the psychological case for Evolution

Just a thought - but there are reasons why your choices are not quite what they seem. I have encountered very very few naturally occurring fires. Those that are likely to be noticed by anybody are usually very large, and children are not particularly attracted to large fires. They do pay them a lot of attention - they don't charge into them.Broccoli is a specific. Children are not attracted to greens in general. And if you take a look around you'll probably notice a fair amount of greens that are poisonous - which may, or may not, be a factor. Oh - and it should also be pointed out that broccoli is actually a modern invention (probably by the Romans about 2,000 years ago).So as far as I can tell fires and broccoli are not things that are common in our evolutionary past. Common access to flames and broccoli is quite modern. Yes - kids naturally play - and not just human children.

Well - the best I can make of it is that we are built for survival in the past so our instincts are honed to that. Whether this is our instincts towards strange green things, hot things, or each other. tomato gave some non moral based examples to demonstrate the point.If we're born with certain inclinations towards behaviour to others - then we are born with a certain morality. This morality might be 'immoral' in the standards of philosophical or theologically derived ideals - but it isn't really 'wrong' behaviour it is behaviour stemming from our natural instincts. A good example is the trolley cart thought experiment.Which is another way of saying that our culture is often at odds with our natural inclinations. Which seems to me to be another way of saying that culture evolves more rapidly than our biology.I think he is saying, then, that childhood behaviour may seem incongruous with modern life (and by modern I mean essentially post-agricultural) but this isn't because of sin (or an inherent disgustingness of greens or an inherent dangerous appearance to snakes), but because standards change quicker than our moral instincts.Not thinking about it like this, tomato seems to contend, is resulting in somewhat skewed ideas about raising children, as he says: 'Caretakers believing that children are "conceived in Original Sin" have assumed malevolent motives on their charges and thereby taken an unnecessarily offensive stance.'Some examples he gives are a tad 'just-so', but I think the underlying point is worth considering. There are some studies that show that we tend to make a moral decision first, and attempt to justify that moral decision using ideas second. Psychology is a science, as tomato contends - what is being studied is very counterintuitive. Evolutionary psychology is an interesting field - an in depth version of other ethological studies.

Is that a Wayne's world moment, or a typo? If its a typo - no problem. If not then...not. I think it's sound in spirit, but not necessarily in form. Heh. It's second nature for me to right click links I want to be opened in a new window (or to middle click for a new tab when I at my home computer). I use href because its ingrained into my fingers. I do switch and change between that and using url, but after 10 years of creating webpages and the like it's a difficult habit to break. Sorry

Then whatever children do (or humans in their 'state of nature') is god's intention and modern ideas about morality are borked? That would imply that the moral imperative is to not teach children morality. Unless god intended for us to teach children morality. But which morality? His preferred morality, presumably? In which case, evolution didn't create humans that naturally follow god's preferred morality or we wouldn't need to teach each other whatever that is. Instead evolution created humans that have natural inclinations that might be contra-god but also created humans that could learn a new morality, but did not create humans that would universally agree on what the correct morality should be.Of course, anyone can answer any question appealing to god. Everything is as it is, ultimately because of god. Discussion over.But why did god make us so we are more inclined to pull a lever that would result in a man's death if it saved six men's lives - but at the same time have us flinch from the prospect of pushing a man to his death to save the lives of six men.But aside from all that - this is a case for evolution developing beings in an ancient environment which creates conflicts when the environment changes (such as social structures) being a better explanation than an inherent sinfulness in humans. It is not against all possible god concepts. There are many god concepts, and there can be a god for any situation.So sure - god might have built men to be inclined towards having multiple partners at the same time for some inscrutable reason, but I think we can agree that goes against the god concepts that have god suggesting adultery is a terrible sin and have god creating humans through evolution.Evolution of course, doesn't have a problem with males being driven to have has as many offspring as possible while attempting to keep their investment in those children to the minimum needed for ultimate reproductive success while females have strategies for maximising the resources the males have to provide.So when a young boy starts masturbating - the correct reason is probably something to do with an evolved sexual drive expressing itself under certain hormonal conditions. And if you want to say this process is god's will then I don't think tomato has a problem (other than possibly philosophical objections surrounding parsimony and or verification etc). It's really those that would say that the young boy is being immoral, disgusting, filthy and/or sinful and that the young boy isn't doing it because it is a natural thing for an adolescent human male to do but because they are inherently sinful/bound for hell and they need to be saved that tomato is highlighting in this thread.So yeah - you could invoke the god of 'chocolate sprinkles' as the ultimate mastermind behind it. Or you could invoke the unicorn of invisible sprinkles as being ultimately behind god being ultimately behind evolution being the cause of drives/desires which conflict with various era's religious or philosophical moral models...if that's what you want to do. I just don't see the merit of doing it in this thread.You could try combining the ideas: A god that creates the conflict between human biology and society. But such a god can't also think this is bad, unless it thinks itself as something that creates bad things, and if it punished its bad things when they do bad things then we have ourselves an arbitrary and cruel god and we're screwed.In the end: tomato's argument seems to be that evolution of our psychology is at odds with the evolution of our ideas and that this is the cause of 'immorality'. It's definitely more parsimonious than trying to fit a god entity into there somewhere - however one wants to try and do it.

They don't remove all gods from the equation, the unfalsifiable ones can never be removed by definition! But it does show that a god is not necessary for humans developing a moral sense that is at odds with some of their natural instincts.God is therefore as removed from the equation as it is for any other scientific theory. One is welcome to be a 'theistic evolutionary psychologist' or something, just as you can be a theistic theory of relativitist or theist gravitationalist or whatever.If tomato was trying to argue that he could demonstrate that unfalsifiable gods are falsified by his argument - then I concur he has erred. But it seems to me he his just showing that the classic god of western culture...Yahweh in his various guises isn't needed to explain this paradox in our lives and I think by an appeal to parsimony should just be, for all intents and purposes, ignored.In that sense god is being left out, but its the same reason all those other unfalsifiable concepts are being left out too so its nothing personal <ego>The pumpkin has not blinded you so much as to prevent you from seeing clearly in this case, at least.</ego>

Although it is unethical these days, back in the glory days of psychology studies something of this ilk was tested.It is possible to make a child fear a rabbit through negative reinforcement.
But it is much easier (less negative reinforcement required) to get them to fear snakes or spiders.I'm not sure of course, but I'd be inclined to think that if you were really devious and raised a child by actors who all pretended to be afraid of rabbits and another by adults that were afraid of spiders - you'd find that the spider phobia was more readily transferred.So it might be a simplification to suggest that kids always fear lions by instinct whereas they aren't afraid of roads by instinct - but the EP prediction is that there would be a tendency to more quickly learn about certain dangers common to our past (I don't think lions really count, but maybe they do) and more slowly learn about dangers (and by 'learn about' I don't mean academically but 'develop an innate fear reaction proportional to the danger posed') that are not common to our evolutionary history.Ethically - being mean to child every time they see a bunny rabbit is frowned upon now - so this hypothesis has to rely on mostly older experiments and some carefully constructed less definitive modern experiments.