Re: OT: Darwin's Doubt

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, While Mary Pondered, Weak and Weary, Over
Many a Quaint and Curious Forgotten Post, s/he wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------

OK, I'll tackle this one briefly... It's an interesting piece, Howard,so
thank you for that. Unfortunately, it's also muddle-headed. It adds
together a piece of chalk and a piece of cheese and claims that they
total one orange... or something. Anyway, it's conceptually wrong, and
here's why:

1) Darwin's doubts were of a scientific nature. He knew that his *ideas*
made sense but that the fossil record at the time was too sparse to
provide more than circumstantial *evidence*. He stated his confidence
that further fossils would be found, and that they would confirm his
theory. And that is exactly what happened. So he didn't really have much
doubt.

But that's just a piece of fuzziness put in there to suggest to the
reader that there has been an epistemological flaw in evolutionary
theory right from the start. It may have its problems as a theory - but
Darwin's "doubts" aren't part of them, and the (few) doubts that he ever
expressed in no way speak to the writer's main thesis.

So, leaving Darwin's irrelevant and nonexistent doubts aside, here's the
writer's main thesis in a nutshell:

2) If religion is an evolutionary trait, yet religious beliefs are
inherently unprovable, then how can evolutionists be certain that their
'belief' in evolution is any more 'right' than religion?

a) Simple. The answer is: evidence.

Scientific theories are built on evidence, not belief. Scientists only
have to believe their own eyes (and instruments). Religious folk believe
in something that requires faith *instead* of evidence.

Evolutionary theory is a *science*. That means it gathers evidence,
tentatively assigns a pattern to it - and then rigorously *tests* the
pattern to see if the new evidence conforms to the pattern. If the new
evidence doesn't fit the predicted pattern (or theory), then the pattern
/ theory must be wrong. If the new evidence *does* fit the theory, then
the theory remains *provisionally* right - i.e., it's still waiting to
be disproved. If enough facts support the theory, the level of
confidence in that theory rises.

In the case of evolution, that's hundreds of thousands of individual
hard *facts* that are all compatible with the theory. Sure, the theory
has bent and adapted to new evidence along the way: things Darwin could
never have dreamed of such as cross-species DNA exchange, retroviral
introns, homeobox genes, the inheritance of methyl groups, and many
more. But over 150 years of evidence-gathering, evolutionary theory has
constantly adapted to *fit the facts*.

Religion does no such thing. In fact, it demands the opposite. The one
scientist in the Bible is doubting Thomas *testing* Jesus' wound - and
he is berated for his lack of faith. He wanted externally verifiable
evidence. Religions thrive where there is none. The 'proof' of faith is
individual and subjective.

So the answer to how we can be more sure that evolution is right than we
are that religious beliefs are right is that evolution has *evidence*,
facts we can all verify without the need to believe something first.

b) The writer does a skillful job of implying that religion's suggested
evolutionary value might stem from the belief in something non-provable.
Actually, the theorists who suggest there might be a 'God gene' don't
think that at all. Instead, they suggest that a pre-disposition to
believe in religious concepts could have served very practical
survival-related purposes.

Religion lets you incorporate phenomena into your cultural system that
you have no way to understand or control, such as the weather,
earthquakes, etc. In primitive societies (and *all* societies were
primitive once), story-telling was an important means of passing
knowledge between the generations. Story-telling requires 'characters' -
these are how young minds learn to identify with what's going on in the
world around them, by putting themselves into the minds of others. So it
made *narrative* sense to fit incomprehensible world events into a
character-driven narrative structure: "Poseidon was angry so he sent a
wave..."; "the dawn goddess spends six months of the year in mourning
for her son...". In other words, the so-called "god gene" (if it exists)
would likely be a by-product of our *evolved* capacity for cultural
transmission.

Another aspect of a putative "god gene" might be that we are not so much
programmed to believe in religions, but programmed to believe in the
authority figures who 'push' it. They can explain the world around us
because they are the alpha individuals who have been assigned that role
by the tribe. Shamans are the recipients of all the narratives I just
mentioned; they hold them on behalf of the rest of the tribe. It
therefore behoves the tribe to pay attention to their assertions,
because they're the people who can tell you when to plant the corn, or
migrate north, or whatever. Tribes which inherit a gene that primes them
to respect a shaman's authority might do better, therefore, than tribes
lacking the gene. And that's all it would take for the gene to spread.

My point is that if there *is* a "God gene", it doesn't mean that there
is survival value in believing something that's unprovable, or that God
is every bit as 'real' as any other thing we humans might hold as true.
No. What it means is simply that in our primitive past, tribes survived
better if they had a social structure and a narrative that helped them
grapple with phenomena that were beyond their control or comprehension.
End of.

(There is as yet no evidence for a 'God gene', BTW. It's just an idea.)

All the best,

Richard


Thanks, Richard. Good post. Do read Daniel Dennett's book, I think
you'll enjoy it.

Mary

Very good explanation, Richard. I ditto Mary.

The only book of his I read so far was his most recent, "Breaking the
Spell" which he explores the idea of belief in belief. Very good.
"Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is probably the one Mary was referring too,
which I need to read.

John P
.

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