Evans and Wolpert Chat About Atheism
So did you listen to Dylan Evans and Lewis Wolpert argue on ‘Today’ this morning? It was quite entertaining at first, but then they got off onto a not very rewarding tangent about religious art, and ran out of time, so the more interesting issues were left unexplored. Pity.
But there were some interesting things said before the tangent.
DE: I think many atheists behave in a rather adolescent manner, and I think that while emancipating themselves from the older religious culture that surrounds them, they insist on rather sort of showy gestures of aggression towards religion; I think it’s just time the atheists moved on and gave a more balanced view of the older religious culture that surrounds them; you know, there’s a time when we come to look at our parents with more compassion and we see them as human beings like us…
Why adolescent? That’s a trope we’ve heard before. Why? Why is criticism (or ‘showy gestures of aggression,’ which is a highly tendentious way of putting the matter) adolescent? Why isn’t it just reasoned criticism and dissent?
And as for moving on – well I’ll tell you what: I will if they will. And not otherwise. I mean, dang, is it not obvious why we don’t ‘move on’? We don’t ‘move on’ because unfortunately religion is not merely a matter of pretty pictures and pretty music, is it. As Lewis Wolpert pointed out:
But to value religion for its beauty, and to ignore the damage that it does to our society, just take all the stuff about contraception, and AIDS, and stem cells, and things like that, and all the holy wars, and [inaudible] see beauty in it is bizarre beyond words.
And why the parental comparison? Is that to shore up the untenable ‘adolescent’ epithet? Religion isn’t my parent, and I’m not ‘rebelling’ against it like an angry teenager. I don’t want it to loan me the car or wash my clothes or quit nagging me about my hair. Or is it there to stand in for religious people whom we’re supposed to look at with more compassion? But then why not just say that, why bring up parents with their inevitable whiff of Oedipal struggle and general babyishness? I’m all grown up, thanks, and my atheism has nothing whatever to do with adolescent rebellion. That’s a belittling, trivializing, patronizing comparison, as is the bit about showy gestures and adolescent manner. Well – if atheists deserve all this trivialization and belittling, what do theists deserve? Eh?
…so many of my fellow atheists – we can’t seem to get them to move on from the tired old religion-bashing and articulate a more content-full account of the way that they find meaning in a godless universe, and I think that’s important, I think it’s something that atheists are just not living up to really – a positive account of their own view of life…There’s a failure to try and see things from the other person’s point of view, and not even for a minute to try and adopt their perspective even for a second so that one could see what it actually seems like for the religious person, I think that it’s incumbent upon atheists who proclaim themselves to be bearers of tolerance and – to actually give an example to other people of the kind of tolerance they preach.
Tired old religion-bashing. Well, there again, religion-bashing is not nearly as tired – not within shouting distance of as tired – as religion itself is, not to mention atheism-bashing. And then – why are atheists obliged to ‘articulate a more content-full account of the way that they find meaning in a godless universe’? Why is that our job? Why is anything our job? Why are we supposed to give an account of ourselves? As if – what – theism is the default position, so anyone who isn’t a theist has some explaining to do? As in the Guardian article, Evans is arguing as if atheism is a system, an ideology, a worked-out established wide-ranging doctrine, when in fact it is merely the absence of one. And by the same token – atheists don’t ‘proclaim themselves to be bearers of tolerance.’ I wouldn’t dream of such a thing, myself. Much less would I ‘preach’ the stuff.
Evans’ whole case seems to rely on a mischaracterization of atheism as simply an inversion of religion, as like religion but turned inside out, but that’s nonsense. I won’t call it adolescent nonsense though. I’m far too polite and tolerant for that.
It is unfortunate that Wolpert made those comments about religious art being propaganda though. I mean, of course, on one level it is, but it is also much more than that.
Evans says atheists need to “articulate a more content-full account of the way that they find meaning in a godless universe”. Has he never read Carl Sagan or S.J. Gould or Dawkins? (And I’m sure there are others.) But really, some of the most articulate, eloquent and content rich accounts of the atheist view of life and “meaning” of said life are easily found in the writings of these non-believers. I’m begining to think Mr. Evans was privately guilt-tripped into throwing a bone to the faithful and now can’t seem to back off, much less back up his thoroughly ignorant remarks! It’s embarrassing to watch.
Religious art as propaganda? Yes it is. Also, Wolpert was responding to the suggestion by Evans that atheists need to see religious art as religious people do. Baloney. It can be technically brilliant art and appreciated for that, but to demand that a non-believer get all warm and fuzzy about the Madonna and child and the trinity and god reaching down to touch the hand of man and to experience some sort of spiritual orgasm over a bunch of fishermen sitting down at the dinner table… well, forget it.
Yeah, it is unfortunate. He handed Evans ammunition on a platter with that comment. Tsk. No doubt that’s why ‘Today’ producers asked him to do the show, they figured he would say things like that!
Evans has read Dawkins – he says as much in a comment on my earlier post. He finds Dawkins unconvincing on aesthetic matters. All right; I don’t agree, but I can see how he could think so. But if he doesn’t find him convincing on the way scientific inquiry can indeed provide ‘meaning’ – then I really don’t know what he wants.
Dawkins is unconvincing on aesthetic matters? OK. Fine. Like you, I disagree. But his comment was that atheists need a “more content-full account” of meaning in the universe. The fact is he’s absurdly wrong. Content-full like…who? Religious people? Puhleeze. He either needs to read more atheists and secular humanists and freethinkers or he actually has and he himself is simply having difficulty in finding meaning from them and, well, maybe religion is the way to go for him. A reverse sort of conversion might be all that’s needed for the man. But, again, there is simply no shortage of impressive, rich, eloquent (I’m repeating myself…sorry!) content-full writings by non-believers, the world over!
Hmm. It’s worth pointing out that propaganda is part of what religious art is – but Wolpert said that what he saw (not what it is, but what he sees in it) is technical skill and propaganda. One can say it’s propaganda and still see more than that. Rembrandt for just one instance. It may be dubious to call it religious (the kind I’m thinking of) because it could as well be secular, but either way, it’s more than technical skill and propaganda. (But Wolpert would probably agree, since he said he likes non-religious Michelangelo better…Oh never mind, I’ll come back to this later. I gotta go.)
Religion is beautiful and dangerous. Just like a tiger. Evans wants to focus on the beauty, Wolpert on the danger.
What bothers me, is that I detect a increased tendency of among religious people to feel victimized by “aggresive” nonbelievers. They feel that atheists are being intolerant and one-sided by focusing only on the bad (i.e. dangeous) side and refusing to see the good. I guess that is what Evans is trying to get across.
Hmm. Not all that much like a tiger. And not all that beautiful, frankly. Let’s not get carried away. Some religious art and especially religious music is certainly beautiful, but religion itself? Not particularly. A lot of it is downright squalid.
And much of the putative good of religion is really altruism and other similar ideas and feelings, that happen to take the form of the local religion. But in fact it’s the
altruism and similar that’s beautiful (when it is), not the religion it’s dressed in. Mostly.
Evans seems to be trying to get different things across, and not articulating them all that well. What he said on ‘Today’ is rather different from what he said in the Guardian.
The thing about religious people feeling victimized – yeah, they do, but that’s the problem. They don’t have much right to. If they want to believe in fictions, okay, but they have little right to demand respect from everyone else.
I think that your discounting of the beauty of religion, as seen through the eyes of believers, is part of the problem. This blindness is comparable in my opinion to the inability of many laypeople to see the beauty of science.
It seems simply beyond their ken.
As for the good of religion being equated with altruism. Couldn’t it be that religion stimulates altruism? That altruism flourishes thanks to religion. And if not altruism than at least social cohesion and cooperation.
You seem to be dismissive of anything good or beautiful in religion. I think many religious people (I’m an atheist) might perceive this as a lack of empathy and respect for something, I presume, you have no personal experience with.
MK,
I think you are simultaneously exactly right and exactly wrong. Other primate societies have their own mechanisms for enforcing altruistic behavior within their social groups, creating the social cohesion to which you refer. Selection for altruistic behaviors is also – necessarily and simultaneously – selection for enforcement mechanisms to punish anti-altruistic (i.e. selfish) behavior. David Sloan Wilson argues rather convincingly that enforcing altruism by punishing cheaters is one of the functions of religion – and I use “function” in the sense of group selection for adaptive fitness here. If you can find the time, read Darwin’s Cathedral. Given the nature of your comments, I think you’ll find Wilson’s arguments quite interesting and persuasive.
G
(Perhaps you’ve mistaken me for an evolutionary psychologist? *shudder* I hope not!)
Given what you say above, what is it about the approach of evolutionary psychology that makes you shudder? Or is it only the straw man assumption that some psychologist or other believes that evolutionary mechanisms are the root cause of all human behaviour?
G,
I love being exactly right and exactly wrong! Though I don’t think I have the wherewithal to judge properly just how I am exactly wrong in this instance. I’ll trust you that you pointed it out somewhere in your post.
Thanks for the tip on Wilson’s book, but I must be honest, the reviews I’ve read (from people whose opinion’s I trust and respect)don’t recommend it highly. Besides, I am far too partial to Michael Shermer’s thoughts as expressed in “How We Believe” and “Why People Believe Weird Things”, as well as R. Dawkins’ thoughts as expressed in his various books and articles to be swayed by yet another Group Selectionist. The suggestion of religion as organism reminds me of the whole Gaia silliness. No thanks.
“In fact, monkeys and the great apes have ethics and morality and altruism.”
Not really. Not the kind humans have, anyway. Not the kind that can overrule certain immediate pressing desires (to eat a prized bit of food, for example) for the sake of kindness or generosity or the thought that another’s need is greater. Doesn’t happen. (I used to work with great apes at the zoo, and I watched it not happen many times, with considerable interest. Their concern for, say, infants and young goes so far and not one bit farther. They’re protective, but they do not share food with them.)
MikeS,
The shuddering over ev psych is about bad science, actually, not anything so nebulous as their “approach.” For example, I am skeptical about empirically unsupported speculation about EEAs (environments of evolutionary adaptation) and over-commitment to a view of brain modularity not supported by current genetics or developmental neuroscience. For the most part, evolutionary psychologists fail to meet the most basic standard of science – they do not generate alternate hypotheses and attempt to eliminate them. They usually don’t even consider alternate hypotheses. There are a few researchers doing good work in the area, but they won’t even call themselves “evolutionary psychologists” because the people under that label so consistently publish shoddy research (c.f. David Buss, Randy Thornhill, etc.). If anyone in science is actually guilty of promoting “just-so stories” about evolution, it is evolutionary psychologists.
MK,
Wilson never says ANYTHING which is even remotely like the claim that religions are organisms. I am led to suspect that one or more of the reviewers you’ve read has charicatured Wilson’s work for ideological reasons.
OB,
Yeah, I was being a little over the top there. Shouldn’t have exaggerated the “guilt, pride, jealousy” point. Thanks.
G,
“The purpose of this book is to treat the organismic concept of religious groups as a serious scientific hypothesis. Organisms are a product of natural selection. Through countless generations of variation and selection, they acquire properties that enable them to survive and reproduce in their environments. My purpose is to see if human groups in general, and religious groups in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense.” –1st page of ‘Darwin’s Cathedral’…David Sloan Wilson.
My apologies. It was religious “groups”, not religion per se. That’s SO much better.
Hmm. I see where you’re coming from. There are a lot of people with axes to grind about group selection, so all I can do is try to persuade you that your opinions have perhaps been shaped by axe-grinding mischaracterizations of the theory rather than by substantial criticisms. The reason this matters is that no account of the evolution of altruism really works without natural selection operating on competition between groups of organisms. You can give up on altruism of course – but then you have to give up an awful lot of observed behavior.
The claim that groups are “organismic in this sense” points to the same “sense” in which genes are treated like organisms in selfish gene theory – genes compete with each other and undergo selection, and so do groups: That’s all there is to the claim, and the controversy about it is grounded mostly on misunderstandings and the inherent conservatism of science, or rather older scientists (which I am not saying is a generally bad thing – it’s a fact). Wilson and others have long since refuted the objections to group selection, most of which were based on misconstruals of the theory to begin with. But there’s certainly reason for the bad odor surrounding group selection: Many evolutionary biologists in the early part of the 20th century were quite careless in characterizing group selection mechanisms. When their carelessness was exposed, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. But in its modern incarnation, nothing in group selection (as one aspect of multi-level selection theory) is at odds with the core concepts of evolution by natural selection and its mechanisms. Ultimately, it isn’t any more theoretically or empirically dubious than, say, kin selection (another aspect of multi-level selection theory, incidentally).
But don’t take my word for it. Instead of reading Darwin’s Cathedral, you might want to read the first half of Sober and Wilson’s Unto Others, which answers the traditional objections to group selection (and the evolution of altruism) in convincing detail.
G,
sounds as if, wrt evolutionary psychology, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. When I last looked, ten or more years ago, psychologists were tentatively wondering to what extent the work of Lorenz and Tinbergen (and many other ethologists)could be applied to some basic human behaviours. Having read Lorenz ‘On Aggression’ I am ready to accept evolution as an explanation of some behaviours for want of anything better, and as you must know it is very difficult for psychologists to test hypotheses. It would be, in any case, a mischaracterisation of science to suggest that it relies solely upon elimination of competing hypotheses to give any given hypothesis validity.
“Wilson and others have long since refuted the objections to group selection, most of which were based on misconstruals of the theory to begin with. But there’s certainly reason for the bad odor surrounding group selection:”
Its been a while but my recollection is that group selection requires very special and thus very rare genetic circumstances. So I would have to say that I’m not convinced that group-selection is likely to have much effect in most situations. It seems to me that people only like group-selection because it is a potential explanation for true altruism, whereas others suggest what appears to be true altruism would have to be better explained as something else.
Since I’ve been accused of “speculation” and far worse, let me ask a few questions. Why exactly are insect “societies” societies? Why aren’t they “super-organisms”, more comparable to jellyfish than elephant “herds”? Why are there not different levels of emergent phenomena and corresponding explanations, rather than reductions to singular, universal “laws”? And why is there a need to explain “altruism” rather than accepting that it is a contingency, for which, biologically constituted organism, given the fragmentary evidence and accounts that we might have, is a misprision, and that human responsibiltity might be subject to the paradox that human freedom is constrained and limited, but nonetheless responsible?
“Why exactly are insect “societies” societies? Why aren’t they “super-organisms”, more comparable to jellyfish than elephant “herds”?”
They aren’t societies in any useful sense of the word, you’re right.
“Why are there not different levels of emergent phenomena and corresponding explanations, rather than reductions to singular, universal “laws”?”
What does that mean? Obviously there are different levels of emergent phenomena, but what do you mean by corresponding different levels of explanation? If you’re looking for evolutionary explanations of a phenomenon then you are constrained to explain it at the evolutionary level.
“And why is there a need to explain “altruism” rather than accepting that it is a contingency, for which, biologically constituted organism, given the fragmentary evidence and accounts that we might have, is a misprision,”
Because it is interesting to find evolutionary explanations for things, and because, on the current gene-centric view of evolution, altruism is a prima facie unlikely thing to evolve.
“and that human responsibiltity might be subject to the paradox that human freedom is constrained and limited, but nonetheless responsible?”
Uh?
PM,
“and that human responsibiltity might be subject to the paradox that human freedom is constrained and limited, but nonetheless responsible?”
There is nothing obscure about John’s question. The paradox of compatibilism is one we face every day.
OK, that was a late night comment (or actually early morning, since it’s the graveyard shift,- small wonder I’m habitually confused), after a wonderful 10 hour shift of grunt-work. But the point was to question why certain patterns of explanation “must” be regarded as obligatory, as evinced by the dogmatic self-certainty of some here that “group selection” is effectively an impossibility, whereas “morality” must be subjected to biological explanation, without regard for any consideration of what explanations do, and correspondingly any consideration for what specific explanations can’t and won’t do, the limits of their scope of application and validity, and the “identity” of the phenomena to be explained, which any valid explanation must in some way conserve, if it is to count as an explanation. [edited for length]
MikeS:
The um; referred to my not seeing the relevance, not failing to understand what he meant.
John:
“clearly, animal groups (with territories) are a readily observable phenomenon. And the idea that selection pressures might operate on the emergence and development of such groups does not strike me as prima facie outrageous nonsense. That is, an organism’s adaption to its environment might, in part, be mediated by its adaption to a conspecific group, with respect to its differential survival and reproduction rates.”
The problem with the suggestion that ‘competition’ between groups leads to selection is that the evolution of genes to benefit the group must compete with individual selection. Which is why something like altruism is hard to see as having evolved as a direct adaptation because although a group with more altuists than average might do better than a group with less altruists, the individuals within that group that will do best will be the non-altruists. The tension is that, by benefitting the group, you are not selecting in favour of the genes that carry that trait.
You can create certain circumstances in which group selection effects can overcome individual selection, but these are very specific and quite contrived.
“The reason this matters is that no account of the evolution of altruism really works without natural selection operating on competition between groups of organisms. You can give up on altruism of course – but then you have to give up an awful lot of observed behavior.”
I think this is where the weakness in arguments for group selecton lie. Essentially you are arguing from an observed phenomenon to the existence of the mechanism that is supposed to explain it. Whereas you really ought to be showing that group selection is possible before you use it as an explanation for apparent altruism.
I think that the evidence has often shown that apparent altruism in animals is often the result of other mechanisms (and thus is not truly altruistic) such as kin selection, reciprocal altruism and other individual selection benefits. In humans altruism is a more complex social phenomenon and I would hesitate to provide a glib adaptationist argument.
PM
MikeS:
People normally define altruism in this context as any behaviour which benefits others and leads to a net cost to the performer. An extreme example would be sacrificing your life to save a stranger – no expected gain (cos you’re dead), big gain for the recipient (they’re still alive). Less extreme examples, such as warning cries in animals, are more difficult to untangle from other forms of behaviour that wouldn’t classically be considered strictly altruistic (e.g. helping close kin or where reciprocation is likely).
PM:
I’m obviously not competent to discuss the technicalities of mathematical models, but isn’t any population a statistically mixed group with respect to supposedly instinctually fixed behavioral strategies? (I’ll leave aside the issue of whether behaviors are necessarily instinctual fixed by genes, a large leap, rather than there being mechanisms to precisely not so fixate them, so that fixed behaviors can recede with respect to rule-governed learned ones, precisely to the extent that they become inter-nested with programmed instincts. Again, elephants, “who” purportedly have long memories.) The “hard to see”, together with the notion of “direct” adaption, as presumably deriving from the “conation” of genes, is perhaps a direct product of viewing evolution in terms of a fixed dichotomy between organism and environment, as I tried, however murkily, to make clear by pointing to the eco-systemic context in which evolutionary processes occur. At any rate, whatever selections occur,- (the idea of “natural selection” being itself a strange conative term),- it does not follow that there is a “conflict of interest” between atomic organisms and the “superorganism” of the group, unless one assumes that there is an isomorphic correspondence between phenotype and genotype, especially with respect to behavioral characteristics, -(scarcely a credible assumption),- and unless one assumes that selection pressures operate only in favor of a fixation of traits, phenotypes, rather than away from such fixation, behaviorally speaking, that is, toward increases in adaptive flexibility. How does the actual phenomenal evidence look?
John, again, as I’ve said, its been a while, but you’re right that there is modelling evidence, and some fieldwork, showing that you can have a population of mixed behavioural strategies.
“it does not follow that there is a “conflict of interest” between atomic organisms and the “superorganism” of the group, unless one assumes that there is an isomorphic correspondence between phenotype and genotype, especially with respect to behavioral characteristics”
The point is more that when you think past the superficial plausibility of group selection to how exactly group-level traits that are determined genetically could be selected for, it becomes difficult to see how they are passed on, since whatever your take on gene versus individual levels of selection, there is no mechanism for the genes for group benefitting behaviours that disadvantage the individual to be passed on preferentially over those that are ‘selfish’ – i.e. they can’t be selected for after all.
As I’ve said, I’d avoid overly adaptationist EP-like explanations for complex social human behaviours without good evidence for them.
So basically, I don’t believe that group-selection is a good explanation for altruistic-like behaviours in any organism, but I’m not going to say that some mechanism like reciprocal altruism (I love that oxymoron) is the origin of human altruism because it is more complicated than a relatively simple behavioural phenotype like warning calls – as you suggest – and would require a pretty sophisticated analysis I would guess.
PM:
One of the reasons I dislike the use of the word “altruism” to account for animal sociality [edited]
“Given that it’s not terribly difficult to imagine the selective advantages accruing to coordination of complementary behaviors in amplifying the capacities/survival chances of the group and thus its members”
There are plenty of examples of the evolution of cooperative behaviours, but most of these have been shown to be mutually beneficial – that is all the individuals involved benefit to some degree (e.g. cooperative hunting).
“with the short-run gains accruing to such organisms being outweighed in the long-run by the benefits accruing to cooperative nodes remaining in the group”
The real question, that group-selection is invoked to answer, is how can behaviours that seem to disadvantage the individual while benefitting the group evolve…we already know how mutually beneficial strategies can evolve…and the problem is that while it is easy to ‘imagine’ that behaviours with benefits to a group could help improve that group’s survival (we’re talking about groups within a species here – between species it is simply coevolution or adapting to the environment which contains other creatures) – the problem with the intuitive idea that benefitting the group over the individual would be evolutionarily advantageous is that there is no method to spread the genes for it – the individuals being ‘altruistic’ are reproducing less, while those not being altruistic are reproducing more within the group. {You can’t invoke punishment strategies for cheaters because then that is reciprocal altruism, not true altruism).
I really don’t have a huge investment in “group selection”. [edited]
“life amongst chimpanzees, too, is nasty, British and short.”
Is that reference to the PG Tips Chimps? I really hope so.
I think perhaps you’re conflating group-selection as a putative mechanism of natural selection of genetic characteristics, and the differential success of social groups, where success is not necessarily reproductive, and group status or social structure is not necessarily genetic.
I’m only talking about group-selection as an evolutionary explanation of ‘altruism’ as a genetically determined behaviour – as suggested by G:
“The reason this matters is that no account of the evolution of altruism really works without natural selection operating on competition between groups of organisms. You can give up on altruism of course – but then you have to give up an awful lot of observed behavior…That’s all there is to the claim, and the controversy about it is grounded mostly on misunderstandings and the inherent conservatism of science…in its modern incarnation, nothing in group selection (as one aspect of multi-level selection theory) is at odds with the core concepts of evolution by natural selection and its mechanisms. Ultimately, it isn’t any more theoretically or empirically dubious than, say, kin selection…”
PM:
I’m sorry to say I entirely missed the PG Tips Chimps saga, but, you see, I live in an entirely different media circus, (speaking of selection pressures, though thank Lawd Gawd Al Mitty for the internet). But just to address the cross-post, and the subsequent post, I think, G’s articulation notwithstanding, the nub of the issue is whether behaviors can necessarily be correlated with genetic reproduction. We don’t actually know how behaviors correlate with genetic determinations, and my guess would be that, if you want an answer to the explanation of the causal circuits involved, you should consult the embryologists, the developmental biologists, rather than the ethologists, for whom the gene-selectionists would give off the odor of bad eggs. The question for me would be whether there *can* be evolution *away* from fixed correlations between genes and behaviors and what the conditions, exceptional though they might be, are for such evolution to occur. That tends away from the formulation of general “laws”, but it’s appropriate to the “subject matter”. (Stuart Kauffman, by the way, had a fascinating, if steep, probability-calculation account of the cellular differentiation mechanism, one of the remaining “mysteries”, which I think is the “spirit” in which biological explanation should occur, even if he’s completely wrong.) It might be that formal mathematical models aren’t jiggered to take account of such possibilities; it might be that the formulation of a problem of altrusim is wrong-headed. It might be that we’re just spawn from outer-space, but, somehow, I don’t think that’s likely. At any rate, we’re still here, stuck, tryin’ to figure and jigger it out…
Guys, this is way off topic. Could you take it to email now? Thanks.