Observer,
Thank you for a well thought out post.
It is indeed the case that most criticism of evolution betrays ignorance and very naive misunderstandings of what evolution is about. Your message, on the other hand, does indicate knowledge of the general theory. Yet, as I will demonstrate, it is still the case that almost all criticism of evolution can be categorized after what aspect of evolution that is misunderstood.
First, it is imperative to know what exactly natural selection is working at, that is, the unit that is subject to selection. Second, we have to know how it works, that is, exactly, how and why it selects some units and rejects other.
Some of your arguments (e.g. the water buffalo example) seems to work on the assumption that evolution is selecting on the species level. That is generally untrue. It may be some species selection going on, but this mechanism will always lose against pressure on the individual level. Other examples (e.g. fireman( seem to work on the assumption that evolution selects individual organisms. While often good enough for for the sake of argument, it is strictly speaking wrong. Evolution selects on the lowest unit: the gene. Only when we look at selection on this level, can we understand altruism in nature.
The fact that individuals are protective of their offspring can be easily explained by the fact that a certain gene will exist in your offspring with a probability of 50%. The same, in fact, applies to your parents and your siblings. Further out in the family tree, the factor is smaller, but it still exists. So, a gene for altruism will certainly propagate in the gene pool. Since humans evolved in a situation where we lived in small clan-based hunter-gather tribes, it would not necessarily be necesssary for evolution to distinguish sharply between non-family and family. Also, add the fact that the other members of the tribe, even non-family, helped in protecting the individuals and its offspring, and also participated in hunting and gathering activities, and we have a good case that evolution would favour strong altruism in human beings.
It is also important to note that evolution only helps individual survival to the degree it helps the individual to bring offspring into the world. That is the reason evolution has helped humans to be very resistant to diseases that attack young people, but as soon as we reach the age where we stop having children, we start dying very quickly when modern science is not around to help us. Cancer, for example, is something that mostly attacks people beyond childbearing age. Evolution has, so to say, only helped us postpone it.
In many of your arguments below, you seem to argue against evolution based on the criticism that certain traits developed in humans may have proven counter productive much later. In other words, natural selection is not pre-scient. And, I will just have to tell you, evolution is indeed extremely near-sighted. It can only select for an advantage here and now. It selects traits that brings on the maximum amount of offspring here and now. If the descendants later encounter situations where this proves to be disadvantageuous, well, then they may be in trouble. How much trouble depends on the level of pressure, and the ability to adapt. In the case of humans, who certainly is a complicated one when we discuss evolution, since humans have not evolved significantly over the last 500,000 years or so. Our culture has been so powerful for the last 10,000 years that it has left evolutionary pressure pretty much outrun.
These, and I am sure a number of other questions come to mind. So, why do humans, in general, seem to be carrying this extra piece of luggage?
I certainly agree that is a good question, if a bit misstated since your premise does not hold. If evolutionary theory (and here I mean the synthetic theory of evolution, which can be attributed to Fisher and Hamilton) is to be a scientific theory, it must be able to answer such questions.
And as I have explained above, evolution has succeeded in answering such questions.
Now, from a creationist perspective, the existence of a higher intelligence might make sense. This higher life form must be living by these principles and it would seem natural that He would want his creation to abide by them as well.
But the problem is that creationism simply begs the question. It does not explain why certain traits are good and other evil, it just asserts that an un-seen, un-known deity postulated certain rules for unknown reasons. How did this God arrive at his rules for what is good and bad?
But from an evolutionist point of view, it becomes complicated, if not "ugly". Yes, how did neutral mutations and natural selection figure out that a particular behavior or action when performed would be deemed "good" and that another is "bad"?
In fact, evolution succeeds in explaining what we observe. If creationism was true, the issue should be clear-cut and simple. You would also expect that people never behaved badly. What we see in nature and humanity is exactly the indifference to evil and suffering we should expect if nature was a blind force. So evolution deals with reality. Creationism creates a pipedream.
It is true that the definition of what is good and what is bad evolved and changed throughout history and that various cultures had divergent interpretations, but somehow there has always been a general theme that consistently repeats itself. This theme revolves around major negative behavior such as murder and theft to the point that permanent laws were written to address them. Also the theme repeats itself in the doing of what is termed as "good" like charity and saving lives.
At least partially correct. And those are the traits we should expect evolution to work against. It will be totally disruptive to the social structure that humans depend on if such evil traits become too dominant. We should expect a balance of "good and evil" in humans, because too many bad traits will lead to individual destructions, while too much "good" will lead us to fall prey to abuse and make one vulnerable to naively using our own resources to help leeches. Humans have found a balance thanks to evolution. An omnipotent, omnibenevolent God would not have created any evil.Since we see evil, this is evidence against creation by this God.
We should not expect God to give us a tendency to favour our own kin, to be skeptical and even hostile towards strangers. But this is what we see. And evolution, unlike creationism, explains why this is so.
If we delve down into it, we see that both the "good" and "bad" attributes are actually counter-productive to Evolution.
As you will see, this is meaningless or false, depening on how you define your terms.
Doing what is bad is counter-productive in the sense that a lot of human energy and resources is wasted in the human loss, suffering, peer judgment, law making and enforcement as a result of the "bad" actions.A real dilemma, is why would Evolution develop abhorrent negative human feelings and behavior to the point that external written laws would be needed to counter them when all Evolution had to do was make humans produce only positive actions. Considering that human motives, desires, feelings, emotions, and drives are merely electro-chemical impulses in the brain, and seeing that Evolution had been very adept in manipulating chemical development and interactions at the molecular level, it would have been relatively simple for the brain to only produce electro-chemical impulses that generates "good" behavior.
Good for what? This only makes sense if you define "good" as what is good for the propagation of the individual's genes. In that case, it is obvious -- indeed teutological -- that evolution will favour such a trait.If you define good in any other way, your whole challenge becomes meaningless.
However, generating "good" behavioral patterns turns out not that good after all.For example, if Evolution is based on the survival of the fittest, then how come it evolved fit and able-bodied persons that will risk their own life walking into a burning building, just to rescue an old and feeble lady who is a total stranger? From an Evolution stand point; this does not make any sense. What evolutionary process told these brave firepersons that by doing this they are actually doing a "good" thing?
First, you oversell the impact of evolution on human behaviour to a degree not even the most hardcore reductionist evolutionist will do. Cultural traits are generally much more powerful in influencing humans, since it can adapt much more quickly than evolution can change the gene pool. Do not forget that humans may place other values higher than the value placed on your genetic survival by evolution.
Second, the evolution of altruism is easily explained through evolution, as I explained above. Evolution has not always made ultimate precision in altruism necessary (some species only care for close kin, some for all individuals, as expected).
When an African water buffalo falls prey to few lions, the Evolutionary process of self-preservation kicks in and tens and even hundreds of thousands of its mates flee in the opposite direction. All that was needed, and the "good" thing to do, was dispatching a dozen buffalos to chase away the lions. But the water buffalo is not burdened with this extra mental process, but if it did, it would mean the starvation and extinction of the lion specie.
Possibly, but this is here you demonstrate some ignorance about natural selection. As I wrote above, slection is not on the species level, as youa ssume here. It is on the level of the gene, and, for intents and purposes, on the individual.
It is true that water buffaloes as a species would have advantage of a "gene for group defence." But what would happen if a "stop and fight" gene was introduced in the Buffalo gene pool? That individual would stop and fight, and its kin, without that gene, would run away. That gene would become lion food. That's the end. Even if such a gene should already exist, natural selection would tend to favour cheating water buffalos who ran away and let their mates fight it out. Since fighting lions carries a risk, a cheater would have all the advantage of the fighters and none of the risk. Its genes would spread in the gene pool, and the "fight" gene might be outcompeted.
What natural selection process made humans at the Titanic and other disasters choose to rescue women and children first, and be deemed the "right" and "good" thing to do? When in fact, rescuing the males and females instead would have been more advantageous. For in merely nine months, the rescued males and females would have been able to reproduce most of the number of lost children. Whereas, the rescued women, not only lost their mates and reproduction potential, but they spent long and risky years in rearing the saved children to reproductive age. Furthermore, this behavior is not seen in the animal world.
If it is not seen in the animal world, it suggests it is more a learned than an evolved trait. And, indeed, civalry is not always common in humans. Look at certain tribes and cultures, and you will see that often the men gets the best food and, in if it is scarce, the only food.
You can only complain about the lack of a genetic trait (as you describe above) if you can make a good case that such a scenario was feasible when human beings developed.
Lastly, I have to say that your analysis of the procreation of the post-Titanic humans leaves something to be desired. In creating offspring for humans, the woman is the "bottleneck". And the women who survived Titanic would go on to have new men and produce children at the maximum rate dictated by nature and culture.
One might reply that these traits are learned or influenced by cultural factors and not evolved. But Evolution is what gave humans the capacity to learn, be influenced and acquire knowledge. Why would Evolution give humans the means or instruments to ultimately hinder its own potential? Evolution was doing very good with animals, why all of a sudden; give humans the extra capacity to shoot itself in the foot?
The proof of the pudding is in its eating. Fact is, humans have been and are immensely successfull, which is the reason there are 6 billio of us. So your argument we have traits that are negative to our procreation is obviously absurd. It is your personal speculation running counter to facts.
In the animal world, we see mothers protecting their offspring from predators, but only to a certain limit. When outnumbered or tired a mother will abandon its kids. It will not lay down its life instead.
This is false.
Humans on the other hand, would generally lay down their life to protect their children, because it is considered a "good" thing. This behavior is counter-productive to Evolution.
Possibly.
But you look at it as if the individual was prescient. All such acts of protection of offspring carries a risk. Generally, a mother will not protect one offspring if the chance of survival falls below 50%. But of course, this is an over-simplification that simply do not take into account how complex nature is.
Even the giving of charity to total strangers to sustain their livelihood runs counter to the survival of the fittest strategy.
I have explained this above.
The bottom line, is why Evolution encumbered humans with the ability to know and choose to do what is "good" or "bad" and evolve a mental process called "conscience" to regulate these choices when in fact, all of this is detrimental and unnecessary as seen in the animal world?
As demonstrated by the fact that humans have survived and prospered, and is very successfull in so doing, we see that human morality has been favourable to our survival. That is the one key fact you have failed to take into account. I have outlined above how the theory of evolution accounts for this fact.
For more details, I again recommend Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. When you have consumed these books, I can assume you that the questions you have asked above will have been answered.
- Jan
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Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]
