"Common Sense Atheist" Smacks Christian Apologist William Lane Craig: “Basically, Craig defends his faith against the evidence the same way my mom does – 'I know because I know that I know that I know.' And that’s it. 'I know in my heart that Christianity is true, and I know my heart is right because my heart tells me it is right.' That’s, like, the dumbest thing ever. It’s intellectual suicide. It is extreme gullibility and credulity. It is also reveals profoundly arrogant double standard to assert that my heart provides irrefutable proof of metaphysical truths, while the hearts of everyone who disagrees with me deceives them."
Should Evolutionary Psychology Be Required for Med School Training? "Nesse’s paper cites examples of where evolutionary knowledge can benefit those working in medicine. An awareness of why humans have evolved the fever response, for example, could help doctors understand when it is safe to use drugs to block fever. Rubbish. Pharmaceutical studies on living patients in real time do that."
Anti-Climate Change, Anti-Human: "There is no nihilism like the nihilism of a 9-year-old. 'Why should I bother,' one of them recently demanded of me, when he was presented with the usual arguments in favor of doing homework: 'By the time I'm grown up, the polar ice caps will have melted and everyone will have drowned.' Watching the news from Copenhagen last weekend, it wasn't hard to understand where he got that idea."
In a recent issue of the leading journal Science, Elizabeth Culotta offers a variety of speculations in an article titled On the Origin of Religion.…Some argue that religion exists because it increases evolutionary fitness (survival of the fittest). Others argue that it makes no difference to fitness. It is merely a glitch in our thinking that doesn't kill us off.
They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong. Let's see.
Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff of the University of British Columbia claimed last year in Science that religion evolved because it made people more cooperative, hence more fit, thus increasing survival rates…
"This type of religiously-motivated 'virtuous' behaviour has likely played a vital social role throughout history," says Shariff, a Psychology PhD student. Then Norenzayan qualifies:
"Some of the most cooperative modern societies are also the most secular," says Norenzayan. "People have found other ways to be cooperative – without God."
Actually, his John Lennon retro Imagine There's No Heaven thesis was pretty much refuted by the atheist totalitarian monstrosities of the 20th century, where trust was minimal and co-operation was an alternative to getting shot or imprisoned.
Then – in what appears to be a direct shot at Ross Douthat’s Kumbaya attitudetoward the rise of Islam in Europe – Ms. O’Leary states…
Even today, co-operative secular societies in Europe do a poor job of dealing with, for example, rising Islamism. They do not co-operate to protect civil liberties; they capitulate. People who believe in nothing beyond their own preferences and security cannot win against people who believe in specific ideas and accept risk as the price of establishing them.
Pure secularism only stands a chance against a fanatical politicised religion if it morphs into a totalitarian state which dispenses with civil liberties. And not a good chance either.
By contrast, in Canada, Christians, Jews, and Muslims -- as well as others -- have fought back hard recently and are winning against Islamists. The Canadians who (so far) have derailed Islamic political censorship posing as religion are passionately committed to a Canada -- founded "on the principles of the supremacy of God and the rule of law." But these principles, on which our civil liberties are based, were not applied in recent "human rights" cases brought by Islamists -- until serious monotheists insisted they be applied.
So doesn't that show that religion creates fitness via co-operation?
Well, no, not really. It is true that in Canada traditional, mostly religious, citizens -- completely fed up -- have co-operated to help bring down Leviathan. But fitness is not a relevant criterion unless we first establish a key question: For what ought we to be fit? All of the disparate "free speechers" would be far more personally fit behind a tax-funded desk, launching persecutions on behalf of favoured pressure groups or grievance mongers.
But we seek a better country. Evolutionary psychology should not go there, or even visit.
Now for the other side: Some researchers claim that religion does not confer fitness; it just fails to kill you before you have kids who grow up. Arguing that religion is an accidental byproduct of evolution, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, a self-declared atheist, explains that we tend to see inanimate objects as having "beliefs, desires, emotions, and consciousness," and that this tendency is central to religious beliefs:
"Taking his cues from Darwin, Bloom posits that our spiritual tendencies emerged somewhere in the evolutionary process, most likely as "accidental by-products" of other traits because "as a species, humans have an unprecedented knack for finding patterns and reading intentions." Unfortunately, to Bloom's mind, this tendency to read intelligence into everything sometimes gets out of hand ..."
His primary evidence seems to be little children's views of whether something is a conscious agent or not. The trouble is, small children don't know very much about the world, so they cannot decide until they gain more experience. The same child who talks earnestly to his teddy will toss it aside a year or two later in favour of Nintendo…
Bloom seems oblivious to the fact that atheism predisposes him to think that a divine source for the universe is false, just as religion disposes others to think it true. So if "evolution" accounts for Mother Teresa's or Gandhi's beliefs, what accounts for his? He will reply triumphantly, "Science!" But it's not clear that any of this stuff is science. It all sounds more like an atheist's feeble attempt to explain the universe and life sans God.
Who's the Nuttiest?: Mark Steyn writes, "For the purposes of argument, let's accept the media's insistence that Major Hasan is a lone crazy. So who's nuttier? The guy who gives a lecture to other military doctors in which he says non-Muslims should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats? Or the guys who say 'Hey, let's have this fellow counsel our traumatized veterans and then promote him to major and put him on a Homeland Security panel?'"...
Gold Price Hits Record High as Dollar Wanes: "Gold prices hit a record above 1,100 dollars on Monday with the dollar weakening after a pledge by G20 countries to keep economic recovery pumped up with easy money."
Evolution is a Theory, Not a Fact:William E. Smiddy, M.D. writes, "It is appropriate to commemorate the Darwin anniversary...However, lost in the platitudes is the fact that evolution is still but a theory, not an experimentally verifiable fact. There is no more than B:III evidence for the theory of evolution (ie, there have been no clinical trials, randomized or not, confirming the theory; rather, respected authorities have concluded its parts and, at best, there are case-control series that have been extrapolated to its conclusion) despite pervasive, frequent, and dogmatic proclamations to the contrary." H/T: Darwiniana
Murderer With "Aggressive Genes" Gets Reduced Sentence: "A judge’s decision to reduce a killer’s sentence because he has genetic mutations linked to violence raises a thorny question – can your genes ever absolve you of responsibility for a particular act?" Denyse O'Leary comments: "I don’t know who benefits if some perp’s sentence is cut because he supposedly has aggression genes, but I sure doubt it is the law-abiding public. Thanks, pop genetics (as opposed to real genetics), no doubt fronted by 'evolutionary' psychology."
Today, the pro-Game blogger Obsidian invited me to a debate about Game and related subjects. I accepted, of course. And here is my first post...
A4_Press_Release
Obsidian: In this post, I’ll try to summarize my position on Game succinctly (knowing in advance that the short length of the post won’t make it very persuasive). Even so, maybe it can serve as the basis for a deeper dialogue.
Let me begin by expressing a few things that I’m pretty sure we can agree on.
1) While “feminism” (i.e., the women’s movement) may have served a useful function in the past (suffrage, anti-discrimination policies, etc.), today it is a counterproductive force that hurts men and women on an individual level and harms society at large. We should oppose radical feminism.
2) Because of feminism and other ideologies, men are facing an “identity crisis.” The qualities that defined men for thousands of years are labeled as either “wrong” or “irrelevant.” We – as men – need to define what it means to be a man (instead of delegating that role to feminists and others who don’t have our best interests at heart).
3) The dating/sexual landscape is wrapped in confusion. The goals are still the same (having sex, marriage, and children), but the way to go about achieving them (and how to establish priorities between them) is unknown to most folks. For example, most women want to have a sprawling sex life until the age of 28 or so, have a successful career, a strong alpha male husband (who also meets her emotional/spiritual needs), and eventually raise 2.5 kids. Obviously, this is a recipe for failure and depression. The need to re-establish logic and common sense to the dating/sexual landscape is urgent.
4) For men, in particular, sex is an important “higher need” which is a vital ingredient in his self-esteem. Any program which encourages men to remain celibate until marriage is doomed to failure. For that reason alone, social conservatives are almost irrelevant to this discussion.
But does this mean we need “Game?” No. Let me give 3 criticisms of “Game” (and please note that I don’t mean “Game” as in “tools to pick up chicks;” I mean “Game” as an overarching life philosophy which seems to be the modus operandi of the online Game community.
1) The foundation of Game (as described by Roissy, Ferdinand, The Fifth Horseman, and others too numerous to count) is “evolutionary psychology.” “Evo psych” is basically the ideology of E.O. Wilson, Robert Wright, and many others which states – and I’m paraphrasing here – that men and women – despite many years of living in “civilization” – are still – on a mental/moral level – chimps living in the savannahs of Africa. We have not “evolved.” The goal of men is to impregnate as many women as possible and the goal of women is to secure an “alpha male” with the “resources” to care for her offspring. What’s my complaint? While there is some truth to Evo Pysch, much of it is false, and even the stuff that IS true has a habit of being misunderstood and abused (as we’ve seen many times in the Game community). To deny the “human” aspect to human life (or to relegate it into the dungeon) is grossly counterproductive. There is a critical role for things like shared interests, shared values, emotional depth, a spiritual connection, etc. These are the true building blocks of a successful relationship.
2) By adopting the “Evo Psych” philosophy, Game encourages men to see themselves (and women) as “animals” and thus, it is much easier to hold women in contempt and to justify using them to gratify our sexual needs and then disposing of them quickly. Needless to say, such a view of women is darkening, and prevents men from expressing the love and commitment necessary for a healthy, happy relationship.
3) The online Game community has chosen to adopt Roissy as not only a member of their movement, but also a leader of it. I find this mind-boggling because Roissy is a hedonist and a nihilist who finds pleasure in the grossest things in life. The fact that Gamers “deify” Roissy (to use your words) shows that Game is a chauvinistic pseudo-religion, in my humble opinion. Any attempt to turn Game into a positive force for men should include – as a first step – a very easy assignment which is to ostracize Roissy from the community and to say “Roissy’s nihilism and genuine contempt for women is not something we can, or will, support.”
Back to you, Sir…
Obsidian's response is here.I'll reply later today.
***UPDATE, NOV. 6, 2009*** And here's my latest...
I’m going to clip the highlights of your essay, and respond to them one-by-one. Please see below.
OBS: “No Man gets to define what an Alpha Male is-Females define that. The only choice we have is to whether we wish to be that for her or not.”
TW: This strikes me as a questionable assertion. If Men are the leaders of society – as Game claims – then men should have the ability to influence what women view as “desirable” or “undesirable.” For example, in Indian society, the Brahmin (the religious caste) are the elite of society, whereas in a commercial republic, like the United States, wealthy businessmen represent the elite. The decision to choose religion over wealth or vice versa was a decision made by men in each culture, would you agree? At the very least, I would say that waving our hands and saying “we can’t help ourselves; the women are in control” is very “unGame-like.” I would wager that Men can be a major factor in improving the situation – maybe up to 50% of the solution. Maybe even more.
OBS: Please see my Open Letter to the Ladies of “Girl Game”…
TW: I will in a little bit. Scout’s honor. But let me address your other points first.
OBS: “Specifically tell me what EP got right, then tell me what it got wrong? I need specific examples, because I can then relate that directly to what you say is wrong about Game, OK?”
TW: E.P. strikes me as a useful (but not proven) paradigm for understanding how our ancestors lived millions of years ago. As it pertains to the year 2009, E.P. can give us some genuine insights as to what human “instincts” are. And – for those among us who are – to put it unkindly – “dumb and primitive”- it can also give us some useful insights as to understanding their behavior (basically, a lot of sex and violence).
For the rest of us, though – I’m referring to civilized folks – E.P. strikes me as at least 80% worthless, and if Gamers are using it as the foundation for understanding romantic relationships, then it becomes 100% worthless. Why? Because we are not animals; we are human beings. We have logic. We have values. We have morality. And all of those things shape our motivations and behavior. To believe – as E.P. does – that the secret desire of all men is to sleep around and impregnate as many women as possible – is absurd. I can’t think of any man I know who lives that way. Most men I know want to get married and have 2-3 kids with one woman. And the evidence backs me: Birth rates have declined over the last 40 years or so – not just in the West, but throughout the world. E.P. can’t explain that.
OBS [on my assertion that Gamers deny the importance of emotional/spiritual connections]: “I don’t recall any writer on Game saying otherwise, Todd-and if you have, please provide the direct quote.”
TW: In early September, I asked Chuck Ross, “What does Game have to offer men and women who want a deeper emotional/spiritual connection?”
He wrote back, “Todd, you always assume that every facet of a male/female relationship has to have some emotional/spiritual connection. These can be fostered by Game in that healthy physical attraction has spillover effects into the other realms even though Game doesn’t necessarily have direct spiritual/emotional ties.”
I responded, “Chuck: Basically this is your answer: Focus on the physical stuff and eventually the emotional/spiritual stuff will work itself out later. Sigh. I don’t think I’m being unfair when I say that’s not a compelling answer at all.”
OBS: “I’ve openly and vociferously disagreed with Roissy on a whole host of issues and points, from his views of Race to his views of what constitutes Feminine Beauty, you name it. Having said that, I also give him a heck of a lot of credit not only for making Game principles accessible to the Common Man, but for also giving a much needed commentary on some of the very things you mention at the outset of your post here.”
TW: I think it’s interesting you brought up the issue of race because it seems to me that most members of the Game community have an attitude toward rare relations that seems to be…how can I put this nicely?… “primitive.” Note their love for Steve Sailer and “Human Bio-Diversity.” And what is the basis of Sailer’s race views? Evolutionary psychology. And what is the foundation of Game? Evolutionary psychology. Put it all together, and it seems to me that anyone who cares about racial justice should be highly dubious of Evolutionary Psychology, and thus Game itself.
Also, if you have “vociferously disagreed with Roissy,” I applaud you for doing that. As far as I know, you’re the only member of the Game community who’s done that.
OBS: “Moreover and in fairness to R, he’s said on more than one occasion that one need not be an Atheistic Hedonist in order to reap the benefits of Game.”
TW: I can imagine Roissy saying something like that, but that doesn’t change the fact that Roissyism is the logical destination for Game as a life philosophy.
As I wrote on Aug. 26: “Once you accept that evolutionary psychology and biology are the only ways to meet women and have women fill your physical needs, its only a hop, skip, and a jump to the proud nihilism and boastful hedonism of Roissy. Is it possible that Roissy might be the only Gamer who truly understands Game?”
OBS: If not Game, then…what? Your detailed, and field-tested response?
TW: Instead of adopting a system (such as Game) in which we allow other people (in this case, loose women) to change who we are for questionable goals (casual sex), we should find happiness from within. No man should judge his worth by how much “gina tingling” he elicits in the opposite sex. That is a recipe for anxiety at best or despair at worst.
The alternative to Game is to take ownership of your life. Everything you need to build a happy and successful life is inside you – inside your mind. The power to think – and by that, I mean the power to think rationally – is the power to grow, and to be everything you wish to be. A rational man is a competent man…and a competent man is a confident man…. and a confident man is a happy man. A man with those qualities (competent, confident, and happy) is extremely desirable to other women (or at least those women who are worthy of his love). And that man can give an incredible amount of love because he is complete on the inside. There are no guarantees in life, but I’m confident that nearly every man who applied my principles would find more love and happiness than he would through Game. I can say that from experience.
**UPDATE, DEC. 9, 2009**
As Obsidian requested, I read through his essay, An Open Letter to Girl Game, and what I found most interesting about it was its numerous attempts to justify Game through evolution: "the truths of evolutionary psychology," "extensive evolutionary hardwiring," "evolutionarily speaking," "passing on a genetic legacy," etc.
I've mentioned Reductionismseveral timeson this blog. And more recently, I've labeled Reductionist philosophy as the inspiration for the Game/HBD phenomenon. But admittedly I haven't done a very good job of explaining what Reductionism is - at least in the literal sense of the word, independent of any moral judgment. Hopefully, this new essay can remedy that.
But before I dive into explaining Reductionism in more detail, I want to highlight 2 Ayn Rand quotes which explicate the fact that our "inner life" (the thoughts, ideas, and values which swirl inside our heads) has a direct impact on our success and happiness.
As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.
And...
Philosophy provides man with a comprehensive view of life. In order to evaluate it properly, ask yourself what a given theory, if accepted, would do to a human life, starting with your own.
Remember Ms. Rand's warning as we trace Reductionism from a scientific theory to a comprehensive philosophy of life.
Oh, and what about the title of my post: Requiem for a Nightmare? It's a play on the movie Requiem for a Dream - an excellent film about the dangers of drug addition.
In fact, I've broken down Wolfe's essays into 4 parts, with each part titled after a song in theRequiem soundtrack.
Actually, before we tap into Tom Wolfe's brain, let's hear from Steve Sailer, a pro-Reductionist leader of the HBD Movement.
Edward O. Wilson, founder of Sociobiology...argues that the future of science resides in "reductionism." Sociology should ultimately be reduced to... its underlying sociobiological mechanisms. In turn, sociobiology needs to be reduced to biology, which will eventually be completely explicable by chemistry. Ultimately, all knowledge can be explained by physics.
This is a magnificently ambitious agenda, and its value is clear... Evolution instilled different reproductive goals in males and females...[And] those contrasting sociobiological drives emanate from chemicals like testosterone and estrogen, which can be understood in terms of the physics of protons and electrons.
So what happened when E.O. Wilson's ground-breaking book, Sociobiology, was published in 1975?
Overnight, Ed Wilson became the most famous biologist in the United States. He was soon adorned with the usual ribbons of celebrity: appearances on the Today show, the Dick Cavett Show,Good Morning America, and the covers of Time and The New York Times Magazine…
In 1977 Wilson won the National Medal for Science. In 1979 he won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for the third volume of his sociobiology trilogy…
A field called evolutionary psychology became all the rage, attracting many young biologists and philosophers who enjoyed the naughty and thrill of being Darwinian fundamentalists. The influence of genes was absolute. Free will among humans, no less than among ants, was an illusion. The “soul” and the “mind” were illusions, too, and so was the very notion of a “self…"
Neuroscience, the science of the brain and the central nervous system, is on the threshold of a unified theory that will have an impact as powerful as that of Darwinism a hundred years ago. Already there is a new Darwin: Edward O. Wilson...
The issue this time around, at the end of the twentieth century, is not the evolution of the species, which can seem a remote business, but the nature of our own precious inner selves...
Neuroscientists involved in three–dimensional electroencephalography will tell you that there is not even any one place in the brain where consciousness or self–consciousness (Cogito ergo sum) is located. This is merely an illusion created by a medley of neurological systems acting in concert. The young generation takes this yet one step further. Since consciousness and thought are entirely physical products of your brain and nervous system—and since your brain arrived fully imprinted at birth—what makes you think you have free will? Where is it going to come from? What "ghost," what "mind," what "self," what "soul," what anything that will not be immediately grabbed by those scornful quotation marks, is going to bubble up your brain stem to give it to you?...
Part 2: Ghosts of Things to Come
Which brings us to the second most famous statement in all of modern philosophy: Nietzsche's "God is dead." The year was 1882. (The book was Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft [The Gay Science].) Nietzsche said this was not a declaration of atheism, although he was in fact an atheist, but simply the news of an event. He called the death of God a "tremendous event," the greatest event of modern history. The news was that educated people no longer believed in God, as a result of the rise of rationalism and scientific thought, including Darwinism, over the preceding 250 years. But before you atheists run up your flags of triumph, he said, think of the implications. "The story I have to tell," wrote Nietzsche, "is the history of the next two centuries." He predicted (in Ecce Homo) that the twentieth century would be a century of "wars such as have never happened on earth," wars catastrophic beyond all imagining. And why? Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to absolve them of their guilt; but they would still be racked by guilt, since guilt is an impulse instilled in children when they are very young, before the age of reason. As a result, people would loathe not only one another but themselves. The blind and reassuring faith they formerly poured into their belief in God, said Nietzsche, they would now pour into a belief in barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods:"If the doctrines...of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal, doctrines I consider true but deadly"—he says in an allusion to Darwinism in Untimely Meditations—"are hurled into the people for another generation...then nobody should be surprised when...brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non–brothers...will appear in the arena of the future."…
Nietzsche said that mankind would limp on through the twentieth century "on the mere pittance" of the old decaying God–based moral codes. But then, in the twenty–first, would come a period more dreadful than the great wars, a time of "the total eclipse of all values" (in The Will to Power). This would also be a frantic period of "revaluation," in which people would try to find new systems of values to replace the osteoporotic skeletons of the old. But you will fail, he warned, because you cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a god who points at you with his fearsome forefinger and says "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."
Why should we bother ourselves with a dire prediction that seems so far–fetched as "the total eclipse of all values"? Because of man's track record, I should think. After all, in Europe, in the peaceful decade of the 1880s, it must have seemed even more far–fetched to predict the world wars of the twentieth century and the barbaric brotherhoods of Nazism and Communism. Ecce vates! Ecce vates! Behold the prophet! How much more proof can one demand of a man's powers of prediction?
A hundred years ago those who worried about the death of God could console one another with the fact that they still had their own bright selves and their own inviolable souls for moral ballast and the marvels of modern science to chart the way. But what if, as seems likely, the greatest marvel of modern science turns out to be brain imaging? And what if, ten years from now, brain imaging has proved, beyond any doubt, that not only Edward O. Wilson but also the young generation are, in fact, correct?...
Despite their best efforts, however, neuroscience is not rippling out into the public on waves of scholarly reassurance. But rippling out it is, rapidly. The conclusion people out beyond the laboratory walls are drawing is: The fix is in! We're all hardwired! That, and: Don't blame me! I'm wired wrong!...
The notion of a self—a self who exercises self–discipline, postpones gratification, curbs the sexual appetite, stops short of aggression and criminal behavior—a self who can become more intelligent and lift itself to the very peaks of life by its own bootstraps through study, practice, perseverance, and refusal to give up in the face of great odds—this old–fashioned notion (what's a boot strap, for God's sake?) of success through enterprise and true grit is already slipping away, slipping away...slipping away...
The genetic fix is in, and the new message is now being pumped out into the popular press and onto television at a stupefying rate. Who are the pumps? They are a new breed who call themselves "evolutionary psychologists." You can be sure that twenty years ago the same people would have been calling themselves Freudian; but today they are genetic determinists, and the press has a voracious appetite for whatever they come up with…
Where does that leave self–control? Where, indeed, if people believe this ghostly self does not even exist, and brain imaging proves it, once and for all?...
Eventually, as brain imaging is refined, the picture may become as clear and complete as those see–through exhibitions, at auto shows, of the inner workings of the internal combustion engine. At that point it may become obvious to everyone that all we are looking at is a piece of machinery, an analog chemical computer, that processes information from the environment. "All," since you can look and look and you will not find any ghostly self inside, or any mind, or any soul.
Part 3: Meltdown
Thereupon, in the year 2010 or 2030, some new Nietzsche will step forward to announce: "The self is dead"—except that being prone to the poetic, like Nietzsche I, he will probably say: "The soul is dead." He will say that he is merely bringing the news, the news of the greatest event of the millennium: "The soul, that last refuge of values, is dead, because educated people no longer believe it exists." Unless the assurances of the Wilsons and the Dennetts and the Dawkinses also start rippling out, the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase "the total eclipse of all values" seem tame…
We live in an age in which it is impossible and pointless to avert your eyes from the truth...
“[Nietzsche] predicted that eventually modern science would turn its juggernaut of skepticism upon itself, question the validity of its own foundations, tear them apart, and self–destruct…
I suddenly had a picture of the entire astonishing edifice collapsing and modern man plunging headlong back into the primordial ooze.
And what is "The Eternal Light?" It's that everything E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Daneil Dennett, and the rest of the "Reductionsts" claim...is bullshit.
In the last few decades, there has been a quiet revolution in the scientific community – especially in the areas of physics and biology – whereby a growing body of evidence leads to an inevitable and surprising conclusion: it is “rational” to believe in God, and even better, a personal God who has a loving interest in our lives.
Despite the hopes of millions of atheists who hoped that science would eventually destroy God, today there is more “reason” to believe in God than at any time in history.
The Reductionist paradigm is starting to unravel. At the same time, however, those who find a perverse pleasure in Reductionism (the Gamers, for example) will cling to it like dear life itself. They refuse to forfeit the self-confidence that comes with knowing "Da Truth," a "Truth" that justifies their superiority over the proles.
But sadly for them, "Da Truth" is a "Lie." And the only thing left is to give it a proper funeral.
"Founded in the late 1980s…[evolutionary psychology] asserts that behaviors that conferred a fitness advantage during the era when modern humans were evolving are the result of hundreds of genetically based cognitive "modules" preprogrammed in the brain. Since they are genetic, these modules and the behaviors they encode are heritable—passed down to future generations—and, together, constitute a universal human nature that describes how people think, feel and act, from the nightclubs of Manhattan to the farms of the Amish, from the huts of New Guinea aborigines to the madrassas of Karachi… We in the 21st century, asserts evo psych, are operating with Stone Age minds.”
For decades, evo psych has been the media’s favorite way to promote Darwinism (see my article, “Sex with Blondes and Darwin” here).
Although, as the article points out, “short of a time machine, the hypothesis was impossible to disprove,” it didn’t matter because no one was there to rebut its claims.
“Game, set and match to evo psych.”
Thankfully – to quote the article again – “that is changing.”
“Evo psych took its first big hit in 2005, when NIU's Buller exposed flaw after fatal flaw in key studies underlying its claims, as he laid out in his book Adapting Minds. Anthropological studies such as Hill's on the Ache, shooting down the programmed-to-rape idea, have been accumulating. And brain scientists have pointed out that there is no evidence our gray matter is organized the way evo psych claims, with hundreds of specialized, preprogrammed modules. Neuroscientist Roger Bingham of the University of California, San Diego, who describes himself as a once devout ‘member of the Church of Evolutionary Psychology’ (in 1996 he created and hosted a multimillion-dollar PBS series praising the field), has come out foursquare against it, accusing some of its adherents of an ‘evangelical" fervor.’
“Evo psych's claims that human behavior is constrained by mental modules that calcified in the Stone Age make sense ‘only if the environmental challenges remain static enough to sculpt an instinct over evolutionary time,’ Pigliucci points out. If the environment, including the social environment, is instead dynamic rather than static—which all evidence suggests—then the only kind of mind that makes humans evolutionarily fit is one that is flexible and responsive, able to figure out a way to make trade-offs, survive, thrive and reproduce in whatever social and physical environment it finds itself in. In some environments it might indeed be adaptive for women to seek sugar daddies. In some, it might be adaptive for stepfathers to kill their stepchildren. In some, it might be adaptive for men to be promiscuous. But not in all. And if that's the case, then there is no universal human nature as evo psych defines it.”
The decline of Evo Psych would be a helpful advance in restoring science to its original function - observing, collecting evidence, and analyzing that evidence in a rational way – NOT pimping for materialism.
“The function of science today is to de-rationalize people and thus, to dehumanize them…Whether it’s in a college classroom or on a TV talk show, we are only provided evidence of materialism. We are only subject to evidence that negates free will; that destroys reason. We are barely aware of evidence in support of free will; in support of reason… Imagine a science that actually chose to uplift humanity… Who knows what we would learn once we treated the mind as a real thing? The possibilities are endless.”
A review of Niles Eldredge's book, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism: "Where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms."
Denyse O'Leary Coins A Great Term: "Darwinbots." "I call the outraged Darwinists “Darwinbots” because I’ll bet that most of them have never seen The Privileged Planet or considered grappling with the questions it raises about design and purpose in the universe.Einstein and Heisenberg grappled with these questions, but the matters that torment great thinkers are beneath the notice of Darwinbots, whose program does not, so far as I can see, contain an independent thinking module."
Denyse O'Leary on the Motivation Behind "Evolutionary Psychology:" The Darwinist "cannot accept that humans actually have consciousness or free will, or that our current circumstances largely result from the exercise of these functions. Rather, he needs to find the answers in the unthinking behavior of non-humans and pre-humans...Any explanation of that sort, no matter how ridiculous, will always make more sense to him than any explanation based on the effects of intelligence, as a creative force in its own right."
Denyse O'Leary on the Link between Darwinism and Marxism: "I don’t see my blog as an exercise in Christian apologetics...I am fascinated by the decline of materialism, typified by widespread public scoffing at its creation story, Darwinism. Had I been born twenty years earlier, I might have covered the decline of Marxism in the same intrigued way, but that show was largely over by the mid-Eighties." For my take on this subject, see here and here.
As the title implies, the book examines male-female relationships from a scientific perspective – actually, a “sociobiological” perspective. “Sociobiology,” in the words of Wikipedia, is a “neo-Darwinian synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the behaviors may have.”
I’ll let Ms. Pincott explain the impact of “sociobiology” on our understanding of human romantic relationships…
“Everyone has an unconscious preference for certain traits, and much of what we desire is rooted in deep evolutionary biases. We evolved this way. Studying ancestral conditions and the mating behaviors of other animals, evolutionary biologists have an interesting take: whether or not you actually want kids, you have ‘parental investment’ instincts that impact your sex life. It all boils down to the basic biological truth that in one year’s time, a woman could sleep with a googol of men but only have one full-term pregnancy, whereas a man could sleep with a googol of women and have googol of babies. To maximize their reproductive success, men are attracted to cues of fertility – youth and beauty – especially in short-term relationships. For women, it’s more complicated. Women have more at stake in the event of a pregnancy, so we’re choosier about our sex partners. Over the ages we developed biases for guys with good genes (masculinity and social dominance) and signs that they would be good dads (nurturers and providers), although we often make trade-offs depending upon our circumstances (p. xv).”
Let’s review this paragraph-long summary of the book’s thesis…
There are 3 major points…
First, that in the game of romance, people aspire to attract the best possible mate (and, especially as they grow older, they aspire to attract the best potential parent for their future children). There is nothing inherently controversial or demeaning or “Darwinian” about this fact. I accept it.
The second point is that women and men have slightly different understandings of what it means to “have a good mate,” and that the reason for this distinction is that women and men have different roles in reproduction. Specifically, because women are the ones who get pregnant, give birth, and have shorter periods of fertility, they are the “choosier” sex. Again, there is nothing inherently controversial or demeaning or “Darwinian” about this fact. I accept it.
But then we come to the third point: that a person’s romantic search is guided by “unconscious preferences” and “deep evolutionary biases. We evolved this way.” That is a flawed conclusion. First of all, there is no inherent reason that perfectly logical preferences (such as men who are “good providers” or women who are “good nurturers”) have anything to do with evolution, per se. Darwinists are always eager to link common sense and banal facts with “evolution,” and equate human beings with “other animals,” as Ms. Pincott does, even though it’s totally unnecessary.
Second of all, using evolution to explain human behavior is inherently silly. Why? Because the Darwinists insist that literally every behavior is a victory for evolution. Consider the following:
On P. 6-9, Ms. Pincott addresses the question, “Why do men prefer big pupils?” She answers: “Evolutionarily speaking, men prefer big, gaping pupils because they’re a sign of arousal and receptivity…Your pupils dilate widest around ovulation, the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle.” Ok…so…the blind forces of nature designed women’s pupils to dilate as a “sign of fertility?” Seems plausible.
But then we come to this…on p. 90-92, Ms. Pincott asks, “What does a ‘wiggle’ in your walk reveal?” Answer: “The more wiggle in your walk, the tinier your waist is in proportion to your hips – a telltale sign of youth and fertility.” OK, so “evolutionarily speaking,” we would expect a woman’s “wiggle” to be greatest during ovulation, right? Wrong! “To the contrary, it turns out that’s when a woman’s gait is most restrained.” Does this contradict sociobiology? Of course not. As Pincott says – without any hint of irony – “the reason women walk less provocatively when they’re most fertile is an unconscious attempt to avoid excessive male attention.”
Got that? During ovulation, women’s eyes dilate to gain men’s attention, and during the same period, their hips wiggle less to avoid men’s attention? Of course, that makes absolutely NO sense. But that’s exactly what happens when you use Darwinism to explain every facet of human behavior. For the atheist Darwinists, everything in life is Darwinist. In every debate, they play the same game: “heads I win; tails you lose.”
But you know what? That’s not my main criticism with Ms. Pincott’s book. Rather, it’s the assumption (once again, promoted by the Darwinists) that human beings – like “other animals” – are a product of their “instincts,” and that our behavior is mostly guided by “deep evolutionary biases,” rather than free will.
For example, one study tested “whether ovulating women are more attracted to very masculine men…The researchers recruited more than four hundred undergraduate women to watch video clips of the men and judge them on their personal qualities and their desirability as long- and short-term partners…The results confirmed…women who were in their fertile phase at the time of the study gave higher-than-usual ratings to swaggering, competitive, confrontational, dominant-looking guys…researchers speculated that the reason women are unconsciously drawn to strong-jawed, deep-voiced, domineering, healthy men when they’re most likely to conceive is that a child born of the union inherits the man’s ‘good genes.’”
While this is an interesting study, there are dangers in overinterpreting it. First of all, no woman makes the decision about who to have children with based on “video clips.” This is so basic and uncontroversial I almost feel embarrassed pointing it out (although I have to because the author doesn’t). Second of all, if the only way to measure “desirability” is through video clips, then the crudest physical aspects (such as “strong jaws”) are – by very definition – the only way women can measure “desirability” – and thus, it should be no surprise that men with traditionally “masculine” physical features are chosen as “more desirable” than men who lack them. If the only information you’re giving women is physical data, should it be surprising when the women judge men on…wait for it…physical data!
The author, however, conveniently doesn’t mention the flaws with the study. Instead, the reader is left with the impression that fertile women, like any animal you find in a zoo, are pawns of their ovaries. The idea that women are looking for other qualities in a partner (such as personality and character) and value these qualities for their own sake (and not just for the value it would bring to their children’s “genes”) is never explored.
There’s a reason it’s never explored: because the author is quite eager to push the “truth” of these so-called “evolutionary biases.” For example, Ms. Pincott asks, “Why do some men smell better to you than others?” She answers: “Women prefer the body odors of guys who have major histocompatibility complex (MHC) gene variants that are mostly different than their own…if you have children with a man whose MHC variants are mostly unlike your own, your kids may inherit a more diverse MHC and stronger immune systems…a body odor that indicates a genetic mismatch may be a big red flag – your body telling you he’s wrong for you on a base biological level.”
While I don’t dispute the conclusion of the study (that body odor can be a helpful signal for MHC “compatibility”) I question how to interpret it. As I stated above, human beings don’t make judgments on who they’re going to marry and have children with based on smell. Let’s use the following example: if a woman has to choose between two guys, will she choose the guy who smells better, or the guy who is nicer, smarter, and a better provider? I think the answer is obvious. And with that answer comes a different conclusion: While these studies are objectively interesting, they don’t tell us a lot about human behavior – because human beings are NOT animals; we don’t just have olfactory cells; we have minds!!!
Or do we?
The author pushes the “truth” of these sexual instincts when she shares the following story: “I once dated a guy whose smell I hated, even though he showered, and it was a major reason why I couldn’t take the relationship further. Later on, I met a man whose smell I love – and I married him.”
I’m not sure how serious we should take her story; it’s likely she’s exaggerating somewhat to increase the effect on her readers. But even so, it’s a very revealing statement. By sharing this story, she is in a sense, validating the “truth” of sexual instincts (such as smell) over the mind. And that is dumb for two reasons. First, as I said above, for most people, physical “facts” are just that – facts – and do not predetermine behavior. But even worse, by presenting these “facts” as behavioral “truths” – the Darwinists are – once again – unnecessarily degrading human dignity. I often wonder: Why do they feel compelled to constantly drag human beings down to the levels of dogs, mice, and insects? I don’t know. But they do it. And it’s wrong.
I don’t mean to pick on Ms. Pincott. I honestly enjoyed her book, and I truly believe she has no agenda beyond sharing interesting information with her readers; but even so, her words and phrases expose an unhealthy ideological framework that she’s transmitting to her audience.
What does this have to do with my book, The Mustard Seed? Well, one of the running questions of the book is: “What does it mean to be human?”
For Troy Dawkins, one of the main characters, being human is equivalent to being an animal. As he says in Chapter 10:
“The newest science is very straightforward – we are, in a very real sense, ‘nothing but mammals.’ Specifically, we’re nothing but highly-evolved monkeys. We think like monkeys and, more often than not, we act like monkeys - just in a more sophisticated way. This is true in virtually every area of life – including sex.”
This so-called “science” reinforces Troy’s atheist philosophy:
“The science is irrefutable: God doesn’t exist, the universe is meaningless, life is a random accident, and morality is an illusion. None of it matters, man. When are you going to understand that? We’re born. We live for a while. We die… That’s all…. And when you come to realize that, my friend, you’re free. You’re liberated. You can do whatever you want.”
Even people who don’t fully embrace Troy’s militant atheism absorb the ideas behind it (specifically, Darwinism). As Chris, the frustrated high school biology student, explains in Chapter 6…
“If anyone thinks the rules of evolution don’t apply to us…well, they’re just living in a fantasy world. I’ve sat in this classroom for years, and I’ve absorbed the truth, even if other kids choose to ignore it.”
I’m not going to write about the pros and cons of Darwinism in this post (although Chapter 9 of The Mustard Seed is a fair introduction), but I would like to highlight 1) the power of the Darwinist idea in our society, and 2) the fact that these ideas are based on faulty conclusions (as seen in Ms. Pincott’s book).
For me, I share the conclusion of Brain Raines, the protagonist of The Mustard Seed, who exclaimed in Chapter 12 that “sex can be, and should be, a human act, and I mean that in a positive way, not as an insult.”
Seeing sex as a “human act” – and not an “animal act” – would require seeing the power of reason and logic to overcome “instincts” and “evolutionary biases.” We see this power even among people who are not…shall we say…“very intellectual.” For starters, unlike our ancestors (or people living in developing countries today), virtually no American in the 21st century is trying to have as many babies as humanly possible. The average American wants 2-3 kids. Furthermore, they want their marriage to be based on love and happiness – not pumping “good genes” into the next generation. This sounds like common sense (and it is!) but our common sense is being weakened by “science” that is nothing of the sort – and the consequence of that “science” weakens morality and the enjoyment of life.
For those – whether they live in America or other countries – who wish to close their mind and live an animal existence – I can only say to them: “that is your prerogative.” But for those of us who aspire to a more spiritually satisfactory existence, we should be aware that our “instincts” are often misleading, and they should be overcome (not embraced!) through the power of reason, and dare I say, love, as well.
This continuous competition between “instinct” and “reason” reinforces an idea that I’ve bandied about: We are souls who entered animal bodies to test the strength of the soul and create testaments to the power of the soul (creative acts such as raising a child or writing a book, etc). I won’t endorse or reject this idea (because there is a lack of evidence either way), but I think it’s a nice thought as we go about our lives (and it’s certainly better than the Darwinian alternative).
