We often try to give examples of evolution occurring right now, in order to answer the proposition from creationists that no one ever saw evolution happening. The commonest example we give is the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. However I recently saw a comment on a blog as follows: The blogger had taught a group of medical students that MRSA came about because of evolution in response to the selection pressures of antibiotic use, when a member of the group stood up and said 'That's a lie!' I asked her how she thought MRSA happened - 'It is a punishment from god'.
A better example might be within the ranks of evangelicals themselves (as the above story suggests). Intuitively it seems that the evangelicals are getting stupider and stupider, and evolutionary theory can certainly explain why this is happening. If you started off with a group of, say, 1000 people, who were suddenly converted to some new religion. If the group had the usual bell-shaped curve of intelligence (and I realize that this is a big if, but stay with me) then evolution within the group would begin almost immediately. The smarter members of the group would very soon realize that what they were being told about golden tablets or beings from another world was completely crazy, and they would leave. The average IQ of the group would then fall.
The dumbest members of the group would start believing crazier and crazier things -- virgins in heaven, spaceships behind comets -- and as a result some of the now smartest ones would leave. Conversely, as the beliefs became more and more mad-brained, new members from outside would inevitably be dumber and dumber.
Round and round the feedback cycle would go, the religious would become more and more addlepated, more resistant to any kind of rational thinking from outside, the intelligent would become atheists.
Just a theory of course, but it seems to fit the facts does it not?
David Horton's Watermelon Blog on the other hand just keeps getting more and more intelligent, as more and more smart readers arrive.
Follow David Horton on Twitter: www.twitter.com/watermelon_man
The atheists here take comfort in hearing about people like your Episcopal priest, though I'm not sure why. Your disbelief says really nothing about whether God is real or not. Your supposing that he was "in the sky with the remote control" was not a very adequate metaphor, certainly, as you yourself admit. But the first pertinent question is this, might God be real? And if God is real, might there be a better metaphor for understanding who God is? And -- well, I'll jump out there and suggest that the metaphors in the Bible are certainly superior in various ways to your guy in the sky with remote control -- a last pertinent question is this: aren't all metaphors forms of communication that fall short? God is God and won't be boxed in by your smallish notions about him (or mine either).
I find these discussions tiresome, though I've participated in them rather often formerly.
People are seeking rationalizations here for their disbelief, ironically too, since no one is compelling them to believe anything. Sorry, friends, but the Middle Ages are over. Spiritually, you're on your own now! Celebrate if it suits you.
But the comments Horton made here really offend me. They remind me of things I used to hear people say about blacks when it was socially acceptable to indulge in racist rhetoric. I know people who never set foot in a black person's house who used to say, "they're like this and they're like that," and all the talk here sounds identical.
This is the new racism. Enjoy it if you must, folks. But at least stop kidding yourselves, and see it for what it is.
Evangelicals are stupid. Evangelicals are sub-human. Evangelicals have low IQs. Evangelicals blah, blah, blah.
Welcome to the new racism.
Where ya been? I was just thinking of you fondly Tuesday. Racism? Come on Muse, who started burning non-believers at the stake boiling'em in oil, and or making others lives a living hell?
Who has the greater intolerance? "Let them without sin cast the first stone."
Got Glass house? Agape.
Muse
have a tendency, anyway, to 'believe'. If so, then the tendency not to believe is a
mutation. Maybe it will persist, maybe not. What's the evolutionary advantage to
'not believing' (when in bad times, it'll get you burned at the stake, or worse.)
Alternatively, it's easy to suppose that religiosity is of *memetic* origin, not
genetic. Notice that there is a geographic aspect to where believers occur
in large numbers, that these populations are in some ways culturally
isolated. The Americas, North & South (of Canada, anyway) are mostly
believers, as is Africa. Europe is not. There is enough cultural isolation
in these cases to suggest that the believers (or maybe the non-believers)
are infested with some sort of nasty meme.
I'm aware of many very intelligent people who hold that god exists, etc.
so I'm willing to accept that it isn't simply diminished intelligence that accounts
for widespread belief. Look for something more subtle.
Part of wisdom seems to be an ability to see the world as it is, and not as we wished it were. Or in other words, wisdom imparts a reality-based constraint on intelligence as we puzzle out the way the world works. Those with a stunted brain subsystem (thought to be part of the prefrontal cortex), for whatever reason, will be less able to impose this constraint on what they accept as reality. Hence, reality can be defined for these people by authorities. Religious beliefs and ideological beliefs come in this way.
The mental capacity for developing wisdom is subtle indeed. Unlike intelligence which can be recognized at an early age (as can creativity), wisdom needs much more time to develop. It can only be determined by looking in the rear view mirror, so to speak. The brain power to allow the development of wisdom, however, can be detected by appropriate testing. Psychologists are just starting to develop such tests and the early results are encouraging.
Wisdom has been dissed by our western culture. As such I suspect it has suffered negative selection in the co-evolution of biological traits and culture. Of late, it seems even intelligence is under attack as well. Look at the western education system. But in the meanwhile, intelligence has been put to the task of rationalization, trying to find reasons why reality must be the way we want it to be.
V.
I wouldn't be at all surprised that this applies to all ideological thinking. Religious thinking - belief in things that have no evidence to back them up - is just another kind of strongly held ideological thinking. Evolution, through sympatric speciation, will produce multiple species of Homo as we all seek those who think the way we do to mate with.
Can anybody find me an intelligent lady with good judgment?
V.
You Sir, are a card, you had a smile on my face from the title. Thanks!
Among the following well-known Christian Democrats--Al Gore, Bill and/or Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter--whom do you consider the stupidest? Is it fair to conclude that, because none of these individuals are atheists, they are among the slower Americans? I'm guessing you'd say yes.
Also, can we conclude that anyone from the above list who is not "on the side of the atheist angels" is, therefore, on the side of people who bomb abortion clinics, hate guys, and/or arrange suicide bombings for this, that, or the other god?
Thanks.
You're guilty of two fallacies, the either/or and the hasty generalization. Exactly what you accuse Horton of.
Why is it that you angry christians never defend a tenet of your belief (and I think there are many that are worthy of that), but attack instead? Aren't you supposed to spread the word? And can you do it without an inquisition?
"If you are not on the side of the humanists, then you are on the side of the people who strapped remote-controlled explosives to two women with Down's syndrome and exploded them in a crowded market place. Or on the side of the woman protesting at the SAG awards, holding up placards saying Heath in Hell, and Death to Faggots."
As far as reading more closely, what, in your opinion, should I have spotted? I'll tell you what I DID see--the qualifier "evangelical," followed by "people," followed by "the religious." Specific to general. This is something we encounter over and over in essays of this sort--i.e., a token qualifier that is dispensed with almost immediately. richard dawkins pulls this scam in a big way in his "God Delusion." To wit, close to the beginning of the volume is a disclaimer in which he acknowledges that most Christians are NOT Bible literalists. After which, he carries on as if they were! The moment a writer departs from the context he has created, the qualifier obviously no longer applies. There's such a thing as maintaining a point of view.
I take it you didn't notice that Mr. Horton went from "evangelical" to "the religious"? Maybe you should read more closely.
Why do we angry Christians attack? Hm. Maybe we're defending ourselves against spurious charges. At any rate, since Mr. Horton sees fit to portray "the religious" as idiots, I'd love to have him answer my question. He won't, of course.
...ah, that would be Bill....
"either you join with the six of us, or you'll suffer the pains of eternal damnation."
...and that would be Kerry and the Swift boaters...
Any other questions?
How stupid was he?
That's like... magic. Sort of. People become what you want them to be, so long as you can psyche them into agreeing with your assessment. Must be a name for such madness.
Anyway, I posted a reading lesson for you above. Learn from it. Zanti out.