May 3, 2017
THERE ARE NO DARWINISTS:
Creationism By Another Name (Ferran Suay, 5/02/17, Quillette)
[H]ow can a species rid itself of the laws that govern the rest of life on the planet?Only a few minutes of thought reveals all this to be extraordinarily unscientific. Are we to believe that evolutionary pressures, which have configured the anatomy of the body and the brain, cannot also be used to explain and understand the whys and wherefores of human behaviour? Everyone agrees that we have opposable thumbs because those of our ancestors born with this mutation possessed certain reproductive advantages and left more living descendants on Earth. As this trait continued to provide benefits to subsequent generations, it became so dominant it is now the norm for the vast majority of humans. The same can be applied to the standing position, and to the size and the particular anatomical configuration of the human brain. This is all uncontroversial.
Why should the same logic not apply to human behaviour? Let's take physical aggression, for example--the tendency to impose on others through coercion. Didn't aggressive individuals enjoy (some) reproductive advantages? Didn't the most aggressive males climb the hierarchy of social groups thereby enhancing their ability to attract resources and mates? Didn't that privilege the transmission of aggressive genes to the next generation? The statistics on violent crime reveal a very clear over-representation of the male sex. Without needing to study the numbers, anyone with eyes in their head can conclude that human males are generally considerably more physically aggressive than females.
However, unlike the shape of our hands, the standing position, or the anatomy of the brain, this trait is not a universally accepted product of evolution. Instead, it is a response to social conditioning, such as patriarchal education, the nefarious influence of the media, or the excessive availability of violent video games. In this scenario, miraculously, evolutionary pressures have no part to play, and the socio-environmental, psychosocial, or psycho-socio-environmental variables (we can keep on juxtaposing terms until we find a sufficiently abstruse formulation) are the sole determinants of behaviour.Because the people defending these statements don't or won't explicitly deny the theory of evolution, we must understand that they accept it, but only up to a point; a point at which a deity arbitrarily decided that, from this moment onwards, humans would be exempt from this process. Henceforth, the method that led us to understand what shaped the brain cannot be applied to explain how it produces behaviour.Curious.
More comical than curious.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 3, 2017 7:45 AM