In today’s New York Times book review, Robin Marantz Henig reviews a new book on evolutionary psychology by Paul Bloom, How Pleasure Works.  I haven’t yet read this book, but the review indicates that it may be a more reasonable specimen of the genre, seeing the human penchant for pleasure-inducing activities as a nonadaptive byproduct, or spandrel, of other evolved tendencies. But there’s a slight problem with the review.  Can you spot it?

Pornography is another example of pleasure via essentialism. Why do some men spend more time looking at Internet porn than interacting with flesh-and-blood lovers? There may be “no reproductive advantage” to liking pornography, Bloom writes, but there is an advantage to its source: an urge to look at real-world “attractive naked people,” which makes us want sex, which in turn is good for continuation of the species. Pornography uses the same pleasure mechanism as actual sex, which is handy since “there aren’t always attractive naked people around when you need them.”

The paragraph contains one of the most common misconceptions about evolution: that traits evolve because they’re “good for continuation of the species.” (This is probably Henig rather than Bloom’s misconception.)

This isn’t the way that most traits evolve under natural selection.  They evolve not because they help the species to persist, but because they help the genes to persist. Or, more accurately, selection favors those traits that enhance the survival and reproduction of the genes that produce those traits.  Genes that make us want to have sex (and, as a byproduct, make us look at pornography that can gratify the sex drive) are favored because individuals that carry them have more offspring than those with sexual lassitude.  This says nothing about the good of the species as a whole, but about the good of individuals and the genes they contain.

Indeed, sex may be a trait that reduces the persistence of some species or groups.  This is because most sex requires two individuals to reproduce, and it may be hard in some circumstances for two individuals to find each other.  If  population density is sparse, perhaps because individuals live in marginal habitats, the need to find somebody else to mate with may not be as adaptive as those forms of reproduction (say, parthenogenesis) that enable you to reproduce without a partner.  This may explain the observation that asexual species often occur in marginal or disturbed habitats.

Natural selection may occasionally favor the evolution of traits that favor the persistence of groups (“group selection”), though I don’t know of any such traits.   And selection can operate directly on the genes themselves, as in the phenomenon of “meiotic drive”, in which one form of a gene outcompetes another because it’s better at getting into the sperm during cell division.  There’s also “kin selection,” in which behaviors like parental care can evolve that may be deleterious for an individual but useful for its offspring or kin.

But must evolutionists think that the main level on which selection operates is that of individuals, not groups. It is the differential success of individuals, not groups, that causes the spread of the genes they contain.

Remember that the next time you see a nature program on television that explains some behavior as having evolved “for the good of the species.” They’re invariably wrong.

Several of us have posted about the dire religion-coddling and atheist-bashing at this year’s evolution meetings.  Over at Metamagician, brother Blackford analyzes whether atheists really are as dogmatic as fundamentalists.  Blackford has special expertise in this area, since he used to be an evangelical Christian but is now an atheist and a philosopher.

(Whoops, Germany just scored against England.)

Blackford concludes that to a large degree dogmatism is a byproduct of adhering to an “integrated system of thought” that doesn’t have much wiggle room for change.  In this light atheists are no more likely to be inflexible than accommodationists.

There are many possibilities, but the idea that the people at the ends of the assumed spectrum must be more dogmatic than those in the middle is just wrong. If Christian fundamentalists are especially dogmatic it may be evidenced by their maintenance of a position in flagrant contradiction to science, and it may be caused by commitment to an integrated system of thought with little give, by their sense that the stakes are very high, and maybe by other factors (e.g. if they reached their position through childhood indoctrination). These factors may not apply so much to liberal and moderate Christians, but nor need they apply to atheists. Again, there is just no reason to think that the degree of someone’s dogmatism will correlate directly with her distance from the centre of some alleged spectrum of viewpoints.

(Germany just scored again. It doesn’t look good for England).

And look at the facts:  are accommodationists really more flexible in their thinking than atheists?  Do you really think that Francisco Ayala, or Karen Armstrong, or Chris Mooney, or Francis Collins, are palpably more open to changing their minds than are the annoyingly shrill New Atheists? I don’t see it.

(England has come back with a goal—and another goal that was good but disallowed. What a great match!)

And there’s this: most atheists are atheists because of a lack of data to convince us that there is a God, especially a theistic one.  Is it so inflexible to keep that position until we have data that convince us otherwise?  (I have published a list of things that would convince me of the existence a theistic God. I have yet to see a religious person publish a similar list of observations that would convince them that no god exists.)

If you see atheists as dogmatic because they won’t accept a god without evidence, then by all means level this criticism at scientists as well.   “Those dogmatic and inflexible scientists—why can’t they just stop banging on about climate change, AIDS, and homeopathy? Can’t they have a respectful conversation with, and find common ground with, the climate-change deniers, the AIDS doubters, the dowsers, the astrologers, and the homeopaths?”

Halftime.

I’ve spent all morning listening to science talks at the Evolution meetings in Portland, so I wasn’t at a concurent session on “Communicating Science”.

Jen McCreight was there, though, and over at Blag Hag she reports, much to her (and my) chagrin, that the Society for the Study of Evolution has joined the ranks of atheist-bashers:

Much of the talk was about distancing support of evolution with atheistic views – that we need to stress that religion and science is compatible so people in the “middle” can still accept theistic evolution. That people are more willing to accept evolution if they hear it from their pastor. He [Robert Pennock] lauded Francis Collins and the BioLogos foundation for being pro-evolution…even though BioLogos just had a piece trying to reconcile Biblical Adam and Eve with evolution.

. . . The reason why people feel compelled to do this [preserve their religious beliefs and bend the science to fit them] is because religion holds a special status in our society where it can’t be criticized, even when it’s blatantly wrong. This really came out in the second part of the symposium, which was by a woman from AAAS (I unfortunately missed her name). She said there’s no use in including creationists or atheists in the discussion because we’re extremists who won’t change our minds.

Well, I’m sorry to hear this.  BioLogos and Francis Collins praised for accepting evolution?   Is the speaker not aware that, as Jen notes, BioLogos has recently spent much of its webspace trying to reconcile science with a historical Adam and Eve? Is that the kind of respect for facts and data that we, as members of the Society for the Study of Evolution, want to encourage?

Atheists are such a reviled minority in our society that it’s always safe to diss them in public, especially if you want to position yourself in the “middle of the road” between “extremes”—a position that to the benighted always seems to be so reasonable.  But, as P. Z. Myers said,

squatting in between those on the side of reason and evidence and those worshipping superstition and myth is not a better place. It just means you’re halfway to crazy town.

As for me, I’m glad I skipped the communication for the science.

__________

Footnote 1:  We just lost to Ghana, 2-1.  Very sad, but good for them!

Footnote 2:  Portland has what is by far the best Thai restaurant I’ve ever eaten at in my long life.  It’s Pok Pok (menu here), and four of us had a spectacular dinner, including drinks, for $92.  The boar collar (neck of a male boar, cooked with soy, star anise, and other spices) is the best Thai dish I’ve ever had.  If you’re a foodie in Portland, don’t miss this one.  And if you’re at the Evolution meetings, grab a cab and get over there!

Are you one of those indigent freelance writers, scrabbling hard to earn a pittance? Sick of magazines and newspapers that pay you jack?

Well, your troubles are over—at least if you’re willing to churn out accommodationist pap.  The John Templeton Foundation, through its credential-bending director of publications Rod Dreher, has announced that, if you’re willing to toe the party line, Templeton has big simoleons for writers:

The future is not good.  Word of warning to you aspiring freelance writers: don’t quit your day job. I’m very serious.

Happily for writers, the Web publication the John Templeton Foundation will soon launch, Big Questions Online, will be paying good money for essays. We’re interested in smart, insightful pieces on science, religion, markets, morals, and any combination of the four. If you have a good idea, send me (the BQO editor) a pitch at rdreher (at) templeton.org. Don’t call me, please! I’ll reply if we’re interested.

All you have to do is write about those Big Questions.  You know the ones—those questions that are plastered in expensive Templeton ads all over the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker.  Those are the questions for which science and religion can reciprocally inform each other.

Accommodationist writers, get to work! Others: suggest some topics!! Templeton’s just handed you a big, expensive megaphone.
.

by Matthew Cobb

In Jerry’s absence in Portland, I thought this story had to feature, even though it’s not yet Caturday anywhere in the world. Featured on the BBC website, and based on a BBC documentary to be broadcast next week, this is the story of Oscar the cat, who had his back feet severed by a combine harvester.

A vet called Noel Fitzpatrick, working with a team led by Professor Gordon Blunn from University College London, was able to graft metal pegs (intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics or “Itaps”) into Oscar’s stumps. This was the key step forward, which might have important consequences for treatment of human amputees. As the BBC website records:

Mr Fitzpatrick explained: “The real revolution with Oscar is [that] we have put a piece of metal and a flange into which skin grows into an extremely tight bone.”

“We have managed to get the bone and skin to grow into the implant and we have developed an ‘exoprosthesis’ that allows this implant to work as a see-saw on the bottom of an animal’s limbs to give him effectively normal gait.”

Professor Blunn told BBC News the idea was initially developed for patients with amputations who have a “stump socket”.

“This means they fix their artifical limb with a sock, which fits over the stump. In a lot of cases this is sucessful, but you [often] get rubbing and pressure sores.”

The Itap technology is being tested in humans and has already been used to create a prosthetic for a woman who lost her arm in the July 2005 London bombings.

The final step was to design artificial paws that could help Oscar move around. These were developed by engineers at the University of Salford. The result was a great success, and Oscar was soon wandering around the vet’s surgery.

An extended video can be found on the BBC website, but is only visible to UK readers. The following brief YouTube clip from BBC news has been posted, but may disappear as it’s not on the BBC’s news channel…

UPDATE. The link provided above by Matthew to the BBC site does work for USA (and perhaps other) readers. Jerry asked me to repost the link here, so people would readily know it works. GCM

I’m off tomorrow for five days at the Evolution meetings (Society for the Study of Evolution) in Portland, Oregon.  Time to hear some science, catch up with old friends, and eat good seafood.  With any luck I’ll be posting on some of the more interesting talks, but Drs. Cobb and Mayer may fill in as well.

This morning I got an email from Darrell Falk, president of the Templeton-funded website BioLogos, who was upset because I had supposedly misconstrued a recent post on Adam and Eve.   The author, preacher Daniel Harrell, had offered a way to reconcile science with the existence of a historical Adam and Eve, suggesting that perhaps Adam and Eve were real people but had God-given DNA that was tricked out to make them look older than they really were.  His other suggestion was that perhaps Adam and Eve were still real people, but two very special, God-chosen people that were embedded in the evolutionary lineage of Homo sapiens.

It’s not true, said Falk, that all of us at BioLogos believe the apparent age hypothesis, and he asked me to retract my statement implying that they did.

I won’t retract it. If you read Harrell’s post, you’ll see that in no way does he deny the “apparent age” theory; he leaves it as an open possibility for Christians. And that was the post I was criticizing.  Other BioLogos folks apparently do reject it, because it’s simply dumb and also implies a duplicitous, manipulative God.

But I also criticized Harrell’s second suggestion, because there’s simply not a shred of evidence that Adam and Eve, even in the “specially-selected-human” sense, ever existed.  If BioLogos is really anxious, as it claims, to harmonize science with scripture, taking the scientific facts as paramount, they’d simply and flatly reject the existence of a historical Adam and Eve on the grounds of no evidence—just as they’d presumably reject the existence of unicorns, or the Loch Ness monster, or Santa Claus.

The reason they don’t jettison the whole Adam and Eve story is, as several commenters have pointed out here, because the historical existence of this pair plays a critical role in the Christian myth of sin and redemption.  If they didn’t exist, what did Jesus die for?  And so BioLogos makes a fool of itself trying to comport science with superstition.

I didn’t publish Falk’s email because I don’t put private emails on this site, but Richard Dawkins, who got a similar email, has posted it, presumably with Falk’s agreement, and adds a link to BioLogos’s “explanation” that they didn’t all subscribe to the “apparent” age theory adumbrated by Harrell.  And Dawkins adds his own email response to Falk, telling him in no uncertain terms how fatuous it is to waste time trying to show believers how science could accommodate Adam and Eve:

Dear Dr Falk
Certainly, I am happy to suggest that our website people might post your article, and I am copying this letter to them to call it to their attention. But I didn’t misunderstand Daniel Harrell’s essay. It never for a moment occurred to me that he, or Biologos, could possibly be supporters of Option #1. Of course I understood that he was advocating the marginally less fatuous Option #2. It was Option #2 that I was referring to as ‘ridiculous’, because it is an attempt to reconcile science with the book of Genesis. Why on Earth would anyone want to reconcile science with Genesis, given that there is no historical reason to suppose that the author of Genesis, a scientifically illiterate scribe writing probably as recently as the 8th century BC, had any knowledge or authority to pronounce on the subject of human origins? I still earnestly hope – and believe – that Francis Collins would disown the article, or at least feel embarrassed by it. If he would not, he is unfit to hold high office in the scientific establishment of the United States.
Yours sincerely
Richard Dawkins

Now I don’t for a moment expect that BioLogos will admit the sheer silliness of their many posts on Adam and Eve, or stop their attempts to show that Biblical superstitions are credible even when supported by NO evidence, but they are feeling the sting that comes from seeing that they look ridiculous.  They should realize that this kind of desperate apologetics turns thoughtful people off on religion, as several ex-Christians have testified on this website. And I wonder if the Templeton Foundation, which is desperately trying to distance itself from this kind of woo, is aware of how their BioLogos money is being used.