Evolving Evangelicals
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.
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This is all fine and well, your recognition that you don't really believe in God. However, in projecting your loss of faith to everyone who sat around you in the pews is perhaps less forthright. I met a minister once who was an unbeliever. I met one minister. I didn't assume he was representative of anyone but himself. I also stopped attending that church, where I was only a visitor and not a member. There seemed little point in being there.
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.
Dear Muse,
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.
Dap, I'm glad I was fondly in your thoughts, but I just call 'em like I see 'em. Greater intolerance? Why does it have to be greater or lesser? Genuine Christians never harmed anybody. But anybody can call themselves whatever they like. There's always been false Christians. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to interest oneself in the genuine. And since when do multiple wrongs make a right? Why not just live and let live? Why does any group of people have to be libeled because of some cliche that's used to stereotype them? I thought diversity was the watchword of the day.
Muse
Your funny David! It probably wouldn't hapen because many of the dumb women would still find a way to hook the (Supposedly) smarter men thereby short circuiting the devolution process.
There is said to be a genetic component to religiosity, that we are hard-wired to
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.
Indeed. Wisdom is a mental construct different from but dependent on intelligence. The brain subsystems that give rise to a capacity for wisdom (as one gains tacit life knowledge) are developed on the basis of genetic endowment but also require a social milieu of wisdom in order to attain maximum effect (just as intelligence is somewhat affected by the kind of environment one is raised in).
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.
It isn't just group selection at work. I have become convinced that evolution of humans is alive and well and producing a few subspecies based on mental attributes. The evidence that there are genetically influenced right-wingers and left-wingers has been explored recently and it appears there might be a genetic basis to conservative minds, vs. progressive minds.
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.
Thank you Mr. Horton. This explains a lot.
Dear Dr. Horton,
You Sir, are a card, you had a smile on my face from the title. Thanks!
Exactly right! And isn't it strange that people who believe in gods or other supernatural beings get a free pass -- and are even treated with respect and deference -- while those who hold other superstitions -- spilling salt is bad luck, etc. -- are looked upon as foolish? Both groups think in a similar fashion in that they choose to believe something with no supporting evidence. Perhaps if those wary of spilling salt would advertise their belief by publishing a "sacred text" on the subject and hiring a choir to fill the air with reverential sounds, they too could collect billions in tax-free donations every week.
Mr. Horton,
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.
Well, maybe you ought to read more closely. He was positing a group with a particular set of beliefs out of which the least credulous are selected out over time. An intelligent person can believe all sorts of things, like, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but drop out of the whacky church that says, "either you join with the six of us, or you'll suffer the pains of eternal damnation." Have you noticed a lot of Americans are leaving sects to worship on their own?
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?
LOL! I'm guilty of the either/or fallacy? Hate to break it to you, but in fact I was responding in kind to Mr. Horton's liberal use of that very fallacy. Several posts ago, he wrote:
"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.
"Love thy neighbor as thyself,"
...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?
Rick, Zanti, as well as being a (very intelligent IMHO) pit bull, lol, is also a "Stealth Atheist" See (David Sloan Wilson's HuffPo series on Stealth Religions to understand the origin of that term)
Anyway, isn't everybody in Idaho an Evangelical Republican??
I skiied Sun-Valley once; the 4 hour ride from Boise was really interesting. Moonscape! I'd love to get up North there in the summer though.
Just a reminder that when Einstein was asked about death and souls, his answer was "Energy can't just disappear."
How stupid was he?
You're doing the same thing as Zanti. Don't waste pixels! Einstein wasn't a christian, anyway.
Fascinating. It's as if you believe you can render your opponents stupid simply by treating them as such.
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.
Outside of physics, Einstein was famously scatter-brained - stories abound regarding his difficulties in dealing with every day life. Why should his brilliance in physics imply that he had anything important to say about philosophy or theology?
Wondering, from my experience or understanding of Einstein, that's does not seem to be the case, he was actually quite normal.
Einstein was an atheist, contrary to the claims of some revisionists who try to portray him as some kind of late-awakening deist or even a closet Bible-thumper. Many dubious quotes are attributed to him, most of them edited or even created out of whole cloth.
Democrab,
Notice the pattern here--specifically, the rather artless bait and switch. We have a piece that contrasts "the religious" with "the intelligent," thus obliterating the earlier, token "evangelical" qualification. You and I, in a completely reasonable manner, ask the author to explain himself, and the usual folks sign on and accuse us of playing games.
They set up their clever traps and we walk on them. Then they get sore. Build better traps, suggests Zanti.
Albert Einstien was a physicist and I rather doubt he actually said that anyway.
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