Freethought & Rationalism Archive

pz · 12-07-2002, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Russell E. Rierson:


<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Have I acted incorrectly pz???

I presented some interesting ideas which seem to be irritating to ...YOU.

I will post elsewhere, if you so desire.

The question was, "What the heck do you think you are doing here?". You are babbling. This is a thread titled, "Is Religion in Our Genes?", and you were replying to my comment that I found that proposal absurd. You responded with a bizarre and long non sequitur about directional derivatives.

I presume that you are currently sufficiently lucid to realize that your comments had no relationship to the subject at hand.

I am not at all irritated, but am merely puzzled. I do strongly recommend that you try to sober up before posting -- this behavior just makes you look foolish.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]

ps418 · 12-07-2002, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by pz:
Don't believe it. All of the known twin studies are seriously flawed, in particular since the authors tend to automatically and unjustifiably discount the role of environment in order to rationalize their bias that any concordance in behavior must be due to genes.

This is flatly incorrect, at least with respect to the study I cited. All of the 'Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart' heritability estimates
explicitly take into account environmental effects, using accepted measures for these variables. See, for instance, Bouchard et al's discussion of "Do Environmental Similarities in Rearing Environments Explain MZA IQ Similarity?," which equally applies to measures of religiosity (Science, Oct 12, 1990 v250 n4978 p223).

Of course, you may disagree with their particular
measures, or find them insufficient, but you are simply wrong to say that the effects of environment are automatically and unjustifiably discounted.

Quote:

These same studies that find similar degrees of this general property of "religiousity" in identical twins also find concordance in which specific religious sect to which they adhere.

They do? Which study are you referring to? Maybe you could provide some references? Do they find a greater concordance amongst monozygotic twins reared apart then with adoptive siblings raised together? Of course most identical twins, having the same genes, and usually being raised together, are concordant for religious sects! I would expect nothing less. Concordance and heritability are two entirely different concepts.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: ps418 ]

Russell E. Rierson · 12-07-2002, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by pz:


The question was, "What the heck do you think you are doing here?". You are babbling. This is a thread titled, "Is Religion in Our Genes?", and you were replying to my comment that I found that proposal absurd. You responded with a bizarre and long non sequitur about directional derivatives.

I presume that you are currently sufficiently lucid to realize that your comments had no relationship to the subject at hand.

I am not at all irritated, but am merely puzzled. I do strongly recommend that you either seek psychiatric help or at least sober up before posting -- this behavior just makes you look foolish.

You seemed to imply that "hyperspace" is a load of bull

I was trying to understand that idea. Yes, there is no need for an external "hyperspace" as Dr. Kaku's book explains.

No... I don't drink.

Russ

cricket · 12-07-2002, 10:48 AM

portion of ps418's post:

Quote:

Identical twins reared apart are much more likely to be concordant for measures of 'religiosity' than are adoptive siblings raised together.

pz's reply:

Quote:

Don't believe it. All of the known twin studies are seriously flawed, in particular since the authors tend to automatically and unjustifiably discount the role of environment in order to rationalize their bias that any concordance in behavior must be due to genes.

Are you referring to their shared environment before birth? If twins are reared apart, what other environment do they share?

lpetrich · 12-07-2002, 10:55 AM

One problem with EOW's account is that it assumes an exclusivist view of religion. While Abrahamic religions have tended to be exclusivist, exclusivism is much less common outside of the Abrahamic fold. Simply consider how some New Agers practically make a principle out of "cafeteria theology".

So any comprehensive theory of religion ought to explain religious pluralism and non-exclusivism.

pz · 12-07-2002, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ps418:
This is flatly incorrect, at least with respect to the study I cited. All of the 'Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart' heritability estimates
explicitly take into account environmental effects, using accepted measures for these variables. See, for instance, Bouchard et al's discussion of "Do Environmental Similarities in Rearing Environments Explain MZA IQ Similarity?," which equally applies to measures of religiosity (Science, Oct 12, 1990 v250 n4978 p223).

Of course, you may disagree with their particular
measures, or find them insufficient, but you are simply wrong to say that the effects of environment are automatically and unjustifiably discounted.

At least some of the results of the Minnesota Twins study can be found on the <a href="http://www.psych.umn.edu/psylabs/mtfs/mtrf1.htm" target="_blank">web</a>. Here's an example of the automatic discounting I'm talking about:

Quote:

Rose et al have argued that the greater similarity in personality of adult MZ than DZ twins may be a consequence of this greater frequency and intimacy of contact. The present findings corroborate once again the greater closeness among MZ twins and the strong correlation between closeness and similarity. However, we continue to believe that similarity leads to intimacy, rather than the other way about, in part because the obverse hypothesis leaves intimacy unexplained while similarity can be explained genetically.

I find that remarkable. They can't understand how environment might reinforce similarities between identical twins!

I've also read some of their discussions about sampling bias. Here's another remarkable sentence: "Studies of volunteer twins tend to involve twice as many female as male pairs and twice as many MZ and DZ pairs". That's the opening sentence to a long discussion in which they subsequently rationalize it all away and pretend there is no recruitment bias! Not to mention that the authors of these studies all tend to be obsessive about ruling out environmental factors...it's quite clear that they must make an argument that environmental influences are inconsequential, or the study is pretty much unpublishable.

pz · 12-07-2002, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by cricket:
Are you referring to their shared environment before birth? If twins are reared apart, what other environment do they share?

From Richard Lewontin, in Biology as Ideology:

Quote:

When we look at other studies (he has just discussed the discredited Cyril Burt studies), which actually give family details of the separated twins, we realize that we live in a real world and not in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The reason that twins may be separated at birth may be that their mother has died in childbirth, so that one twin is raised by an aunt and another by a best friend or grandmother. Sometimes the parents cannot afford to keep both children so they give one to a relative. In fact, the studied twins were not raised apart at all. They were raised by members of the same extended family, in the same small village. They went to school together. They played together. Other adoption studies of human IQ that are said to demonstrate the effect of genes have their own experimental difficulties, including the failure to match children by age, extremely small samples, and biased selection of cases for study. There is a strong effort on the part of parents of many twins to make them as similar as possible. They are given names beginning with the same letter and are dressed alike. One twin study advertised in the newspapers and offered a free trip to Chicago for identical twins, thus attracting those who were most similar. As a consequence of such biases, there is at present simply no convincing measure of the role of genes in influencing human behavioral variation.

ps418 · 12-07-2002, 11:42 AM

Pz, none of that adresses the question. Where are the studies which show high heritability of specific religious beliefs, such as Wicca or Catholicism, which you invoked in your reductio?

Quote:

Not to mention that the authors of these studies all tend to be obsessive about ruling out environmental factors...

That's completely erroneous. This very same research (twin and adoption studies) has demonstrated again and again that environment does play a major role in accounting for variance in all kinds of personality measures, including religiosity! In fact, in most personality measures, environment plays a much bigger role than genes!

The only sense in which you are correct is that whenever a significant heritability is found for a personality trait (e.g. religiosity, introversion), it is controversial, and it is necessary to take environmental similarities into account (which you just said they didnt even do). Thus you will find extended discussions in such research about how much of the variance in a given trait can be attributed to variance in environment. This hardly makes these researchers "obsessive about ruling out environmental factors."

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: ps418 ]

ps418 · 12-07-2002, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Lewontin: As a consequence of such biases, there is at present simply no convincing measure of the role of genes in influencing human behavioral variation.

That's hilarious. There is abundant evidence that genes influence human behavioral variation. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either ignorant of the evidence, or blinded by an a priori conviction that genes have no influence on human behavior.

EDIT: Oh, I see Lewontin used the weasal words "convincing measure," and thus was not necessarily saying that there is no evidence that genes play a role in human behavioral variation.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: ps418 ]

pz · 12-07-2002, 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ps418:
That's hilarious. There is abundant evidence that genes influence human behavioral variation. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either ignorant of the evidence, or blinded by an a priori conviction that genes have no influence on human behavior.

Errm, no. That's not what he said. Lewontin, and myself as well (although that is not an attempt to claim peerage with Lewontin), are pretty explicit in saying that genes do affect human behavior. As you say, one would have to be ignorant or blind to think otherwise. Look at the statement again: "no convincing measure of the role of genes in influencing human behavioral variation". Over and over again in this literature, you will see investigators discussing the heritability of such things as intelligence, sexual preference, or temperament as if these were discrete entities. You will often seen reported as if it were fact the claim that intelligence is 80% the product of the genes, and 20% the product of environment...despite the fact that we don't even know what intelligence is, that all the studies are limited by the constraints I've already mentioned, and that it is absurd to try and partition an extraordinarily complex and derived parameter like intelligence into two compartments, "nurture" and "nature", which don't even exist independently.

That's what is hilarious.

Edited to add: those aren't weasel words. It's an attempt by Lewontin to accurately describe the state of the field; you can't blame him for not fitting the caricature of the man who doesn't believe genes do anything (which would be an odd stand for a geneticist to take, anyway).

Oh, and you missed the other important qualifier: "human behavioral variation". Genes are undeniably critical elements in building human brains, but there is no scientific evidence that allows one to explain why Johnny didn't do as well as Tommy on his math test on the basis of genes.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]

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12-07-2002, 10:55 AM	#15
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	One problem with EOW's account is that it assumes an exclusivist view of religion. While Abrahamic religions have tended to be exclusivist, exclusivism is much less common outside of the Abrahamic fold. Simply consider how some New Agers practically make a principle out of "cafeteria theology". So any comprehensive theory of religion ought to explain religious pluralism and non-exclusivism.

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