[recycled material - first appeared here]
Evolution has been, and still sometimes mistakenly is, portrayed as a grand parade to the new, the better, the more complex. But two things, at least, make this flatly untrue.
First, the failures are an undeniable yet indispensable part of the parade. Sure, they tend to be fleeting and thus partly invisible — joining the parade for a mere half block before veering off to nowhere — but to overlook them is sheer folly. The numbers, were we to count them, are staggering.
Second, there is no force pushing evolution inextricably toward the bigger and the better. None that seems more than a human projection, in my opinion. Consider this recent science news headline:
Male Sex Chromosome Losing Genes By Rapid Evolution, Study Reveals.
That’s right, the male “Y” has been losing size (and hence complexity) over time. It’s shrinking. And not due to immersion in cold water.
With evolution, whatever works in one form or another, persists. Whatever doesn’t, disappears. Sometimes. If we are talking organisms, that is absolutely true. But non-working (non-functional) characteristics of organisms can persist if there is no cost the selective pressures can subtract. Sometimes.
I’m not an evolutionary biologist, so don’t take my word for it. I also wouldn’t advise taking any single thinkers word for anything. I suggest aiming for a deeper education.
Holy smokes, Batman! And by smokes I mean “Lucky Strikes.” Check out this heading and subhead to a research finding:
Lifestyles of the old and healthy defy expectations -
Einstein researchers find centenarians just as likely as the rest of population to smoke, drink and pack on pounds. [source]
Damn. That doesn’t fit in with our mantra of “you are what you eat” and “you are what you smoke and drink, or don’t.”
By the way, the Einstein researchers aren’t necessarily brilliant. Rather they are affiliated with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University.
Okay, this was one study. And the data isn’t fantastic. But in some regards, it’s not bad either. The researchers interviewed nearly 500 Ashkenazi Jews, living independently and more than 95 years old, about their health and lifestyle. Ashkenazi Jews were chosen as the subject pool both due to their alleged longevity and their relative genetic uniformity. They then compared this to previous information gathered from roughly three thousand cohorts. In brief, this what they found:
Overall, people with exceptional longevity did not have healthier habits than the comparison group in terms of BMI, smoking, physical activity, or diet.
What? Really? Okay, so maybe those really long-lived individuals benefit from good genes. Yet lifestyle might matter more for those with so-so genes. Might.
If the human brain is a toolkit, individuals tend to have not only somewhat different kits, but they also have favored ‘tools.’ And perhaps these tools, these capacities, influence how we perceive our world.
Research published in September of last year offers this proposition:
Intuitive thinking may influence belief in God
Does thinking style (variable one), influence belief in a supernatural “numero uno” (variable two)?
First, a nitpick about the news release and actual paper: The consistent, unqualified use of the word “God.” There are quite a few assumptions that go into the use of “belief in God,” or simply “God.” I’ve raised these before. Suffice it to say that a more scientific wording would be “a god” or “an ultimate god.”
That said, the studies that generated the finding were quite innovative and perhaps revealing. In the first study, the researchers from Harvard University measured intuitive problem-solving in individuals, via a number of math problems that lent themselves to intuitive short-cuts that resulted in incorrect answers. The finding:
Participants who gave intuitive answers to all three problems were 1 ½ times as likely to report they were convinced of God’s existence as those who answered all of the questions correctly.
Interesting. Is belief in a god the result of taking a similar sort of mistake-prone, cognitive short-cut? Notice that intuition does not equal true. Nor does it always equal false.
A second study was equally revealing:
In another study, with 373 participants, the researchers found they could temporarily influence levels of faith by instructing participants to write a paragraph describing a personal experience where either intuitive or reflective thinking led to a good result. One group was told to describe a time in their lives when intuition or first instinct led to a good outcome, while a second group was instructed to write about an experience where a good outcome resulted from reflecting and carefully reasoning through a problem. When they were surveyed about their beliefs after the writing exercise, participants who wrote about a successful intuitive experience were more likely to report they were convinced of God’s existence than those who wrote about a successful reflective experience.
It seems if we encourage intuitive thinking and the mental short-cuts it entails we are likely to promote more error-prone thoughts and conclusions/beliefs.
Of course, there is way more to the question of why people believe in an ultimate god than this. But thinking style may be a factor.
[recycled material - first appeared here]
In a freethought essay by Valerie Tarico, Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 5.5 of 6, I came across a quote that caused me to emit a silent huzzah!
The scientific method has been called, “What we know about how not to fool ourselves.”
No, science is not one belief system among many. In fact, it may just be an antidote to belief. At least bogus belief.
What is science? Too often science is presented solely as the products of a process/enterprise. This strikes me as akin to pointing to a sack of rice and calling it agriculture.
We need more words!
There are the products of science and there is the enterprise or process of doing science.
Here is my spur-of-the-moment definition of “science.” At least the part I think needs to be emphasized.
Science is a set of thinking and information-gathering strategies developed to reduce error.
What differentiates science from non-science? The types of thinking and information-gathering processes used to come to a conclusion or form a belief.
Some fundamentalists view science with hostility, claiming it leads to atheism. There may be something to this, actually. In a sense, science is the process of subtracting the bogus to arrive at the more real (what we can more confidently know). When you apply scientific thinking to religious claims . . . they tend to fall away. In the area of supernatural belief, the atheist is one who has let fall away ideas unsupported by the best methods and technologies of thought.
The audacity! Dropping to the cutting floor another person’s cherished ideas!
Scientists aren’t arrogant or close-minded. They are confident that their cognitive tools are a prophylactic against bogus belief. And they are willing to put ideas to the test! And so they continue to advance, in part, by subtraction.
My personal opinion is that soda is bad. It’s like the cocaine of beverages. High on calories, devoid of nutritional value (beyond calories if calories are needed). I additionally suspect it may ‘grow’ a child’s propensity to develop a ‘sweet tooth.’ But maybe it doesn’t.
[Cue cranky old man voice] “And in my day, it was water or milk, and it was good enough for me!”
I have also suspected that the consumption of soda may play a role in the rising proportion of obese children and adults in our society. But I could be wrong. In fact, a recent study…
… suggests that—at least for middle school students—weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food they can purchase at school. [source]
Huh? How can that be?
BTW, I like the inclusion of “suggests” — for it is only one study. Kudos for the qualifier “at least for middle school students” as well.
As for the data the study conclusion was based upon: Nearly 20,000 students tracked over 8 years. Not bad, not bad at all.
The authors of the study admit they were surprised by the finding. Which, in brief, was this:
[W]hile there was a significant increase in the percentage of students who attended schools that sold junk food between fifth and eighth grades, there was no rise in the percentage of students who were overweight or obese.
Lead author Jennifer Van Hook recommends looking at younger children to prevent obesity. And that . . .
. . . to reduce childhood obesity and prevent unhealthy weight gain need to concentrate more on the home and family environments as well as the broader environments outside of school.
To both of those I would say yes, but. But remember to do the research. For the causes and solutions to a problem may not be what they seems they should be.
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