Original Sin - Scripture and Reason

Hi GDR,I have to agree with Paul and Mod; you have mangled the concept of the Selfish Gene here. Perhaps an applied example would help. The example I was taught at school was of a rabbit and its warning signal.When a rabbit spots danger, say a buzzard overhead, it drums its foot on the ground. This drumming acts as a signal to the other rabbits, who, alert to the danger, can flee for the safety of their burrows. For the individual rabbit that drums however, the action is a risk. It opens itself up to added danger, as instead of immediately running for safety itself, it takes that time to warn its fellows, time that from an individually selfish point of view, would have been better spent running. The rabbit is, in effect, sacrificing its own safety for a moment in order to benefit its fellow rabbits.This is an innately altruistic act. From the individual point of view, the rabbit is being selfless. From a wider point of view though, the rabbit's genes are being selfish, as the drumming behaviour benefits the whole group and thus the rabbit gene pool as a whole. The selfishness of the gene is taking place at the expense of the individual rabbit.The whole point of the Selfish Gene idea is to explain why evolution would compel a creature to act against its own survival. No. That is totally wrong.Dawkins is saying that genes influence our behaviour for their benefit, not for our own individual benefit. No. That's backwards again. Take the rabbit example; the Selfish genes compel the rabbit to stand in one place and make a lot of noise when it sees a predator. That is not a selfish behaviour from an individual point of view. And the Selfish Gene is a concept used to explain why we are born altruistic. You have got this completely backwards. Well it does mean exactly that to millions of people. All you are doing here is equivocating to make the phrase "Original Sin" mean something that it was never intended to mean. Given that you are well aware that the concept is non-Biblical, I can't see why you are so keen to rescue this vile notion. Original Sin is a grossly offensive concept. It belongs in the dark Ages. Let's leave it there. That way you don't have to mangle the science and a bit of bad theology can be consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs.Mutate and Survive

But all he's saying there is that as rational creatures, we can create a form of altruism based on rationality rather than instinct. That does not change for a moment the fact that the Selfish Gene concept is intended to explain unselfish behaviour.Think about it; selfish behaviour needs no explanation. Being selfish would promote one's own chances of evolutionary success, but being selfless would, at first glance, seem to reduce the chances of evolutionary success. That required an explanation; the Selfish Gene. Actual selfishness requires no such explanation.One paragraph of musings taken out of context does not trump the fact that the idea is used to explain how altruism can evolve. The concept is a very poor fit for your notion of sin. I mean, exactly where in the rabbit scenario above does the sin occur? You're not. You're rehabilitating it. Well of course your understanding is new. You are the first to try and shoehorn this particular piece of science into it. I understand that you regard some scripture as inspired, but do you really believe that this extras-Biblical concept is inspired by God? Because that's what it would have to be to incorporate Twentieth century science into Second Century theology. Is that what you're telling us? If so, God seems to have made a bit of a mess of it.Mutate and Survive

What is unique is your attempt to draw parallels with evolutionary theory.I have to say though, you are not really making a parallel with the actual theory of the Selfish Gene; you are making a parallel with a single comment that Dawkins made as a side-comment on the theory, not the theory itself. As such, all you are doing is pointing out that more than one person over the course of history has noticed that all of us are born with the capacity to do bad things. The comparison you make between the selfish behaviours of biological replicators and sin is a loose one I think. Selfishness and sin are far from synonymous. As such, I think you are making a rather trivial point. Much of the modern concept(s) of original sin is not mentioned by Paul. He gives little detail on the concept and never uses the phrase "original sin". He talks instead of how Adam's sin brought us death. You could interpret his words as being about original sin if you liked, but that is not the only way to interpret them. I don't see how this particular belief is useful or necessary to modern Christians. The idea that a baby is born in sin is abhorrent and should be consigned to the dustbin of bad theology. But then the whole concept of sin is wrong-headed as far as I'm concerned. It's a poor way of framing any discussion of morality.Mutate and Survive

Hi GDR, sorry for the delay in reply, I've been away. And neither of them say that we, as individual animals are selfish. They say that genes are selfish. But this is your problem; the selfishness of genes is only a metaphor, a way of helping us understand how genes operate. Genes are not and never will actually be selfish. They can't be, they're mindless. You have hooked onto a metaphor as if it were real.Note that neither of your quotes describe individuals as selfish. The theory is there to explain individual altruism, not individual selfishness - that already has an explanation in "survival of the fittest". You would be able to draw better comparison between original sin and survival of the fittest, at least that would make some sort of sense as it would actually be about the biological drive toward selfishness. Your version makes no sense in that you are trying to link sin to a theory that is intended to explain altruism. Except that, as PaulK notes, memes are selfish too. I know that you responded to that with a Wiki quote, but your quote does not say what you seem to think it does. Memes are selfish in exactly the same way that genes are selfish, i.e. they're not selfish at all, because they're not sentient. It's just a metaphor. Genes are no more selfish then an apple is being selfish when it falls to the ground in accordance with gravity. Genes are just objects, obeying the laws of chemistry. The selfishness is just an explanatory tool that Dawkins concocted to explain how survival of the fittest could co-exist with the evolution of apparent altruism and self-sacrifice. And genes don't have minds.Rabbits do though. I asked you this question for a reason and you have thus far ignored it; where in my example does the rabbit sin? When he risks his own life to save his fellow bunnies? that doesn't sound like sin to me. When his genes tell him to do this? That''s no sin either, since mere chemicals cannot sin when they obey the laws of chemistry. So where's the sin? I contend that there is no sin and that this is why the two ideas are such a poor fit. In my opinion, the false concept of "sin" is a barrier to a positive and effective moral framework. It should be abandoned. Well abandon it then. The term carries too much cultural baggage to be of use. Well then you're not sticking to the concept of original sin any more than you're sticking to the concept of the selfish gene. You are mangling both of them to fit them together and you are achieving nothing by doing so except bungling the science and making what looks like apologetics for one of the most evil ideas in the history of thought. Please drop this idea, it's just broken.Mutate and Survive

Lucky then that i gave you just such an example in Message 20.

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When a rabbit spots danger, say a buzzard overhead, it drums its foot on the ground. This drumming acts as a signal to the other rabbits, who, alert to the danger, can flee for the safety of their burrows. For the individual rabbit that drums however, the action is a risk. It opens itself up to added danger, as instead of immediately running for safety itself, it takes that time to warn its fellows, time that from an individually selfish point of view, would have been better spent running. The rabbit is, in effect, sacrificing its own safety for a moment in order to benefit its fellow rabbits.

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This is an innately altruistic act. From the individual point of view, the rabbit is being selfless. From a wider point of view though, the rabbit's genes are being selfish, as the drumming behaviour benefits the whole group and thus the rabbit gene pool as a whole. The selfishness of the gene is taking place at the expense of the individual rabbit.

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The whole point of the Selfish Gene idea is to explain why evolution would compel a creature to act against its own survival.

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There is nothing going on here that is even remotely comparable to sin, original or otherwise. Holy crap GDR! Do you have any idea how many genes you have in common with people in Sudan? All humans share over 99% of our DNA. That's more than enough for group selection to make sense.Mutate and Survive

Hi Mod,Okay, put like that, it makes sense. My apologies to GDR.Mutate and Survive

So far, using this version hasn't exactly met with unqualified approval either.Personally, I would prefer that you used the term "survival of the fittest". It would still not be an especially meaningful comparison, but at least it would be a more valid one. Survival of the fittest is, after all, used to explain individual selfishness. The selfish gene isn't so much. I think that, more specifically, he is attempting to explain how evolution can lead to the emergence of mutually co-operative behaviours that appear to defy a naive view of survival of the fittest.So, going back to the rabbit example, a straightforward view of survival of the fittest would lead us to expect that the rabbit would not pause when it sees danger. It would flee. It would benefit most from saying "Devil take the hindmost" and preserving its own genes. The selfish gene theory exists as an explanation for why this isn't the case.This is why I think it's a bad fit. There is no need to resort to the selfish gene to explain the kind of individually selfish acts that might be described as sin; natural selection and survival of the fittest do that just fine. The selfish gene is there to explain other behaviours, not those we might call sin. Yes, exactly. He's trying to explain altruistic behaviours in the context of survival of the fittest. He's trying to explain how self-sacrifice can evolve. That has no connection with sin or immorality. Agreed. Not agreed. A meme can be nice, nasty or neutral, but in the sense that a selfish gene is selfish. A meme is always selfish as well, even the nice ones that tell us to be kind to each other.A meme seeks only to replicate itself. It does that whether it is a positive meme or a harmful one. In that sense, it is always selfish, just as a gene that creates an altruistic behaviour is as selfish as a gene that creates an individually selfish behaviour.I agree that Dawkins is saying that we can rise above the harmful memes, by recognising them as what they are, but that doesn't mean that the memes ( even the good ones) aren't selfish in the biological sense. Right. So if we apply a similar scenario to a human, we have the same situation. The human, driven by his selfish genes, exhibits a behaviour that is potentially harmful to himself, but benefits his kin. This is not a situation that can be described as sinful, yet it is exactly the type of situation that Dawkins was trying to explain with his theory. Again, sin is a bad fit for the theory. They are separate notions that cover different ground. I would call the Holocaust a collection of superlatively immoral acts. That does not mean that it is a sin. I feel that the word "sin" is too explicitly religious. It includes an implicit assumption that some supernatural entity disapproves of the act in question. That muddies the issue by inserting unnecessary entities. Saying that the Holocaust was deeply immoral is enough. The concept of sin adds nothing helpful to the equation. We can see this in the way that so many religions regard morally neutral or morally good acts (sexual acts, worshipping other gods, etc.) as sinful. Moral or immoral, ethical or unethical. That is adequate and it does not confuse any moral debate with unnecessary baggage.

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In the theology of the Catholic Church, original sin is regarded as the general condition of sinfulness, that is (the absence of holiness and perfect charity) into which humans are born, distinct from the actual sins that a person commits.

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I find both of those highlighted areas abhorrent. There is no such thing as a "general condition of sinfulness". There are only immoral acts and the people who commit them. Further, the idea that babies are born into such a condition is grossly offensive. They are not. They have the potential to commit immoral acts and they almost certainly will do so at some point in their lives, but to ascribe a moral condition to a babe in arms is insane and vile.I agree that it's not quite as bad as the version where we must take collective guilt for the sin of Adam , but it's still pretty awful. The fact that the Catholic church regards this sort of filth as acceptable goes a long way towards explaining why it is such a morally bankrupt organisation. That lot wouldn't recognise morality if it bit them on the arse. I don't think it works for any version of original sin, not because of problems with the religious side of the comparison, but because of problems with the science end of it. Whatever version of original sin we use, the comparison is invalid because the selfish gene concept is not and was never intended to explain the kind of individual selfishness that is commonly called sin. It was intended to explain the opposite of that. That's what makes it such a bad metaphor, not that original sin is so awful , but that the selfish gene was never about immoral acts in the first place. I don't think it's quite that. He's saying that we can move from a shoddy form of morality based upon selfish replicators to a better, artificial form of morality. Frankly, I don't know if I agree with him or not, but he's not talking about moving from an immoral condition to a moral one. That undermines the comparison, fatally I think.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.