{"id":2915,"date":"2012-05-04T17:16:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T21:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=2915"},"modified":"2013-01-09T11:19:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T16:19:00","slug":"scared-of-darwin-for-all-the-wrong-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/05\/scared-of-darwin-for-all-the-wrong-reasons.html","title":{"rendered":"Scared of Darwin for All the Wrong Reasons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

UPDATE: I\u2019ve expanded a response to a commenter in a new post: \u201cHave Humans \u2018Won\u2019 Evolution?\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Over at Patheos\u2019s group blog on science and religion<\/a>, Connor Wood is trying to explain why people have a visceral discomfort with evolution<\/a>. \u00a0He sees natural selection as the ultimate example of \u201cnature red in tooth and claw\u201d \u2014 a rigged game that pits us all against each other and\u00a0suppresses\u00a0the better angels of our nature. \u00a0He writes:<\/p>\n

Once you start looking at evolutionary reasons for human behavior, you very quickly run aground on some very uncomfortable ideas. These can be summed up in a simple formula: we are not here to love one another. We are here to spread our genes.<\/p>\n

This means that, whatever aspirations we have, whatever loves we think we cherish, whirring beneath the entire mechanism of human social life is a bleak drive to win life\u2019s game\u2026\u00a0Queasily, the entire world began to look like a kind of vast sorting mechanism, a heartless machine for separating the beautiful and talented from the mediocre, charmless, and wretched.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He turns to religion in part because it is counter-Darwinian<\/em>; the demands of a Christian life of self-sacrifice fly in the face of the evolutionary imperative he fears. \u00a0I\u2019m excited by his impulse, and long to welcome him to the ranks of the transhumanists, but I\u2019ve got some big problems with the way he\u2019s thinking about evolution.<\/p>\n

Wood seems to imagine Evolution as somehow akin to the Gamemakers in The Hunger Games<\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s forcing us into a particular way of being, and it wants to bring us down. \u00a0The problem is that evolution isn\u2019t directed toward any moral end in particular. \u00a0It\u2019s only favoring behaviors that are stable and resilient.<\/p>\n

So we see a blend of evolutionary strategies, even if we limit our sample to our closest relatives. \u00a0There\u2019s everything from the courtship-by-infanticide of gorillas to the solving-problems-through-orgies of bonobos. \u00a0Most species, just like humans, have a blend of strategies; the only total egoists are Ayn Rand protagonists or psychopaths (but I repeat myself).<\/p>\n

Evolution isn\u2019t railroading us into anything, moral or immoral, and that fact might end up creeping Wood out a good deal more. \u00a0There\u2019s a kind of relief in imagining Evolution as a malevolent force that only really pressures us in one direction. \u00a0Virtue becomes easy; it\u2019s defined in opposition to this force (ok, so carrying out virtue is still hard, but it\u2019s not hard to know what you\u00a0ought <\/em>to do).<\/p>\n

The really scary thing is thinking you\u2019re adrift in Harris\u2019s moral landscape<\/a> with no way to distinguish a local optima from the ideal you should actually be striving for. \u00a0You can\u2019t react against evolutionary pressures as a way to bootstrap a metric for moral choices. \u00a0The moral law (the elevation in Harris\u2019s landscape) has to be rooted in something else.<\/p>\n

Yudkowsky has a short story (\u201cThe Sword of Good\u201d<\/a>) that does a pretty good job reminding you that you may have skipped over the really hard part of philosophy, the part that feels dangerous to think about. \u00a0How do we recognize and cleave to the Good, when our minds and traditions feel suspiciously kludged together?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: I\u2019ve expanded a response to a commenter in a new post: \u201cHave Humans \u2018Won\u2019 Evolution?\u201d Over at Patheos\u2019s group blog on science and religion, Connor Wood is trying to explain why people have a visceral discomfort with evolution. \u00a0He sees natural selection as the ultimate example of \u201cnature red in tooth and claw\u201d \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,68,48],"tags":[82,148,18,147],"class_list":["post-2915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-epistemologyphilosophy","category-morality-in-practice","tag-evo-psych","tag-game-theory","tag-transhumanism","tag-whence-moral-law"],"yoast_head":"\nScared of Darwin for All the Wrong Reasons<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UPDATE: I've expanded a response to a commenter in a new post: "Have Humans 'Won' Evolution?" 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