Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse evolution

[Monk Of Reason]

Which one?
One of them may even be by someone whom I worked with. By I've no doubt that they are highly credible. Nor am I suggesting that what you have read is some pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo. Steven Pinker, among many others, is as qualified as they come. But sometimes entire fields exist within the sciences that over-reach. This is one.

I see where you are going with this and lets just say I understand.

And Morality being an evolutionary advantage for living in large groups.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I see where you are going with this

I wasn't going anywhere. I was asking a question and it was neither rhetorical nor some sort of trap.

And Morality being an evolutionary advantage for living in large groups.

"Morality" is not. Empathy is. It is (IMO) the basis for all of culture: the ability to identify the "other" as in some sense the same as one's self. However, this did not evolve as an adaptive trait for civilizations. It couldn't have (that much evolutionary psychologists all agree on). I have a bit of an advantage over many of those I've worked with or worked alongside of.

The advantage is an additional background in history (classical studies and languages). I happened to be at the lab I worked at one day when Pinker was giving a talk about his then new book about morality. However, while much of it sounded brilliant, there were a few issues with the way he presented the history of violence. Genocide, for example, is not simply going into a nearby city and killing everyone. It requires a conception of race that wasn't around in antiquity. genos, the Greek word at the root of genocide, doesn't mean "race" the way we understand it or have understood it. Why is this at all relevant?

Because like wolves, gorillas, and pack animals of all types, the social structures the emerge are adaptive not for the species but for the group. Humans have created social structures that attempt to take the basic, fundamental element behind morality (the empathetic familial bonds that are extended to the clan, tribe, etc.,) and extend these to a species. That is not an adaptive trait. It's maladaptive if anything. And the history of humanity has shown that we tend to view a rather small group of people with enough empathy such that we really care about hurting, killing, enslaving, or otherwise harming them. The default for humans appears to be "if you aren't [insert clan/tribe/nation name here], then you aren't a person". We do not naturally extend empathetic ties to the entire species, but morality is concerned with such extensions and with that level.

Which means that the ways in which morality was adaptive tens of thousands of years ago are not now (just like the craving for salts, fats, and sugars was extremely important when McDonald's wasn't around, but when candy bars and big macs are so readily available, it's no longer an adaptive trait).

Equating social organization and the mechanisms that drive them is great, and even better if we can somehow tie these to evolutionary processes. However, equating what is adaptive in small group dynamics with "morality" is, I think, a serious mistake.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I wasn't going anywhere. I was asking a question and it was neither rhetorical nor some sort of trap.

I didn't say it was?

"Morality" is not. Empathy is. It is (IMO) the basis for all of culture: the ability to identify the "other" as in some sense the same as one's self. However, this did not evolve as an adaptive trait for civilizations. It couldn't have (that much evolutionary psychologists all agree on). I have a bit of an advantage over many of those I've worked with or worked alongside of.

The advantage is an additional background in history (classical studies and languages). I happened to be at the lab I worked at one day when Pinker was giving a talk about his then new book about morality. However, while much of it sounded brilliant, there were a few issues with the way he presented the history of violence. Genocide, for example, is not simply going into a nearby city and killing everyone. It requires a conception of race that wasn't around in antiquity. genos, the Greek word at the root of genocide, doesn't mean "race" the way we understand it or have understood it. Why is this at all relevant?

Because like wolves, gorillas, and pack animals of all types, the social structures the emerge are adaptive not for the species but for the group. Humans have created social structures that attempt to take the basic, fundamental element behind morality (the empathetic familial bonds that are extended to the clan, tribe, etc.,) and extend these to a species. That is not an adaptive trait. It's maladaptive if anything. And the history of humanity has shown that we tend to view a rather small group of people with enough empathy such that we really care about hurting, killing, enslaving, or otherwise harming them. The default for humans appears to be "if you aren't [insert clan/tribe/nation name here], then you aren't a person". We do not naturally extend empathetic ties to the entire species, but morality is concerned with such extensions and with that level.

Which means that the ways in which morality was adaptive tens of thousands of years ago are not now (just like the craving for salts, fats, and sugars was extremely important when McDonald's wasn't around, but when candy bars and big macs are so readily available, it's no longer an adaptive trait).

Equating social organization and the mechanisms that drive them is great, and even better if we can somehow tie these to evolutionary processes. However, equating what is adaptive in small group dynamics with "morality" is, I think, a serious mistake.

I am from the arguing standpoint that Morality is based in Empathy. The idea that morality couldn't arise from evolution (weather biological or psychological) without the idea of Empathy and that somehow Empathy is against Survival of the fittest. Empathy is a biologically developed mechanism while Morality is the culturally created concept that is based both in Empathy and the logical desire to maintain rights for oneself/family.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Empathy is a biologically developed mechanism while Morality is the culturally created concept that is based both in Empathy and the logical desire to maintain rights for oneself/family.

I don't think you can get from evolutionary mechanisms that enable the type of social structures that existed tens of thousands of years ago to any useful morality. That is, in a world where things like slavery, slaughter, sexism, etc., have been ubiquitous, but the idea that "all humans are people too" is almost nowhere seen, and for most of the world's history half of the human race (females) have been more often regarded as property, connecting morality to evolutionary processes is a bit like connecting humans to the big bang. Sure, without a universe we wouldn't be here, but that's why we distinguish between different types of cause, and why we include proximal causation.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I don't think you can get from evolutionary mechanisms that enable the type of social structures that existed tens of thousands of years ago to any useful morality. That is, in a world where things like slavery, slaughter, sexism, etc., have been ubiquitous, but the idea that "all humans are people too" is almost nowhere seen, and for most of the world's history half of the human race (females) have been more often regarded as property, connecting morality to evolutionary processes is a bit like connecting humans to the big bang. Sure, without a universe we wouldn't be here, but that's why we distinguish between different types of cause, and why we include proximal causation.

I can see how the groundwork was laid from that. Our "morality" is something that changes with the generations. It seems to be as organic as our language in how rapidly it changes. It leads me to believe that its a cultural phenomenon that has developed.

Just as you have stated that our morality seems to have come up quickly doesn't mean that its any less a product or at least directly impacted by evolution of the past.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I can see how the groundwork was laid from that.

Absolutely. The problem isn't that morality has nothing to do with evolution (clearly it does). It's the range of moral systems that can emerge in human societies, and the tendency for what used to perhaps be adaptive to be now an obstacle to generalized morality.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Absolutely. The problem isn't that morality has nothing to do with evolution (clearly it does). It's the range of moral systems that can emerge in human societies, and the tendency for what used to perhaps be adaptive to be now an obstacle to generalized morality.

Well yeah. I just meant as an explination opposing the notion that god is the only source of morality and its somehow been decreed by an outside source.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Well yeah. I just meant as an explination opposing the notion that god is the only source of morality and its somehow been decreed by an outside source.

I agree with you on a lot as a person who used to think we couldn't just develop morality on our own.

Morality is the result of evolution both biologically and socially.

I'd like to bring this back to the OP since I see this hasn't been touched on in awhile

Shouldn't we be very concerned at the number of teachers and school administrators that have a disdain for evolution?

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

I would say that our concept of Morality arises from Altruism. Altruism which is evident in many life forms has "evolved" for humans into Morality.

For Christianity I feel that the push against evolution comes from two grounds.

1. They take Genesis Literal, and by taking Genesis Literally you bring in the concept of Original sin. If evolution is true, there was no fall and because of that what would have been the point of Jesus dying on the cross? I don't find this a hard one to address as the concept of Original Sin in my view is a doctrine introduce through Manichaeism more so than Christianity.

2. Evolution does not appear to be nice. For a Divine Loving Creator to actually create such a process...well that creator doesn't seem so nice.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I would say that our concept of Morality arises from Altruism. Altruism which is evident in many life forms has "evolved" for humans into Morality.

Rather, biologists stole a term from other fields (ethics, social sciences, theology, religious studies, etc.) and changed the meaning:

"Evolutionary biology persists in using motivational terms. Thus, an action is called “selfish” regardless of whether or not the actor deliberately seeks benefits for itself. Similarly, an action is called “altruistic” if it benefits a recipient at a cost to the actor regardless of whether or not the actor intended to benefit the other. The prototypical altruist is a honeybee that stings an intruder—sacrificing her life to protect the hive—even though her motivation is more likely aggressive than benign. This usage of the terms “selfish” and “altruistic” oftentimes conflicts with their vernacular meaning"

De Waal, F. B. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 59, 279-300.

Altruism is a misleading term for the behaviors in evolutionary theory it applies to. The meaning is stripped away so that it can be used in e.g., fitness functions, social network models, game theory, and other mathematical ways in which rewards/gains can account for behavior that is seemingly against the best interest of the organism, be it an insect or a human.

The word itself was coined ~1840s either by Augustus Comte himself or a member of his secular religion to mean deliberate selflessness and sacrifice for the gain of another or for others.

It is one thing to see the ways in which evolutionary processes would seem to run counter to all the others (i.e., processes that increase the probability of passing on one's genetic code) and quite another to equate this to altruism. The classic example (from a time when women were barred from almost any military service) is that of the soldier throwing himself upon a grenade for the sake of his fellow platoon members.

The problem is that animals do not do this kind of thing. Evolutionary altruism is really only the basis for actual altruism, yet it is not treated as such.

For Christianity I feel that the push against evolution comes from two grounds.

A central argument for God was that no other explanation could explain the "miracle" of life in all its diversity and splendor. Evolutionary sciences from Darwin onward took that away.

2. Evolution does not appear to be nice. For a Divine Loving Creator to actually create such a process...well that creator doesn't seem so nice.

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
….

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed


That was written by Tennyson a decade before Origin of Species was released. Hobbes' description nature and man as a natural animal came some 200 years earlier:
"...solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that Nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another"

Darwin timed his existence poorly. He had the nerve to be born into a period in which positivism reigned in science and mathematics and romanticism in literature. Literature tended to either praise nature and the pagan gods that went with it in pastoral poetry, works like The Wind in the Willows, etc., or lament the loss of these:
"And that dismal cry rose slowly
And sank slowly through the air,
Full of spirit's melancholy
And eternity's despair!
And they heard the words it said—
Pan is dead—Great Pan is dead—
Pan, Pan is dead."
-EB Browining

Had he waited a bit longer, he'd have Auden instead of Shelley, and been born earlier, he'd have Hobbes instead of Nietzsche. Being born when he did was terribly irresponsible of him.