Is the theory of evolution normative?

A lot of people object to the theory of evolution on normative grounds, that is, because evolution says that people should behave in certain ways. To take a radical example, according to the theory of evolution men who rape has gained some sort of evolutionary advantage, and that is why the behavior still exists in many different species today. Speaking in evolutionary terms an individual can gain fitness through rape. Confused people (Russ Tanner in this video is confused on other issues besides this) who mistakenly thinks that the theory of evolution is normative goes on to argue that according to the theory of evolution, rape is good.

This is of course wrong. The theory of evolution says absolutely nothing about how we should behave. The theory of evolution, in other words is descriptive. It describes what the world is like and the mechanisms that are at work, it doesn't say what the world should be like or whether status quo is good or bad.

So independent of whether you want a communist or a liberal society, whether you want like or dislike a certain behavior that the theory of evolution predicts. Independent of what your opinion is, the theory of evolution can help you get you where you want to go because you can learn important lessons about human nature. Ignoring or trying to deny our natural instincts will just make things harder for you…

Go save the world, but do it using what you know about human nature

Ps: Also see my post "Ethics of an atheist"

The God Delusion, Part 6 – Roots of morality

In chapter six of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins deals with the roots of morality. There seems to be a major concern amongst religious people that should people become atheists there would no longer be any reason to behave morally. After all, why would anyone behave in a good way if there was no after-life reward, and if there was no hell fire, what would stop people from murder and rape??? On the question, "If there is no God, why be good?" Dawkins writes:

Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: 'Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, applepolishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.' As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.'

So what is the danger associated with atheism and in particular, a belief in the Theory of Evolution? It seems to me that many people mistakenly believe that the theory of evolution teaches us how to maximize fitness and perhaps more dangerously that maximizing fitness is necessarily a good thing…. There is nothing in the theory of evolution which tells us how we should act, that is for us to decide. Dawkins writes:

A great deal of the opposition to the teaching of evolution has no connection with evolution itself, or with anything scientific, but is spurred on by moral outrage. This ranges from the naive 'If you teach children that they evolved from monkeys, then they will act like monkeys…

I have written about this before in my post "Ethics of an atheist", but it is important so I will say it again. I think that the role of the Theory of Evolution is not to tell us how to act i.e. we should not derive our morality from the theory of evolution. Rather, I think, the theory of evolution can be used to make informed guessed about how people are likely to act in various situations. On a larger scale, I think that Evolution can help us predict which policies are likely to succeed as well as which ones are likely to fail because they violate our instincts? I think that in many ways a communistic society, as it is described in theory, would be quite nice. Marx's (see picture) slogan "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs" may be sexist, but aside from that it sounds like a very sensible principle to my ears. Unfortunately I think that a society based on this principle would never work, simply because it is human nature to want more than one need (this is probably the reason it never has worked to)… Largely for this reason I favor a market-based society. For those who are interested in this line of thought I recommend Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue (the last chapter is about implications for society). Dawkins writes that:

A great majority of religious people, I am sure, are moral and responsible human beings. However, the following letter to Brian Flemming, as well as countless historical episodes (9/11, Crusades, Inquisition etc), shows that religious belief indeed does not make people immune from primitive "ape like" behavior…

You've definitely got some nerve. I'd love to take a knife, gut you fools, and scream with joy as your insides spill out in front of you. You are attempting to ignite a holy war in which some day I, and others like me, may have the pleasure of taking action like the above mentioned…

Dawkins then points out the absurdity in defending an omnipotent omniscient God. Isn't it enough that all atheists will burn in hell forever after we die? Can't your God just punish us if he wants to, or perhaps this is where your faith breaks down? My advice to those who feel the need to fight in the name of God is, why not let God take care of it, should he exist then it should be a piece of cake…

So where does morality come from? Without going into the details the Theory of Evolution provides a perfectly valid explanation of the phenomenon. In experiments where people are given ethical dilemmas, religious people and atheists give pretty much the same answers, again suggesting that religion doesn't make you more moral... How did morality evolve? Here, to confine the length of this post, I will simply refer to Matt Ridley's The Origin of Virtue, which deals exhaustively with the subject...

Equal opportunity design

Intelligent design proponents tell us that evolution lacks evidence and that the alternative, a creator God who designed all creatures as we see them today, is equally likely. Their favorite analogy is the clockmaker analogy which basically says that our intuition tells us that everything complex have a designer, therefore humans must have a designer. A little sidetrack: even though our intuition often leads us in the right direction it can sometimes be quite wrong to. Read here.

I have already dealt with the essentials of Intelligent design, and why I think that it is wrong in a previous post. Here I want to focus on a consequence of the intelligent design argument that only became apparent to me after reading an article in the latest issue of my favorite magazine "Skeptic". The article is called "Who designed that?" and is written by Tom McIver. The problem that ID proponents face is the following.

In order to avoid being deemed a religion, intelligent design cannot say that any particular God is the designer, after all there is no rational argument why it should be Yahweh or Allah rather than any other God who designed us and our planet. Now, ID proponents are eager to take their theory into the classrooms to be taught in the biology lessons as an alternative theory to the theory of evolution. In practice, what they really want (in the US at least) is to read from the Bible during biology sessions, and that is where the problem is. Since any designer God is equally unlikely, any religion could claim their time in the classroom and their chance to convert today's students. In essence, Christianity would have to be taught side by side with Islam, Gnosticism, and even the silly religion of Scientology (man I lost my respect for Tom Cruise and John Travolta when I learned that they belonged to this church). In their morning biology session students would be taught about how God created plants and then came the light (have you noticed the severe conflict with science in this?), and then later on came Adam, and from his rib came Eve. In their afternoon biology session the same student would be taught the following.

"The Gnostics taught that God was a mad scientist named Yaldabaoth who had been created by accident and built the earth as a prison for pre-existent human souls. He cloned Adam, raped Eve and kicked them both out of paradise when Christ came in the form of a serpent to liberate them" (excerpt from "Skeptic magazine" number 2, 2007, p.60).

The next fifty biology sessions would be spent going through everyone of these, all equally plausible, alternatives to the theory of evolution. Needless to say, this would be a preposterous scenario. Evolution does have loads of supporting evidence. If you don't believe me, read about an experiment here or about AIDS here. Intelligent design, on the other hand, merely bring up another problem, namely who designed the designer?

The God Delusion, Part 4, Why there is almost certainly no God

I am not the only blogger who is discussing The God Delusion. If you want a view that is really different from mine you can go to the Apologetics homepage where you will find comprehensive criticism of Richard Dawkins latest book. Deepak Chopra whom I recently criticized for his abuse of quantum physics also taken the challenge of trying to break the arguments put forth in The God Delusion. Needless to say I don't think that the Apologetics or Chopra are able to break the very strong message in the God delusion, but that should be up to you readers to decide.

After having met the many arguments or proofs for God, one by one, in chapter four Richard Dawkins goes on to describe not only why we do not need a God to describe our world but also why such a God in fact is quite implausible.

He starts out by explaining why the alternative to a creator God, Charles Darwin's (see picture) Theory of Evolution, is not, as many people tend to think, the same as blind chance. It is really quite wearisome to hear people say "so you think we just popped into existence" when you say you believe in evolution, but I have already written about this issue in my blog post Evolution is NOT blind chance. Dawkins also points out that to call upon a creator in order to explain complexities which we have not yet understood does not solve nothing, all it does is to invent another complexity that needs to be explained. I would like the ID proponents to suggest an empirical test, similar to the one below, which if it succeeded would support their "theory" and if it failed would falsify it. Dawkins writes:

"Darwin himself said as much: 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.' Darwin could find no such case, and nor has anybody since Darwin's time, despite strenuous, indeed desperate, efforts. Many candidates for this holy grail of creationism have been proposed. None has stood up to analysis"

Another common tactic used by religious people is "The worship of gaps". Whenever there is something science cannot explain such as for instance language, certain religious people take this as proof of God's existence. After all, if science doesn't have the explanation, then it has to God right, right?

"The logic turns out to be no more convincing than this: 'I [insert own name] am personally unable to think of any way in which [insert biological phenomenon] could have been built up step by step. Therefore it is irreducibly complex. That means it is designed."

But what about the Universe and what about us humans? Why should there be a Universe? Why should we exist? Surely someone must have wanted us to exist? No not of necessity. Though I am still merely an amateur astronomer (I am trying to help that by following a lecture series by Professor Alex Filippenko available at Berkeley's webcast), I know that there are theories out there which could potentially elucidate why our Universe looks the way it does. There are also good attempts to explain how the first cells arose. These theories I admit can sound a bit far fetched an even unlikely. However, it seems that we are also relatively lonely in our Universe and so the unlikely event of a cell (see below) forming spontaneously from various organic constituents only had to happen once for us to exist. If you throw a dice billions and billions of times you are likely to at least once get say 10 sixes in a row even though the probability of this series is as low as 0.00000002.

We humans are also ill equipped to accept hard nosed scientific theories instead of explanations that invoke an agent such as God. Humans have a natural tendency to see agents everywhere. Dawkins writes:

"Maybe the psychological reason for this amazing blindness has something to do with the fact that many people have not had their consciousness raised, as biologists have, by natural selection and its power to tame improbability. J. Anderson Thomson, from his perspective as an evolutionary psychiatrist, points me to an additional reason, the psychological bias that we all have towards personifying inanimate objects as agents. As Thomson says, we are more inclined to mistake a shadow for a burglar than a burglar for a shadow. A false positive might be a waste of time. A false negative could be fatal. In a letter to me, he suggested that, in our ancestral past, our greatest challenge in our environment came from each other. 'The legacy of that is the default assumption, often fear, of human intention. We have a great deal of difficulty seeing anything other than human causation.' We naturally generalized that to divine intention."

In summary, chapter four in The God Delusion, bring up a few quite important points. It is shown that a creator God is really an inadequate answer since it merely brings up another problem namely who created the creator, or who designed the designer? The best theory we have to explain our own existence without invoking an agent is the beautiful and simple Theory of Evolution.

Americans’ belief in evolution

I would very much like to recommend Gallups daily briefings which presents, in video format, interesting data from Gallup polls on a daily basis. Today for example, Gallup presents the latest figures on the 2008 presidential election. They ask, "who would you vote for today, Clinton or Gulliani (the two front runners for either party).

In yesterdays briefing Gallup presented a survey probing about Americans' belief in the theory of evolution. Apparently, three of the republican presidential candidates claimed not to believe in evolution (none of the front runners thank God). I am almost hoping that they said so only because of their voters. An unbelievable 48% of the Americans' who were asked in this survey said that they did not believe in evolution. Why do some people not believe in the extremely well established theory of evolution? When you ask those who do not believe in evolution a large majority says that evolution contradicts their religious beliefs. In other words they chose to base their world view on faith rather than on evidence. These figures are an inspiration to me to keep writing on this blog.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the more educated you are, the higher the probability that you believe in the well established theory of evolution. Also not surprising republicans deny evolution more often than democrats (68% of republicans claim not to believe in evolution).

The Mating Act of a Ladybird

To describe the copulative behavior of a ladybird, or a coccinellidae as it is called among scientists, is actually quite hard due to the fact that the category contains at least 5000 different species (I wonder if they can tell the difference between us and say a gorilla). The account that I will give here will no doubt be oversimplified and perhaps only applies to a fraction of the 5000 different species, but it is nevertheless a fascinating type behavior.

So imagine that you are a female ladybird. Because you are already four days old you feel it is really about time that you get a hold of yourself and cease to live your life in an aimless fashion. You feel that it is time to get pregnant. While wandering about on your green plant reflecting on where your life has gone you suddenly look up and see an attractive male about 2 cm ahead (which is about how far a ladybird can see). You feel really flattered when this handsome stud mounts you, but then, when he is just about to insert his thing you instinctively start to run around, kicking forcefully backwards to get him off. This stud won't give up that easily though so in spite of the rather uncomfortable ride he hangs on. You therefore switch to a different strategy. Almost to your own amazement you throw yourself of the green plant and falls towards the ground. You make your handsome stud lands first thus making him absorb the long fall. For a second the male lets go of you and you try to escape, but luckily for the male he retains his consciousness before you have been able to run more than 2 cm away in which case he would not have been able to find you.

The stud mounts again and this time you don't fight. Instead you think to yourself, this guy can copulate right after falling down an equivalent of ten floors, now that is a trait I want my ladybird offspring to have. So the romance begins, and since you are ladybirds, and since ladybirds are fond of copulating you go on for a long time. (Here is a video of two ladybirds getting it on to the tunes of Donald Crawford's "You Know I Know".)

If both the male and the female have not mated recently they will keep going for about 275 minutes, or 4.5 hours. However, if both have had sex recently and thus feel a bit tired or drowsy or satisfied, then they will limit they will stop after only 176 minutes or 3 hours.

Following not so much cuddling you depart, exhausted but happy… However, for a ladybird sex is not just joy. Because ladybirds are really really promiscuous animals they are also very often the victims of sexually transmitted diseases, in fact the ladybird has more STDs than any other insect. According to one estimate that I found, up to 90% of some populations of ladybirds can be affected, so you better use the condom (or become a ladybird nun).

Most of what you have read here is my recollection of a lecture that was given to me by Professor Mike Majerus at Cambridge University, UK. In 2004 I attended a science summer school at Fitzwillam college and there I had the great privilege of taking a course called "sex and aggression in insects" taught by this extraordinarily entertaining ladybird world authority (I would vote for him to take over after David Attenborough if he ever quits). Though I have not read his books he has written several, so if you are interested in ladybirds and evolution I am sure that the following books are probably really good references.

Melanism: Evolution in Action: In this book majerus decribes the evolutionary forces that has given rise to melanism, or skin color. I'll bet that many of the examples are on the somewhat rare black ladybirds which he talked alot about during his course.

Guide to Ladybirds of the British Isles: As the title suggests this is a short (8 pages) guide to ladybirds.

The argument from design

Imagine that you are out walking an early Monday morning. Suddenly you detect something shining on the ground. You pick it up and see that it is a delicate watch. Intrigued, you take the clock back home and pick it apart. Amazed by the fine, very complex machinery inside you say to yourself "this cannot have just come about by chance, someone must have made this clock". Tuesday morning, when you are out walking again your foot suddenly bumps into something, and you look down… There lies a dead man. You take him home and dissect the body. With the aid of electron microscopy and other high tech tools you look into the cells and see how extremely, impressively complex they are. Again you look up and say to yourself "this human being is far more complex than the watch I found yesterday, this human cannot have just come from nothing, there must have been a creator"…

This argument which I believe is referred to as the argument from design or the watchmaker analogy, was put forward by a man named Paley (actually I think I have read somewhere that he was not the first person to use the argument, but it is associated with him). Unless this is the first time you read my blog you will probably know that I do not buy this argument, for several reasons. First of, this is an analogical argument, and analogical arguments are only as good as the analogy. In other words, the argument is valid only to the extent that a clock and a human being are similar, and we all know they are not very similar. For example, I happen to know that humans can make babies. In contrast, I have never seen clocks make new clocks, not even when I put my different clocks in the same drawer (though maybe that is because all my clocks are broken?). There are of course many other differences between clocks and human beings but I will let the reader use her imagination here.

The perhaps biggest flaw in the argument from design is to suppose that the alternative to design is sudden, random formation. Paley simply did not understand evolution, and neither does anyone today who argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection suggests that things just come about by chance (see my previous post called, "Natural selection is NOT blind chance"). Mutations, which are approximately random will give rise to new DNA molecules every now and then. Some DNA molecules, independent of whether they are in a virus, bacteria, mouse, dog, cat, whale, monkey or human being, will be more successful in terms of survival and replication, than the average DNA molecule. Sometimes the molecules just "gets lucky", but over time the phenotype (the characteristics) of the DNA molecule plays an important role in determining the fitness of that molecule. Say that one DNA molecule contains the code for making Prions, which then goes up and destroys the brain of its host. This molecule would not be very successful (unless it lets its host reproduce before starting to express the protein)... The Ebola virus is another example of a rather "unintelligent" strand of DNA (or is it RNA, I don't really know). Sure it is great at spreading between different individuals, however, this does not compensate for the fact that Ebola viruses kill their host really rapidly and brutally. Had the virus been a little bit more subtle and patient it would have been much more successful.

The point here is simply that the fitness of a particular strand of DNA is not random. Depending on what it does it will have a larger or lesser chance of getting into the next generation, and this process is referred to as natural selection. It is quite ironic that the argument from design so often comes from those who believe in God.

In essence, the argument from design becomes something like the following: No, humans surely cannot have come about through natural selection, that is just too unlikely! It is much more likely that we have a divine being, superior to all human being who came about (wait a minute, how did he come about???), and made the humans, that is much more likely… hmmm. Seems to me that creationists are undermining themselves…

For a much more thorough analysis of the argument from design I recommend Richard Dawkin's "The Blind watchmaker".

The evolution of happiness

Our genes, containing the recipe for making us, do not care about our feeling. All they care about is replicating themselves. Whether their host is the most depressed anxious, suicidal person out there doesn't matter to the genes as long as they get into the next generation, preferably in great numbers. In a sense we are merely the means to obtaining a goal: replication of our genes.

So why do we have emotions? Why are we not just insensitive robots that do not break down because of something silly such as your dog dying, or too much stress at work? The reason is of course that emotions are adaptive in many important ways, and people who lack emotions evidently do not succeed very well in our society. Fear makes us avoid many dangers; pleasure makes us come back to the things that induced it. Guilt and shames tells us we have not been fair and that we should try to fix it, and so on. In other words, we are not born to be happy. Of course we are not born to be sad either; rather we are born with a spectrum of emotions, all of which are probably important in some ways.

What I want to argue here is that, by learning more about evolution, our ancestry, and which situations are likely to produce different emotions we will be able to form our lives as well as our society in such a way that happiness occurs more often, and sadness not so often. David Buss (see picture) from the University of Texas, have written an interesting article on this topic in which he lists the lessons that research in evolutionary psychology have taught us. For example, Buss argues that our anonymous metropolis society is bound to cause distress and anxiety due to a lack of belonging. You can easily live your entire adult life without really getting to know someone today. Our genes, because they are used to a society containing no more than a hundred or so individuals (read about ancestral environment), may feel distressed in the big cities today. Buss advices us to try to get closer to our extended kin, and to make use of today's technology in order to keep in touch with family as well as friends.

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two evolutionary theorists from University of California, Santa Barbara (where I used to go to school), have done some interesting research about the meaning of deep friendships. David Buss writes about this research in his article as well. Without going into any details, it can be said that deep friendships are good for all kinds of reasons (e.g. live longer, less stress, happier etc). Talking about your problems is simply good for you (there is no ambiguity in the research on this point), so go get good friends!

Other examples of advice that Buss gives us in his article include, (1) Educating people about evolved psychological sex differences (I believe that sex differences, without proper understanding, can destroy any relationship), (2) Managing our competitive mechanisms, and (3) Fulfilling your desires and dreams (go do that thing that you have always dreamt about!).

Another thing that makes us happy is democracy. If you ask people whether they are "happy" and "satisfied with life as a whole", and then correlate that with the degree of freedom in the country, you will find a very nice positive correlation (see diagram). In other words, countries with democracy, free elections, and elective rule have happier citizens, than dictatorships. So here is a lesson for the society as a whole, don't vote for dictators, and keep fighting for freedom of speech…

Some people say that a belief in evolution by natural selection will corrupt a person into immorality. In contrast, I think that evolution is one of the keys to create a society in which people are happy, or as my former teacher put it:

"Go save the world, but do it using what you know about human nature"

Evolution is NOT blind chance

At one point in Woody Allen´s excellent movie Match Point, the main characters, all coming from the British upper class, are having a conversation about the meaning of life. Chris Wilton (see picture) played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, comments that scientists are becoming more and more certain that there is no meaning to life, that we are all here by blind chance (after which the other in the company desperately tries to change the subject. I do not know whether this is what Woody Allen believes, a fast google search suggested that he was an atheist so maybe he is just having Chris say this because it is something people often think. In any case, this is something you hear again and again, and it is quite tedious to be frank. It is also a cause of concern if you ask me. If people hear that evolution is the same as blind chance when they go to the cinema, have a chat at the pub or turn on the telly, then they might start to believe that it is in fact so, even though it is not.

(Warning, spoilers in this paragraph!!!)
I do not know if it is a coincidence that it is the same Chris Wilton who later in the movie commits adultery, makes his lover (played by Scarlet Johansson) pregnant because of carelessness, and then kills her, her neighbour (to make it look like a drug related crime), as well as his own child that is growing inside his lover. I am personally inclined to believe that Woody Allen is well aware of this "coincidence" considering the many references made to Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky thought that without a religion and a God who punish bad behavior and rewards virtuous behavior, we would all be savages.

I had a similar experience one late evening about two years ago when I was visiting my father on Jamaica. I was zapping around on the telly to see if I could find anything interesting to watch. I finally stumbled upon a program in which a scientist would, in a very intriguing way, describe the amazing feats performed by many animals. Most vividly I remember his description of a lizard. He showed how, on a microscopic level, this lizard had almost perfect machinery for walking in the roof. In the end he asked, "do you really believe that this lizard came about through pure chance?". He went on to say, "of course not, it is obvious that it has been designed to do what is does". Since I liked his descriptions of the animals I was actually quite saddened when I learned that he had bought into the idea that evolution is the same as blind chance.

Considering that it such a widespread and often articulated myth, it is perhaps not so strange that people believe that evolution and blind chance are synonymous. To me the fact that evolution is not the same as blind chance, complete randomness, accident etc is extremely obvious. Random mutations change the phenotype of the individual with the mutation. This change in the phenotype can increase the chance of the individual surviving, it may decrease the chance of the individual surviving, or it may have no effect on survival. When the mutation affects the chance of survival (or more accurately, the chance of copying genes into the next generation), natural selection will either favour that mutation, or work against it.

To illustrate, imagine a hypothetical population of rabbits. On average they get the same number of offspring, and they are equally likely to be eaten by whatever animals eat rabbits (is it foxes??). However, one day, two happy rabbit parents give birth to a rabbit baby with a mutation in a gene that affects the sensitivity of the retina. This new baby rabbit, as a result of its improved retina is ten percent more likely to discover a predator in time and therefore avoid being consumed. When this baby rabbit (unless he or she is eaten) becomes a proud parent one day, the offspring inherits the improved retina and therefore the higher chance of survival in encounters with predators. How long would it take for a mutation that increased the survival chance by 10% to spread throughout the whole population? Is it one thousand generations, or a million perhaps? No, if you do the math in this hypothetical example a more plausible estimation would be around 15 generation. At that point, due to the better survival chance of individuals with the mutation, all rabbits will have the new retina. That is how natural selection works. EVOLUTION IS NOT THE SAME AS BLIND CHANCE!

Universal human behaviors

There is a trend amongst scholars in sociology and gender sciences to argue that more or less everything is social constructions. Relationships and roles in the society are constructed by humans in our conversations. Hence, they argue, there are almost no universal behaviors. Anthropologists writing about strange habits in different societies are often cited to show that there is great variability between people living in different places, and indeed there is. However, it is often overlooked that there are many similarities between different cultures as well. I argue that even though there are many differences between people in different societies that stand out, there are also many, more fundamental, behaviors which do not vary between different cultures. These behaviors seem so natural to us that we barely notice them...

Take beauty for instance. Is it true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Research suggests not! People from cultures all around the globe agree on what faces are beautiful and which are not beautiful. For example, symmetrical faces are seen as more attractive than non-symmetrical faces. Similarly, around the globe a 0.7 and 0.9 waist to hip ratio for women and men respectively, is considered the most attractive body shape. Preferences for the amount of fat on the body varies between cultures. In starving countries in Africa "wider" ladies are generally preferred whereas in western cultures almost anorectic women are seen as very attractive, but consistently it is found that people prefer 0.7 and 0.9 waist to hip ratios. We can do even better than this. For example, have you seen someone who becomes happy when faced with misfortune and sad when life is good? Have you heard of a society where there is neither love nor hate?

Comparing humans to other species can show us how similar we really are as a species. The dung fly know no better place for mating than a new, fresh, rich in nutrients pile of dung. What do you imagine dung smells like for a dung fly? Probably it is equivalent to when we smell our partners perfume or a bed of roses. I don´t think there is any woman who would prefer to pop out her baby into a pile of dung, but why not? I hope it is clear by now that humans, even though we differ in many respects, are fundamentally very similar to each other. Any two humans will differ only marginally in their DNA sequence, and this similarity has a correspondence in the phenotype of the host. Put more simply, all humans share most of their DNA and therefore we are very similar in the most fundamental respects.

As I have argued before I think it is better to recognise that we have some instincts and then figure out the best way to deal with these, than to say that we have no instincts or innate behavioral patterns because we want it to be true. "Go save the world, but do it using what you know about human nature"...

If you have not been convinced that our seemingly natural behaviors are in fact not so natural, then take a look at this wonderful citation from William James, one of the founders of psychology.

"On making the natural seem strange...
It takes...a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upsidedown? The common man can only say, Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made for all eternity to be loved! And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in the presence of particular objects. ... To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the shebear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her. " (William James, 1890)"

Richard Dawkins interview

If you, like myself, are interested in questions about science, religion, and evolution you have probably heard of Richard Dawkins (see picture). Following, his recent book, The God Delusion, he has answered a few questions from the readers. Find all the questions and answers here. Below is his response to people who claim that he is a fanatic... This post is more or less a plagiarism of Felicia Giljam's most recent post on her blog.

What is there to distinguish your intolerance from that of a religious fanatic?

Dawkins answer: It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have. I merely give robust expression to views about the cosmos and morality with which you happen to disagree. You interpret that as 'intolerance' because of the weirdly privileged status of religion, which expects to get a free ride and not have to defend itself. If I wrote a book called The Socialist Delusion or The Monetarist Delusion, you would never use a word like intolerance. But The God Delusion sounds automatically intolerant. Why? What's the difference?

I have a (you might say fanatical) desire for people to use their own minds and make their own choices, based upon publicly available evidence. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'. There is a huge difference.

Trofim Lysenko - why we should not mix ideology and science

What happens when ideology becomes more important than scientifical critical thinking?

Trofim Lysenko (see picture), quickly became a very prominent "scientist" in the soviet union following an article printed in Pravda (aka "the truth") about this barefooted peasant who "solved problems". Even though he had little education and was barely literate Lysenko progressed rapidly in the soviet system and it did not take many years before he controlled much of the agricultural policy in the soviet union. Lysenko was a practical man who cared about practical issues rather than theoretical nonsense. When something appealed to Lysenko's intuition there was really no need for rigorous testing, consider for instance his citation "In order to obtain a certain result, you must want to obtain precisely that result; if you want to obtain a certain result you will obtain it". When he had achieved a powerful position in the soviet union Lysenko's intuition became so important that criticzing him was associated with grave dangers. Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian biologist who have made important contributions to genetics was one of Lysenko's many victims

Lysenko did not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution because organisms do not "compete", they co-operate. Based on this belief Lysenko ordered that trees should be planted in groups so that they would co-operate (perhaps he was a well-meaning man after all). The result: only 5% of the trees planted flourished, 15% survived, huge economical costs to the soviet union. Lysenko also believed that environment meant everything. Give a seed a good environment and it will flourish. The result of this: availability of meat and vegetables was no higher in 1953 than in 1900 when Tsar Nicholas II reigned the country, millions of Russians starved. In fact, Lysenko even believed that one could easily change one species into another species by manipulating the environment, and indeed "scientists" began reporting studies in which they changed bacteria into viruses and even a rabbit into a chicken!

This history shows the danger of letting ideals steer science. Though he may have been a well meaning man, Lysenko ignored what was known about agriculture and the Russian people suffered the consequences. As I have previously argues, I think it would be a mistake to ignore what we know about human nature when we design our society. Under what conditions do people tend to co-operate, and when do we not co-operate?, what differences between the sexes should we expect and accept rather than fight against (and which should we fight against)? I think that the most important lesson of the above is that whatever ideological motives we have we should not let these motives affect the way we do scientific research...

Ethics of an atheist

One common misconcepetion about atheists is that they do not care about anything, after all, why would anyone want to be good unless they are rewarded with a place in heaven?, and what would stop someone who do not fear the eternal fire in hell from rape and murder?

I think statements such as these say more about religious people than it does about atheists. It reveals that the only reason they are acting morally is because of the reward that they believe will be given to them.

For me there is really no egoistic reason for behaving morally, it is just something I try to do for its own sake, acting morally is simply good. I think that ethics in the 21st century should not be based on an ancient book of fiction which advocates "turning the other cheek" on one page and stoning to death those who do not share your faith on another page. Rather, I advocate thinking rationally about ethics.

I personally subscribe to some form of utilitarianism, meaning that we should try to maximize happiness in the word. I say some form of utilitarianism, because sometimes I think it can be questioned whether the end justify the means. Another sound ethical principle in my opinion is the one of the "original position" advocated by Harvard professor John Rawls. According to Rawls it should not matter where or by whom you are born. If being born in a certain part of the society or by a certain class means entering a life of unhappiness or even slavery, then it is not a good society. A leader, thus should be able to say that "if I was reborn tomorrow, it would make no difference to me where or by whom I was born". This may be a utopian idea, but I think it is a good guideline.

How does a belief in evolution fit into all this? Surely, evolution teaches us that the killing rivals and raping is good? No! Evolution, says nothing about what is good and what is bad, that is for us to decide. Evolution can teach us many things about the ways in which humans work and what kinds of instincts to expect. Evolutionary psychology can give us invaluable information in the building of a just world. Not taking into account what we know about humanity when building a society just seems rather stupid to me. I will end with a quote by a great Professor, Leda Cosmides (see picture), whose class I had the privilege to attend; "Go save the world, but do it using what you know about human nature!"

Experimental evidence of evolution

For those who say that the theory of evolution is a belief just like intelligent design is a belief, here is another piece of evidence for you. The two species shown to the left are involved in a "red queen" antagonistic co-evolution race. The wasp feeds on the larvae of the house fly, and because wasps that eat more larvae are more likely to survive and have offspring, the population as a whole become more and more efficient predators. The fly on the other hand must develop defenses against these wasps. Those larvae that are unable to defend themselves against the predator will die and therefore cannot contribute any genes to the next generation. In sum while the wasps become more and more efficient killers, the flies get better at protecting themselves, thus the relative frequencies remain stable.

What happens though if you, for each new generation, take out, say all the surviving flies, that is, all the flies that were able to survive the attacks from the wasps, and instead introduce a new population of flies that have never encountered these wasps before? What happens is that virtually all flies are killed! The wasps have evolved by natural selection, but the flies have not. If you do the opposite and introduce naive wasps to flies that have had a chance to evolve, then the relative frequencies tilt to the advantage of the fly. The wasps starve to death because they cannot overcome the defenses that the house fly has evolved.

This experiment has actually been done, way back in 1963 by Plmentel and Al-Hafldh, and yet, there are still tons of people who claim that the theory of evolution asserts that all species were formed accidentally (not to mention all the Christians who firmly believes this is what the theory of evolution says). How is the process illuminated in these experiments chance? Please, someone explain that to me, I do not understand

Why we need the theory of evolution to explain HIV

If you are wondering why the HIV virus unlike other viruses kills you and if you have not accepted the catholic explanation that all Africans who get aids are sinners and deserved it you might want to continue reading.

The reason that our otherwise extremely impressive immune system is not able to cope with the HIV virus in the long run, is that the virus has a very high mutation and proliferation rate. Following any type of virus infection, the number of viruses in your body will go up exponentially, however, once your immune system is able to recognize the virus it will mobilize its troops (the white blood cells) and destroy the invader.

The same thing happens when someone is infected with HIV, first the number of viruses go up, then down. However, because of its rapid mutation rate, some of the HIV viruses will change so much that the immune system no longer recognize the virus. This new virus, which has evolved by natural selection will proliferate. Our immune system will soon be able to recognize the new invader, but then yet a different virus will be present. This constant race will go on for about ten years. At that time the HIV virus will have killed of so many white blood cells (the HIV virus is specifically targeting white blood cells) that the body can no longer defend itself against otherwise non-fatal infection, and you will die, perhaps, from a simple flu.