IMHO, the recent Vox Apologia VII on whether the debate over evolution vs. creation has been a big success. There were even a few l…

Bingo.

From Webster’s New World College Dictionary (2004): 2.(a) Utopia, any idealized place, state or situation of perfection. (b) any visionary scheme or system for an ideally perfect society. Utopia, like any “blank-slate” secular or theistic theory, rests on a human mental construct, that when deaf to any counsel from contrary empirical evidence, becomes an ideal discorporated from physical reality.

Have most religionists ever cogitated, say, prokaryotic cellular evolution, or that of mitochondrial DNA? Is Greenpeace’s mindset (and that of other Anti-American Leftists) impermeable to the fact of Capitalism’s success at lifting living standards worldwide? The new Information Age, I wager, won’t let them dodge the questions for much longer.

Shannon, My entire academic career (I’m an overpaid gardener, now) I’ve had to defend Western Science against both the Secular Left and the Religious Right. That’s why your post and Ginny’s quote from Fromm were so stimulating to me. I was the only employee in an organic farm in Coastal CA to defend the science of GM (having majored in Biochemistry I knew a thing or two about the subject), and I shudder still at the anti-intellectuallism of the “Scopes Trial.”

To Lotharbot, and Scotus, my own view of any religion is, as long as their groups devolve to local branches, remain dynamic, and offer some tangible service to their communities, they will continue to be integral to our societies. The Pope ain’t goin’ away anytime soon.

But, warning: an ancient Chinese proverb says, “When Rhetoric does not match Reality, Revolution occurs.”

-Steve

A recent article that, I think, relates generally to the topic(s) of this string is “On the Origins of the Mind” by David Berlinski in the November, 2004 issue of COMMENTARY.

Christianity is one of the few religions that states outright that people are inherently messed up and flawed (which is very anti-blank-slate and very pro-inherited-behavior). Christianity necessarily requires that people have inborn behaviors. You can’t be born sinful if you’re born with a blank slate, after all. What you’re missing is the way it’s followed up: with the idea that people’s inborn habits can be broken or overcome through external intervention (via a spiritual process).

There isn’t a clash there — Christianity holds that people *will* still act like “right bastards” no matter what they believe (James once argues about this, saying “even the demons believe” — clearly demonstrating that belief itself is not worth anything.) Only those who are transformed (by spiritual, not mental, processes) will change their behavior.

I suppose if we were discussing pure determinism — that is, the far end of the spectrum from blank-slate-ism — you’d have a point. Christianity has tended to be at war with the idea that there is no choice at all in life (though I think this comes out of improperly formed ideas of determinism and choice.) But it’s not at all at war with the idea that there are some things which are inherited, rather than chosen.

“Most of the Evangelicals I know are of a strong Calvinist bent”

I think that Calvinist are a small and rapidly shrinking faction within contemporary evangelicalism. Within the context of larger Christianity they are definitely a minority. The largest Christian sect in the world is of course Roman Catholicism and it is definitely anti-calvinistic and on record as rejecting the notion that genes play a role in moral decision making. Almost all of the contemporary fast growing evangelical sects like Pentecostals, Churches of Christ, Assemblies of God etc are distinctly anti-calvinist.

The central tenet of modern evangelicalism is that one must, “choose to accept Christ as one’s personal savior.” That is an explicitly anti-calvinistic statement.

Even viewed historically, I don’t think that Calvinism translated into support for genetic determinism even though logically it should. People adopt the blank-slate model when they propose to solve problems by altering human behavior. As the claims for the power of the solution grow so do the claims about the degree of “blankness” of the human mind. (i.e. a desire for “marketshare” for the idea drives the adoption of the blank-slate instead of the blank-slate model driving the idea) It doesn’t really matter whether the proposed solution is religious or secular in nature.

Christianity and related religions have always been at war with the idea of inherited morality because it undermined the conceptual ability of using the spread and perfection of Christian faith to solve real world problems. People wouldn’t “buy” Christianity if it promulgated a world view where people going to be right bastards no matter what they believed. Trying to reconcile the Feudal class structure or racism with Christianity’s claim to alter behavior consumed vast amounts of theological effort with poor results.

Pinker actually doesn’t spend a lot of time on the subject but I think it is pretty clear that most Christians sects whether historical or contemporary, even Calvinistic ones largely rejected the idea of genetic determinism as it relates to moral choice.

Fluffy feel-good religions certainly have a strong attraction and high fitness. It’s my own belief that Christianity according to the actual Biblical model, stripped of all the social junk that’s been stacked on top of it, will also remain quite strong. Churchianity might fail, and those who see church as a social club and a support network may fall away into Unitarian-like groupings, but those who’ve encountered God in what I would term a truly Christian experience are not likely to fall away.

Recall that some of the strongest groups form out of shared experience (siblings are a great example of this.) Groups that accept basically anybody as they are tend to grow very large, but groups based on strong common experiences tend to be very cohesive and robust even if they remain quite small. Churchianity tries to have it both ways and fails, and it should crumble soon, but Christianity based on genuine experience isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Correct statement.

A pluralistic analysis would encourage a diversity of intercompeting groupings and associations, all vying for the designation of “Real.” In a non-coercive, liberal society the intercompetition will decide best.

Humans have evolved fantastically intricate grouping mechanisms. Some archaic and chemical, like pheromones. Others are more recent and abstract., like language. In a pluralistic, liberal society, the groupings that these mechanism allow would be innumerable, take infinite forms, and be dynamic and intercooperable.

One of Homo sapiens sapiens‘ more archaic group-organizers, dogmatic, monotheistic religion may be forced to evolve in the face of the new democratizing forces unleashed by the Information Age.

-Steve

I defer to your superior knowledge about Evangelicals on the issue of their Calvinism and thank you for your endorsement of my main point.

Groupings as a whole do function as survival mechanisms… but that does not mean all groupings are equal, or have an equal grasp of reality.

Scotus:

It’s a common tactic among Calvinists to claim that “most evangelicals” have a strong bent that way. But it’s simply not true. Most evangelicals would not take offense to more than a couple parts of a couple points of TULIP, but this does not make them Calvinist-leaning. Rather, it demonstrates the fact that we don’t always mean the same thing or draw the same conclusions from the same sentences. (Similarly, Muslims and Christians often say the same things about God, but they often mean very different things.) I happen to be pretty heavily Calvinist-leaning, but I know I’m rare among evangelicals.

Still, your point that most evangelicals accept genetic influences of behavior is a good one. The debate is not over whether genetic factors are involved, but whether (in cases like homosexuality) resisting genetic tendencies is possible, reasonable, and moral.

FYI, it’s pretty well established that at least some homosexuals can change their orientation (see: Exodus International.) Nobody claims it’s easy or fast, but recovery rates aren’t too different from alcoholism. I know one ex-gay who changed back around 1980.

You’re also right that homosexuality is a strange exception to blank-slateism.

You say that “most evangelical Christians violently reject the idea that genetics has any impact on our ability to make moral choices.” Frankly, I find this puzzling. Most of the Evangelicals I know are of a strong Calvinist bent. The ‘T’ in the famous Calvinist TULIP acronym stands for ‘Total Depravity,’ i.e. the doctrine that humans, by nature, are incapable of choosing to act rightly, at least consistently. That strikes me as about as strong a nature over nurture view as there is. Now, Evangelicals (and all other orthodox Christians) believe that, with the assistance of Grace, humans can and do overcome their natural tendency to sin. Grace, however, is an “influence” on behavior – over and above both nature and nurture – that no science can quantify or evaluate.

My (wild) guess about what you may have been talking about in the above quote is that Evangelicals are among the strongest critics of the proposition that sexual orientation, especially a homosexual orientation, is rooted primarily or exclusively in a person’s genetic make up. Now, there is much confusion on this subject. Even if an orientation to a certain type of behavior is rooted primarily or exclusively in a person’s genetic make up, it does not follow that acting on that orientation is ipso facto morally legitimate. For example, some believe that an orientation to alcoholism is rooted primarily or exclusively in a person’s genetic make up. Even if this is true, it hardly follows that alcoholism is a morally legitimate “alternative lifestyle.” Similarly, even if a homosexual orientation is rooted primarily or exclusively in a person’s genetic make up, it does not follow that the person’s acting on that orientation is morally legitimate.

Evangelicals (and all other orthodox Christians) maintain that all humans have a natural capacity for chastity, but it is only when that natural capacity is “enhanced” by Grace that humans can live a consistently chaste life. Thus, while those with a homosexual orientation are tempted toward sins against chastity that don’t tempt those with a heterosexual orientation (who, BTW, have plenty of temptations of their own to deal with), those with either a homosexual or heterosexual orientation, with the assistance of Grace, can live chaste lives.

A question that divides Christians of all stripes is whether those with a homosexual orientation can change it into a heterosexual one. Some Christians say that, with the assistance of Grace, they can. Others maintain, with Saint Thomas Aquinas, that Grace builds upon nature. Thus, all that anyone (including God) can expect from a person with a homosexual orientation is that he or she does not act upon it, i.e. that he or she remains sexually continent. Of course, there are scientists (e.g. Masters and Johnson) who maintain that sexual orientation is much more pliable than it is politically correct to believe. If so, then, with the assistance of Grace, perhaps a homosexual orientation can be changed into a heterosexual one. (BTW, the Left’s insistence on a genetic origin for sexual orientation seems to be the one – totally inconsistent – exception to its otherwise through going “blank slateism.”)

In any event, I don’t think it is at all accurate to say “most evangelical Christians violently reject the idea that genetics has any impact on our ability to make moral choices.” Making another (wild) guess, I will end with my opinion that, while Pinker’s discussion of the present state of the academic disciplines is quite reliable, one should not take to the bank what he has to say about religion.

I prefer the word “holographs” instead, though “In each unit, the whole.”
-Steve

Other competing manifestations are family, tribe, corps, hanse, nation, club, or political party. All derive from our biological need to “belong.” To analogize, the human animal shares much in common with the water molecule. We tend to aggregate ourselves in inter-linked matrices in which all members co-orient according to a shared polarity.

I ‘d argue this parallelism is not an accidental.

Accordingly, at the abstract boundary of any human-based matrix, as in a drop of water, a stable surface tension forms, that, absent an emulsifier, is resistant to the entry of any “immiscible”, call it impermissible, idea. There is an energetic stabilty in the ordered matrix that resents any dislocation or mal-orientation within its boundary.

So put, any discussion that attempts to correlate or distinguish these social groupings without acknowledging their shared biological genesis tends to decay into rote factional cant.

-Steve

Thanks Tman, that is exactly what I was refering to. There is plenty of evidence for these kinds of gradual change. What I would like to see, however, is a strong explanation of one of the ‘closed loop’ phenomenon. Such as the jellyfish sting, with its pump, harpoon, poison, all necessary, each part a very fine and delicate device, all usless without the others. There is simply no way I can imagine such a closed system being created by random mutation and selection. It is all or nothing, in one swoop.

Anyway, the point of my comment was that contrary to the original post, not all sceptics are ignorant, bible-thumping tooth-picking rednecks.

Your position has merit and I can provide a concrete example. The language centers of males and females are in different anatomical positions in the brain yet we generally don’t think of one gender or the other having superior language skills. Most males have their language centers on the Left side of their brain whereas most females have language centers on both sides of their brain. Males are much more likely to suffer aphasia after a left-hemisphere stroke than are women because women have the center on the right-side to fall back on.

So different physiology doesn’t automatically mean different function but when we do see a difference in function, as in males being better at visualization and we see a difference in the relevant physiology, hemispherical separation of some visual modules in males, it is legitimate to ask what degree the physiological difference contribute to the difference in skill.

Humans are a sexually dimorphic species and all sexually dimorphic species exhibit differences in behavior based on sex. Therefore, anytime we examine the differences between behavior between human males and females we know, or should know, that we will have to check for a possible genetic component.

That has not been the attitude advanced by the Leftist proponents of the blank slate.