yes. But there are lots of things that affect evolution that are not part of natural selection. I think it is important to draw a line between natural selection and everything else.
posted by docgonzo at 2:58 PM on November 12, 2005

HM, etc., No human philosophy has ever eliminated "hope". Nor is one likely to do so. With each improvment in our understanding of our world, those who seek to understand it find a new and greater source of hope, while those who seek to remain ignorant find only shattered illusions.

The sun centered solar system is the classic example. But lets take a more modern example, the prisoners dilemma debunks much Marxist based leftist philosophy. To a leftists who refuse to learn, it is philosophically disrupting to really understand the long term consequences of the prisoners dilemma. But, I'd venture a guess that almost everyone who does understand the prisoners dilemma is a leftist (by American standards, European "right" wingers can be surprisingly bright). And the vast majority of them see a the *iterated* prisoners dilemma as a great insight, a partial vindication of economics, and a solution to all that socialism and communism got wrong.

Science & understanding tend to increase hope. It reviles that good things are truly possible, by separating them from senseless, or brutal, pipe dreams.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:07 PM on November 12, 2005

If it is ok to comment on both comments and on my post, I believe that this piece by Wilson, to accompany the text of Darwin works, takes a dim view of the religious set mind in America. Another editor, Watson (a colleage and the DNA guy) takes the "long view"==in time americans will come around to see the many benefits derived from the sciences, technology, medicine etc and will slowly be willing to acknowledge what Evolution is making us aware of. In short: Wilson pessimistic but Watson not so, or at least more forgiving and relaxed in the long view.
posted by Postroad at 3:50 PM on November 12, 2005

I've not read the articles but I don't know if Watson's argument holds any merit -- I think these ID fundies are more than happy to consume the fruit of Darwin's revolution without acknowledging its truth. After all -- with a mindset that divorced from logic, who says you have to be consistent?
posted by docgonzo at 3:59 PM on November 12, 2005

Comprehension of evolution by natural selection is not a trait, in the evolutionary biology sense, as it cannot be inherited.
posted by docgonzo at 12:02 PM PST on November 12

Mabye the specific idea of evolution cannot be inherited, but perhaps the prerequisites for comprehending evolution can be.

What intelligence is is far from certain, but there is some indication that it is, to some degree, inheritable.
(If it is not, why are so few leading members of our society dogs?)

I get nervous when people pre-suppose the existance of free will.
posted by spazzm at 5:22 PM on November 12, 2005

spazzm : "I get nervous when people pre-suppose the existance of free will."

They can't help it. And neither can you.
posted by Gyan at 5:24 PM on November 12, 2005

Gyan: I knew you'd say that. ;)
posted by spazzm at 5:27 PM on November 12, 2005

And as far as the elementary and secondary schools where they want to water down biology instruction to suit their tastes and emotional limitations, that would just make it like every other subject taught in the vast majority of American elementary and secondary classrooms: so grossly sub-par or off-base as to be basically unrelated to the true discipline as it is taught in colleges or universities.

Really? They teach alchemy in high school chemistry? Holocaust revisionism is put forth as a competing theory in history, and flat earth theories get equal time in geography?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 5:47 PM on November 12, 2005

No, the answer is simply that evolution, properly understood, shows up the whole "Big-guy-in-the-sky-made-it-all" childishness for the iredeemable and shameful horsecack it is. And the stupid spiritual cowards who need that retrograde nonsense because they're too damned weak to face harsh reality really can't tolerate that.
posted by Decani at 7:19 PM on November 12, 2005

This is not convenient for cultures or ideologies immersed in and dependent upon a historical dialecticism, such as ... Hinduism

A fundamental tenet of Hinduism is that this is not a rudderless world of chance events but instead is shaped by vague metaphysical forces that manifest as "karma", or a cycle of cause and effect that propagates in a punctuated manner through time, the mechanism of which can be harnessed by individuals to enhance their position within the unhiverse. In essence, it is spiritual Lamarckism. It is manifested very directly in Hinduism through the approaches of Vedanta and Tantra.

It presupposes a metaphysical calculsus, wherin karma past (sanchita), karma present (parabdha), and karma future (kriyamana) are judged by a deity and, upon passing a certain point, enables the soul to reach moksha, a point of spiritual singularity or ultimately recursive development. It is the dissolution of the "name form" and union with the metaphysical force that created the universe. It is a release from the yoke, or burden, of existence. It is the union of the ātman with the Brahman.

Sikhism, Buddhism, & Jainism, as descendent religions of Hinduism, also share this developmental approach. It should be noted that some of Hinduism's descendent religions, such as Buddhism or Jainism, retain the idea of karmic development while removing the Brahamn, or deity.

I enjoy reading the Rig Veda and other Vedic texts as much as the next person, but while I admire their artistry, I do not share their enthusiasm for asserting that their accounts of anthropic manifestations of a cosmic guiding principle are grounded in fact.

Most religions are selling Lamarckism, in one form or another. The idea of cosmic randomness is usually reserved for the likes of Azathoth.
posted by meehawl at 7:32 PM on November 12, 2005

meehawl : "A fundamental tenet of Hinduism is that this is not a rudderless world of chance events"

Neither is evolution. Saying that mutations are "random", simply means that there is no targeted endpoint. But the mechanisms are physical and not random. 'karma' is easily accomodated and metamorphized to deal with the paradigms of the actors in question (humans, animals, nature..). Not all interpretations of the Vedas recognize an interventionist/judging deity.
posted by Gyan at 8:12 PM on November 12, 2005

I have immense respect for Wilson the scientist. He might benefit from deepening his knowledge about human anthropology.

Darwinism as a description of the natural world may be perfectly accurate. It doesn't offer any way to organize human societies nor does it offer any place for managing human irrationality or fantasy. He simply says, we are irrational, and so let us become rational. That, in itself, seems utopian.

The credible reason to reject Darwinism has nothing to do with science, but everything to do with politics. Does Darwinism have a role in creating meaning? Not really. It's a description of the world, and the best one available. But I don't know how Darwinism fits in my life, although maybe it means I should compete more for the attention of women and try to have as many children as possible. I don't know - but I just can't get a picture of it. I can understand how people can misuse Darwinism to justify discarding the weak.

We are misled if we assume that Intelligent design, for example, has anything remotely to do with science. It doesn't - no matter what its detractors or supporters think. It's a political battle. To be clear - the confusion is in what context we are meant to understand the work the scientific inquiry.

I have two quibbles:

1) is religion always about the afterlife or hell? Or is it about free will, the care of the poor, and the organizing of the irrational through liturgy, ritual and storytelling? If it is primarily about damning others, then, let's get rid of it, although, I wonder if there if hell, for example, is efficient. But as an aside, lots of Christians have quietly accepted pluralism. This has more to do with practical social realities than with scientific knowledge.

2) His conflation of religion and tribalism is much too neat and tidy. Is he thinking of tribes of 150 people? 3000? Nations of a few million? I think the evidence indicates that religions can be used to unite people as much as they can divide them. And if we are to look at religion materialistically, we note that religion is merely one tool that people can use for political power. It's not the only one [money, media, and weapons do pretty good on their own].

It is clear that religion short-cuts thinking. In science, this is bad. But there are other instincts, other systems, other ways of looking at the world that are worthwhile, that require the poetry and collective fantasy that religion offers.

A religious humanism, anyone?
posted by john wilkins at 9:49 PM on November 12, 2005

To Add - modern Christian theology has been influenced by Darwin as well. The idea of a changing God, either Hegelianism or Panentheism is common fodder in seminaries.
posted by john wilkins at 9:51 PM on November 12, 2005

john wilkins: It is clear that religion short-cuts thinking. In science, this is bad. But there are other instincts, other systems, other ways of looking at the world that are worthwhile, that require the poetry and collective fantasy that religion offers.

A religious humanism, anyone?

In other writings Wilson has been more explicit in his calls for something akin to a religious humanism grounded in an appreciation of the universe around us rather than the hope of a supernatural being. The basic idea is that the major religions have managed to co-opt many experiences such as awe, wonder, and beauty, as expressions of a divine god, and there is a critical need to reclaim those experiences. This is where I think Einstein was also headed in his expressions of religious humanism.

It is important to note that many of the originators of the first humanist manifesto came out radical Unitarian, Quaker and Jewish beliefs rather than out of critical atheism.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:45 PM on November 12, 2005

neither is evolution

See there's the thing, it really is. To think anything else is to lapse into fuzzy orthogenisis, that is, an orthogenetic evolution that adds some external goal-driver to the process beyond randomness and competition for finite resources. I see no evidence in speciation that there is any external supernatural force. Perhaps you have seen other evidence?

Not all interpretations of the Vedas recognize an interventionist/judging deity.

If you're alluding to a difference in conception between Śaivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism, and Smartha in the relative dominance of the idea of Saguna Brahma vs Nirguna Brahman (or even of their separate or joined existence), then this is really splitting hairs, but the end-goal is still processive and goal-directed, and therefore contrary to the current idea of the evolutionary process.

I honestly feel it is difficult for a religion to succeed and become a global, enduring faith without constructing a story of processive improvement and offering generalised hope for its adherents. People like happy stories.
posted by meehawl at 5:33 AM on November 13, 2005

meehawl : "I see no evidence in speciation that there is any external supernatural force"

None required. No counter tallying up the tables. Just the innate mechanism of the world.

meehawl : "I honestly feel it is difficult for a religion to succeed and become a global, enduring faith without constructing a story of processive improvement and offering generalised hope for its adherents. People like happy stories."

Correct. But how a religion is co-opted, does not necessarily represent what the original religious traditions were trying to say. Millions of people, in India, wake up every morning and perform a small puja. This bhakti yoga is folk belief for you. And so is a lot of the Hindu philosophy as presented. At its core, karma simply means that the universe has laws. The original seers/scripters postulated that manifestations of such laws were expressed in all spheres; their form adapted based on the actors they applied to. Modern science has deduced such a lawful framework for behaviour of macroscopic and microscope nonsentient entitites, called physics. But science having not found a similar elegant framework for behaviour of sentient beings, implicitly asserts that there exists none, and that any apparent rhythm is accidental byproduct. The strict answer is to be agnostic. The aesthetic answer is that an hitherto undiscovered framework exists for conscious beings as well.
posted by Gyan at 10:19 AM on November 13, 2005

I loved this article, a very concise statement of a fundamental problem. A few thoughts occur to me:

The Copernican revolution was only 500 years ago. This is not a long time. The Darwinian revolution not yet 150. These things take time, and we shouldn't be so distressed and a little more tolerant (I struggle with this) that some people have a harder time shedding this obviously evolutionarily beneficial, yet erroneous belief system. Religious experience is to a large degree hardwired thanks to evolution. (Why my countrymen in the USA are more stubborn in their belief than other western liberal democracies is still a puzzle to me.)

What Darwin (and other great scientists after him, like Einstein) seem to have come to is a "spiritual" wonder at the amazing happy accident of everything that we are and the world around us. The Abramaic religions seem more adrift in an evolutionary universe than other faiths. Native Americans seemed to have intuitively recognized man's kinship with other living creatures. Hindu cosmology is comfortable with enormously long and repetitive cycles of time, and sees a common soul across species. The Dalai Lama writes in the NY Times yesterday of the harmony between Buddhist thought and scientific inquiry. I heard him say once that if science ever proved Buddhism to be incorrect, he would have to renounce Buddhism.

I take solace in the belief that we and those who come after do indeed hold a special place in creation. It seems to me that the Universe, as we do also, desires to know itself: The Universe creates conditions where life must come to pass, and that life guided by the laws of evolution sometimes leads to advanced intelligence and self-awareness, and the ability to contemplate and wonder at the universe that spawned us. Is this something like the belief common in religions that the gods want us to worship them? Some modern pagan variant on that? I don't know, it works for me.
posted by bephillips at 10:55 AM on November 13, 2005

science having not found a similar elegant framework for behaviour of sentient beings, implicitly asserts that there exists none ... The aesthetic answer is that an hitherto undiscovered framework exists for conscious beings as well.

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate
posted by meehawl at 11:16 AM on November 13, 2005

joe lisboa: "what's with Wilson's massive false trilemma?"

I rather liked this. When I remind my religious friends of the great evils committed in the name of religions, they often throw back "Oh yeah, well the greatest atrocities in history have been committed in the name of Humanism-spawned Communism and Fascism." Wilson's trinity of belief systems is a neat riposte to this: Communism and Fascism want to fashion "blank slate" humans in to something "unnatural" that is orthodoxly predetermined by the leaders, whereas we enlightened secular humanists delight in the investigation of "what exactly is human nature and our place in the world?" and through sharing with each other what we have found, be able then to democratically construct a better world to live in. And there's the hope to be found in godless humanism. You're welcome.
posted by bephillips at 11:40 AM on November 13, 2005

Occam's Razor is a guideline for conducting science in a time and resource constrained world. A practical convention, not a truth-seeking sickle.
posted by Gyan at 11:53 AM on November 13, 2005

As an Australian.... yes, it's a US thing. Never heard a whisper of it over here. What we DO here though is what's happening over there, so generally most Australians think most Americans are blockheaded fools. I've been to your united states a few times and I know that most of you are wonderful a friendly and intelligent people, but all we ever hear about or see on tv here are the Jerry Springers and the Judge Judys and the IDers. Of course, the fact that so many people assume that your whole country is as simple minded as the few people we see on tv doesn't say a whole lot about the intelligence of my fellow Aussies.

On the western religion vs science note, I was educated at a Jesuit school and taught Chemistry and Biology by a priest with a science degree. Science and religion can be complementary- religion says there is a God, He is good, you should try and be good too, etc etc. Science tries to understand the world, the relationships and rules that make it work. You can't be a fundamentalist, biblical literalist scientist, but then that's not what religion is. If you think God created the world, Science is a perfectly acceptable way of coming to understand that world. In my opinion, it's a far better way than taking the word of a bunch of men from two thousand years ago.
posted by twirlypen at 2:30 PM on November 13, 2005

Occam's Razor is a guideline for conducting science

Key word being science. That is, a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena.

You, and a surprising number of others in this thread, keep invoking supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. That is not science, that is, at best, metaphysics, and at worst, intelligent design. Even if some people are eager to abaondon anthropic framing and would have it that there is a non-intelligent cosmic design principle, or that the designing intelligence is an emergent property of "consciousness", itself a quality being reified into a universal actor capable of intension that spans time symmetrically.
posted by meehawl at 3:46 PM on November 13, 2005

Of course, the fact that so many people assume that your whole country is as simple minded as the few people we see on tv doesn't say a whole lot about the intelligence of my fellow Aussies.

That's okay. We know you Aussies are always drunk. We can excuse your lowered intelligence.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:50 PM on November 13, 2005

Of course, the fact that so many people assume that your whole country is as simple minded as the few people we see on tv doesn't say a whole lot about the intelligence of my fellow Aussies.

That's okay. We know you Aussies are always drunk. We can excuse your lowered intelligence.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:50 PM on November 13, 2005

Damn, I hate that MeFi doesn't block keybounce.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:50 PM on November 13, 2005

I propose Intelligent Attraction. Just as Intelligent Design explains how complex things got here, Intelligent Attraction explains why we have phenomena like gravity (it's because God sucks), magnetism (another aspect of God's suckiness), and sub-atomic forces (yet more sucking). At the same time, it also explains how your brother-in-law could possibly be attracted to your sister (it's God's will), and also the phenomena of Paris Hilton influencing peoples' purchasing decisions (God's the intelligent one: people are stupid).
posted by five fresh fish at 3:56 PM on November 13, 2005

Why is it that there is a set of Christians who do not believe that God gave man the ability to figure things out, and that what we're doing with logic and metrics and, you know, science is exactly what he wants us to do?

What makes them think God is anti-science, anti-discovery, anti-exploration, anti-explanation, anti-thinking?

Why is their faith in the omnipotent power of God threatened by the idea that He used evolution to Do His Work? Imagine the intelligence behind a God who can guide something so seemingly random as evolution, and come out in the end with Adam, the first creature to have the capacity imagine His existance, let alone contain His gift of a Soul which shall eventually reside with Him in the afterlife.

I mean, that's a fucking awesome God. Why don't the ID freaks get it?! Why the hell are they limiting their God?! Arrrgh.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:10 PM on November 13, 2005

meehawl : "That is, a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena."

Physicalism happens to be the current reigning paradigm, but science is not restricted to any rigid philosophy. There is no such thing as 'supernatural', if it happens, it's a part of nature ergo natural. There's only flux over what nature is.

'Gravity' doesn't exist in nature; it's the label given to an observed relation between direct objects of observation; 'karma' is a generic label given to the existence of such relational grammar. This dichotomy between metaphysics and science is transient, illusory and practical. There's only the world, undivided. And then there's cognitive divisions of this world.
posted by Gyan at 4:27 PM on November 13, 2005

if it happens, it's a part of nature

Define "happens". If something "happens" in my mind, has it happened? How much qualia do I need to experience to render an event transpired and not non-transpired? How many transactional events must occur for you to convince me that something has transpired in the past, or will tanspire as predicted in the future?

'Gravity' doesn't exist in nature; it's the label given to an observed relation between direct objects of observation

Oh my dear Bishop Berkeley, I do so love the splendid variety of these Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.
posted by meehawl at 4:41 PM on November 13, 2005

meehawl : "If something 'happens' in my mind, has it happened?"

Yes. What has happened is a different story.
posted by Gyan at 4:44 PM on November 13, 2005

What has happened is a different story.

Exactly my point. I can imagine a great variety of things, of alternative universes where objects interact according to different rules. I can also imagine a reality where metaphysical entities possess great influence.

Many people have imagined such things. I can't say I can find any evidence that such imaginings have ever possessed an ability to affect the world outside the boundaries of a person's skull without invoking that person's physicalism to act upon the world in a manner constrained by gross materialism.
posted by meehawl at 4:57 PM on November 13, 2005

You have just shot down unconstrained volition.
posted by Gyan at 7:31 PM on November 13, 2005

You have just shot down unconstrained volition.

I don't quite see how that is so. I choose to ask you to explain why you perceive it as such. Also, please square unconstrained volition with a pan-temporal moral calculus, with or without an intelligent agency.
posted by meehawl at 9:32 AM on November 14, 2005

meehawl : "I choose to ask you to explain why you perceive it as such."

You said it yourself ("to act upon the world in a manner constrained by gross materialism"). Idealism doesn't mean a world without rules. So the lack of synchronicity between the events in imagination and subsequently in the 'real world' isn't evidence of realism. In a completely physical world, how is "free will" implemented? Where do the chance events come from? Don't invoke QM. That's mathematics that 'work'. What it means, is unclear. Indeed, some physicists, like Nobel laureate 't Hooft have proposed deterministic models.
posted by Gyan at 9:47 AM on November 14, 2005

So the lack of synchronicity between the events in imagination and subsequently in the 'real world' isn't evidence of realism.

You know, I wrote a really long response to this earlier but Safari crashed and burned. A deist might take that as a divine intervention...

Anybody is free to believe as strongly as they want in solipstistic generalised semantics and noospheric orthogenesis, but clicking one's heels three times isn't very likely to bring one home, no matter how strong one's will might be concerning this matter. Unless, of course, one possesses power over another or an instrument that can transact in a physically meaningful and consensually pragmatic fashion in order to convey one home.

how is "free will" implemented?

Why do you think you have free will? Or is will always constrained? What is will devoid of the ability to enact intention? If you do think you have free will, then why do you have free will? If it is not an emergent behaviour of matter and energy organised into special, evolutionary relations, then what is your explanation for its existence?

Earlier you seemed to argue in favour of a pan-temporal moral calculus that envelops individuals and embeds them within a field of eternal meaningfulness. If that is the case and one's actions are constrained by a morally relative, time synchronous force, where effects follow causes in a non-predictive manner and without obeying any kind of transactional predictability, where, then, is the room for unconstrained volition?Aquinas had a lot to say about this sort of thing and I don't think he squared it away quite well enough. And Calvin drove himself and his followers batty worrying away at the same principle.

some physicists, like Nobel laureate 't Hooft have proposed deterministic models.

When 't Hooft uses the word "deterministic" in a paper such as Quantum Gravity as a Dissipative Deterministic System, he is using it in a very specialised, formal sense and within a very localised domain. In what sense are you using it? He uses some clever mappings to demonstrate some particle motions can be deterministic at the Planck level yet chaotic at the macroscopic level, and in one model the motion of massless and non-interacting chiral fermions can be modelled in a completely deterministic manner. However, it's a long way from extending these infinite, strictly flat membranes to any real-world massive interactions.

Or we could let 't Hooft speak for himself on the subject of supernatural influences:

Both relativity theory (special as well as general) and quantum field theory have a causality structure built in. This means that information processing takes place along extremely rigorous rules, and these rules include the mechanisms at work inside our brains ... any explanation of paranormal experiences must come from psychology, not from theoretical physics ...

[Perhaps] there is a physical effect not yet recognized by physicists, allowing information to be transmitted in novel ways. - What kind of effect could this possibly be? It has to be so weak that it went unnoticed in all physics experiments ... The purported signal(s) should not only be able to move backward in time, over unlimited distances, from dead bodies, etc., but also carry information in a form that brains can encode and decode without any practice (unlike the ordinary senses). All these features are completely uncharacteristic for all physical phenomena, so it will be extremely difficult to keep this option up.

posted by meehawl at 2:30 PM on November 14, 2005

meehawl : "Why do you think you have free will?"

No firm opinion on the matter. I asked you how "free will" would be implemented in a physical substrate, if it exists.

meehawl : "where, then, is the room for unconstrained volition?"

Volition isn't unconstrained. I told you that you had shot down UV.

meehawl : "yet chaotic at the macroscopic level,"

Correct me, but chaotic systems are deterministic, just exquisitely sensitive?

Your first paragraph just seems to be saying that A won't likely work, unless it does.
posted by Gyan at 2:58 PM on November 14, 2005

I told you that you had shot down UV.

Yes you did. And I believe I chose to ask you why you choose to believe that. You have chosen not to state why it is you choose to believe that. I find that an intriguing demonstration of constrained behaviour.

chaotic systems are deterministic, just exquisitely sensitive

If you can't determine why something does one thing and not another, if you can't construct a model that will let you predict its behaviour, or you do and find that the system evolves in a surprising manner unpredicted by your model or map, is that evidence for freedom of action? Could it scale up to freedom of will? Your 't Hooft paper above demonstrates that while the timelike evolution of a system in some cases can be completely deterministic at small scales, information loss renders it merely probabilistic at larger scales. Therefore it is not simply a case of sensitivities and a computational/cell automatational transactional limit, but of emergent properties that cannot easily be mapped from the behaviour of smaller-scale properties.
posted by meehawl at 4:13 PM on November 14, 2005

meehawl : "And I believe I chose to ask you why you choose to believe that."

Believe what? That you shot down UV? Because you mentioned your imaginings didn't translate to action, unless a physicalist instrument mediated. Why I believe in UV? I don't, for reasons similar to yours.

"if you can't construct a model that will let you predict its behaviour, ... is that evidence for freedom of action?"

No. That's plain uncertainty. I'm not sure how freedom of action can be proven for sure. Any idea?

meehawl : "information loss renders it merely probabilistic at larger scales."

I'm not technically competent to understand the nuances, but is our use of probability the result of our incomplete knowledge or the inherent nature of the universe?
posted by Gyan at 7:53 PM on November 14, 2005

I'm not sure how freedom of action can be proven for sure.

It depends on how you define it. Look up Monte Carlo.
posted by meehawl at 4:46 PM on November 15, 2005