On Dec 4, 2007 3:10 PM, hkhenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 01:00 PM 12/4/2007, Nick Arnett wrote: > > snip > > >You've set an impossibly high burden of proof by claiming that religion > >causes evil. You'll never prove it. > > I don't think that's the proper model.
My argument there is really about the squishiness of psychology and sociology. > Evolutionary psychology states that *every* human psychological trait > is either the result of direct selection or a side effect of direct > selection. (With a bit of possibility of something being fixed due to > random genetic drift.) This is arguing from a conclusion. The conclusion is that everything that exists in living organisms arose via evolution, therefore everything has an evolutionary explanation. I'll certainly allow that it *may* be true, but it certainly isn't proved -- our understanding of evolution is far from complete. Furthermore, I think pure Darwinian explanations are generally wrong. Everything doesn't arise from competition and we have mathematics (complexity) that demonstrates that, or at least very strongly suggests that Darwinian models are substantially incomplete. (Nothing in this is an argument for or against God; like the majority of people, I don't think religion has anything much to say about evolution.) > > I think we can agree that the psychological mechanisms behind > religion are a species wide psychological trait. It's known from > twin studies to be at least as heritable as other personality traits. That's interesting and certainly speaks to causes. > > You have a choice of directly selected (like the psychological > mechanism behind Stockholm syndrome) or a side effect like drug > addiction. (In the EEA being wiped out on plant sap was a formula > for experiencing the intestines of a predator from the inside.) > > I favor direct selection via a primary mortality mode in the EEA, > wars between groups of humans. Here is the background: > > http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf > > I have gone a little further than Dr. Gat and propose that the > psychological mechanism leading to wars starts with a population > average "bleak outlook." Under circumstances where parents can see > they won't be able to feed the kids through the next dry season, it > makes genetic sense for an evolved behavioral switch to flip. So the > future looks bleak enough, it is cost effective from the gene's > viewpoint for a group of related males to go to war and take the high > risk of dying. Hmmm. Are you suggesting that this mechanism directly explains, for example, our invasion and occupation of Iraq? Or is war simply a leftover from a time of scarcer resources? > > > You ask: "How do religions fit in here?" What are religions? They are > memes of course, Ouch. Though I love the concept of a meme, it is at best vaguely defined. Clever, but not obviously useful, at least to me. So it's very little help to me to postulate that religions are memes. but in particular religions are *xenophobic* memes. > When times are good they are relatively inactive seed xenophobic > memes. What we see today as religions are the result of evolved > psychological mechanisms that induce groups to go to war as needed by > conditions. By this model religions don't _cause_ wars. How does this explain non-warring religions? How could they have anything meaningful left over? > > If you consider killing people "evil" or at least undesirable, and > want to get back to a "cause," it's population growth in excess of > economic growth. Malthus with method if you like. Religions are just > xenophobic memes. When people feel the need to thin out the > overpopulation, some meme (including memes like communism) will gain > enough influence over enough people to serve as a "reason" for a war. As I see it, one can substitute "idea" for "meme" in everything you've written here and it makes no difference in the meaning... I'm curious why you're using the word. Back to the point at hand, I smell the same argument from conclusion that you started with. I.e., if people kill each other, there must be an evolutionary explanation, since all behavior arises from evolution. Tempting, but tautological. I think it is tempting because we are hard-pressed to see any other mechanism at work. At some point, we have to explain all the ways that living things behave that isn't clearly competitive. War is rather obviously survival of the fittest, so it is no surprise that it fits neatly into Darwinian thinking. > > > > Is this model logical enough for you? It's great food for thought, but I'd still like to escape the circularity. Is it just politically incorrect to consider non-Darwinian explanations? And I mean *scientific* non-Darwinian explanations, not the non-thinking kind that some folks seem to think is all that fits in one's head if one chooses to have faith. For example, how does the anthropic principle (which I suspect the math of complexity hints at) fit into this discussion? Intuitively, I'm tempted to believe that if Darwinism was all there is, we wouldn't be here to observe the universe. But how can one prove the anthropic principle without a few other universes available as examples? Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
