So what do you lefties think of Darwinism, selfish genes and sociobiology?
Offline I recently read scathing editorials of Dawkins by known leftwing atheists/secularists such as Steven Rose, Stephen J. Gould, Richard Lewontin, etc who find sociobiologic explanations of human nature abhorent. They contend that such explanations are a threat to notions of human equality. They and like-minded others put forth the notion that scientific knowledge is never value free and completely embedded and subject to the moral and ideological sentiments of a particular culture. They claim that sociobiologic explanations only give further creedence to bourgeous, laissez-faire economic systems which in the end contribute to the exploitation of the working class as well as contribute to racist and sexist ideologies.
It is unfortunate that these "saints" completely misinterpret the writings of Dawkins, Wilson and Pinker. None of these individuals have ever advocated any form of social darwininism and whom only desire to seek a naturalistic explanation of human behaviors including our most noble attributes such as altruism. And these same lefties easily forget that societies whose original aim was to socially engineer the masses into the perfection of equality (ie. nurture) the end result was the exact opposite--brutal genocidal totalitarianism (ie. Stalin).
I personally find that some of those on the "secular" left can be equally if not more irrational than the rightwing fundies. I am curious as to what folks on this forum who lean towards the left think of biologic explanations of human nature?
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Personally, I'm sick of hearing arguments from consequence and straw-men.
It's still more important to know what's true even if we don't want it to be true. Only then can we start worrying about how to deal with it.
In that they want all humans to actually be equal rather than simply treated equally under the law, the "left-wing" secularists are just as nutty as their right-wing theist counterparts.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
I met Lewontin when I was eighteen and he screwed me up for a good month. He's about 50-60% bullshit in my opinion. Gould got sucked into his way of thinking and admittedly they were both Marxists (at one point Lewontin compared speciation events to socialist Revolutions). Over time, Gould and Lewontin have basically admitted that their critiques of sociobiology and biological determinism was contaminated by personal issues, mostly with Wilson and to a lesser extent their political views. Still good scientists, but a bit spoiled by their provenance and the red-hot Marxism of their youth. If you want to get the truth, Dawkins' essays on Gould in A Devil's Chaplain is a good place to start. Not only will you get Dawkins' take, you'll get the publication record of the debate, as he cites the feints and counter-strokes, if memory serves.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
I have no issues with sociobiological explanations of human behavior. Those who do find such an approach problematic tend toward delusions of grandeur. Further, the sort of opposition you mentioned is truly inane. They confuse descriptive arguments with prescriptive ones. Creationists often do this, such as when they say that if humans evolved from animals they ought to behave like animals. Gould almost certainly knows the problem with that line of reasoning—confusing description with prescription—but conveniently forgets and uses it against sociobiological explanations of human behavior. Shame on him.
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
No different than I would if I were right-wing, I guess. I don't see the connection. I've always thought that the explanations to human nature lies in biology, it just isn't something that influences my view on politics.
"Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy."
First, I contend that anyone who says that evolutionary psychology or sociobiology necessitates either social darwinism or any kind of extreme form of socialism, has never read Dawkins or Ridley or Pinker. Not only does evo psych not lead to social darwinism, it refutes it in most cases. Not only does it not promote racism, sexism, eugenics, or social engineering, it refutes all of those concepts as untenable in the long term due to the generally good and egalitarian qualities of human nature.
The more we learn about human nature, the more we learn that utopianism is a pipe dream. There's an upside and a downside to the naturalist explanation of human society. The upside is that if we listen to the scientists, we won't try anything stupid like communism anymore. The downside is that we will never achieve a completely equal society, nor will we ever escape the harsh reality that there will always be haves and have nots to some degree. If anything, the lesson that I take from the study of evolutionary psychology is that things like universal healthcare and social welfare are crucial elements of a strong society, and that more good can be done for a society by encouraging literacy and healthy lifestyles than vigorously punishing criminals. In other words, evo psych encourages me by demonstrating that more scientific understanding of human nature will lead naturally to less of the things the critics are so worried about.
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I think its quite scary than Dawkins and others are saying most human morality and emotions are often secondary products of our genes but just because its scary doesnt make it any less true.
We care about others not because we are innately 'good' but as a combination between of protecting/reproducing our genes and a 'mis firing' of confusing complete strangers with close relatives. We evolved in tiny clans where everyone shared closely the same genes, this is no longer true but our genes havent caught up.
Sure that is a really 'ugly' view of human nature, christians hate it (in fact I as an atheist hate it) but it doesnt make it any less true. We do have one advantage over other animals we know where we came from and can at least try to overcome our inheritance
I thought the implications of Evo Psych were scary until I actually read the science. The more I understand about it, the more I am comforted by it.
This isn't exactly accurate. We are essentially innately good to our peers because those of our ancestors who were not did not produce societies that effectively utilized nonzero sum reciprocal altruism. The societies failed because the individuals were not innately good to their own. Our society works precisely because nearly all people are genetically programmed to have compassion for their own. We have certainly stretched the boundaries of what constitutes "our own." Family is next to meaningless in big Western cities. However, we give every indication of having the phylogenic flexibility to imprint non-familial kinship. Consider that non-related children raised in the same household between the ages of three and twelve pretty much never develop sexual feelings for each other later in life. That's imprinting.
I really wish people would stop saying this. It's not really ugly. The scientific view of human nature is threatening to a lot of traditional values, but many of those traditional values are really ugly.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Quote:Sure that is a really 'ugly' view of human nature, christians hate it (in fact I as an atheist hate it) but it doesnt make it any less true. We do have one advantage over other animals we know where we came from and can at least try to overcome our inheritance
What I meant by that was christians like to pretend human beings have a splinter of 'sin' or 'god' in them that other animals dont. Most human beings at least emotionally (religious or not)like to think of themselves seperate from other animals which we arent.
Just saw Dawkins 2nd Genius of Darwin programme and in it he said he had difficulties resolving his 4 billion years of ruthless natural selection with his liberal views on life, ie you look after a lost child regardless of your relationship with him/her etc)
Don't confuse 'lefty' with Marxist. I consider myself pretty far left, but I'm not Marxist, and I also have plenty of differences with traditional Canadian and US left-wing parties.
Marxism is an irrational precept, to borrow Rook's phrase. It is based on a whole system of 'dialectic' that can be used to justify literally anything. What justifies anything justifies nothing. Marxism is not based on evidence-based rational thinking.
A lot of 'lefties' are plenty as irrational as a lot of right wing nut jobs. There's a strong anti-science post-modernism, for example. A bunch of crap. Liberal and moderate theism is another example. It's still theism.
But being 'left' is more of a statement of where you place your emphasis in terms of values. As such, I fall in the 'left' category, but I don't base my reasoning on mushy feelings or a vague dialectic. I base it on the likely outcomes of various strategies of social organization. And evolution is the basis of that judgment.
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Left or Right are pretty vague terms these days
Originally in the French revolution left = pro revolution right = pro monarchy
This then mutated to left = like change right = conserv (ative) as in keep things as they are
I really don't think there are many people on the 'right' who thinks everything is great and we should keep everything as they are and there are plenty of people on the 'left' who don't like the way some things are changing
Then you get comparing what left/right means between countries, for example in EU (500 million people +) I'm not aware of a single signficant political party that doesnt want universal healthcare for its citizens. Some of the more right wing ones would be quite happy to shoot a few immigrants and declare them non citizens but not one would want to get away with the principle of health care.
Does that mean all Europeans are a bunch of commie nuts (sure plenty of Americans think that) or does it mean Americans are just so far of the scale to the right that they are on a differerent planet (plenty of Europeans think that, I sometimes think that myself)
"Left" nowadays tends to mean let people do pretty much whatever they want in their own lives as long as they aren't harming others, while trying to regulate business more and have more economic equality.
"Right" tends to mean as little regulation of business as possible while controlling much of people's private lives (pro-life, anti-porn, blue laws, religion in government, etc. )
Libertarian tends to agree with the left on social issues and the right on economic
Soviet style communism tends to do the opposite.
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I think sociobiology demonstrates how a scientific idea can outlast cultural biases of an era. When it was first proposed in the 1970s by Wilson, there was a massive storm of controversy, largely from people who knew little basic biology. It was one of the only times in the last century where a scientist has been physically attacked for a theory. People hated it. This was a time of large scale social changes and civil rights movements. It was horrifying to think that behaivor could have a biological grounding. Gradually, however, this firestorm died, and sociobiology is still here.
I've read most of the criticism by Lewontin, Rose and Gould. The most obvious place to start is here:
Richard C. Lewontin. "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme
I find not so much that Lewontin et al are wrong that they are attacking a doctrine which has little to do with sociobiology. Lewontin and Gould focused on adaptationism, a proposition within evolutionary biology stating that all phenotypic characteristics were adaptations, as opposed to a side-effect of a true adaptation (this is called a spandrel). Rose, a neuroscientist, focused on the notion that "everything is in the genes" and criticized it heavily.
This would be unproblematic except for that neither of these doctrines are part of a sociobiology. As an academic discipline, the basic tenets are sociobiology are little different to those of evolutionary biology. In fact, they directly follow. The first basic and fundamental tenet and observation is that a human is a product of evolution. That includes the human brain. The second basic tenet is that there are certain traits which are widespread among animals which involve the way the animals work together and distribute and share resources. Ants build anthills. Bees build beehives. These traits are not learned, they are innate. Similarily, there are particular things that humans do and aspects of human behaivor which appear universal, cross-cultural and cross-era. And it is those things which sociobiologists are interested in. And the most obvious example of a particular behaivor which is obviously universal is sex.
The other thing worth noting is that there is a difference between sociobiology and what I call "press sociobiology". The latter include articles with wonderful titles including phrases that have caused me to laugh so hard I almost choked. My all time favorite is "art making gene". My advice to any rational individual is to ignore "press sociobiology" in its entirety. If you seriously think sociobiology is about why we make art or "religion genes" then you are living in a very strange fantasy world. If you are a sociobiologist, you will spend your time studying two things: Sex and game theory. Most of sociobiology is concerned with different strategies, cues, and so forth, employed by men and women in terms of sex, children and wooing. Different animals employ different and varied strategies in terms of the continuation of genetic material. In terms of discussion of behaivour, you will find little of sociobiology talks about why we make art or why we perform science or "IQ genes", etc. What sosiobiology does talk about is:
1) Why men leave their wives to sleep with younger women
2) Why older, wealthier men tend to be found with younger, prettier women
3) Why and how siblings compete in the struggle for resources and attention of their parents
Nowhere in sociobiology as a discipline is there any requirement that you partake in the adaptationist school of thought. Some are openly against it (like Dawkins). Nor is there any tenet included anywhere that says "everything is in your genes". No sociobiologist discounts the importance of environmental factors in forming an individual. Nor do they say that every trait an individual possesses is innate. They are primarily concerned with those behaviors which pertain directly to continuation of genetic material and therefore naturally selected. As such, (and I shall say this again for those with a short attention span) they are primarily concerned with sex. Sociobiology is essentially a combination of zoology, evolutionary biology and game theory.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
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Uh. Isn't Gould, like, dead?
That kinda tends to be a barrier against making further arguments / concessions against any topic.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Yes, he is. But he was not the only critic. Or the most virulent. I actually quite liked Gould. He was clearly very good at popularization of science, and he was always very polite and respectful.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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DG has explained things very well, but I'd like to chime in here because sociobiology and game theory are my particular interest. There has been much made in the last century about the "nature vs. nurture" debate. It is my opinion that those who today believe there is still a debate are unaware of a significant body of work from the last 30 years.
Put simply, those on both sides of the nature/nurture debate have more or less nakedly asserted that all animal behavior is a product of either nature or nurture, ultimately. This view is clearly flawed in either case for two very important reasons:
1) Nature and Nurture are not well defined. If a woman is sexually reserved as an adult, we can say it's because she was raised in a very conservative upbringing with authoritarian parents. That's nurture. However, it's been well proven that personality types are at least partially determined by genes. That's nature. However, it's also nurture, because the expression of many genes, including those which effect adult personality, express differently during the imprinting phase of childhood based on experience. That's.. um...
Hmm... is it nature or nurture?
The point is that genes express in nature through nurture. We are gene survival machines that react to our environment based on our genetic programming. Both sides of the nature/nurture debate are right and both sides are wrong.
2) As DG has pointed out, there is no such thing as a gene for making great art. Genes express as part of an entire genome. It's not 25,000 individual genes, each independently building a discreet part of an organism. It's a base 4 system of on/off information that interacts with itself and with the environment that acts upon it. While we may be able to isolate a single gene without which, blue eyes do not exist in humans, we cannot say with complete accuracy that it is the gene for blue eyes. Eyes are formed by the expression of a great many genes working together. Without the DNA that tells the RNA to make the proteins that act as catalysts that lead to the embryonic formation of irises, the presence of the "blue eye gene" hardly matters.
I'm recalling an example from Dawkins, and hopefully I'll do it justice for memory because I don't feel like looking it up. Suppose there is a gene, or set of genes acting together, that cause certain beavers in a population to paddle slightly differently such that their mouth is slightly higher out of the water when they swim. This isn't a huge stretch to imagine. All cheetahs run the same way, after all. Mice all scurry about the same way. You don't see one random mouse doing the backstroke. Mice and cheetahs and beavers don't decide how to propell themselves. They all just do it the same way from birth. That's genetic.
Anyway, the beavers that swim with their heads slightly higher out of the water will return to the dam with logs that are slightly more mud-covered than those that swam lower and caused much of the mud to wash off. This slight difference will cause the mutant beavers to build slightly stronger dams because of the adhesive property of mud. This behavior will then be selected slightly more often than low swimming, and soon will dominate the population.
As you can see, in this hypothetical example, there isn't a gene for putting more mud in dams to strengthen them. There's only a gene, or set of genes, that express in a slightly different behavior, which leads to an environmental effect that becomes advantageous. You can imagine then that humans are essentially the same. We don't have a gene for painting beautiful art. We have a gene or set of genes that encouraged abstract visual thinking, and we have genes or sets of genes that encouraged communication, and we have genes or sets of genes that cause us to discriminate between things based on aesthetics, and so forth and so on. Making art is a very complex behavior, and cannot be explained by "a gene."
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Actually, the development of the eye is switched on, in cascading style, by one gene. Ever seen this picture? Guess what the red spots are. This is a mutant fruit fly. The Ey GRP was artificially inserted into cells which, on the Anterior-posterior axis GRP gradient in the syncytium, are normally responsible for forming the legs.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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LOL!
I love genetics. I wish I had more of it on the tip of my brain. I know that I've read this before, but alas, I know a lot more about sociobiology than any other branch of biology.
I ought to include a disclaimer on my threads: If it's talking about sociobiology, I have a strong chance of being correct. If it's genetics, take it with a grain of salt, and assume that at least some of it will be factually suspect.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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I have one and only one qualm with sociobiologists, and that is the way they employ the term gene. When Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, we knew next to nothing about what a gene actually is. The definition employed in 1976 is obsolete, but many sociobiologists still use it. Dawkins used it to mean a DNA sequence that constituted a selfish unit of natural selection. But the definition of a gene is very precise. A gene is a nucleotide sequence which constitutes the coding sequence for a single protein (or, for polycistronic mRNA, for a single operon-controlled unit). The proper definition of a gene should be a nucleotide sequence which is transcribed as a single mRNA. It is not a unit of natural selection. Units of natural selection can extend below (exon shuffling) or above (ohnologous duplication) the level of a single gene as well as between individual genes.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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It's been a while since I read The Selfish Gene. I do recall that he was rather vague about what, exactly, constituted a gene. Anyway, let me make sure I get this right:
By "single protein" you mean to say a sequence containing all the codons for all the mRNA to make all the amino acids necessary to build a particular protein, right? I'm guessing the "end of sequence" codon would be included as well. (I don't know the correct nomenclature off the top of my head.) [EDIT: I just realized how dumb the question about end of sequence codons was. I left it because I don't like editing for stupidity, but ignore it.]
Are you saying that a gene is never a unit of natural selection, or that it is not always a unit of natural selection?
I can't say I completely understand how exon shuffling works. I get that exons get more or less mixed around, but it's hard for me to grasp how they would still produce the same protein if that happened. I don't guess I know what ohnologous duplication is. Maybe I've heard of it, but it's not coming to me.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Well, no, because that would exclude introns. In Eukaryota, although the genome is very poorly organized, individual genes are very well organized. Genes are distinct modular units which have insulator units marking their boundaries which block cross-talk, and have promoter regions and gene control regions distributed across the nucleotide sequence upstream and downstream of the coding sequence.
You mean the stop codon. The nucleotide sequence which constitutes the unit called a gene extends further than the stop codon. The mRNA does not halt transcription at the stop codon. The purpose of the stop codon is to indicate to the ribosome where to halt translation. The transcription process continues after the stop codon, until RNA polymerase encounters a sequence which, when transcribed, folds into a hairpin structure of RNA which jams the tube through which free nucleosides flow. As a result, the polymerase falls off. A pair of factors called CstF and CPSF induce the cleaving of the mRNA and the polyadenylation to form the 3-UTR of the mRNA. Although the start and end of a gene is poorly defined, I prefer to think of a eukaryotic gene in terms of the insulator elements, which mark its boundaries. Remember, the term gene was invented long before anyone knew about molecular biology. When Dawkins wrote in 1976, a gene was understood to mean a basic unit of natural selection, which it is, just not the only one.
The latter.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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I'm scaring myself to say this, but that makes perfect sense, and I think I have a pretty firm grasp on it. Thanks!
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Hey, COOL!
...Err, wait... Were the eyes functional? Or just 'decorations', so to speak?
If the former, can we do similar things to more complex animals to alter their characteristics? Or play around with things like the genes that control an organism's size to make them grow much larger?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Well...no. They were perfectly formed, but not connected to the brain.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Minor correction. (gasp! Is is kosher to correct DG on biology?)
A gene is not the unit of selection, but it is a unit of selection. Really, any replicator can be a unit of selection, which was the interesting generalization Dawkins made about memes. A replicator is any information which directly or indirectly forms copies of itself, with variation. The selection occurs as a function of the replicator's influence on its environment to increase or decrease its rate of replication. In a way, you could even think of individual nucleotides as replicators. They just don't have much variation anymore, so they don't really evolve. But I'm sure you could formulate a model of nucleotide competitive selection when we learn more about abiogenesis. Different potential nucleotides worked better together, and so ended up dominating the population of nucleotides, until we are left with our current complement of GTAC and U.
Likewise, I'm fascinated with Genetic Algorithms, in which any encoded information could potentially be made to evolve by applying mutation and a fitness selection criterion.
The value of the Selfish Gene metaphor is to break the habit of thinking that the major selective level in biology is the level of the organism. You are correct to point out that it would be wrong to therefore jump to the conclusion that genes are the *only* unit of natural selection, but surely you misspoke when you said that they are *not* a unit of natural selection.
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Damn. If we tinkered around with them more, could we get them to develop with the nueral connections too? Or is that something that looks unfeasible?
Also: This was done at the developmental stage of the organism, right?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I'm just going to register my minor quibble with language insinuating that it's completely agreeable to call a meme a replicator. I'm not completely convinced of meme theory despite how effective it is at creating analogy.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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I think a helpful term to introduce at this point is ORF (Open Reading Frame)--that's the stretch of bases (in a DNA sequence) beginning with a start codon and ending a stop codon. If you're talking about a single gene that codes for a single protein, "ORF" is the term you should use. Often, this is synonymous with "gene", and in every day molecular biology, it's common to use the terms interchangeably, though gene, as has been pointed out, has a wider definition; for example, tRNAs and rRNAs and ssRNAs do not code for proteins and don't have start and stop codons, but they're still individual units in the genome that evolve at their own rate--therefore, they're genes, too.
I'd disagree that one polycistronic mRNA constitutes one gene based upon the fact that the individual ORFs within the polycistron are always expressed together (I think I read that somewhere above--I'm skimming). Even if the ORFs are expressed together, they mutate individually. Take the case of a dicistronic sequence: assume that the second ORF is interrupted immediately after its start codon (just for dramatic purposes). In this case, you've got the first ORF transcribed and translated as per usual, but the second is gone. The first ORF makes an mRNA and ultimately a functional protein, but it's without its cistronic partner--this makes the first ORF no less a gene.
And just as trivia, Mendel wanted to call genes "elemente" back when he figured out what they were. And it was a guy called Mendeleev that figured out the period table of "elements". Spooky.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
ooh clever. But kinda gross, sorry to say DG... o_O eye-feet creep me out a bit.
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You might be right. My biggest problem with the meme-gene analogy is that memes lack a "unit of selection" as we've been discussing. A meme is not made up of fundamental units in a meaningfully analagous way. Sure, language is used to transmit some memes, but not all. I am not aware of a fundamental "concept particle" in the brain.
Furthermore, I'm not comfortable with the idea of memes being naturally selected in any meaningful sense. Certainly, they change and "evolve" as they spread through a population, but the changes are not driven by anything that I would call selection pressure.
Finally, genomes have very specific limits. That is, frogs don't give birth to grasshoppers. Memes, on the other hand, can change so dramatically that they are unrecognizable from their predecessors within a single "generation." To me, a wholesale change of this type is not evolution in any meaningful sense. It's more like polymorphing. No... not having more than one adult form. Having a wizard cast a polymorph spell that changes you instantly from one creature into another.
[/D&D Mode OFF]
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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I've found those problems as well. What bothers me most about memes is that they make it easy for laymen to talk about particular Linguistic studies like (but not exclusive to) semiotics, semantics, syntactics, anthropological linguistics and diachronic linguistics without understanding what any of it means and without appreciating that memes are meaningless when held up to Linguistic study. Of course, I never succeed in convincing anyone who harps about memes because invariably that person has never studied Linguistics and fails to appreciate that particular Linguistic studies already talk about memetics without mention of memetics and better than memetics talks about what it is supposed to (which, granted, is difficult to know since it is formed from a broken analogy).
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Knowing the truth and ignoring it wont help you manage it. Knowing the truth can help you deal with it.
Even atheists do this and that says to me that everyone is subject to human nature and mundane human phychology and can project themselves on others. The label "atheist" does not make us super human. It merely means that we do not hold a belief in a deity.
Life is not perfect for either the theist or the atheist and the only thing that means is that we are of the same species and made up of the same carbon based DNA.
Much of the reason many atheists have a pollitically correct attitude, is because they know what it is like to get picked on. I DO TOO! But how I respond is not to silence the blasphemy against us, but to respond with reason.
Empathy is not only about treating everyone nicely, it is about accepting that we all do the same thing, including things others may disagree with. Empathy is also about recognizing that we all bitch. Reality is not in political correctness or theocracy or nationalism or fascism, reality is the fact that we all fart and shit, pay taxes and we will all die.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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I actually disagree with the lefties you portrayed. Dawkins' work actually rules social Darwinism a void ideology anyway. I don't think any scientific explanation should be denied on grounds that it has bad moral consequences. I think lefties sometimes worry that the brutality of Darwinism undermines their cause. They really needn't worry, and if it's they truth they just have to accept it. I would elaborate more but I'm tired and have work in the morning.
Atheist Books
Exactly. There seems to be an inherit human need to believe that some higher power can look out for you. That there can be some arbiter of what is fair and moral. The folks on the atheist/secular left believe that government can be what the religious folks believe god is. Some sugar daddy that can pass out unconditional benefits because of some holy standard for fairness and morality. And unless you accept their standard for fairness and morality, you are an outcast, of the devil(i.e Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh).
Human beings have evolved into social beings that can enter into mutually beneficial relationships. People also have a sense of charity and altruism which should lead us to help our fellow human on at a temporary basis. If I help someone in their time of need, they may later help me.
But unfortunately the church of liberalism uses this feature not to create voluntary mutually beneficial social contracts, but instead hostile transfers of wealth which can only lead to poverty and strife. They will ignore the outcomes of a particular action and instead believe that if they follow their "path of fairness and equality" everything will workout and somehow the universe will cooperate because they "care". Yet their "care" always seems to be stealing other people's wealth and capital, not developing then distributing their own.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen