Albert Cipriani

Dear PZ,
You say,
But then you contradict one of your henchmen. In the “How Good is God” thread in the E of G forum, Majestyk says:
According to evolutionists, evolution cannot know that rape is not a “good strategy for people” as you say, only people can know this. Either evolutionary is a mindless amoral god-less processes or it is not. You cannot have it both ways. I’ve been told in this forum that evolution’s only directive is to replicate. If that is true, rape is a more efficient means of replication than courtship. Please address the rationality of my argument; and cease and desist from your humanistic and sentimentally moralistic posturing.

You claim:
I am agnostic on this count. I simply observe that the incontrovertible fossil record shows a growth in bio-complexity. If evolution is truly a theory, it must account for this. Stated as an interrogative, how does a process that is generated by random mutations account for more and more non-randomness, i.e., an increase in complexity? – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Alix Nenuphar

Albert Cipriani:

You said,
Although your concern appears to consist of a number of false dichotomies, it might be more fun to argue that in another thread.

Since you are looking for a clear answer, however, I offer the following: evolution is a process which produces variations on existing gene pools, variations which are better adapted to an environment.

Adaptations can be simple or complex, as long as they are adaptions. For example, since evolution is the mechanism by which the organisms we see today are actually seen today, both sheer volume and flexibility might be considered good survival mechanisms, since both reduce the odds that a given species will become extinct.

Sheer volume obviates the problem of environmental change by increasing the scope of that environment: the more organisms, the less the odds that a single accident will wipe it out. The price for volume is usually complexity, so bacteria, etc. remain simple.

Flexibility obviates the problem of environmental change by allowing individual organisms of the species to survive and breed. The price of flexibility is increased complexity.

I'm not at all sure that translated well....

Doubting Didymus

Quite simply, humans have evolved a family group ecology, and are now largely dependant on it. It is a much better reproductive stategy, and we are much more likely to have healthy, surviving children if they are conceved and raised not only by a mother, but by a father, brothers, aunts and the rest of the social group.

Remember that natural selections 'reproductive fitness' is always in the context of the environment. In many animals, rape is a good strategy for passing on your genes. In the human context, it is greatly reducing the survival prospects of your child if you must conceive it in a way that deprives it of at least one important family member and poses something of a physical threat to the mother you're relying on to birth the child to boot.

This is exceptionally true of humans because of our impressive brains, long gestation periods and even longer period of vulnerable childhood development. To protect your children from conception to adolescence will vastly improve their prospects of survival.

Quetzal

And why must I pick one or the other? Evolution in its most basic form is simply change over time. From a population biology standpoint, evolution is merely the change in the frequency of certain alleles or traits in a population over time in response to the action of natural selection (or drift, in some cases) acting on the traits possessed by individual members of that population. Note there is no demand here that something increase or decrease in any measure of complexity you'd care to name - merely change. Descent with modification is the only requirement.

There are innumerable examples from living organisms that show increase in complexity as well as numerous examples of organisms that have divested themselves of no-longer-needed structures over time - arguably a decrease in complexity - from snakes descended from four-legged diapsids to whales to barnacles to endoparasites unable to survive outside their hosts to virii which have divested themselves of most of their cellular machinery by the expedient of using their hosts cellular machinery to function and replicate.

It is your assertion that requires support: show that either increase or decrease in complexity is ruled out by evolution. Show that the theory demands "increase" only.

Again, it is your insistance that there can only be one or the other.


Evidently I wasn't clear. My digression on bacteria was to point out the fallacy of your insistence on placing a human-centric value judgement on the results of evolution. Evolutionary success is based solely on the criterion of survival: if an organism is well-enough adapted to its environment to survive and reproduce, it is "evolutionarily succesful". Anything beyond that and you are attempting to attribte values to a species beyond what evolution describes.

MrSparkle

There's a whole broad subject about this.... The long and short is that sexual reproduction evolved anosogimy (sp), the unequal size of gametes. IE, the egg is bigger than the sperm. This means the female has a lot more invested in the reproductive process than the male does. Thus, she gets more pickey about which mates she chooses.

An unhealth peacock would likely have a less "pretty" coat than a healthy one, who can afford to invest more resource in it, because he's not fighting for his daily survival. The appearance of the organism can also be linked to a benifical trait. Sorry, I don't have any specific examples or this....

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting,
You argue: Then after all this time, why do men still rape women? Why hasn't natural selection de-selected that poor strategy? What's that!? You say we need a few more million years of convincing?? And we're supposed to be the smartest of creatures???

I'm being somewhat facetious here, but my point is that rapists would disagree with the evolutionary explaination for their behavior. Rapists would say they did what they did cuz they wanted to do it. And non-rapists would say that they did not do it cuz they did not want to do it. Let's keep it simple...

In the beginning the more powerful humans raped the less powerful. Then a gene mutated that caused one man to feel altruism and empathy. These strange new sensations, a second puberty, mixed with his feelings of lust to confuse him, and as Hamlet, he "lost the name of action."

Such a sensitive fellow was far less likely to sow his seed in his rough and tumble world. But if he did, those same sensitivities would increase his seed's survival rate. Ditto this process for women in the form of gene mutations that cause hormonaly-induced maternal feelings. So the genetically sensitized humans would replicate less frequently than their rapist counterparts, but would compensate for that shortfall by improving the odds of their offspring replicating.

If, as you say, this kinder gentler approach to sex was the better survial strategy, why haven't rapists gone extinct? Why isn't there at least less of them? When you add to the powerful forces of natural selection the unnatural selection of the world's great religions selecting rapists out for summary execution, I, for the life of me, can't see why rapists are still among us. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

Everything in biology does not have to be an adaptive evolutionary trait in order for evolution to remain the explanation for the origin of biodiversity. It may be that rapists are not driven by adaptive inherent motives, but by a simple cognitive choice. Similarly, humans might cognitively choose to stay in a loving monogamy in order to raise children. The theory of evolution does not explain why I choose whatever I choose, though it may very well predict and/or explain the prescence of biological influences on those choices.

As a hypothetical example, take lust. If animals evolve chemical ligands that give rise to lust emotions, they will be more driven to seek mates. Depending on the individual, this may influence the animal to seek a loving monbogamy, or to attempt rape. Evolution explains the emotion, but not the final choice of the animal.

Finally it is important to note that few things are black and white in the eyes of natural selection. If one trait is favoured, it does not neccessarily result in the extinction of another alternative trait. Natural selection may favour a balance in the population.

Doubting Didymus

Also: evolution often takes a VERY long time. social punishment of rapists may simply be too little, too late to exterminate rape. In any case, the exacution of the rapist does not prevent his deed from taking effect: he often has already succeeded in passing on his (possibly) racist genes.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting,
This is the crux of our contention: I think that it does.

That makes no sense to me. If evolution is the cause of life and all forms thereof, and choice is a function of living things (e.g., rocks don't choose), then how can you postulate choice being predicated upon anything other than evolution?

You call it a "simple cognitive choice." I can't see anything simple about it. A cognitive choice cannot be conceived of in isolation, it necessarily involves a context and an end. That's why the slogan "a woman's right to choose" is so successful, it disembodies choice (a good thing) from the the context of what is being choosen (the mutilation of a baby).

Ergo, any choice we products of evolution make must derive from evolution. What other choice is there? As a theist, I don't have this problem. But if I were to become an evolutionist, I'd be stumped by it. That is why I am pursuing it here with you.

Allow me to express this issue metaphysically. If all that there was was a pink unicorn, all that it created would necessarily reflect its pinkness and uni-hornness. Likewise, if the only process responsible for life is the evolutionary one, and it is based upon randomness and replicating fitness, then everything every living thing does must necessarily be either random and/or a form of replication. It's just that simple. I see no other way out.

But you propose evolution on the one hand, and the vagury of "simple cognitive choice" on the other. If the evolutionary process is the light that illuminates life as we know it, we mustn't hide it under a bushel basket of our free will choices. Indeed, that bushel basket of choice must be an illusion. As how one cannot cast a shadow on the surface of the sun, so too must the illuminating light of evolution leave no room for any shadow of competing processes. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

Sorry, you've lost me. I'm afraid I don't understand why you think evolution must explain everything that organisms do in order to remain a viable theory of their origin. I'll think about this some more, but would you mind eleborating a bit on why nonadaptive explanations are inviable?

If I may apply your pink unicorn example to god for a moment, what aspect of god is on display in human rapists? Remember that god, as the origin of human beings, must according to you be the sole explanation of all biological phenomena. You may not invoke non-god explanations, such as the human will that I proposed is the explaination for rape, or the agancy of satan.

Sorry, but I think your demand on theories of origin is just too strong, and can not be applied to ANY hypothesis: be it evolution or god.