“Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians,” wrote the late philosopher of science David Stove. “If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.”
Nowadays, expressing any skepticism toward Darwinian theories is considered evidence that a person harbors creationist sympathies. But the Australian philosopher was no friend of “intelligent design.” In fact, Stove was an atheist and an ardent admirer or Charles Darwin’s genius who believed that it is “overwhelmingly probable” that our species evolved from another and that “natural selection is probably the cause which is principally responsible for the coming into existence of new species from old ones.”
But Stove could only follow the theory so far. Unwilling to disregard common sense, he was unable to accept the patent nonsense of the “ultra-Darwinists.” These Darwinian advocates, men like Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, have, he said, an “amazingly arrogant habit of Darwinians” of “blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory” when they encounter contrary biological facts.
Consider, for example, Darwin’s contention (Origin of Species, ch. 4) that “any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.” This is one of the essential ideas of natural selection but, as Stove points out, we don’t even have to look past the first letter of the alphabet to find characteristics which are extremely injurious to humans yet have not been “rigidly destroyed”:
Abortion; adoption; fondness for alcohol; altruism; anal intercourse; respect for ancestors; susceptibility to aneurism; the love of animals; the importance attached to art; asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever.
All of these can either shorten our lives or lessen the number of children we have. So why has this “biological error” not been destroyed? According to the ultra-Darwinist, there has “not been enough time.”
How long does it take for natural selection to destroy an injurious attribute, such as adoption or fondness for alcohol? I have not the faintest idea, of course. I therefore have no positive ground whatever for believing either that there has been enough time for adoption to be destroyed, or that there has not. But then, on this matter, everyone else is in the same state of total ignorance as I am. So how come the Darwinian is so confident that there has not been enough time? What evidence can he point to, for thinking that there has not? Why, nothing but this, that adoption has not been destroyed, despite its being an injurious attribute! But this is palpably arguing in a circle, and taking for granted the very point which is in dispute. The Darwinian has no positive evidence whatever, that there has not been enough time.
Stove admits that since philosophers have pointed out this circular reasonsing, few Darwinists admit to such a belief: “Ask a Darwinian whether he actually believes that the fondness for alcoholic drinks is being destroyed now, or that abortion is, or adoption - and watch his face.” The Darwinist knows there is no evidence to support such a contention yet cannot escape the fact that “Darwinism says it must be so.”
In rebuttal, ultra-Darwinists assert that while man was once trapped in the struggle to survive and pass on our genes, we no longer are trapped in the spiral of natural selection. Stove calls this the “Cave Man” attempt to solve “Darwinism’s Dilemma”:
If Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, no species can ever escape from the process of natural selection. His theory is that two universal and permanent tendencies of all species of organisms—the tendency to increase in numbers up to the limit that the food supply allows, and the tendency to vary in a heritable way—are together sufficient to bring about in any species universal and permanent competition for survival, and therefore universal and permanent natural selection among the competitors.
Natural selection, which is a “universal generalization about all terrestrial species at any time” can’t just be true sometimes: “If the theory says something which is not true now of our species (or another), then it is not true—finish.” Not only is this not true of our species now, it could never have been true:
Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. ‘Every single organic being’, or ‘each organic being’: this means you.
Stove concludes that despite its power to explain other species, Darwin’s theory of evolution is “a ridiculous slander on human beings.” Darwinism, he says, “is a mere festering mass of errors.” While it can tell you “lots of truths about plants, flies, fish, etc., and interesting truths, too. . . .if it is human life that you would most like to know about and to understand, then a good library can be begun by leaving out Darwinism, from 1859 to the present hour.”
Addendum: To entice you to read “So You Think You Are a Darwinian?” in its entirety, I leave you with this gem:
4. Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism: that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters to raise more children.
This very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9. Professor Trivers is a leading light among ultra-Darwinians, (who are nowadays usually called ‘sociobiologists’). Whether he also believes that suicide, for example, and self-castration, are forms of sibling-altruism, I do not know; but I do not see what there is to stop him. What is there to stop anyone believing such propositions? Only common sense: a thing entirely out of the question among sociobiologists.
See also: Darwinian Fairytales : Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution
1
So Stove has trouble with Darwinism. Hope it doesn't keep him awake.
Smart Christians.com.an apt title. Having the best of both worlds while the founder of the religion found it was too much to juggle around some benefit to reap all that world has to offer, wealth, power etc,. Believe me I am a Christian as far as I have no problem with the spirit of Christ. Perhaps like the word of Paul should one should rather be a ' fool' and not pharisiacal.
The Christian Right so it seems to me too smart for Christ and for the flock.
benny
2
I am always amused by illiterate posts protesting the elitism of the educated. Heh. Idiots never do "get it," do they...? (li'l Darwin joke, there)
Stove seems to be overstating the case. In particular, there have been suggestions that there is evidence for the survival value of some kinds of altruistic behavior, albeit not the epiphenomenal thinking of *why* we behave altruistically (I mean these terms "from a certain point of view," and not representing the beliefs I hold, necessarily).
At the same time, it is certain *at least* true that nobody holds Darwin in the way or to the extend Darwin intended; philosophically-minded evolutionary thinkers tend to end up as some species of "Left Creationist," that is, taking the appearance of homo sapiens as an entirely new and different turn in evolutionary processes.
I hold that God created the universe in six (God-relative) days a few thousand years ago, and that the evidence of older age is an artefact of the changes in matter/energy undergone during the Creation process; we aren't wrong to see what we see, just lacking an adequate frame of reference to interpret it authoritatively. It does indeed look like the starry skies took gadzillions of years to get the way they are, and that's OK--it just doesn't mean we extrapolate *correctly* when we extrapolate *validly* from what is, usually, a *useful* pattern of inference.
But I'm quite sure plenty of things have changed in that few thousand years. To say the least.
Cheers,
PGE
3
good luck with the grand canyon, pgepps, for starters. though i've no doubt that there exists a raft of christian 'scholars' (with pee h dee's even!) who have already attempted to do some of the heavy reintepretive "scientific" lifting, in order to shoehorn all those geologic events into something consistent with a young-earth literalist interpretation of creation stories from that holiest of books. clearly i'm way behind on my discovery institute pdf downloads. guess i should put down my 'nature,' 'science,' and 'trends in ecology and evolution' subscriptions and get to reading all about those cutting edge young-earth hypotheses that propose an "adequate frame of reference" to explain away the reams of available evidence that we've been around a *wee* bit longer than 6000 years.
but i'm gonna sleep on it first!
4
Joe,
It's a good thing biology has left "ultra-Darwinism" behind, with a very few (though obviously visible) exceptions, for the last 7 or 8 decades. Science does that, you see? It advances. If people think they are "Darwinians," it's less a result of an ignorance of what Darwin said than an ignorance of contemporary biology.
You'll find that the vast majority of biologists, atheist or not, are not "Darwinians" in Stove's sense. Of course, that doesn't mean they don't recognize that evolution is a fact, and that natural selection is one of its primary means. They simply understand that, for example, the fitness of a trait is relative, so that whatever it is about our brains that permits alcoholism may be adaptive, even if it can have bad consequences in some individuals.
The same, of course, may be true of homosexuality, as several biologists have argued, with the idea being that whatever genetic factors that, under particular (mostly prenatal) environmental conditions, lead to homosexuality in some individuals, are, under most conditions, quite adaptive. Currently there are all sorts of theories about the evolutionary origins of homosexuality (especially male homosexuality), and no theory has emerged as the frontrunner, to my knowledge, though kin selection is, I think, on its way out as a contender. Even if it weren't, Stove's representation of it is at best a straw man. The idea behind the kin selection theory of the origins of homosexuality is that gay siblings, because they do not have children of their own (and tend to be more feminine), will help in the raising of their siblings' children. Suicide wouldn't accopmlish that, and self-castration is, as a behavior, both a bit complex for selection (it's easy to mess with sex hormones in development, but you'd have to build a complex self-castration mechanism from scratch) and quite dangerous (knowing what kind of blog this is, I fully expect the response that homosexuality is dangerous to your health too, but that is both a recent and culturally specific fact).
Anyway, the point being, Stove's article shows a bit of ignorance itself, and where it is right, it's not right about what biologists actually think.
posted on 04.25.2006 2:59 AM5
Arguing about darwinism and expecting a result is like trying to move a dead whale by kicking it.
Darwinism is obviously wrong. We didn't need Stove to point that out, although he did so with style. What I don't understand is the attitude on the part of people who should know better (Mr. Thomas, above, obviously excluded from that group) that somehow biological theory has reached the stage where "we know everything we need to know about that particular corner of the universe and our theory just became Fact and Truth."
That's not to say that the ID crowd has done any better. Sloughing off the interesting questions and challenges that bedevil darwinism to a miracle is not useful for science.
Darwinism is a rickety, ramshackle theoretical structure that really needs some new thinking. Unfortunately, we don't have a Darwin around today who is up to the task of doing it. Hence, the fallback position is the current scientific Maginot line laid down by True Believers: believers in materialism who see darwinism as the Hotchkiss with which to shred the Forces of Darkness who want us all to believe that this universe is more than a confluence of extraordinarily unlikely random events.
By the way, I'm amused that academic political correctness has forced some scientists into defending homosexuality, an obvious darwinian dead end, as adaptive. If they keep at it, they may indeed be able to squeeeeeze a couple more dancing angels on the head of that pin. After all, they shoot horses, don't they?
posted on 04.25.2006 7:47 AM6
Great post.
But there's actually quite alot in the term "adaptive" that isn't immediately apparent. It works out, as we get to know more about genetics that many features of a particular behavior are not governed by a single heritable gene.
When Mendel started studying peas he was dealing with features that really were controlled by a single gene (color, wrinkly skin or smooth, etc).
But the "maladaptive" behaviors raised here (penchant for alcohol or homosexuality) are NOT governed by a single gene anyone has been able to locate.
Many such supposedly maladaptive behaviors probably are connected to inheritance, though that is also unclear, but if so, they are probably connected to several other features as well, some of which might in fact be very adaptive, who can say?
As for homosexuality, it is certainly amusing that it comes up everywhere. But trying to bring Darwin to bear on that front it pointless. For starters, plenty of organisms who have same sex sex also have opposite sex sex--humans and many animals alike. And for enders, whatever genes homosexuals are carrying get carried forward by their siblings anyway. The point being, the genes of gay people get carried forward in any case.
Trying to solve the homosexual riddle by exploring natural selection is clearly not going to yield useful results. Gay exists, in various forms and with various social meanings in all human societies anybody has ever studied.
It's view as "sin", if such a thing actually does exist, is dictated by something other than the genome.
c
posted on 04.25.2006 8:10 AM7
Joe usually doesn't do so well with posts about evolution. He tends to repeat the same arguments over and over and is generally deaf to his numerous errors which he never seems to correct despite the fact that a small army of dedicated readers spends a rather large amount of time correcting him. So perhaps it's a good thing that yet another tedious 500 comment evolution article begin on a somewhat new point.
All of these can either shorten our lives or lessen the number of children we have. So why has this “biological error” not been destroyed? According to the ultra-Darwinist, there has “not been enough time.”
Indeed, it is also a good argument against Intelligent Design. After all, why don't some GM cars come off the assembly line with just two wheels instead of four? Because they are designed to have four because two will not sell and GM is designed to make a profit (despite accumulated evidence to the contrary for the last ten years or so).
Anyway there are some good responses to this objection:
1. 'Harmful traits' are not really harmful in the big picture. A fondness for alcohol may seem like a harmful trait but in nature alcohol has a very high energy density. In an environment where food is scarce and difficult to come by (which was the case for maybe 90% of human history and probably even a majority of humans today) it would be a great loss if an animal passed up a chance find of an alcohol rich food source. Also for much of human history alcoholic drinks were probably safer than water. Many traits do have advantages that are hard to see from our perspective as 'intelligent designers'. One of the advantages of natural selection based design is that just about everything will be tried so things that are unexpectedly useful will be stumbled upon. Homosexuality, therefore, might very well have some helpfulness overall even if it does seem bad from the reproductive view of an individual organism.
2. Another variation of this argument is that some harmful traits are indeed harmful but they are part of the tradeoff for some good that is an overall benefit. Mental illness, for example, is obviously harmful and is probably a side effect of having a big, complicated brain. (I do not think worms ever suffer mental illness). However as bad as that side effect may be...for humans at least...having a top of the line brain is more beneficial even if it doese come with the increased risk of mental illness.
3. Time is indeed a potent argument. Many of the traits you cite as evidence are relatively minor problems for the human species. Many of them are also only recently problems. Take people with slow metabolisms. Normally this is a great thing. If you're burning a huge number of calories just standing still how long are you going to make it in a famine? It's only in our super-prosperous culture of ultra-cheap food that the slow metabolism is a harmful trait leading to obesity and other health problems. But how long has this been so in terms of human generations? Two or three at best? Even then we are only talking about maybe 20-30% of the world that is developed. For much of Africa, India and China you're better off with a slow metabolism because you are going to be spending most of your life at some level of starvation.
Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. ‘Every single organic being’, or ‘each organic being’: this means you.
I think you lost me here. Not only does Darwinism not say that every human beign has as many offspring as they could...it doesn't even say this of other species. With offspring there is a tradeoff between the energy and time a species invests in giving their offspring the best possible chance and the time and energy invested in making more offspring. This is seen in human culture where agricultural based societies often have a huge number of children while developed countries have much fewer but put more time and energy into them.
posted on 04.25.2006 8:58 AM8
Joe,
You take this little bit from Stove: "Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does."
I've mulled this over for a bit, and I just don't get it. Darwinism says no such thing. Why in the world would one think that it does? I need this explained to me.
If I understand, Stove charges that Darwinism cannot explain the persistence of malaptive traits over time. This is another straw man, it seems to me. Christ quite eloquently put his finder on the fallacy: "[T]he fitness of a trait is relative, so that whatever it is about our brains that permits alcoholism may be adaptive, even if it can have bad consequences in some individuals." The point is an obvious one, even to one such as me who had very little biology. That Stove seems to have ignored it casts doubt upon his sagacity, his integrity, or both.
posted on 04.25.2006 8:59 AM9
CT,
Trying to solve the homosexual riddle by exploring natural selection is clearly not going to yield useful results. Gay exists, in various forms and with various social meanings in all human societies anybody has ever studied.
Polygamy has been a big topic here because of its (un)relation to the gay marriage debate and in the real world because of HBO's 'Big Love'. One of the interesting problems I read with polygamy is that it creates a surplus male problem. Very simply, say one out of ten men take two wives. For the nine men remaining there are only eight women. There is evidence when the surplus male population is even as low as 5% there is increasing trouble in terms of rising crime and violence from young men. This evidence comes from societies like China and India where the perference for male children combined with population control in China, prenatal tech and abortion has created generations with many more males than females.
A primitive society, though, (which is what we humans have been for about 99% of our history) would probably want as many men as it could tolerate for their muscle power. Having some genes that, say, have a 3-5% chance of making some men gay gives such a society an advantage. It can have a bit more men than the next society without the problems of roudy young men who have no women to hook up with and calm them down. What people often forget is that humans are highly social creatures. Alone in the wilderness a single human is almost laughably hopeless. The idea of a the 'wilderness man' who lives totally alone and off the land like Rambo is mostly a myth. Put a few humans together, though, and what was the most vulnerable animal in nature now becomes the most dangerous.
It's silly to analyze human traits without first recognizing that being a social creature is the most fundamental of human traits. Too much of this reasoning seems to imagine humans being dropped out of some UFO into the wild with various traits assigned to them. The reality was that humans and their immediate ancestors always have been doing their reproducing and evolving in societies.
posted on 04.25.2006 9:13 AM10
As if to prove evolving a human brain doesn't always produce intelligence, George writes:
Darwinism is obviously wrong. We didn't need Stove to point that out, although he did so with style. What I don't understand is the attitude on the part of people who should know better (Mr. Thomas, above, obviously excluded from that group) that somehow biological theory has reached the stage where "we know everything we need to know about that particular corner of the universe and our theory just became Fact and Truth."
People like this deploy the word 'obviously' when they really should say 'I have no idea of anything about this topic but I'd really like it if the truth turned out to be...'. The latter half of the above paragraph drives that point home by demonstrating that our friend does not know what either biologists or evolutionary theory. He will happily wing it and make it up as he goes along.
Darwinism is a rickety, ramshackle theoretical structure that really needs some new thinking. Unfortunately, we don't have a Darwin around today who is up to the task of doing it.
The interesting thing about rickety ramshackle structures is that they tend to be rather old. In other words they have stood the test of time and although they squeek and are rusty you know they have lasted a long time while you have no idea whether your new, plastic thing that you got at Wal-Mart last night will even make it a year. Since George is honest enough to admit he isn't up to the task of coming up with anything better he should grow up and come to terms with evolution.
By the way, I'm amused that academic political correctness has forced some scientists into defending homosexuality, an obvious darwinian dead end, as adaptive. If they keep at it, they may indeed be able to squeeeeeze a couple more dancing angels on the head of that pin. After all, they shoot horses, don't they?
Note the use of the word 'obvious' again. People like George also seem to think the word is also some type of magic spell that refutes arguments without requiring the writer to do anything to refute the arguments. Adding an affiliate link is a nice touch. You demonstrate yourself to have slightly more intelligence than the 'intelligently designed' spam programs bebooping around the net. Another point for evolution and against intelligent design!
posted on 04.25.2006 9:29 AM11
I really appreciate all of your posts on evolution and darwinism. Keep it up.
posted on 04.25.2006 10:05 AM12
I am disbeliever in Evolutionism, but I have to agree with the critics of Stove here. Stove's book is embarrassing and I wish it did not receive the promotion it has gotten. He spends an inordinate amount of time on straw men like infant mortality & lack of reproductive excess in humans (as noted in the comments here) that just don't really get to the heart of the issue. I learned a few things from Stove (mostly related to intellectual & science history - not evolution), but overall it was a waste. And as for his style - "precious" sums it up.
posted on 04.25.2006 10:19 AM13
Chris It's a good thing biology has left "ultra-Darwinism" behind, with a very few (though obviously visible) exceptions, for the last 7 or 8 decades.
Really? If science has discarded “ultra-Darwinism” (i.e., sociobiology, evolutionary psychology), then why don’t any scientists stand up and tell Dawkins, Wilson, et al., to shut up and stop misleading the public about the real finds of biology?
They simply understand that, for example, the fitness of a trait is relative, so that whatever it is about our brains that permits alcoholism may be adaptive, even if it can have bad consequences in some individuals.
That’s a prime example of what Stove was referring to when he was talking about “blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory.” Our brains permit alcoholism? Well, it must be an adaptive trait that has some off-setting benefits. What this does is define away the problem so that no trait, if it still exists in a species, can truly be maladaptive. This is what Stove means when he says that Darwinism can “explain anything.”
Boonton One of the advantages of natural selection based design is that just about everything will be tried so things that are unexpectedly useful will be stumbled upon.
This is another example of something nobody really believes. First of all, there is no evidence that species try “everything” and eventually stumble upon what works. Take food, for example. There are more items in the world that are poisonous than that are nutritious. If we truly tried the “try-everything-and-see” approach to food experimentation we’d have died off long ago.
Homosexuality, therefore, might very well have some helpfulness overall even if it does seem bad from the reproductive view of an individual organism.
Again with blaming the biological fact. Homosexuality contradicts the tenets of the theory therefore their must be some super-secret way that it really fits in – we just don’t know it!
Mental illness, for example, is obviously harmful and is probably a side effect of having a big, complicated brain.
In other words, we have no way to explain why maladaptive traits such as mental illness exists. But in order to save the theory we must assume that it is a beneficial “side effect” of another trait.
Not only does Darwinism not say that every human beign has as many offspring as they could...it doesn't even say this of other species.
In The Origin of Species, p. 66: “…every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers”; and again, pp. 78-9, “each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio”. Now I’m sure you’ll try to spin this to make it seem that “striving to the utmost to increase in numbers” does not really mean “striving to the utmost to increase in numbers.” But that is, in fact, what Darwin said.
Also, as Stove notes:
But it would not have mattered if he had not happened to say in print such things as I have just quoted. For it was always obvious, to everyone who understood his theory, that a universal striving-to-the-utmost-to-increase is an essential part of that theory: in fact it is the very ‘motor’ of evolution, according to the theory. It is the thing which, by creating pressure of population on the supply of food, is supposed to bring about the struggle for life among con-specifics, hence natural selection, and hence evolution. As is well known, and as Darwin himself stated, he had got the idea of population permanently pressing on food, because of the constant tendency to increase, from T. R. Malthus’s Essay on Population (1798).
Franklin The point is an obvious one, even to one such as me who had very little biology. That Stove seems to have ignored it casts doubt upon his sagacity, his integrity, or both.
What you are claiming to be obvious is that natural selection cannot work the way Darwinist claim it does. Let's look at Darwin's definition of natural selection:
Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic. (Origin of Species)
The theory of natural selection says that injurious variations will be rejected. To claim that some maladaptive characteristics slip through because they may have some benefit completely undercuts the theory and makes it null. Either natural selection rejects injurious variations or it doesn’t. To say that it does sometimes and doesn’t other times and we have no way of knowing which is which is a claim that takes the theory out of the realm of science.
Booton It's silly to analyze human traits without first recognizing that being a social creature is the most fundamental of human traits.
And how does this “most fundamental of human traits” arise from natural selection?
14
It's worth it to follow Joe's link to the Wikipedia entry on Stove. Yet again we have Darwin attacked not from science but from philosophy. Darwin spent years in the mud looking at worms and birds' beaks. His philosopher critics spend their time in comfortable chairs playing word games...which is why almost every argument against Darwinism here attacks something that is not actual Darwinism but various philosophy schools that have used evolutionary theory as either inspiration or metaphor.
What is this argument but a word game?
If Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, no species can ever escape from the process of natural selection. His theory is that two universal and permanent tendencies of all species of organisms—the tendency to increase in numbers up to the limit that the food supply allows, and the tendency to vary in a heritable way—are together sufficient to bring about in any species universal and permanent competition for survival, and therefore universal and permanent natural selection among the competitors.
What is the definition of natural selection? That the environment does not favor all sets of traits equally for reproduction. For an organism to remove itself from natural selection it must remove itself from any influence the natural environment has on reproduction. Is this possible? Perhaps if humans lived on space stations or had technology advanced to Star Trek levels or beyond (and only then if you choose a definition of natural that excluded human behavior).
posted on 04.25.2006 10:45 AM15
Jeff He spends an inordinate amount of time on straw men like infant mortality & lack of reproductive excess in humans (as noted in the comments here) that just don't really get to the heart of the issue.
I think the primary problem that people seem to have with Stove is that he takes the theory as it is rather filtered through the Internet-based understanding of the theory. Most people that debate the topic have gleaned their understanding of Darwinism from reading the Internet or perhaps Richard Dawkins. So when Stove starts bashing some of the stuff that Darwin said people laugh it off as “strawmen.” The problem is that this is Darwinism. Most of it actually is based on stuff that no critically thinking person would actually believe.
It’s similar to when I used to debate inerrancy on an atheists’ forum. I used to accuse them of setting up strawmen when they would talk about forms of verbal plenary inspiration that I thought were bogus but turned out to be what many (if not most) inerrentists actually believed.
16
To paraphrase Oakeshotte "The only thing everyone can agree on about the past is that it doesn't exist."
Maybe the young earth creationists and the darwinists would find themselves in greater harmony if they realized they were fighting over a story, not 'reality'.
17
This is another example of something nobody really believes. First of all, there is no evidence that species try “everything” and eventually stumble upon what works. Take food, for example. There are more items in the world that are poisonous than that are nutritious. If we truly tried the “try-everything-and-see” approach to food experimentation we’d have died off long ago.
'We' didn't, life certainly did. Just about everything in this world is eaten by something. There are few, if any, things that life has not stumbled upon a way to digest.
Again with blaming the biological fact. Homosexuality contradicts the tenets of the theory therefore their must be some super-secret way that it really fits in – we just don’t know it!
The tenents of the theory are simply that traits that aid to the overall success of the species will become more prominent and others less so. If one group of animals has 3% homosexuality rates and finds a 10% increase in reproductive advantage then that trait will be perserved, period. Finding out why that happens to be may be very difficult but has nothing to do with contradicting the central tenents of the theory.
In other words, we have no way to explain why maladaptive traits such as mental illness exists. But in order to save the theory we must assume that it is a beneficial “side effect” of another trait.
You're presuming that the healthy big brain came first and then mental illness came later as some type of adaptation. It's much more logical to work with the hypothetisis that big complicated brains are more prone to breaking down but that's ok because when they work they do so much better than simple brains. Look how many bugs are there in any Windows versus the operating system of an old Commodore 64? Millions more probably yet you're not irrational for using a Windows box to write your posts. The bugs in Windows are an acceptable trade off for the many more things you can do with a Windows Box versus a C-64 box.
In The Origin of Species, p. 66: “…every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers”; and again, pp. 78-9, “each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio”. Now I’m sure you’ll try to spin this to make it seem that “striving to the utmost to increase in numbers” does not really mean “striving to the utmost to increase in numbers.” But that is, in fact, what Darwin said.
"each human being strives to make as much money as he can"....does this mean "each human makes as much money as he can"? Do you think that by pointing out that some people make less money than their potential you are being cute and overturning one of the central tenants of economics and business that says people are motivated by money?
Social creatures
And how does this “most fundamental of human traits” arise from natural selection?
Simply, like all other traits. There are numerous examples of species that are social and ones that are not. Evolution does not state that only one strategy can be successful, both have advantages and disadvantages. Whatever the advantages of being non-social they were closed off to humans long before humans were humans. As I pointed out for a human female to reproduce without the aid of other humans is almost certain death. Before we can even begin to talk about whether we think a particular trait may or may not be advantageous to human reproduction we must recognize that such an analysis has to be done in the context of human society. Does a human society with a 3% homosexuality rate facilitate successful reproduction compared to one with a 0% rate, a 25% rate and so on?
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that Joe argues for 'common sense' when thinking about whether or not traits have an evolutionary advantage yet seems to model human reproduction after something like a horse that can give birth alone in the middle of a field and walk away 20 minutes later?
posted on 04.25.2006 11:09 AM18
Joe,
You've made a rather simple (but I suppose predictable) error. When Darwin says that any injurious variation would be destroyed, this must mean that any variation the total effect of which was more injurious than beneficial would be destroyed. This leaves open the possibility that some variation would, in certain circumstances and in certain individuals, prove injurious and yet, since it was more commonly beneficial, be selected for. Perhaps our species potential for alcoholism is like this. Perhaps, that is, there is some trait that, though it sometimes leads to alcoholism and thus to injury, more often proves beneficial and so was selected for. What this might be I have no idea; but I do see clearly that such a thing is a very real possibility.
Granted there is no trait selected for that is always in all individuals injurious. But no one with a lick of sense (and this includes Wilson and Dawkins, of course) supposes that so-called maladaptive traits are like that. Species traits do not always have the same effect in every individual and situation. What is required for selection is not that a trait is always beneficial but that it is more beneficial that harmful; and a trait is called maladaptive not because it is always harmful but b/c in this particular situation, whatever it might be, it proved harmful.
Come now, Joe. You accuse evolutionary biologists, when then talk of maladaptive traits, of a quite elemantary conceptual error. Do you really think that they're so addle-brained as that?
posted on 04.25.2006 11:16 AM19
The theory of natural selection says that injurious variations will be rejected. To claim that some maladaptive characteristics slip through because they may have some benefit completely undercuts the theory and makes it null. Either natural selection rejects injurious variations or it doesn’t. To say that it does sometimes and doesn’t other times and we have no way of knowing which is which is a claim that takes the theory out of the realm of science.
This is a nice example of how much of the criticism of evolution that happens on this blog is not based on science but based on rather sloppy philosophy. A variation that has some disadvantageous but benefits that outweigh them would not be an injurious variation. When Joe says something like a prediliction to alcoholism is an injurious trait he presumes to know quite a bit. He is presuming to not only know what causes alcoholism but more importantly to know that whatever causes it has absolutely no benefits that either individually or collectively outweight the evolutionary disadvantage of the trait. How does Joe know this?
If this was a scientific discussion we'd actually be getting out hands dirty. Looking at various studies that have tried to find what causes alcoholism and seeing if those causes ever do humans any good and how much good if so. Instead 'alcoholism' is treated as just some variation, the actual mechanics are glossed over and ignored. The real game is in playing with the words which is why Joe always does so poorly when he tried to work on evolution. Rather than bringing a tool box to the transmission overhaul he'd bring a paintbrush and wonder why his car remains broke and everyone says he's a crappy artist.
posted on 04.25.2006 11:30 AM20
Franklin When Darwin says that any injurious variation would be destroyed, this must mean that any variation the total effect of which was more injurious than beneficial would be destroyed. This leaves open the possibility that some variation would, in certain circumstances and in certain individuals, prove injurious and yet, since it was more commonly beneficial, be selected for.
Let me begin by noting two things about this point: (1) It could be true. (2) It isn’t science, its circular reasoning.
According to the theory of natural selection, any injurious variation would be destroyed. If a variation wasn’t destroyed, then in order save the theory, we have to assume that it must have been more beneficial than injurious otherwise it would not have been selected for. What this does is claim that all traits are, in some sense beneficial since otherwise we couldn’t have them.
Now I’m not saying that this isn’t true. I’m just saying that when most reasonable people hear this they rightfully scoff. For example, a propensity to rape would be an obvious beneficial trait since it not only still around (therefore selected for) but aids in furthering the genetic information of the individual (the selfish gene stuff). But not too many people are willing to admit that the desire to rape is a "beneficial trait."
Species traits do not always have the same effect in every individual and situation. What is required for selection is not that a trait is always beneficial but that it is more beneficial that harmful; and a trait is called maladaptive not because it is always harmful but b/c in this particular situation, whatever it might be, it proved harmful.
Species don’t have traits; individuals do. When we refer to “species’ traits” we are simply talking about the traits exhibited by the majority of the individuals within that species. So while it is true that not every trait affects the individual the same (having one abortion doesn’t necessarily stop a woman from having other children), the effect is at the individual level. But you imply that the affect must be more beneficial than harmful at the individual level, which seems, on the face of it, absurd and contrary to Darwin’s theory.
What your definition is saying is that all traits are beneficial unless they are not selected for. Since ever trait has been selected for it must, ipso facto, be beneficial. Am I missing something? Is this not the logical outcome of your supposition?
You accuse evolutionary biologists, when then talk of maladaptive traits, of a quite elementary conceptual error. Do you really think that they're so addle-brained as that?
Well, yes, actually, I do. I think overlooking the conceptual error is necessary in order to save the appearances. We all have blind spots in our thinking that cause us to ignore certain details that do not fit into our broader worldview.
Typically, this in not a problem since most people admit that a large portion of their belief system is not based on strictly empirical epistemic verification (i.e., they can’t prove it scientifically). It is one thing, for example, to have a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible that is predicated on believing that manuscripts that no longer exist were error-free. This is a religious belief rooted in faith. It is quite another thing, though, for “ultra-Darwinists” to make faith-based claims that are supposedly rooted in empirical science.
21
According to the theory of natural selection, any injurious variation would be destroyed. If a variation wasn’t destroyed, then in order save the theory, we have to assume that it must have been more beneficial than injurious otherwise it would not have been selected for. What this does is claim that all traits are, in some sense beneficial since otherwise we couldn’t have them.
Ahhhh here comes the sloppy philosophy as opposed to science. Yes if what appears to be an injurious trait is not destroyed the theory tells us that the trait should actually be beneficial (or at least neutral). Likewise if we observe a small star only a kilometer wide standing still while a huge star orbits it the theory of gravity tells us the small star must be very very dense.
This is where the philosophy ends and the science begins. If a space probe is sent to the small star it will either report back that the star is very dense or not. If the former then the theory is confirmed if the latter then the theory has a problem (possibly fatal but not necessarily).
Now I’m not saying that this isn’t true. I’m just saying that when most reasonable people hear this they rightfully scoff. For example, a propensity to rape would be an obvious beneficial trait since it not only still around (therefore selected for) but aids in furthering the genetic information of the individual (the selfish gene stuff). But not too many people are willing to admit that the desire to rape is a "beneficial trait."
Perhaps your problem here is just linguistic confusion. In evolutionary theory beneficial has a very specific definition while in everyday conversation beneficial has a much broader definition. Using the specific definition there is no easy way to determine a priori whether or not the desire is beneficial or not. IMO it is probably beneficial when combined with a social taboo against rape. To really know, though, you'd actually have to do some science...even if it is just a computer simulation of virtual rape-desiring organisms versus non-desiring ones.
What Joe is calling circular reasoning is just the theory making a prediction. If a trait seems injurious it either must be in the process of being destroyed over the generations OR it has a benefit that redeems it. IF YOU LOOK YOU SHOULD FIND ONE OR THE OTHER.
Of course here on this blog we don't really look but just use our creative writing skills to come up with a hypothesis but scientifically we would rightly be expected to back up our assertions with evidence.
What your definition is saying is that all traits are beneficial unless they are not selected for. Since ever trait has been selected for it must, ipso facto, be beneficial. Am I missing something? Is this not the logical outcome of your supposition?
No logically if the theory is true the prediction is true. Before we declare the search over for any benefit, though, due diligence requires us to ask if we were really comprehensive. When you start shooting off very complicated traits that are difficult to nail down (propensity for alcoholism, homosexuality etc.) you are glossing over what are actually very complicated subjects and traits that are anything but simple.
posted on 04.25.2006 1:01 PM22
Joe Carter: According to the theory of natural selection, any injurious variation would be destroyed. If a variation wasn’t destroyed, then in order save the theory, we have to assume that it must have been more beneficial than injurious otherwise it would not have been selected for. What this does is claim that all traits are, in some sense beneficial since otherwise we couldn’t have them. Now I’m not saying that this isn’t true. I’m just saying that when most reasonable people hear this they rightfully scoff. For example, a propensity to rape would be an obvious beneficial trait since it not only still around (therefore selected for) but aids in furthering the genetic information of the individual (the selfish gene stuff). But not too many people are willing to admit that the desire to rape is a "beneficial trait."
Okay - time to return to biology. Consider the example of sickle cell trait - not too nice a disease to have if you happen to inherit two copies of the sickle cell allele from your parents, but very beneficial for the parents, as it protects them from malaria. Or, variants that cause cystic fibrosis - again, not so good for individuals who inherit multiple alleles, but beneficial for individuals with one allele because it affords some protection against dysentery. These are both examples of "injurious variation" that is retained in the population by selection for individuals carrying one allele.
And, FYI, your example of rape is already in book form: Palmer and Thornhill, A Natural History Of Rape: Biological Basis Of Sexual Coercion (MIT Press)
posted on 04.25.2006 2:40 PM23
Amazed;
Just so you'll know. Young earth creationists would tell you that the Grand Canyon was the result of runoff from the great flood. Enough volume of water moving fast enough will cut rock and it doesn't take all that much time.
24
It really is very, very, odd that Homosexuality keeps coming up in a blog about Jesus, don't you think?
Is the less than 2% of people that are gay more of a threat to Christianity than say...Islamist extremists? You would think so, if you listen to Christian pastors.
This week is the Anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. The extermination of Christians by Muslims. Namely by the Ottoman Empire, who's modern State is our ally of today, Turkey, who still refuses to recognize that it happened in the first place. And in fact, a recent member of the US State Dept. was reprimanded a few months ago for even bringing the Genocide up in public speech -while speaking to Armenians.
But its a good thing our intrepid Christianists in the USA are on the case eh? We wouldn't want something like a Christian Genocide to happen again would we? Like say.... in Darfur? About which our Government, lead by a conservative Evangelical Christian, has done very little?
But thats all right, I understand. Its difficult to see what the average Joe Q. Christian can do about the massacres of Christians in Darfur.
Its a very tough and hard problem. That's why its oh-so-much-easier to spend so much time obsessing about a small group of unpopular people who can't do very much to fight back and protect themselves from you. Now there is a problem that can be addressed...
Bah.
posted on 04.25.2006 3:02 PM25
Boonton:
Beyond some obvious personal editorial tics of yours, It's not obvious to me what you were trying to get across.
Obviously, if rusty old theories that "squeek" are the tried and true theories, and the new "Wal-Mart" theories are here today and gone tomorrow, Aristotle must be raising a glass - wherever he is - looking for his resurgence. His theories obviously stood the test of centuries, until "cheep" (I'm trying to stick with your lead here) shots like Newton and, well, that upstart Wal-Mart theoretician Darwin came along. But I obviously don't know very much about "Wal-Mart science" - in fact, the concept is a new one to me - and I defer to your obvious authority.
On the Queer Evolutionary Theory debate, what point is there to refute? Homosexuals are going to be obviously disadvantaged, to put it in the mildest possible terms, in passing on any genetic traits whatosever. (Perhaps that has escaped your notice) Now there may be some people who claim it's obvious that "...being a social creature is the most fundamental of human traits", [emphasis added] but that is merely asserting the existence of another angel on the head of the pin. Without, obviously, even bothering do explain the sense in which "most fundamental" is used. For example, one could argue, and I think quite reasonably, that any number of human traits are prerequisite to any sort of uniquely human social order. In that case, the social trait cannot be the "most" fundamental. Obviously, we disagree here.
posted on 04.25.2006 3:15 PM26
Michael Okay - time to return to biology.
Careful, Michael, we don’t want to sully the theory by mixing in biological facts. ; )
These are both examples of "injurious variation" that is retained in the population by selection for individuals carrying one allele.
You’re absolutely right. And I completely agree that we can find, contra the theory, such examples. The problem is that for theories of natural selection to have any predictive value, they have to be able to filter out the noise. But the options for any trait that has been “selected for” are:
1) It is beneficial (or at least harmless).
2) It is maladaptive but either is in some other respects beneficial.
3) Enough time has not passed for natural selection to have rooted out the maladaptive trait.
4) Natural selection allows both beneficial and maladaptive traits.
The problem is that unless #2 is clear, we can’t tell the difference between #3 (which saves the theory) and #4 (which disconfirms it). Obviously, in order to retain the universality of the theory we have to choose #3. In doing so, though, we make it all but useless for making predictions (i.e., doing empirical science).
And, FYI, your example of rape is already in book form: Palmer and Thornhill, A Natural History Of Rape: Biological Basis Of Sexual Coercion (MIT Press)
While I couldn’t remember the title of that book, I chose rape because of the controversy that erupted when that issue came out. (I do remember the authors saying something about how women should dress in a way that doesn’t provoke this natural trait.) Oddly, the authors also tried to make a claim that while rape is, in a sense, natural (and least naturally selected for) it was immoral.
But isn’t our morality also created by natural selection? If not, where did it come from? And the tendency to rape and the moral qualms against it were both selected for, which should take precedence? The problem with considering evolutionary answers as ultimate is that we eventually have to resort to special pleading in order to justify morality.
Patrick But thats all right, I understand. Its difficult to see what the average Joe Q. Christian can do about the massacres of Christians in Darfur.
The problem isn't that the problem is Darfur is difficult to solve, its that no one really has an interest in doing anything to stop it. Remember how many people complained about Bush, Sr. leaving Saddam in power to terrorize his people? Those same people were the first to complain when we liberated Iraq.
We could send troops into Darfur and stop the genocide. But as soon as we do the Left and Right would join hands in condeming our "unwarranted military intervention."
27
Hi, Joe, when I first heard Stove's critique of Darwinism, in the article you linked, I thought that it was a bit of a strawman myself, but I don't any longer. He's simply being more consistent with Darwinism that most Darwinists care to be.
When faced with behavior or traits that are common in the human population, but seem unhelpful or even destructive to one's own survival and reproduction, the Darwinist has two possible options. The first option is to assert that we have somehow escaped the constraints of natural selection. The idea here is that we have become so smart that now we can act based on logic and reason, instead of being natural selection-programmed drones.
As Stove points out, this option is a non-starter. If one is a consistent Darwinist, then one must accept that the driving force behind all traits that spread through a population is reproduction. Your brain must have been built, piece by piece, behavioral tendency by behavioral tendency, as a result of increased reproductive value. All of your behaviors must be the result of Darwinian programming and learning algorithms responding to environmental input in predefined ways. In whole and in part, every organism must be a reproduction machine, every fiber of its being dictated by the reproductive success of previous generations. The idea that some sort of autonomous reasoning that escapes this has poofed into existence is a species of magical thinking, and is inconsistent. It's an attempt to illegitimately borrow from teleology, where reason is an irreducible, autonomous cause of its own. This might be an option for a theistic evolutionist, who mixes in a little Darwinism with a little real teleology, and thus doesn't expect a fully Darwinian explanation for life, but it's an incoherent option for a consistent Darwinist. What we call reasoning, under this view, can only be the sum total of our Darwinian programming operating on our environment.
If trying to allow for seemingly anti-reproductive and anti-survival behaviors by claiming that we have escaped natural selection is incoherent, then what other options are there? There is only one: to insist that our seemingly anti-Darwinian traits really *are* conducive to reproduction after all, and it just isn't apparent to us for some reason.
But at this point, as you say, we're no longer doing empirical science. This amounts to a non-empirical, metaphysical premise that anything about us that exists is ultimately the result of natural selection, whether we can see any evidence of it or not. Note that this position actually reverses the direction of rational inquiry. Rational inquiry normally proceeds thus: First we see some phenomenon that needs an explanation, then we examine the phenomenon closely on its own terms and gather data to figure out exactly what it is and what about it needs an explanation, and finally we attempt to come up with an explanation that is up to the task of explaining what needs to be explained and takes into account the observed reality.
This position, however, proceeds in the opposite direction. Instead of examining an observed reality and taking it for what it is, and then working backwards to an explanation that's up to the task, this path starts with an explanation, and when faced with phenomena that appear to contradict it, declares that those phenomena must not be what they appear.
The homosexuality thing is a good example. There's not a shred of evidence that the trait is or could ever be beneficial overall to an individual passing on their genes, via their siblings or not. None. It appears just the opposite, which is why it's a difficult issue for sociobiology in the first place. In fact, none of the attempts to model mathematically how such a trait could be spread Darwinistically have worked. The only evidence that it is so is that if Darwinism is an exhaustive and true explanation, then it must be so. Rather than fitting an explanation to the thing that needs to be explained, the explanandum is being force-fitted or eliminated to fit an acceptable explanation.
One last thing that bears pointing out is this: to be a good sociobiologist you must be a philosophical naturalist, not just a methodological naturalist. A methodological naturalist is someone who says that science can only consider material explanations, but doesn't necessarily believe that materialism is true in reality. Hence, someone who is merely a MNist, but not a PNist, shouldn't have any problem with the idea that some biological traits are not actually the result of natural selection. They, of course, would think that most other possible causes were outside the sphere of science to investigate, but they wouldn't feel the need to claim that seemingly anti-Darwinian traits were really Darwinian after all, when there was no compelling empirical evidence that such is the case. They could happily grant that while Darwinism explains a number of things, it just doesn't apply to some areas, as physicists did with Newtonian physics at the beginning of last century. I think it's safe to say that anybody who claims that they are not a philosophical materialist, but buys into sociobiology's various explanations, is deluding themselves or others.
posted on 04.25.2006 3:36 PM28
On the Queer Evolutionary Theory debate, what point is there to refute? Homosexuals are going to be obviously disadvantaged, to put it in the mildest possible terms, in passing on any genetic traits whatosever. (Perhaps that has escaped your notice) Now there may be some people who claim it's obvious that "...being a social creature is the most fundamental of human traits", [emphasis added] but that is merely asserting the existence of another angel on the head of the pin. Without, obviously, even bothering do explain the sense in which "most fundamental" is used. For example, one could argue, and I think quite reasonably, that any number of human traits are prerequisite to any sort of uniquely human social order. In that case, the social trait cannot be the "most" fundamental. Obviously, we disagree here.
My point here is that you cannot make judgements about which traits are advantageous or disadvantageous unless you look at them in combination with our other traits. A worm with a brain equal to a humans is probably at an evolutionary disadvantage (human brains require a relatively large amount of energy, like trying to run a motorcycle with a Mack Truck motor). Humans are social animals so if homosexuality is an evolutionary trait it has to be looked at in that light. I understand that it is much more complicated than just looking at a human individual but sometimes reality is complicated, sometimes you have to use calculus even though you'd rather solve all problems with arithmatic.
Now I laid out a hypothetical showing how homosexuality could be an evolutionary advantage. If you want to bash me for not having data to back that up you are totally right. Such hypotheticals will just be speculation until someone rolls up their sleeves and starts collecting data and making sense of it. But that's not what you are trying to do. You are trying to cut your way to the front of the line by making unsupported assertions...dropping 'obviously' or 'common sense' as if they were get out of jail free cards.
Joe:
The problem is that unless #2 is clear, we can’t tell the difference between #3 (which saves the theory) and #4 (which disconfirms it). Obviously, in order to retain the universality of the theory we have to choose #3. In doing so, though, we make it all but useless for making predictions (i.e., doing empirical science).
Errr no Joe, to save the theory you have to demonstrate #3 and disprove #4. Those who argue, for example, that homosexuality has evolutionary benefits are expected to produce evidence. Not simply announce that #3 is to be choosen because it 'saves the theory'.
On the flip side if you're going to argue against natural selection you should be expected to demonstrate your results. Show us why and how a trait that in your opinion is evolutionary injurious is somehow protected and is able to survive even after thousands or millions of generations.
But isn’t our morality also created by natural selection? If not, where did it come from? And the tendency to rape and the moral qualms against it were both selected for, which should take precedence? The problem with considering evolutionary answers as ultimate is that we eventually have to resort to special pleading in order to justify morality.
There you go again, tossing philosophy into a discussiona bout science. Who said that evolution's answers were 'ultimate'? Say for the sake of the argument that a particular belief may in fact have some sort of genetic basis and even has an evolutionary advantage? What moral advantage does that give it? None unless you believe that morality is solely decided by the criteria of natural selection...but that is not a question that can be studied emperically. At best science can tell you rape may or may not give you a certain percentage increase in seeing your genes spread. That alone says nothing about whether that is a good thing or if it is if it trumps the harm of rape.
29
When faced with behavior or traits that are common in the human population, but seem unhelpful or even destructive to one's own survival and reproduction, the Darwinist has two possible options. The first option is to assert that we have somehow escaped the constraints of natural selection. The idea here is that we have become so smart that now we can act based on logic and reason, instead of being natural selection-programmed drones.
Errrr, note the error here? When we encounter a trait that seems unhelpful? Don't we have to confirm that the trait is actually unhelpful before we can conclude it is? Notice how the critics here gloss over that. Don't break a sweat guys.
If trying to allow for seemingly anti-reproductive and anti-survival behaviors by claiming that we have escaped natural selection is incoherent, then what other options are there? There is only one: to insist that our seemingly anti-Darwinian traits really *are* conducive to reproduction after all, and it just isn't apparent to us for some reason.
What exactly does 'escaping from natural selection' mean? When you really think about it, it can only mean something like traits will never have any impact on reproductive success. Do you have a serious argument that statement somehow reflects the present condition of humanity? Even the fictional condition of humanity in, say , Star Trek or Star Wars?
What objective evidence do you have the humans have, on a whole anti-reproductive or anti-survival traits considering that humans have done quite a bit of surviving and reproducing? Or are you just going to point out that some traits seem anti-reproductive or anti-survival without bothering to show they really are?
The homosexuality thing is a good example. There's not a shred of evidence that the trait is or could ever be beneficial overall to an individual passing on their genes, via their siblings or not. None. It appears just the opposite, which is why it's a difficult issue for sociobiology in the first place. In fact, none of the attempts to model mathematically how such a trait could be spread Darwinistically have worked. The only evidence that it is so is that if Darwinism is an exhaustive and true explanation, then it must be so. Rather than fitting an explanation to the thing that needs to be explained, the explanandum is being force-fitted or eliminated to fit an acceptable explanation.
So when we encounter a small star that seems to have enough gravity to command a huge star we conclude the star must be very dense because that is consistent with the theory of gravity. Is that also 'force fitting'? If not, why not?
posted on 04.25.2006 4:29 PM30
Actually Patrick the Christian Genocide has already occured in Southern Sudan though it was called a civil war. Now that they're also killing animists and black skinned Muslims as well as Christians in Darfur it's getting a little more notice.
posted on 04.25.2006 4:37 PM31
The idea behind the kin selection theory of the origins of homosexuality is that gay siblings, because they do not have children of their own (and tend to be more feminine), will help in the raising of their siblings' children.
But that's nothing but speculation. There's not a shred of hard, testable science to support it (nor could there ever be), yet journalists and other constantly say that the claims of evolutionists are "science" while the claims of ID are not.
Indeed, what's happening with that statement (and many like it) is taking a preexisting belief (Darwinism, evolution, natural seclection, whatever) and shoehorning a problem to fit into it, no matter how unscientific or nonsensical the "solution" might be.
It's not examining the evidence and coming to a conclusion; it's having a conclusion and interpreting all the evidence to fit into it.
posted on 04.25.2006 5:00 PM32
Joe Carter wrote:
"But the options for any trait that has been “selected for” are:
1) It is beneficial (or at least harmless).
2) It is maladaptive but either is in some other respects beneficial.
3) Enough time has not passed for natural selection to have rooted out the maladaptive trait.
4) Natural selection allows both beneficial and maladaptive traits."
To which Boonton replied:
"to save the theory you have to demonstrate #3 and disprove #4."
How can you demonstrate #3 when it states specifically that not enough time has passed for natural selection to demonstrate whether a trait is maladaptive?
How is it possible to disprove #4 when whatever traits exist in populations have been selected for?
Boonton, I've noticed that in this thread you've accused Joe of resorting to phiolosophy because science doesn't support his position. If I'm reading him correctly I think you misunderstand the nature of his complaint about natural slection as science; it's circular logic (whatever trait is selected for survives, whatever trait survives is selected for). You can't attack circular logic with science, you have to use rhetoric.
33
Gee, never heard of that Grand Canyon thingie. You sure it exists? I bet you Darwinists made it up.
I love it when folks trot out elementary-school exhibit 1 as the Ultimate Argument. Geez, golly-gosh, guess I'm gonna have to go re-think it all, now, 'cuz I never thought "What about the Grand Canyon?" when I was trying to account for the red-shift data and radiometrics.
There are data which are very hard to reconcile with what I know must be the case. There are data which are very hard to reconcile with what Darwinists, neo-Darwinists, and others of views different from mine claim is actually the case. That's fine.
What I have never seen are data which constrain me to eliminate my view in favor of another, and re-hashing the old Charles Lyell (in whose day "evolution" actually meant un-ending, non-progressive change which demonstrated the eternity of matter) geology approach sure as heck ain't gonna do it.
Cheers,
PGE
34
Joe CarterYou’re absolutely right. And I completely agree that we can find, contra the theory, such examples. The problem is that for theories of natural selection to have any predictive value, they have to be able to filter out the noise. But the options for any trait that has been “selected for” are:
1) It is beneficial (or at least harmless).
2) It is maladaptive but either is in some other respects beneficial.
3) Enough time has not passed for natural selection to have rooted out the maladaptive trait.
4) Natural selection allows both beneficial and maladaptive traits.
The problem is that unless #2 is clear, we can’t tell the difference between #3 (which saves the theory) and #4 (which disconfirms it). Obviously, in order to retain the universality of the theory we have to choose #3. In doing so, though, we make it all but useless for making predictions (i.e., doing empirical science).
But most examples of variability are in fact evidence of point #2. In the case of most "injurious" variation, they also have a beneficial effect in a different context - I think many people miss the context-dependent effects that variation can have. Its one of the key tenets of evolutionary theory - not only that you have variation, but that there are pressures that act to select for or against certain variations. These pressures usually come about because of some change of context - change in food supply, change in climate, change in habitat, etc.
I think we do need to inject a little more biological reality into these discussions. I'm confident that modern evolutionary theory is up to the challenge...
posted on 04.25.2006 7:35 PM35
Terry
Boonton, I've noticed that in this thread you've accused Joe of resorting to phiolosophy because science doesn't support his position. If I'm reading him correctly I think you misunderstand the nature of his complaint about natural slection as science; it's circular logic (whatever trait is selected for survives, whatever trait survives is selected for). You can't attack circular logic with science, you have to use rhetoric.
This isn't circular logic but a prediction. Traits that survive have an evolutionary benefit. Show me a trait that is surviving, that is not in the process of getting wiped out and if you look hard enough you should find a benefit of that trait.
Likewise, show me a star moving in a circle and the theory of gravity tells us that somewhere inside that circle is something massive enough to have captured a star in orbit.
Now if you explore every inch inside that circle and find nothing then the theory of gravity has a problem. If you have an injurious trait and you demonstrate that it is not being weeded out by natural selection then the trait should have some benefit that redeems it. Go look for it and see if you can find it. If you prove that it does not then indeed the theory has a problem just as the theory of gravity has a problem if you prove the star is not orbiting anything with mass.
36
Someone must have said:
It's easy to disagree with a theory about which you know little. It's very difficult to agree completely with a theory about which you know quite a lot.
There's a corollary:
It's even easier to disagree with a theory when you study the version published 150 years ago by a single author.
PGE: I enjoyed your remarks very much. It's wonderful to see such clear thinking from a YEC (that's meant sincerely, without snark).
posted on 04.25.2006 10:00 PM37
A lot of talk about homosexuality and Darwinism. Stove is wrong because he forgets that a complex trait like homosexuality is multigenic and that each gene has several alleles (forms of the genes). Yes, when all the alleles are for absolute homosexuality, that individual and that COMBINATION of alleles would be eliminated. BUT, in other combinations, those alleles could end up being beneficial. The analysis is explained in the following abstract of a scientific paper. Too bad Stove and the author of the post doesn't bother to read the scintific literature. For anyone interested in actually KNOWING what evolution and Darwinism is, and what research has been done on a topic within evolution, the place to start is PubMed. Just google "PubMed" and it'll be right at the top. Now the article and abstract:
Arch Sex Behav 2000 Feb;29(1):1-34 Homosexuality, birth order, and evolution: toward an equilibrium reproductive economics of homosexuality.Miller EM.Department of Economics and Finance, University of New Orleans, Louisiana 70148,USA. emmef@uno.edu
"The survival of a human predisposition for homosexuality can be explained by sexual orientation being a polygenetic trait that is influenced by a number of genes. During development these shift male brain development in the female direction. Inheritance of several such alleles produces homosexuality. Single alleles make for greater sensitivity, empathy, tender mindedness, and kindness.These traits make heterosexual carriers of the genes better fathers and more attractive mates. There is a balanced polymorphism in which the feminizing effect of these alleles in heterosexuals offsets the adverse effects (on reproductive success) of these alleles' contribution to homosexuality. A similar effect probably occurs for genes that can produce lesbianism in females. The whole system survives because it serves to provide a high degree of variabilityamong the personalities of offspring, providing the genotype with diversification and reducing competition among offspring for the same niches. An allele with a large effect can survive in these circumstances in males, but it is less likely to survive in females. The birth order effect on homosexuality is probably a by-product of a biological mechanism that shifts personalities more in the feminine direction in the later born sons, reducing the probability of these sons engaging in unproductive competition with each other."
posted on 04.25.2006 11:03 PM38
Paul Lucas: The statement you just quoted is all great. The only problem with it is that it is speculation, not fact. Which is sort of the point of what Joe is saying. The explanation is driving the interpretation of the hard data, not the other way around.
posted on 04.25.2006 11:15 PM39
Thanks for the post Joe. My personal favorite is the commentator who thinks that because this is a philosophical complaint it is irrelevant to science....Priceless.
One bit of related information is that experimental results have indicated that even beneficial mutations conspire against each other meaning that adding 2 beneficial mutations together in an organism reduces fitness. So even examples of 'positive' adaptions are dubious support for natural selection.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0404125101v1
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5701/1547
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5701/1492
40
I have trouble with the author's contention that
"that “any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.” This is one of the essential ideas of natural selection "
First, I can't find that phrase in Chapter 4 in the 6th edition. A page # is necessary. It's obviously a sentence fragment torn out of context.
I do find several sentences like this:
" Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of variations in some way advantageous, which consequently endure. Owing to the high geometrical rate of increase of all organic beings, each area is already fully stocked with inhabitants; and it follows from this, that as the favoured forms increase in number, so, generally, will the less favoured decrease and become rare." pg 85
So, the claim that "This is one of the essential ideas of natural selection " is false and a deliberate strawman. The author (and Stove) apparently forget that modern Darwinism is neo-Darwinism or Darwin modified by data and the Modern Synthesis in the 1940s. There is one way that a deleterious trait can be "fixed" in a population -- fixed meaning that every individual will have it. This is by genetic drift, which is essentially chance. The equations -- derived from Mendelian genetics -- are very clear:
Kimura and then Li and Gauer derived the probability of an allele being fixed in the population. The probability of fixation of an allele A2 where the fitness of the genotypes are: A1A1 = 1, A1A2 = 1 +s, and A2A2 = 1 +2s is (s = the selection coefficient; beneficial alleles have a positive s and deleterious alleles have a negative s):
P = 1 - e^2Nsq/1 - e^-4Nq where e = the base of natural logarithms = 2.718, N = effective population size, s = selection coefficient, and q = the initial frequency of the allele in the population. For a mutation, q = 1/2N
Where s = 0 (genetic drift) then the equation reduces to P = 1/2N. The influence on fixation is obvious. Double the population and you halve the probability. Any N > 50 really reduces P. Now, if you have N = 1,000 and the selective advantage is small at s = 0.01 and A2 is a mutation so that its initial frequency is 1/2000, then P = 0.02. However, increase N to 10,000 and P goes down to 0.013.
Where N is large (>100) and s is positive, then P = 2s
Notice that, even with a deleterious mutation of s = -0.001, there is still a probability of 0.00004 that the allele will become fixed. D. Futuym, Evolutionary Biology, 4th Edition, pg 393.
Now, let's look at the poster's list of traits that he thinks should have been eliminated:
Abortion. Remember, what is of interest is the number of kids that reach breeding age! Not just number of kids. If a woman has more kids that she can support, THEY ALL DIE. Abortion allows greater reproductive success by limiting the number of kids to those that can be fed, clothed, etc. until they reach breeding age.
Adoption; up until recently, most adoption was of KIN. So raising relatives that have your genes gives those genes survival. This increases if the couple cannot have children of their own.
Fondness for alcohol: This is a two-edged sword. Some fondness for alcohol, especially among women, lowers inhibitions and increases the number of times they have sex. This in turn increases the number of kids they have. Now, a true alcolic will die "young". But that is in the late 20s or early 30s at the earliest. However, in non-modern societies, they've already had their children by then. So natural selection can't "see" this.
Susceptibility to aneurism. Again, aneurisms only appear after age 50! Up until this century, the average lifespan was 35. What's more, women especially have all the kids they are going to have by 50. So this too is invisible to natural selection.
Altruism. A LOT of work has been done on this and how natural selection can favor this, especially when altruism helps kin survival (as it always will in small clans where everyone is a relative). Can the author (and Stover) be so ignorant of this work? Stover knows of E.O. Wilson, can he be ignorant that most of Wilson's work is in this area.
Anal intercourse. LOL! If this were the ONLY type of intercourse done, then yes. However, even if it is done 50% of the time, the remaining vaginal intercourse is enough to reliably get a woman pregnant if there is regular intercourse -- 3-4 times a week.
Respect for ancestors. I can't figure how this would lower reproduction. In fact, keeping elders around in a primitive tribe actually helps child survival by having extra hands to help raise the kids.
The love of animals. Does he mean sodomy? Otherwise, loving animals -- especially domesticated ones -- increases the food supply and thus reproductive success.
The importance attached to art. How does this interfere with sexual activity and raising kids? JS Bach would be amused to think that he had fewer kids because of the importance he attached to musicl
Asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever. Only sexual asceticism is going to affect reproductive success. It is being noted that restriction of calories extends life! I notice that the Catholic Church has been having trouble getting priests and nuns. Could it be that this is because the tendency to be celibate (the only ascetism that would be evolutionarily deleterious) has been reduced in the population? Stover talks about Darwinists ignoring facts. It appears that Stover is doing so here (as well as elsewhere).
Like so many attacks on Darwinism, this one is based on strawmen and ignorance.
posted on 04.25.2006 11:38 PM41
More strawmen:
"If Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, no species can ever escape from the process of natural selection. His theory is that two universal and permanent tendencies of all species of organisms—the tendency to increase in numbers up to the limit that the food supply allows, and the tendency to vary in a heritable way—are together sufficient to bring about in any species universal and permanent competition for survival, and therefore universal and permanent natural selection among the competitors."
Technology allows for artificial birth control methods. However, even before that our BRAINS allow us to CHOOSE how and when we have sex. It turns out that, the wealthier you are, the more children cost you economically. So rich folks have fewer kids. They use rhythm, withdrawal, and abstinence to reduce the number of pregnancies to keep the number of children to that which they can afford.
What Stove has done is take an ATYPICAL MODERN situation and tried to tell us it applies to all human history! Nonsense. Except for the past 100 years, humans have lived a Darwinian existence.
" Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. ‘Every single organic being’, or ‘each organic being’: this means you."
The author has noted that the world's population is increasing, hasn't he? Apparently he is speaking of WESTERN CULTURE in the last 50 years, which is NOT typical of human history.
In answer to his question, yes, I do. Charles and Emma Darwin had 13 kids -- about the maximum a woman can produce during childbearing years. Of course, 5 of them died. NOTE THAT.
Both my sets of grandparents on my father's side had 12-13 children. In both cases 2 died in infancy.
Now, during most of our history, yes, humans did fit Darwin's description of natural selection. Infant mortality was high. MOTHER mortality was high -- lots of women died in childbirth. So while men could father 12 or more children by different mates, it was rare for a woman to be able to deliver more than 3 or 4 before she died. Infant mortality was so high that even in the 1400s in Europe, children were not treated as people until they were 5. They were too likely to die before then and people protected themselves emotionally by refusing to get attached.
What's more, because of disease and poor nutrition, human lifespan was about 30 or less. So, the period from puberty to end of life in order to have kids was less.
However, world population is increasing, despite rigorous birth control measures. Of course, if you have 10 kids and only 3 survive to adulthood (typical in the Roman empire), having 3 kids who will surive to adulthood is the same thing.
So far, our technology has managed to keep resources in MOST of the world ahead of population. Everyone knows we can't continue that forever, and then once again we will be competing for scarce resources.
42
JOe Carter: "The problem is that for theories of natural selection to have any predictive value, they have to be able to filter out the noise. But the options for any trait that has been “selected for” are:
1) It is beneficial (or at least harmless).
2) It is maladaptive but either is in some other respects beneficial.
3) Enough time has not passed for natural selection to have rooted out the maladaptive trait.
4) Natural selection allows both beneficial and maladaptive traits.
The problem is that unless #2 is clear, we can’t tell the difference between #3 (which saves the theory) and #4 (which disconfirms it). "
Yes, we can. Remember, each gene has TWO ALLELES in people. What we are looking at is heterozygote fitness. If you have alleles A and a, the homozygotes are AA and aa. The heteorzygote is Aa. If the heterozygote (or polygenic zygote if the trait has several genes) is greater than the homozygote, then the "deleterious" allele will be kept in the population. Mendelian genetics even let us calculate the frequency (fraction of individuals who carry the allele) of that allele.
Douglas Futuyma Evolutionary Biology, pages 384-385.
"If the heterozygote has higher fitness than either homzygote, both alleles are necessarily propagated in successive generations, in which, of course, union of gametes yields all three genotypes among the zygotes. Heterozygote advantage is also termed overdominance or heterosis for fitness. If the fitness of AA, AB, and BB are 1-s, 1, and 1-t respectively, selection wil bring the allele frequences from any initial value to the stable equilibrium
p = t/(s+t, q = s/(s+t) where p and q are the equilibrium frequencies of A and B respectively. The equilibrium frequencies of the alleles and genotypes thus depend on the balance of fitness of the two homozygotes."
"Single locus heterozygote advantage has been documented in a few cases, including WAtt's study of PGI in Colias butterflies. The best known case is is the beta-hemoglobin locus in some African and Mediterranean human populations. One allele at the locus is normal hemoglogine, the other allele is for sickle-cell hemoglobin (S) ... The relative finesses have been estimated as W(aa) = 0.89, W(as) =1, W(ss) =0.2 [where aa is homozygote normal and as is heterozygote, and ss is homozygote sickle
cell]. The heterozygote advantage therefore arises from a balance of opposing selective factors: anemia and malaria. In the absence of malaria, balancing selection yields to directional selection, because then the AA genotype has the highest fitness. In the African-American population, the frequency of S is about 0.05 and is declining due to mortality."
NOTICE that we have a DECLINE of a deleterious allele in the ABSENCE of malaria. Just exactly what Darwin predicted.
43
Paul Lucas Like so many attacks on Darwinism, this one is based on strawmen and ignorance.
For those new to these debates, let me provide some clarification of terminology. Most of us think that that a strawman is an argument that misrepresents an opponent's position. For the people who Stove called ultra-Darwinists, though, a "strawman" is any argument that shines a skeptical light on Darwinian-based theories. You can quote Darwin the exact words of Darwin and they will swear up and down that the quote has nothing to do with Darwinism.
Notice how no one bothers to dispute Stove's claims. Granted as one of the 20th centuries great philosophers of science, it would be a tough challenge. But you'd think they'd want to save face by at least attempting to answer his charges.
posted on 04.26.2006 12:17 AM44
Joe, biologists have been very critical of Evolutionary Psychology and sociobiology. EP is pretty much universally rejected by biologists.
And it's not a case of blaming the facts to say that the brain structures that allow alcoholism are adaptive. It's looking at the facts. They have a function, and serve it well. It just so happens that alcohol can affect those regions. The same is true for other drugs. Consider morphine. It binds to receptors in the brain that are integral for things like pain management, and that evolved for endorphins.
Anyway, try as you might, you haven't touched modern biology, or biologists, with this.
posted on 04.26.2006 1:12 AM45
Joe Notice how no one bothers to dispute Stove's claims. Granted as one of the 20th centuries great philosophers of science, it would be a tough challenge. But you'd think they'd want to save face by at least attempting to answer his charges.
Huh? Nearly everyone has refute Stove's claims—such as they are. There's no there there. I can't find anything of much substance to refute for he makes no arguments."
Stove says:
I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one, obviously false in the case of our species, at least. Some of the ten propositions are quotations; all the others are paraphrases.
He then lists the 10 "propositions" — all of which are selective quotes without context — and procedes to make snide remarks and "obviously false" claims. Show me that he makes any intelligent argument for or against any position and I'll be happy to join the debate.
#1, snide remark #2, "Obviously false" #3, snide remark #4, snide remark #5, snide remark #6, snide remark #7, "For it was always obvious" and a snide remark and a gross failure to understand the "obvious" idea
#8, Here Stove tries to make an argument of sorts — against one part of a sentence in a lengthy work. He's says outlandish things like "Which is to say, the great majority of those born must soon die" and "And no one, either in 1859 or now, would dream of calling 30 or more, surviving out of 100, 'but a small number’ surviving." This isn't what I would call an argument worth having.
#9, He rehashs all the usual twisted eugenics nonsense that has been sliced and diced for 70 years — and he adds nothing to it. The proposition is nothing science claims in the first place.
#10, Another selective quote from a 150 year old document that no scientist believes is launched as a propostion.
At least Behe, Dembski, and Platinga try to do orginal, credible work within their professions even though they get knocked down at every turn. Stove, however, in the piece doesn't even try.
posted on 04.26.2006 1:59 AM46
As I recall, pgepps said:
"I hold that God created the universe in six (God-relative) days a few thousand years ago, and that the evidence of older age is an artefact of the changes in matter/energy undergone during the Creation process; we aren't wrong to see what we see, just lacking an adequate frame of reference to interpret it authoritatively."
Me, I hold that one of my blood ancestors gave birth to the universe 1200 years ago, and that all evidence we see to the contrary is simply due to our "lacking an adequate frame of reference to interpet" that hypothesis "authoritatively."
Gee, how do we assess which of these (and other) hypotheses makes more sense in estimating the age of the earth?
The existence of the Grand Canyon isn't an "ultimate argument" from elementary school, it's merely one argument among the vast piles of evidence suggesting (to put it lightly) that the earth is many orders of magnitude older than you wish to believe. Frame your belief as a hypothesis, camoflauge it within a bunch of ultimately irrelevant methodological critiques (of a mere sliver of the data consistent with an ancient earth), and when the smoke clears the idea of a 6000 year old earth remains thoroughly crushed by a) the weight of the evidence against the idea, and b) the paucity of support for it.
The converse, sadly for you, is not true with respect to "the data which are very hard to reconcile with what Darwinists, neo-Darwinists, and others of views different from mine claim is actually the case." There ain't much of it worth spending time on. Visit the Discovery Institue's (or your favorite amateur scientist creationist's) website, compile your list of these hard-to-reconcile "data," toss out the many-times-over debunked bullsh*t (which will take a while), then compare the magnitude and relative importance of what's left standing in support of a 6000 year old earth, to a mere fraction of the piles of evidence referred to above, and, were you remotely objective, you'd be getting on board with the long-standing, cumulative scientific consensus of a much older earth. But that's not gonna happen, is it. I suspect you have it on a higher authority (non-evidentiary) that you're already right about your age of the earth, and you'll happily ignore (and i predict actively try to discredit) the objective fact that the weight of a couple centuries of cumulative evidence is against you.
Sorry if that's too elementary for you.
Cheers back at you.
47
Paul Lucas: The statement you just quoted is all great. The only problem with it is that it is speculation, not fact. Which is sort of the point of what Joe is saying. The explanation is driving the interpretation of the hard data, not the other way around.
If someone here were to cut and paste the entire text of a few scientific papers on this topic full of hard data we all know this guy will be the last person to read through it all. He doesn't really want hard data, he really wants to pretend that scientists who use evolutionary theory are as lazy as he is and spend their days drinking coffee and idly speculating on informal blog comment sections.
Joe
Notice how no one bothers to dispute Stove's claims. Granted as one of the 20th centuries great philosophers of science, it would be a tough challenge. But you'd think they'd want to save face by at least attempting to answer his charges.
Errr no I didn't notice how no one bothers to dispute Stove's claims. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places. I looked at the wikipedia entry that YOU cited and I also looked at this comment thread on YOUR blog. I found plenty of people disputing his claims in both places.
posted on 04.26.2006 7:15 AM48
This argument is particularly silly, even given the usual quality of biological thinking on this blog. As another commenter pointed out, most organisms have two alleles for each gene. Darwin was wrong when he said "any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed,” largely because he did not know of Mendel's genetics. A recessive trait, even if it is lethal in all environments, will linger in a population for a long time. It's frequency will depend on the rate at which it is removed from the population (natural selection) and the rate at which remutation occurs. In small populations, genetic drift will also strongly influence the rate at which the trait is lost. Joe, and Stove, are ignoring the neodarwinian synthesis of the 20th century and focusing on a 19th century understanding of evolution.
So, this is indeed a strawman argument. By ignoring twentieth century biology, Joe is falsely attributing 19th century opinions to 21st century biologists. The use of the term "ultra-darwinists" is symptomatic of this strawman.
posted on 04.26.2006 8:03 AM49
Technology allows for artificial birth control methods. However, even before that our BRAINS allow us to CHOOSE how and when we have sex.This doesn't answer Stove's assertion that "If Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, no species can ever escape from the process of natural selection." Even your "choosing" can only be your brain's Darwinian programming acting on your environmental inputs. You appear to be appealing to some sort of autonomous will that escapes Darwinian imperatives.
It turns out that, the wealthier you are, the more children cost you economically. So rich folks have fewer kids. They use rhythm, withdrawal, and abstinence to reduce the number of pregnancies to keep the number of children to that which they can afford.On the face of it, this appears to just be clearly false. Are you trying to say that wealthy people have less money and resources? I'm guessing you must have something else in mind, since that is false by definition. Or are you trying to say that children tend to knock wealthy people further down on the relative economic scale (ie, poor people with lots of kids are still poor, but wealthy people may become upper-middle class). This may be true, but wouldn't answer Stove's objection.
NOTICE that we have a DECLINE of a deleterious allele in the ABSENCE of malaria. Just exactly what Darwin predicted.But notice that Joe said "The problem is that unless #2 is clear, we can’t tell the difference between #3 (which saves the theory) and #4 (which disconfirms it)." However, in the case of sickle cell, 2 *is* clear. posted on 04.26.2006 8:56 AM
50
Joe:
the options for any trait that has been “selected for” are:
By "selected for," I assume that you mean traits which are present at relatively high (i.e. easily detectable) frequency in a population.
1) It is beneficial (or at least harmless).
"harmless" = selectively neutral? If so, then that trait has not been "selected for"
2) It is maladaptive but either is in some other respects beneficial.
Whether a trait is beneficial or deleterious is not an absolute characteristic but is strongly affected on environment. So, this statement is true, as long as you are clear that "maladaptive" and "beneficial" are contingent, not descriptions of some essential characteristic of a trait. It is common for creationists to dismiss the sickle cell/heterozygous advantage as an example of a beneficial mutation, because they are fixated on the harmful effects of homozygosity as the essential or real nature of the mutation.
3) Enough time has not passed for natural selection to have rooted out the maladaptive trait.
Or the trait is only weakly selected against. Almost by definition, any polymorphic trait that we can easily observe in a population will be one that is under weak selection. For traits under very strong selection, the adaptive variant will be at high frequency, and it may be very difficult