(no subject)

[catsittingstill]

Okay, I'm having a conversation (e-mail) with someone who doesn't believe in evolution. I'm not sure how I got sucked into this. I have a feeling I'm going to regret it. But a couple of things occurred to me while I was reading the last message that I think fellow believers in evolution may want to consider for those moments when such things come up.

1) Evolution is a process, like evaporation, not a purpose. Just because humans evolved from more primitive ancestor creatures doesn't mean that our highest duty is to help the race improve genetically. After all, people who believe God molded the first man from dirt do not all become potters.

2) Many people believe both in a Christian God, and in evolution. It is by no means an either-or proposition. It's also possible for someone to believe neither in God nor in evolution, though I suppose that's probably rare.

3) When people start talking to you about how statistically probable (or not) something is, remember that to know how likely something is, you have to observe many instances of it. For instance to know how rare it is for a woman to be six feet tall, you have to measure many women. Which makes it hard to talk about the likelihood of a given cosmological constant having a particular value, since there's only one cosmos to observe. Quick--what's the plural of cosmos?

Sigh. I don't have time for this.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's hard to have these conversations with folks who believe in not-evolution. (I phrase it this way because I don't "believe" in evolution. I'm convinced that various forms of evolutionary processes are what has caused speciation for the last few billion years at least.) In part, it's because the human tendency to look for patterns easily finds false patterns, and we're just not accustomed to checking those perceived patterns against observable evidence.

In part it's because concepts like "maximum likelihood" are tough to grasp. "What are the odds that we'd have this world today?" is a nonsensical question to someone who sees all possible events as highly contingent and pretty improbable. "What explanation maximizes the possibility of observing this world?" is a different question entirely, but most of us aren't trained to look at things that way.

And, in part, it's because lots of folks who are convinced that evolution is a pretty good explanation of speciation have articulated it badly, incorrectly, or plain evilly. The 'chain of being' explanation of evolution is incredibly common, however fallacious it is. Spenserian notions of Social Darwinism still exist, even in tongue-in-cheek places like the Darwin Awards (which are really Lamarckian Awards, but try to tell others that), but viciously in other social circles. And evolutionary psychology is all too often a set of Just So Stories with pretty weak reasoning about individual characteristics rather than species characteristics.

Evolution is just a messy, difficult story to tell, because it attacks us in all sorts of ways we're weak in reasoning.

By the way, congrats on the Pegasus nomination for "Howie in Waltz Time," which I'm feeling pretty darn lucky to have heard in its first incarnations.

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Quick--what's the plural of cosmos?

Cosmoses, according one on-line dictionary I have.

---

By the way, I don't "believe" in Evolution. "Belief" too often implies religious belief, and in an argument like this, rhetorical problems often ensue. I know what I mean, and you know what I mean; but your correspondent often doesn't know what I mean — or will purposely conflate the different meanings.

Rather, I consider the Darwinian Theory of Evolution to be a well-confirmed hypothesis in the biological sciences: I regard it as successful. Evolution, under the conditions specified in the theory, works. And because it does, it is an excellent foundation for the acquisition of useful knowledge, allowing us humans (and our many co-dependent species) to have better lives — or at least, be biologically successful.

This successful theory is also extremely satisfactory because it has a (now) well-understood mechanism of operation (speciation: the mutable means of transmission of behaviors and somatic forms) and is very successful in letting us understand our current biological world, its varied biological ecologies, and the world in its distant past.

It is also extremely useful as a basis to understand why the technologies of plant and animal breeding work so wonderfully. And it forms the foundation for genetic engineering techniques.

And finally, it is a powerful theory because its basic idea has been extended into semibiological and non-biological arenas (e.g., Dawkins' memes), with greater or lesser success.

Classic Darwinian Evolution is, on the other hand, not a very comfortable thing to those without a sense of wonder of the natural world. To these folks, it makes people (and their ideas) seem like very small, trivial, insignificant things in a very large, uncaring, cold universe. It does not explain why certain things may be morally right or morally wrong. Nor is it taken as particularly comforting when bad things happen to good people.

One background issue you might consider is what your correspondent takes as the relationship between his/her concept of God, and human society and the natural world. For those who believe that nature is subservient to an anthropomorphic all-God, the existence of a natural evolutionary process would be anathema. Thus it becomes critical to some to deny the truth of the process (at least in the natural world). Forgive me if I use a shorthand and oversimplify; but to me, at least, the reasoning based on such premises explains the persistent challenges presented from that quarter (which you have encountered to your apparent exhaustion).

But, without actually seeing the objections your correspondent has made to Evolution as a successful theory, or without understanding the deeper issues he/she may have with it, and whether or not your correspondent is playing fair, I can't say much more.

(And that was a lot of words saying very little. I'm sorry! I would probably have spent my time better looking up some good Defense of Evolution websites for you.)

Beyond that — well, isn't it a wonderful world out there to discover, regardless?

now I have this song in my head...

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Where are the leaders of the land?
Where are the swells who run this show?
Only one man, and that's Lamarck
Speaks for the people here below...

I'm just sure there's a filk in there somewhere.

But I'm not writing it. :)

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

Cosmoi, if you're Greek.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"For those who believe that nature is subservient to an anthropomorphic all-God, the existence of a natural evolutionary process would be anathema."

Disputed. It certainly ain't anathema to me.

"Subservient to" does not equate to "micro-managed by". =:o}

My computer may be subservient to me (subject to whatever backdoors the Redmond folks have helpfully provided those in the outside world... =:o\ ), but that doesn't mean I can't fire up a program and leave it running in the background while I get on with a bit of word-processing that actually *needs* my attention. And that program may easily include randomly decided elements that I don't need to worry about because they don't affect the purpose of running the program; Or indeed, may include random elements that I've deliberately included to "see how it turns out".

It's a mistake to infer someone's methods and purposes simply from the amount of power they hold... Including God's! =:o}

What I Meant Was ... (Part I)

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... I think we may be talking past one another here.

For those who believe that nature is subservient to an anthropomorphic all-God, the existence of a natural evolutionary process would be anathema.

Understand that I'm being rather White Knight-ish here, and I'm using the terms "anthropomorphic all-God" and "subservient" in a very particular way. And I did warn that I was using a shorthand and overgeneralizing, and asked for indulgence in the matter.

It would take me a very very long essay to describe what I mean by "anthropomorphic all-God" and "subservient". The following is not that essay!

For the purposes of the commentary I made to Cat, I would partially define the *anthropomorphic all-God, as the prime mover of nature, intimately and constantly involved in nature, that there is an evident independent-of-humans teleological aspect of nature, thus making nature directly subservient to *His Will, and as evidence that this Will is not equivalent to nature itself, that there exists a body of "super-nature" (including magic, if you will), also directly subservient to *His Will, arbitrarily invocable and not amenable to scientific investigation, but somehow concerned with human affairs (the "anthropomorphic"), for example, as Moses conversed with *Him and gave the people signs. There is an arguable proposition that *God may be also the Societal God that is invoked by Princes and politicians. Out of this, though, comes the assertion that *God's attributes makes the Universe somehow fundamentally unknowable, particularly in the scientific sense.

There's another restriction to consider: that though the belief in *God may be held, there's no conflict with the success of the Evolutionary Theory if you establish a bright line, a barrier to discourse if you will, stating that religion is a matter of faith (rather than of substance), and that science is a matter of practice, and one cannot commingle reasoning between the two universes. Although this barrier very much helps establish polite company, for those rationalists who believe that *God is a creature of Nature (who some consider equivalent to what they conceive of as God), this is extremely stultifying, particularly if one wishes to establish a scientific study of religious psychology.

However, putting religionists under the microscope, as it were, can threaten the clergy's power and even its raison d'etre (and why should it not? Diderot would approve!). This challenge to the religious hierarchy is exactly what Darwin's Theory of Evolution did in the 19th century. The very normal reaction was to fight fire with fire. "If you invade our domain, and threaten what we perceive as the welfare of our members, we feel free to invade yours by questioning the validity of your efforts!" However, most mainstream religions (until recently, at least) have reached a modus vivendi with science, just as they have with business practices and with the laws of Nature, red in tooth and claw. And to the degree permitted by their tenets, religions have been strengthened by their adaptability: some psychological studies indicate that elements of religious beliefs, when taken together, appear to give advantages to the well-being and survival of those who adopt and practice them.

(End Part I)

What I Meant Was ... (Part II)

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

.

Beyond the extended argument, I should say that I did write the statement's antecedents with the conclusion in mind, working backwards, to make what I hoped was a tautological statement. (At least that was what was in my head, before I mangled it into pixels.) But, beyond the shorthand and elided arguments, I think I am using "subservient" in a much different sense than you state, that is, I'm using the word to mean "useful as a means or an instrument; serving to promote an end," rather than "subordinate in capacity or function."

But then, I repeat, I'm rather like the White Knight: the word means exactly what I say it means, neither more or less. Which, I am afraid, is much the tendency in the wonderland of metaphysical commentary.

---

After all that long-winded comment, I'll summarize:

1. The sentence in question has terms that are a shorthand for much longer descriptions.
2. The definitions of words/terms were not precisely defined.
3. Intermediate arguments have been elided.
4. I put the reader on notice of these facts in the following sentence.

The statement was in context of a question relating to the motivation and thought-process of Cat's correspondent. What I queried about is a common thought-process among anti-evolutionists, as it elicits this sort of behavior (that of extended, persistent, tiring and ultimately vexatious argument).

I regret that I may have allowed you to misconstrue the meaning of the antecedents in the statement, and that my warning may have been inadequate. I do, as I did in the original comment, ask for your indulgence.


(End)

Re: What I Meant Was ... (Part II)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Oops! I seem to have put you to a lot of trouble: In my LJ inbox I have no less than 3 different drafts of this second section of your reply...

Apologies if my tersely worded reply read like I was picking a fight. I was replying half to you and half to (my hasty conceptualisation of) Cat's correspondent. I picked up on that particular sentence because it's a point where many people *do* falsely assume that the statements "God made everything according to his plan" and "God made us in his own image" automatically preclude any random element in God's *process* of making everything/us.

(And I actually overlooked the word "anthropomorphic" in your sentence until after I'd replied anyway, but then decided that it didn't make to much difference to what I was saying. =:o} )

Re: What I Meant Was ... (Part II)

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

No problem! It has been an excellent exercise in honing one's thought. To be frank, the question of the success and scope of the validity of the Theory of Evolution is a huge, complex one, and the arguments are varied. The issues involved take an enormous amount of knowledge of fact, and of work in the techniques of classical rhetoric, particularly in the Common Topics relating to Discovery of Arguments.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Sigh...sympathies. I am continually amazed at the things people believe. Is your correspondent a "young-earth" creationist or an intelligent designer?

She's Alive!

[quadrivium.livejournal.com]

It's good to read/hear from you . :-) Congratulations, on your nomination for "Howie in Waltztime!"

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

This just in. "One of the most thoughtful politicians in Washington doesn't believe in the theory of evolution. [...]"--NY Times conservative columnist David Brooks. (Registration required, article goes for-pay-private after 7 days.)

What is it with people?

[barbara-the-w.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

If someone wants to exercise hubris to the point where they think they can tell God what he keeps in his toolbox, they can go right ahead.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

I know I'm coming in late, having just realized that you weren't friended until Callie mentioned you'd posted something. I scrolled back a few posts and saw this one, and it interested me...

Please, please, if you ever get in an evolution argument with a Bible-believer again, just point that person to TalkOrigins.org and then go off and do something with your time that is more likely to produce results. Those three points you made are discussed there at great length.

Anything you could argue with them has already been argued a million times over there. In more positive and convincing ways than you or I ever could. And of course, anyone you're arguing with still won't change their mind after reading that, but what can you do? :-)

Regarding your third point, it's one of my favorite ones to harp on. I once made a post in another online community with my take on it. Here's a quote:

I remember the first time this "hit" me. I was young, pre-teen, and it was an eye-opening idea for someone my age.

The idea: Sure, the chances are billions to one against any given planet supporting life (the creationists like to use this as an argument for I.D. sometimes). Fine, but here we are, sitting on that one-in-a-billion planet. Does that mean we were incredibly lucky? NO, it means we were inevitable, and the fact that we're sitting here contemplating our own existence simply means that our brains evolved enough intelligence to perform that activity. Put another way (perhaps existentialism, but anyway): If we weren't able to sit here contemplating our own existence, then we wouldn't be contemplating our own existence.

I forget who said it first, but here's the corollary: Sure, you could say that the odds of winning the lottery are millions to one. But the guy holding that winning ticket would be a fool to throw it away because "it must be wrong, the odds are millions to one against it being right".

Creationists like to argue that the first spark of life on this planet, the first time molecules assembled into self-replicating strands, had astronomical odds against it. Scientists counter with: "Yeah, but we had oceans of molecules working on the problem for eons". I counter with: "You're both forgetting that we had an entire universe full of planets, many of them with oceans of molecules working on the problem." (and I use the term 'working' metaphorically, of course.)

See, any argument about how "unlikely our biology could have come about by chance" is forgetting to look at it in the proper scale. They think it has to apply just to our planet, or our solar system, or our time period. It doesn't.

We're sitting on a winning lottery ticket, and we've got the evidence to show it. Those who say the game was rigged are missing out on the true wonder and appreciation for the situation.

Anyhoo, um, "Hi Cat, how you doing"? :-)

You should come to Consonace 2005 this year. We miss you out here on this lonely West coast. :-)