Another Failure of Religion

One of the most spectacular failures of creationism—indeed, of theistic evolution, or any kind of religious explanation of the world—is the inability to explain human nature and human instincts.

The monotheistic religions, which trace human nature back to the Garden of Eden, present the following explanation for what human nature is like. God created Adam and Eve as almost perfect people. They were adapted, physically and mentally, to living in a garden where all their physical needs were met. I say almost perfect because, according to the most conservative literalists, there were two problems. One was that Eve was gullible, and the other was that Adam had this tendency to do what his wife told him to do. So when the serpent told Eve to eat the apple, she just couldn’t resist. Sort of the primordial version of the irresistible expensive handbag, I suppose. It was therefore really her fault that Adam ate the apple; he trusted his wife too much. And from that point forward, human nature has been primarily evil. Sometimes more evil, as with Cain, and sometimes less, as with Abel.Sometimes more, as with Nimrod, and sometimes less, as with Noah. But even the good people had flaws, such as Noah getting drunk. And even evil people have a deep yearning to go back to the garden. Therefore, from a conservative religious viewpoint, human nature is a complex mixture of good and evil.But what kinds of good and what kinds of evil? Religion gives us no way to understand this.

But evolution presents a different picture. Science reveals humans as an evolutionary product of cave-man days. Our bodies and minds are adapted to prehistory, to a time before agriculture, to a time when the availability of food was unpredictable; when we had to run a lot to catch prey or to keep from becoming prey; when we had to be constantly aware of danger; when the only way to survive was to fight our enemies and form intimate alliances with our friends; when the way to evolutionary success was to stop at nothing to leave as many offspring as possible.

We have numerous adaptations to these particular prehistoric conditions. We have strong appetites, which make us eat as much food as we can when it is available, and to store what we do not use as fat; we crave salt so that we can sweat a lot when we get hot; we have a strong sense of awareness of the world around us, which makes us suspicious of every little movement; we are both honest and deceitful; and we have an overwhelming craving for sex. We hate and we lust and we love more strongly than logic could possibly dictate. That is, human instinct is a complex mixture of gluttony, craving, suspicion, lust, hatred, and love. And there is an evolutionary reason for each of these instincts.

Many of the problems that we have today result from the fact that our bodies and minds still work in prehistoric ways, even though these adaptations are now dangerous. Gluttony, with its attendant medical problems, results from our bodies preparing themselves for a famine that never comes, and makes us fat and diabetic; craving for salt so that we can sweat while we run away from non-existent predators now gives us high blood pressure. Anxiety and worry result from focusing on dangers that modern society has largely eliminated, and finding new things to worry about, giving us mental problems that cavemen probably did not have. Today we could get by on altruism and honesty alone, but we still have the habit of violence and deceit. And the things that cavemen had to do to get a mate would land us in jail today.

According to religion, sin is just random bad stuff that happens to be against the will of God. And righteousness is random good stuff that happens to meet God’s approval. We pursue sin because the devil makes us do it. But according to evolutionary science, both what we call sin and what we call righteousness evolved during cave man days.

Both conservative religion and evolution explain human nature as a complex mixture of good and evil. But only evolution gives specific explanations. Evolution gives specific explanations of why humans have gluttony, cravings, anxieties, and violence. If you ask a religious person why we are tempted by gluttony, he or she can give no explanation.  Why do our brains make us crave rich food and sugar and salt? Are these just arbitrary temptations that God has imposed on us as punishment for Eve sweet-talking Adam into eating the apple? And why are we almost crazy with sexual desires? Religious people can only tell us that the devil makes us do it.

According to traditional religion, the cave man days never existed. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they did not have to stuff their faces with food, because the Garden had no food shortages; they did not have to crave salt, or be paranoid, because there were no wild beasts to run away from; they certainly did not need a sex drive strong enough to fight off competitors, because they were literally the only people in the world. Then, when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, almost immediately there was agriculture and herding (Cain and Abel, respectively). Humans went straight from sinlessness into civilization. In Biblical chronology, there is no period during which gluttony, cravings, paranoia, and sex drive would have been adaptive. These instincts went straight from being nonexistent to being unnecessary.

Jeremiah 17:9 says that the human heart is evil and desperately corrupt, and that only God can understand it. So there. Just give up and don’t try to understand it.

There can be no religious basis for explaining why we get sick and why we have mental problems. But there are detailed evolutionary reasons for these things. And that explanation is that ninety percent of the time Homo sapiens has existed has been in a cave-man environment, the existence of which religion denies.

The Evolved Capacity for Evil, Part Four

In previous entries, I have explored the idea that good and evil are both part of the human brain; in particular, there is genetic variability for the impulses that underlie goodness (e.g., altruism) and evil (e.g., psychopathic violence) in human populations. Natural selection may favor altruism in some demes, and violence in other demes, of the same population at the same time.

I have one further speculation to make. Ever since scientists began to discover that the things that people think, feel, and do are determined in large measure by brain chemistry and structure, and the genes that underlie them, the idea of free will has come under attack. How can the people we call evil be held accountable for their actions, if their actions result inevitably from the interaction of their genes and their environments? This may not be an important question, since humans help to create their own environments, and since we have to control evil people even if they are not spiritually culpable. But modern brain science discoveries do raise an important question: what about free will?

Every human behavior is an interaction of genes and environment. It is always both. In some people, genetic abnormalities are so severe that their behavior is almost a stereotypical script; for them, genes are more important than environment. For most people, genes influence feelings and attitudes, while environment (including their current capacity to make decisions) is much more important. It is a sliding scale from the overwhelming importance of genes to the overwhelming importance of environment.

Perhaps the same thing is true of free will. It is perhaps nonsensical to ask whether humans have free will or not. All humans have free will, but some humans have very little of it, while most of us have a great deal of it. It, too, may be a sliding scale.

I propose this possibility for your consideration. Please comment on it if you like.

The Evolved Capacity for Evil, Part Three

Copernicus was born this day in 1473. Cheers!

In the two previous entries, I have established that human behavior is physically determined, and that there is variation (that is, both good and evil, altruism and abuse) in populations. I choose to emphasize the good, but am continually aware of evil. Jesus said, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

There are always evil people, some of whom are very successful. Sometimes they change the course of history. But are there relatively good vs. evil populations? That is, are there times when altruism is more vs. less common?

It is possible, though unproven, that there is an altruistic arch to human history. In tribal days, there was a lot of altruism. That was the only way a person could survive in a small tribe. There was war between tribes, but war was sporadic. Most of the natural selection was within tribes, where altruism provided a direct advantage. It is even possible, as Sewall Wright’s interdemic selection model might suggest, that the most altruistic groups prospered at the expense of the less altruistic groups (that is, for altruism to fellow group members). Then when civilization began, altruism didn’t matter as much. A king could enslave others, abuse them and exult in it, not needing anything from them, so long as he kept the army happy. This is basically the story of ancient human history. Then, more recently, as societies became more interdependent, altruism became important again. There were a few holdouts—the obviously insane Mao stayed in power because the army and party leaders saw him as their way to get power—but they were the exceptions. If this arch of history is correct—altruism, oppression, altruism—then we can imagine that the future is altruistic. We can imagine that democracy is spreading in Muslim countries right now. I hope so. This would mean that natural selection will continue to favor those people and cultures that are most altruistic.

But there can be local variation. While most populations become more altruistic, some can become less so. And, within an overall population, some demes can become more altruistic, some less. People spend most of their time, and choose their mating partners, within demes more often than from another deme. And this brings us back to the impaled coyotes about which I wrote four entries ago. Is it possible that, in the rural South, some demes are evolving toward evil?

It is possible. Here in the rural South, there are groups of people who appear to enjoy violence and value physical power. They even look different: the men are thick-necked and thick-everything-elsed. They place no value on intelligence. They have it, but it is down in the basement. They pile up weapons and impale coyotes. Individuals with evil genes may prevail in these demes, because not only natural but cultural selection favors them. They have a thin crust of friendliness, so long as you don’t ask them about the coyotes. They worship a God of war. They do not like to build things; they buy them, then wreck them. Let’s call them Destroyers.

This is clearly not true of all rural Okies (such as me). I have seen a lot of my fellow Okies who are just as uneducated as the ones described above but who are altruistic and friendly. They even look different than the others. They may have even fewer teeth than the evil ones, but they are not scary. They value intelligence: they love to tell you about their work, and they exult in the skills that they have. They love to build things. Let’s call them Builders.

The Destroyers and the Builders are two demes, side by side, within the same population. There is occasional interbreeding. But the rules of natural selection are different, at least in degree, in the two demes, favoring oppression in one and altruism in the other. Over time, natural selection has favored the altruism of the Builders in the modern human species, but if circumstances change, such as political or economic chaos, the Destroyers are ready to emerge from their rural hiding places.