the psychological case for Evolution

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.

Wow. Thanks Mod, that was a great explanation. Its a lot clearer not. Not that I disagree with the conclusion, but do you think his argument is sound?

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I hope you don't mind me bitching about something... I REALLY hate the href code. Everytime I click on a link you provide, it goes directly to that page in this window. When people use the url code, it pops up in a new window, and then I can click back to what I was reading while the new page loads. For yours, I always have to go back to this page and then right-click and open in new window. I like to finish reading the post before I check out the link anyways.You're, like, the only one who uses the href. Stop it! Use url!

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

Probably, but is that behaviour just learned early? I've never seen a very young baby fed to lions, so I don't really have any idea how it would react, but I have seen babies evince no fear at all when they're in danger. And if a baby cries whilst being fed to lions, is it because of an instinctive fear of the lion; or because it's been abandoned by its mother; or simply because of the pain once the lion starts chewing?I think that evolutionary psychology is a subject you have to be careful with to avoid just making up a posteriori justifications for behaviour that might have nothing to do with it. It's like hearing speculations about the reasons girls like pink and boys blue - knowing this fact to be true people can come up with all sorts of convincing stories to do with girls picking berries.Thing is, there's no real evidence that pink and blue are ingrained in our minds as girls' and boys' colours respectively, except by our cultural upbringing. An issue of Time magazine informed us, in 1927, that the cradle of the Crown Prince of Belgium "had been optimistically oufitted in pink, the color for boys, that for a girl being blue." (from here)I'm all a little bit dubious about touting evolutionary psychology as great confirming evidence for evolution when it's a subject still too much in its infancy*. If we're creating convincing evolutionary rationales for behaviour and habits that don't actually turn out to be an inherent part of our psychology at all, then we need more evidence than just a convincing sounding story to explain any behaviours that are ingrained.*Caveat: There's a possibility my understanding of the state of the field is shaped more by bad articles in the popular press than the actual research being done

Straggler, if children are not afraid of automobiles, then why do parents have to teach their children not to run out in the street?

"I'm all a little bit dubious about touting evolutionary psychology as great confirming evidence for evolution when it's a subject still too much in its infancy."All the more reason why it should be explored.
What do you guys have against hypotheses?
When you ask a girl for a date, you hypothesize--you don't know--that she will say yes.
When you apply for a job, you hypothesize--you don't know--that you will be hired.
Does that mean you should never ask a girl for a date or apply for a job?

Modulous, you paraphrased my message perfectly.
The next time someone asks about my message, I'll tell them to argue with you, not me--no, just kidding.Edited by tomato, : No reason given.

Hello, Catholic Scientist!"You could be "born for survival" while being inherently good or evil. I guess I just don't get it, what he's really trying to say."That's a dilly. I'll try again.
But it's going to be difficult, because I gradually stopped using the words good and evil when I stopped thinking in theistic terms and started thinking in evolutionary terms.I guess my best definition of "good" is "that which is productive to efficient and cooperative living in modern times."Conversely, my best definition of "good" is "that which is counterproductive to efficient and cooperative living in modern times."
I was taught to believe that the source of the former is a sky daddy with a long white beard. The source of the latter is a red man with horns.After giving the matter some thought, I concluded that the source of the former is instincts which were ingrained in us long before anyone ever built any churches and synagogues. I also concluded that the source of the latter is the wide gap between that rip-snorting technological civilization and that lazy slowpoke, Evolution.I hope a couple of examples will help:There are two factors which determine whether or not a species will favor monogamy: one is susceptibility to venereal disease, the other is length of childhood. Our species is highly susceptible to venereal disease, and we have the longest childhood of all the species. Consequently, we turned monogamous long before anyone wrote all that lofty rhetoric about "holy matrimony."Satan may be blamed for inventing interracial and international prejudice, but if he did, he would have had to invent it by creating a gap between evolution and civilization. A million years ago, the world was more sparsely populated than it is now. It was also less mixed than it is now. There were no apartment houses, much less apartment houses housing families of all shades and hues.Furthermore, we were living a million years before the Industrial Revolution. Nobody knew or cared where all the oil and mineral deposits were. On those rare occasions in which you met someone from another tribe, it was most likely not for purposes of signing an international trade agreement.Furthermore, even if you wanted to understand a different language or different culture, it would be impossible. There were no cassette tapes, no anthropology textbooks, no Berlitz Language Schools. If someone who looked and acted differently from you came up and said something nonsensical like, "Bonjour, monsieur," you wouldn't know WHAT that meant! The safest assumption is that it meant, "I'm going to beat you to a pulp."

Being a father of a small child I can tell you that the requirement for road safety with little kids has more to do with their complete obliviousness to the fact that fast moving objects capable of killing them might suddenly appear on those strange things called roads that balls and other toys have a habit of rolling into.Ignorance, obliviousness and an ability to absorb themselves in their own little world. Very probably all the same reasons little kids would be relativley susceptible to being unsuspectingly pounced upon by wild animals in different circumstances.If you place a kid in the middle of a road and force him to watch a roaring car charge at him then the reaction would be pretty similar to if that car were a lion in my opinion.Can you explain what exactly what your point is here regarding kids, fears and nature?

"Can you explain what exactly what your point is here regarding kids, fears and nature?"You mean any more clearly than I already have?
I don't think so.
I've already done that best I can.I've never been to a primitive village, but I assume that a child in a primitive village doesn't go out and try to play with lions and tigers the minute Mommy's back is turned.I'm just assuming, but I doubt if a child in a primitive village would even knowingly venture into a lion's den.
And I would consider that equivalent to children running out in the street.
Here in Korea, parents let children play in the street and Korea leads the world in traffic deaths per capita.If you're so confident that your children are afraid of automobiles, I hope your yard is fenced in.Edited by tomato, : No reason given.Edited by tomato, : No reason given.

Given that he regularly sits in the back of a car and often takes the bus with me it would be rather a drawback if he exhibited innate and complete terror at the very sight of any automotive vehicle. And I don't think little kids in London dive under bulldozers. Oh well.

it was a typo. I meant now. Alas, a natural explanation for a phenomenon doesn't necessarily preclude a supernatural one.

No biggie. I think we know well enough what "good" and "evil" mean. But they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.It is possible that god ingrained goodness into us via the process of evolution. I'm not sure they're necessariy for my point. That doesn't preclude god's hand in the matter. I can think of other ways that don't require him inventing that gap. Nah... there's always non-verbal communication. But we're getting off topic.The point is that all these natural explanations could be the way that god did it.

I've nothing at all against exploring hypotheses, but there's no point in just putting a hypothesis out there then just moving on. I was looking at those you'd presented and pointing out some problems I see - specifically that it doesn't really seem to be the case that small children are naturally scared of dangerous things, including dangerous things they would have encountered way back in our evolutionary history.I'm not quite sure I understand your point now though, but I think some of this is just a bit of mistakes with negatives. You ask: I'm guessing this should read 'if children are afraid of automobiles'. The fact that they aren't particularly is why they need to be taught not to run into the street. If I understood your point well before, it was that this is because cars and trucks have not been a significant part of our evolutionary history, so there's never been any pressure to evolve instinctive fear.But, babies don't seem to have a great deal of instinctive fear full stop. Saying that they aren't afraid of modern inventions is all well and good, but unless we have a good sign that they're afraid of primaeval dangers then it doesn't really tell us anything about the origin of the fear response in children. With reference to the bolded part, I have to ask 'how do you know?' In historical times, the only ones in which we have direct evidence of mating practices between humans, monogamy is far from universal, and probably in the minority. In the extreme case, when men have had the wealth to support massive harems and the political power to keep them to themselves, such as the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, they have done so. Polygyny was (and sometimes is) common practice in all sorts of societies about which we know these things - Biblical Israel (from the Old right through to the New); early Mormons in the US (and a few Mormon groups stil today); Imperial China right up to the 20th century; many Muslim countries, past and present. Even in societies where men have only one wife, it has often been common for them to have mistresses on the side, either in a formalised way or informally with varying degrees of approval.This doesn't give us much reason to assume prehstoric humanity was particularly monogamous. A few clues point the other way - one is the sexual dimorphism in humans when it comes to size. Studies of other mammals (such as this one of seals and walruses) have found that the degree of dimorphism correlates well with the size of male harems - the more polygynous a species the bigger its males grow. Male humans aren't massively bigger than females, but the size dimorphism that exists is a hint in the favour of some poylgyny in our past. Animals that are strictly monogamous (or ones who invest equally in the care of offspring, at least), such as albatrosses, tend to be much less dimporphic.There's also the evidence from the attempt to find our most recent common patrilineal and matrilineal ancestors from Y-chromosone and mitochondrial DNA, respectively. The common ancestor of the Y-chromosone of all men in the world is estimated to have been around about 60,000 years ago, while the common ancestor of all our mitochondrial DNA (only passed down the female line) is placed much earlier at about 180,000 years ago.This implies that there has been much greater variation in reproductive success amongst males than females - more men fail to reproduce, while those who do reproduce are more likely to leave many offspring. The male common ancestor is much closer because so many mroe Y-chromosonal lines died out as their carriers faield to reproduce, possibly because a few successful harem owners were hogging all the women. The only monogamous scenario that would make sense here is one of serial monogamy in which men were much more likely to remarry.Edited by caffeine, : to include the bit i forgot to write. This is what happens when I sit in forums at work.Edited by caffeine, : somehow deleted part of a paragraphEdited by caffeine, : More oddness with tags - don't know what's wrong with my typing ability today

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.