Evolutionary psychology: Wisdom swings from the trees, it turns out

My Salvo 15 Deprogram column:

LUCY SPEAKS
Evolutionary Psychology Is Now Taking Your Questions

When Britain's Guardian newspaper first introduced its "evolutionary" agony aunt (advice columnist in America) in 2009—to honor 150 years of the culture birthed with Charles Darwin's 1859 book, On the Origin of Species—I thought, "Aha! a send-up, to be sure." I was wrong, but in fairness, when the evolutionary psychologist speaks, even an expert can't always tell.

No spoof. The Guardian burbled proudly about Carole Jahme, author of Beauty and the Beasts: Woman, Ape and Evolution and winner of the Wellcome Trust Award for Communication of Science to the Public. For the 2009 Darwin bicentennial celebrations, Jahme, who holds an M.A. in evolutionary psychology, put together a comedy show titled Carole Jahme is Sexually Selected, which was described as a combination of Charles Darwin and Charlie Chaplin.

The Guardian touts her column as "shin[ing] the cold light of evolutionary psychology" on readers' problems, thus apparently offering welcome relief from the "Aw, just dump the dweeb!" froth churned out by glossier rags and mags.

For more, go here.

And treat yourself or a friend to a year-long Salvo of light-hearted fun at the expense of publicly venerated nonsense.

Darwinian “triggers to persuasion and captivation” read more like the seven deadly sins.

From my recent MercatorNet column:

The Darwinian world of brand marketing

We all know what evolutionary psychology (EP) has meant for sociology, psychology, and religious anthropology: a serious effort to explain human behaviour in terms of ape behaviour or “hardwired” Stone Age genes. For example, you get your selfish genes from your mother, so it’s her fault if you don’t visit her...

The EP academics, however pernicious their ideas, are doubtless just trying to understand. But what happens when their theories hit the business world? Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead (Harper Business, 2010) gives us a glimpse of the Darwinian universe, as opposed to the Judeo-Christian one.

Hogshead is a brand marketing specialist. She helps executives persuade us to pay more for a brand than for a reliable service. Her special theory, gathered from research studies of apes and brain scans, is that the best strategy is “fascinating” people, and she has identified seven triggers for the spells a perceptive marketer can cast on them: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.

This list vaguely echoes the seven deadly sins, except for the last. But caution! Here, trust is not an intuition about how the universe really works; it is manipulative. We are told, “trust doesn’t demand a moral absolute—only absolute consistency.” (p 175)

Hogshead begins by disposing of free will. (MercatorNet, 30 September 2010)

And she’ll end by disposing of your bank account if you don’t look sharp.

For example,

*Still more news from the world of privilege: “Not so long ago, the height of epicurean indulgence was a gold box filled with Godiva chocolates … Then, in an effort to expand, in 1999 Godiva made a fateful decision to distribute in mass retailers such as Barnes & Noble. The chocolates, which for the first time now included preservatives, were no longer a treat to be craved and desired. Now you could buy the gold box in strip malls. (Strip malls!)” (79)

Huh? Does this writer really not know that millions of her fellow Americans crave the goods of strip malls in vain?

Read more here.

So tell me again, Uncle Doddy: Given the stats, how does sin promote survival - for anyone but the rackets downtown?

Denyse O'leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Evolutionary psychology racket alert: Serious news, not just more embarrassment for science

Someone tipped me off about this MIT Press book, attempting to explode the "evolutionary psychology" racket:

The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -and we should treat its claims with skepticism.

I say "attempting" because - from its blurb - the book sounds far too timid to me. (Prove me wrong, publisher, by sending me a copy.)

For one thing, evolutionary psychology is right up there with recovered memories as the kind of nonsense that professors of therapy get into because they don't have anything more useful to do. The trouble is, if anyone takes them seriously, they can cause problems.

Frankly, evolutionary psychologists come up with stuff so stupid that it falls beneath mockery.

I am still mad at Bill Dembski for scooping me on the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution, but I forgave him eventually, and in the meantime there is "why middle-aged men have shiny scalps" and "why dad can't dance" - supposedly, except when he can and does. And in many world cultures, he just must.

Whatever we want to call this stuff, it is not science. Science is about fact, not free-floating, idle speculation. But - as noted earlier - I expect this book to accomplish little because the publisher and maybe the author are far too concerned with placating the tenured profs they should just dismiss. Prove me wrong.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Evolutionary psychology promises to rescue literature

Hey, lucky taxpayer, you will soon get a chance to fund "evolutionary psychology" in English literature departments too:

At a time when university literature departments are confronting painful budget cuts, a moribund job market and pointed scrutiny about the purpose and value of an education in the humanities, the cross-pollination of English and psychology is providing a revitalizing lift.

Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said "it's a new moment of hope" in an era when everyone is talking about "the death of the humanities." To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and frequently arcane theories that energized departments in the 1970s, '80s and early ’90s — Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis — has faded. Since then a new generation of scholars have been casting about for The Next Big Thing. (Patricia Cohen, "The Next Big Thing: Knowing They Know That You Know", New York Times, March 31, 2010)

You guessed it, the "Next Big Thing" is the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology, which promises to explain "the root of people's fascination with fiction and fantasy."

How about: We like to be entertained and instructed after a hard day's work, and there is nothing better at the fireside than a hot beverage and someone else's story, provided it is well told and interesting. It will be a pity if English literature is derailed by yet another invasion of publicly funded quacks.

Now, here, I must disillusion some readers: Most good storytelling depends on technique. Homer knew this three thousand years ago, and doubtless many knew it before him, before stories came to be committed to writing.

If one must be a storyteller, the alternative to good technique is morphing into target practice for public insults, if not rotten tomatoes. The proper knowledge base of the literature department is the analysis of the techniques actually used in written and oral literature. As to how they ultimately originated, well, let's just say that anyone can make up stuff and insist that it is "science".

Can your lifestyle affect your grandchildren's health ? Maybe ...

New York Times pundit: Book rather existence of Antony Flew

Should "intelligent design" be captialized as Intelligent Design?

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

None of the Above: All the Modern Explanations for Religion Except the Most Obvious

id you know that: Religion is good for you; also, Religion is bad for you; also, Religion makes no difference; also, Religion can be explained by a God gene, or a meme, or part of the brain . . . or whatever the editor of your local paper’s “Relationships” section will buy for this weekend’s edition?

You didn’t know any of those things? Aw, no surprise. But never fear: One outreach of the new atheist movement, currently making its way around the lecture rooms of the nation, is the academic attempt to account for religious belief, and to do so on any basis whatsoever, except one.

We will get to that forbidden one in a moment. First, let’s look at the permitted ones.

Go here for more.

Anyway, if you are paying taxes for this, why are you? Has it never occurred to you that you might have been born free and able to make up your own mind?

Wisdom from your local zoo: Introducing the “Evolutionary Agony Aunt”

When Britain’s Guardian newspaper first introduced its “evolutionary agony aunt”, this writer thought - a spoof for sure. But where evolutionary psychology is concerned, it can be genuinely hard to tell.

No spoof. The Guardian burbled proudly, “A mere 150 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, we are proud to introduce our very own Evolutionary Agony Aunt” in the person of Carole Jahme, author of Beauty and the Beasts: Woman, Ape and Evolution and star of comedy Carole Jahme is Sexually Selected, described as a combination of Charles Darwin and Charlie Chaplin. We were told that her column will shine the “cold light” of evolutionary psychology on readers’ problems, in sharp contrast to the glossy magazines.

Carole counsels her troubled readers by citing the behaviour of chimpanzees, other apes, and monkeys. And with what result?

Go here for the rest.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Evolutionary psychology: If they are going to chase their tails anyway, why don't they stick to origin of life?

British physicist David Tyler discusses recent evolutionary psychology speculations about the origin of religion:

the "potential answers" Culotta mentions at the outset have the word potential in bold and the rest is in the imagination. What is strikingly lacking in these studies is any questioning of the materialist mindset of the researchers. The most significant way they follow Darwin is in excluding any thought that intelligent design issues need to be addressed before we can properly understand humanity. Indeed, the researchers set up a culture that portrays teleology as anti-science. Culotta reports on the findings of cognitive psychologists working with some undergraduate students: "When the undergrads had to respond under time pressure, they were likely to agree with nonscientific statements such as "The sun radiates heat because warmth nurtures life." "It's hard work to overcome these teleological explanations," says Kelemen, who adds that the data also suggest an uphill battle for scientific literacy. "When you speed people up, their hard work goes by the wayside." She's now investigating how professional scientists perform on her tests. Such purpose-driven beliefs are a step on the way to religion, she says. "Things exist for purposes, things are intentionally caused, things are intentionally caused for a purpose by some agent. ... You begin to see that a god is a likely thing for a human mind to construct.""

These attitudes are deeply worrying, because the researchers have started with the premise of philosophical naturalism. If a teleological perspective is correct, these researchers have no way of discovering the truth. When we look at the radiation that life needs to be sustained, and then look at the radiation emitted by the sun, the match is superb. It is perfectly reasonable to make design inferences and to test teleological hypotheses.

Yes, but it doesn't lead to a society in which a scientific elite can emit any piffle or bafflegab and be both supported by the taxpayer and wholeheartedly believed - even if the piffle or bafflegab changes next year.

For the rest, go here.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Coffee!! Oh, so now Darwinism explains why you think SHE'S beautiful? Where's my rolling pin?

In "Joke science" (Sunday Spectator, August 2, 2009), David Warren writes,

One of the great attractions of popular Darwinism, as a financial investment, is its appeal to what we in the media refer to, in our jaded way, as the "tabloid audience." That is to say people who, through no fault of their own (lack of education, native dullness, mental injury, etc.) are extremely credulous. You can sell stuff to them that you just couldn't sell to -- you know, "people like us."

From another point of view, it may be a misfortune that our schools and media have been working, for decades now, on expanding this "tabloid audience." But that has been a subject for many other days. Today we're only looking at the business angle.

The incredible tabloid Darwinian story of this last week was about the evolution of beautiful women.

Go here for the rest.

(Note: If you follow me at Twitter, you will get regular notice of new Post-Darwinist posts, usually when I have posted five or so stories.)

Evolutionary psychology: Tracing the road to extinction

Here is my latest MercatorNet article, dissecting the caveman theory of psychology, explaining why evolutionary psychology is so rapidly losing credibility:

“Is human behaviour really based on the survival strategies of our Pleistocene ancestors?”

Well, the stone hatchet is certainly poised over our iconic cavemen. A recent Scientific American podcast admits as much, and without the narrator throwing a panic attack either.

Why this? Why now? And why such equinamity?

Secular materialist thinkers have as deep a desire as anyone to understand the wellsprings of human nature. But they are much more restricted in where they can look. From the very beginning of the organized "human evolution" movement, starting with Darwin's publication of The Descent of Man, they have mined random findings from evolution for deep truths about human nature.

So what went so wrong, so badly, and so soon?

Go here for more and for the links, and great Flintstones graphics.

Evolutionary psychology: David Warren on beautiful women

In "The mystery of beauty", Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren (August 2, 2009), skewers another "evolutionary psychology" shish-kebob:

One of the great attractions of popular Darwinism, as a financial investment, is its appeal to what we in the media refer to, in our jaded way, as the "tabloid audience." That is to say people who, through no fault of their own (lack of education, native dullness, mental injury, etc.) are extremely credulous. You can sell stuff to them that you just couldn't sell to -- you know, "people like us."

From another point of view, it may be a misfortune that our schools and media have been working, for decades now, on expanding this "tabloid audience." But that has been a subject for many other days. Today we're only looking at the business angle.

The incredible tabloid Darwinian story of this last week was about the evolution of beautiful women. "Scientists," led by Markus Jokela at the University of Helsinki (flag that name), have now "proved" that, for reasons of "sexual selection," women are becoming ever more beautiful, while men remain as ugly as we were in the caves.

I have never been able to figure out why Darwinists don't just denounce and get rid of this crap. Their theory has enough problems in real issues around bacteria and fruit flies, without this tabloid-friendly nonsense.

Surely this isn't all they have to go on? Or? Jathink?

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Evolutionary psychology: Don't you know that this stuff is supposed to "rile" you?

Michael O'Donnell's Barnes and Noble book review of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct does its best to make the case for evolutionary psychology in the arts, a book that will supposedly "rile" many readers - but will probably make far more wonder why they don't just watch the afternoon soaps.

It offers a paean of praise to Dutton (and Steve Pinker) who "know" that great tenors could "spot the savanna with little Pavarottis" by catching the ear of ladies:

Natural selection is one thing, but the stronger, and more entertaining, basis for Dutton's case for an evolutionary aesthetics is sexual selection, which Darwin explored in The Descent of Man. A clear tenor voice wouldn't help Pleistocene man outrun a jaguar, but it might ingratiate him with the ladies -- remember the guitarist on the stairs in Animal House? -- allowing him to spread his genes widely and spot the savanna with little Pavarottis. Dutton describes the possession of artistic talent as "an ornamental capacity analogous to the peacock's tail" -- or to a florid vocabulary. These traits signal a certain robustness or intelligence, which are attractive qualities in a potential mate.

This stuff is so terminal that it is hard to believe that the people writing it believe it. I bet they don't. Perhaps they think they must write it, in order to ingratiate themselves with the powers that - they think - rule the world.

First, if Pleistocene man (with whom Katie Couric has never booked an interview, no matter how passionately she believes in him) couldn't deep-six a jaguar, his sweet tenor voice would be at best a happy memory for his forlorn ladies. And worse for them, the tone-deaf dullard - whose aim with a projectile is unerring - must then be their companion.

But who knows?

Evolutionary psychology is a discipline without a subject. We really do not know what went on among humans in the Pleistocene era - assuming that we agree they were humans. In other words, that they could think about things the way we can. And if they couldn't, no direct comparison is possible.

O'Donnell notes, re Dutton,

He also makes important concessions, acknowledging, for instance, the confounding resistance of music to natural selection theory: pitched sounds are elusive in nature, so the ability to decipher or deploy them would not help anyone survive. In the tradition of all pathbreaking scholarship, The Art Instinct is therefore an invitation to further study rather than the final word.

I am glad to hear that Dutton is not setting himself up as the final word. That cuts down on the mess to clean up later.

Note: In any event, it is not clear that the peacock's tail attracts mates. But why let facts get in the way of a good story about the cavemen.

So go ahead, get "riled." Oh, okay ... yes, getting riled by this is pretty far down on my list too.

Just thought I should note this story in passing. This is, after all, the year of ridiculous Darwin hagiography. And, in fairness, O'Donnell doesn't write like he really believes it, as a true worshipper of Darwin's toothbrush or sidewalk:

Ah, but there's no accounting for taste. If sexual selection shaped human character by favoring high artistic talent, why does the average young woman spend her evenings watching clumsy footwork on Dancing with the Stars rather than attending the symphony on the arm of a clever sculptor?

Well, that could be because the theory of sexual selection is utter nonsense, and sometimes malignant, racist nonsense.

Anthropology: Darwinists vs. humanists

Get a load of this:

Today, anthropology is at war with itself. The discipline has divided into two schools of thought - the social anthropologists and the evolutionary anthropologists. The schism between the two is simple but deeply ingrained. Academics in the subject clearly align themselves with one side or the other; once that choice is made it defines their career.

The division lies in the question of whether or not anthropology is a science, and if it accepts that Darwinian evolutionary theory guides research into human behaviour and the development of societies.

In other words, Darwinism is once again spreading its malign influence into some hapless discipline.

Personally, I would ask one single, simple question of anyone who wants to be an anthropologist: Do you believe that the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution makes more sense than conventional explanations of why men are attracted to abundance (big bazooms, big steaks, big engines)?

If that person says yes, yes, I do, I do believe in Darwin! ... recommend to him or her a career with a Canadian "human rights" Commission, will you? We are in the process of deep-sixing those people's careers in Canada, so a few more down the drain will make no difference. We must restore some kind of integrity in some sciences, at least.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Evolutionary psychology: Where do I go to get my tax money back?

A friend notes this revealing example of two evolutionary psychologists duking it out about whether groups of people can decide to behave better as a group, for mutual advantage - or is everyone merely governed by their selfish genes?

Condemning D. S. Wilson's argument that cooperative groups are more likely to survive than uncooperative ones, University of Washington psychologist David P. Barash insists that "the overwhelming conviction among evolutionary theorists remains that they are most unlikely."*

In other words, the cooperative groups that I experience every day, while riding Toronto Transit, are "most unlikely."

I want my tax money back.

Anyway, Barash goes on to make perfectly plain that evolutionary psychology is nothing but current local politics in a cave man face mask:

Perhaps, in the future, these supposed components of morality will be found to have genuine evolutionary underpinnings, but for now they seem closer to a political platform plank for the religious right; psychologists interested in achieving a new synthesis by applying evolutionary biology to human morality should bear in mind that just because these notions appeared in a Science Review does not make them genuine science.

I wonder how he'll vote in the 2008 US election?

*Apparently, group selection was declared "off limits" in 1966, so no virtuous evo psycho ever imagines that people foresee an advantage in working together. But then evo psychos probably don't believe in the reality of the mind either, so they are always looking for something that isn't there - the cave man gene that replaces awareness of one's situation in real time.

And, by the way, don't write to give me any more guff about how it isn't "real science" and therefore I shouldnt talk about it, as one would-be commenter tried to do:

... No reasonable scientist (or Darwinist as you like to say) would consider evolutionary psychology to be a legitimation of Darwin's evolution; its just a bastardized spin off for goofballs trying to explain things like current social preferences, ie evolutionary psychology = joke. ...

Of course it's not real science. Of course it's a joke. BUT notice that the evolutionary biologists NEVER get together to denounce it. That would put an end to it, but conveniently, they never do.

Or if they have, write and tell me and give me a link - and I will give them all the publicity in my power.

But I am not holding my breath. The reality is that they can't risk a spotlight on THEIR theories either. Otherwise they would act pretty quickly, just as MDs act against quack medicine.

Toddlers as Neanderthals? Evolutionary psychology's bargain basement sale - no refunds

I just got done posting on a fun sendup of evolutionary psychology, when the next item was a friend's note about Tara Parker-Pope's article, "Coping with the Caveman in the Crib" (New York Times, February 5, 2008), about a pediatrician who knows how to quiet crying babies. He is, I gather, an overnite evolutionary psychology bestseller:

Dr. Karp notes that in terms of brain development, a toddler is primitive, an emotion-driven, instinctive creature that has yet to develop the thinking skills that define modern humans. Logic and persuasion, common tools of modern parenting, “are meaningless to a Neanderthal,” Dr. Karp says.

Right. So an immature modern Homo sapiens is equivalent to a mature Neanderthal?

Why not to an immature Neanderthal? And then, what's the difference? What point are you trying to make?

Anyway, while Dr. Harvey Karp's advice sounds like it could possibly work ...

Dr. Karp adopts a soothing, childlike voice to demonstrate how to respond to the toddler’s cookie demands.

“You want. You want. You want cookie. You say, ‘Cookie, now. Cookie now.’ ”

it certainly isn't revolutionary. Actually, with toddlers, nothing works consistently. We and they just have to get through it.

Toddlers are not Neanderthals, they are immature modern humans, who must be taught exquisitely complex social behaviour by a variety of methods. It takes sixteen to twenty years, and toddlers start about Year 1. It is very frustrating for them.

Dr. Karp's methods aren’t bad, but there is nothing especially new about them. Decades ago, I was told that the best way to control a small child’s temper tantrum is by whispering.

The explanation was that, if everyone whispers, the child must stop screaming in order to find out if he is getting what he wants. Once he stops, he may not start again. But if the adults are also screaming, the child can get the information without stopping.

Note: What have Neanderthals to do with it anyway? Aren't toddlers just immature, period?

Actually, the Neanderthals, while persistently more clumsy than ourselves, were probably not much different from us. They even buried their dead, in the hope of rising again (= with tools).

UPDATE: Update: Here is a much more reasonable way of looking at it, courtesy editor Jonah Goldberg:

Political theorist Hannah Arendt once said that, every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians - we call them "children." Today's babies aren't meaningfully different from those born 1,000 or 5,000 years ago. A Viking baby magically transported to 21st-century America might grow up to be an accountant or a bus driver. A baby born today and sent back in time might become a Hun, Visigoth or Aztec warrior, whatever his parents expected of him.

Families are civilization factories. They take children and install the necessary software, from what to expect from life to how to treat others. One hears a lot of platitudes about how children are "taught to hate." This is nonsense. Hating comes naturally to humans, and children are perfectly capable of learning to hate on their own. Indeed, everyone hates. The differences between good people and bad resides in what they hate, and why. And although schools and society can teach that, parents imprint it on their kids.

Fun sendup and straight talk about evolutionary psychology - why does anyone take it seriously?

Columnist Mike Adams, whose spoofs regularly outrage odd, tax-funded people at universities, was last seen fronting the "Journal of Genetic Rationalization", whose research projects include the following:

The Tardy Gene. Attention seeking has been a common explanation for chronic lateness. Television star and psychologist Dr. Phil has advised – to Brittany Spears and others he is unqualified to counsel – that such strategies often backfire. A person will often make late appearances at social gatherings in order to draw attention without realizing that the attention she draws is significantly more negative than she had expected. Since it is assumed that people are not likely to make choices that bring about adverse consequences – even when those adverse consequences were unforeseen – the existence of a tardiness gene is assumed. Researchers are encouraged to begin the search for evidence of a tardiness gene before it is too late.

Seriously, the basic problem with evolutionary (= gene-driven) psychology (EP), as I explained in a recent piece in Salvo 4, is that EP must locate the causes of human behaviour in genes inherited from prehuman ancestors - genes that want to replicate themselves - rather than in decisions made by conscious minds today. So what you do is driven by your genes, not by your current perceptions of your environment.

That entails an amazing number of silly ideas. For example,

A recent article in Psychology Today (July/August 2007) avers that men prefer women with big breasts because the man can see whether the woman’s breasts sag, which indicates reduced fertility.

Really? Isn't the general human preference for the anticipated pleasure of abundance over scarcity a better explanation - and a wee bit simpler too? But to think that way is to be out of step with the whole point of evolutionary psychology, which derives from a materialist view of human nature. To say that men prefer abundance to scarcity is to say that they have minds and that - to their minds - abundance seems better than scarcity.

But to an evolutionary psychologist, framing the preference that way is simply not acceptable. Evolutionary psychology looks for a program in the genes that governs what men like. Its practitioners are entirely convinced that such a program exists. The program must exist because the mind does not cause anything to happen. Men do not know what they like until their selfish genes act on their neurons, creating the appropriate buzz. The man himself has no preferences, but his genes do.

Believe it or not, the central dogma of neuroscience today is that the mind is an illusion, but Mario Beauregard and I dispatch that doctrine handily in The Spiritual Brain.

Actually, evolutionary psychology contains within itself the seed of its own downfall. Taken seriously, it means that precisely nothing has changed since the days of our prehuman ancestors. In that case, no evolution occurred. That is strange, considering the wonders Darwinists attribute to natural selection. And if nothing has changed between our prehuman ancestors and ourselves, has anything changed between the amoeba and ourselves?

Either Darwinian evolution can induce real change (in which case, the evolutionary psychologists' pursuit is highly doubtful) or it can't, in which case it is futile because evolution did not happen by Darwinian means.

Essentially, evolutionary psychology, in an effort to prop up Darwinism, is stabbing it through the heart by trying to show that no evolution in human behaviour has actually occurred. In all that time, no evolution occurred ... Well, then, ... you shouldn't have even asked.

Evolutionary psychology vs. evolution as a fact

With the neo-Darwinian synthesis, Darwinism became a simple, elegant theory in science that might - or might not - do what is claimed for it.

Is Darwinism the explanation of finch beak changes in the Galapagos? Maybe. (There are opinions pro and con about that.)

Is it the explanation for certain beneficial mutations in the malaria parasite? Apparently, yes.

Does it explain why the giraffe has a long neck? Apparently no.

Does it explain why men cheat on their wives? Huh? Who let YOU in here, creepazoid? I SAID we needed someone to keep a watch on the door!

I think that after Behe's Edge of Evolution, the legitimate questions revolve around what Darwinism can be shown to actually do, in the restricted sphere where we can be quite sure it is doing anything at all.

One reason I came to realize that Darwinism’s power had been blown out of all proportion was the relative unwillingness of evolutionary biologists to detach themselves from the florid arguments of evolutionary psychology. Normally, people in their position will be anxious to cut loose from cranks.

With some sensible exceptions such as Larry Moran and Jerry Coyne, they didn’t cut loose, and there was one obvious reason why they didn’t. They don't want the books balanced. They don’t want any accounting of what Darwinism can actually do.

Now that I have read Edge of Evolution I think I pretty much know why.

It's too bad if we have to admit that we really don't have a good theory of how evolution happens, but apparently we really don't.

Evolutionary psychology challenge:Read the latest and keep a straight face!

Those who will take themselves seriously but shouldn't attract comedians.

Bill Dembski scooped me on the latest idiocy of Darwinism's idiot child, evolutionary psychology:

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight-suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

and on Fred Reed's hilarious take on it. Reed, of course, knocks the stuffings out of the pillow. Responding to "Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not", he notes,

I think of those millions of pitiful Chinese women, sobbing quietly in corners, "Oh, how can I let him know I'm interested when I have these horrible dark eyes? Maybe I can write him a letter.."

One thinks also of the advice Naomi gives Ruth in the Book of Ruth. I doubt Boaz knew what colour Ruth's eyes were. It's not clear how he could.

Still, we need to put a pin on the map for this latest outburst of evo psycho ... Read more »

Intelligent design and popular culture: "More complex than thought" and "would have done" invade the English language

David DeWitt, a young earth creationist who heads creation studies at Liberty University, writes to comment on the ubiquitous use of the phrase, "more complex than thought" in science journalism:

Since we often hear the phrase "more complex than thought", I thought I would do a Google search for it. It turns up ~11,000 pages when used in quotes for the exact phrase. Some things that were "more complex than thought" from the first few pages:

Comet formation
Autism
Global warming
Fetal immune system
Malaria in pregnancy
Obesity
Brain's visual processing
bat's social lives
Down's syndrome
solar flares
radio galaxies
bird flu
bird orientation
COX enzymes

Of course, only a materialist would ever have "thought" these things are simple. The phrase is classic social code: "We know that, at bottom, it is all very, very simple, so we are going to actually tell you about this complexity but DON'T waver in your faith."

(Note: DeWitt also draws my attention to his new textbook explicating young earth creationism. I don't see the point or have much use for the beleif that Earth is less than 10,000 years old, but I hope that people who are planning to trash young earth creationism will take the trouble to read his text rather than gossip about a marginal figure in that community like Kent Hovind. I hope for too much, but it's better to hope.)

Anyway, while I am here, I also want to draw attention to a peculiar grammatical form that has crept into the English language, first disgracing Biblical interpretation and now finding its true home in evolutionary psychology. I am referring to the use of "would have done" - in English, the past conditional tense. If grammar wasn't your best subject in school, don't despair. Bear with me.

Properly, the past conditional refers to an event that did not occur. For example, "Denyse would have blogged on that movie last week, but all Blockbusters' copies were already rented." (= Denyse did not blog on the movie last week. That is a verifiable historical fact.)

However, I have noticed over the years a tendency in questionable Bible interpretation to use "would have" in an entirely different sense, as follows: "Jesus would have said such-and-such to Peter because in John 3:16, he says, yada, yada ... "

In other words, we have no idea whether Jesus ever said anything of the kind to anyone. Any such comment is speculation thinly disguised as fact. It gets better in evolutionary psychology, because we actually don't have confirmation for the individual existence of the generic people discussed. So there isn't even anyone in particular to hang the nonsense on. For example, we might read - expressed in far more academic language than I can usually manage - some version of this thought: "Stone Age man would have whupped his squeeze pretty good if she had objected to his newly acquired reputation as a babe train."

Yuh? And how do we know? Maybe some male Stone Age fossil found smashed to pieces was the first guy who tried Stone Age woman's patience on the subject of trophy bimbos. Maybe a vengeful Willendorf Venus sat on him ...

You think that's just speculation? I agree. But so is the other stuff. And I didn't even use "would have" to try to fool you.

One minor suggestion for getting control of the nonsense factor is to banish that particular use of "would have". If you can't say "it happened", you don't have facts.

Update July 8, 2007: Thanks to reader dalibor (see combox below), I realized that I had not elucidated the nature of the "would have done" scam. He wrote to suggest (I think) how the past conditional tense might have originated.

I don't know when or where the tense originated. All the languages I have ever studied, including languages that are thousands of years old, have a past conditional tense.

I think we know why the past conditional tense originated. It got started because people felt the need to describe things that could have happened but did not, for reasons they thought they knew:

Denyse would have blogged on Tuesday, but she was out of town.

The "but" clause assigns the cause, that is, it identifies the events that precluded the event described.

Lately, however, the past conditional tense has frequently fallen into the hands of people who LEAVE OUT the "but" clause or any similar coordinate or subordinate clause. They use the tense to speculate on past events that "would have" happened - and present their speculations as fact.

Denyse would have blogged on Tuesday.

In normal English, the sentence implies that the event did not happen. But it invites a coordinate or subordinate clause that offers an explanation of why the event did not occur.

Subordinate clause example: Denyse would have blogged on Tuesday if the electricity had been restored. [But, the sentence implies, the electricity was not restored.]

Now, about my own life, or the life of any person in the present day, the speculator faces the difficulty that whether I blogged on Tuesday (and if not, why not) must be determined on evidence.

However - and this is my point - a person who chooses to transpose it all back to the ancient halls of the mute dead can waive evidence for the first part of the clause and simply insert another dependent clause without fear of contradiction:

Stone Age man would have banged his woman around good if she had objected to his trophy bimbos.

Well, would he, or wouldn't he? Do we know? How? By substituting a dependent clause, an if clause, for example, the speculator hopes to get around providing evidence for the primary proposition in the main clause. It's a neat trick if people fall for it. And some do.

The key question to ask is, do we have evidence for the primary statement? What evidence?

Thinkquote of the day: Social conservatives should embrace Darwin?

Reviewing Michael Shermer’s book, Why Darwin Matters , David Brown, science and medicine reporter for The Washington Post comments,

"In a bit of his own proselytizing, Shermer tries to show why political and social conservatives should actually embrace Darwin's discovery, not vilify it. Evolution has given rise to species (and not just our own) that value social cooperation, monogamy and altruism -- the very values so many conservatives feel are threatened by the secular world. Natural selection, he writes, "is precisely parallel to Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand " -- a process whereby self-interest creates order and a self-correcting whole that is larger than any of its parts."

If that’s what Shermer, and Brown, apparently, think - that people who doubt Darwin’s theory are merely invested in a social cargo cult - no wonder there is an intelligent design controversy!

While I am here anyway, the fact that someone writes a book called Why Darwin Matters shows why he doesn’t. For example, who writes a book called “Why bin Laden matters?” It’s when people start to matter less that such books appear.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy att he University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being granted tenure at Baylor after a long struggle - even after helping in a small way to destroy the Baylor Bears' ancient glory - in the opinion of a hyper sportswriter.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Thinkquote of the day: Either religion offers true insight or evolutionary psychology explains it - no middle ground

Philosopher Kim Sterelny, reviewing Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell for American Scientist, writes on the impossibility of an explanation of religion according to "evolutionary psychology" that is not corrosive of religious faith,

... , secular theories of religion are corrosive. Religious commitment cannot both be the result of natural selection for (for example) enhanced social cohesion and be a response to something that is actually divine. A cohesion-and-cooperation model of religion just says that believers would believe, whether or not there was a divine world to which to respond. If a secular theory of the origin of religious belief is true, such belief is not contingent on the existence of traces of the divine in our world. So although a secular and evolutionary model of religion might be (in a strict sense) neutral on the existence of divine agency, it cannot be neutral on the rationality of religious conviction.

In other words, the universe really is either top down or bottom up. If it is top down, you may have had a revelation. If it is bottom up, you cannot have had a relevation, though - as an animal - you may be motivated to believe you did.

But, like all materialists, Sterelny turns out to have an unfalsifiable viewpoint of his own where materialism is concerned. I noted this in By Design or by Chance?, p. 196, where Sterelny was defending one of Richard Dawkins' just-so stories about Darwinian evolution:

Many have wondered why a creature that is on its way to becoming a stick insect would be more
likely to survive if it looked five percent like a stick rather than four percent like a stick. Surely a purely random process could not fool a predator by generating so small a difference? Dennett quotes philosopher Kim Sterelny in response:

"I do think this objection is something of a quibble because essentially I agree that natural selection is the only possible explanation of complex adaptation. So something like Dawkins’ stories have got to be right."

Essentially, Dennett is saying that we must accept the Darwinist explanation for the evolution of a stick insect not because it is an especially good explanation but because it upholds Darwin's theory. (Sterelny’s review of Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker was in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (1988), vol. 66: 421–66.)

In my experience, materialists see nothing wrong with forcing others to pay for and study from publicly funded textbooks advancing their view - and no other - even when their view is sourced only by its own fanatical assertion. Indeed, dazed by the growing volume of complaints, they warn that objectins mean that the end of all things is at hand.

I have been appealing for years for a social scientist or anthropologist to study Darwinism, the creation story of materialism, as a cultural phenomenon. It cries out for that treatment. Besides, such a study would make a great trade book after the journal articles have been published; just the thing for an up-and-coming young academic.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy att he University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being granted tenure at Baylor after a long struggle - even after helping in a small way to destroy the Baylor Bears' ancient glory - in the opinion of a hyper sportswriter.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.