Follow up: Rowan Williams on Neo-Darwinism

[jack]

OK, I've thought about this for a long time, and I've finally thought of something interesting.

Prologue (just because)

Descartes: I have a theory.
Descartes: That it's a demon¹
Descartes: A dancing demon.
Me: No, something isn't right there.
Darwin: I have a theory.
Darwin: More complex organisms evolved from simpler ones.
Me: Hold on. That's not right either. Rewind.
Lamarck: I have a theory.
Lamark: More complex organisms evolved from simpler ones.
Me: Yes.
Lamarck: Spontaneous generation and inheritance of acquired characteristics are a good model of how this could happen.
Me: Agreed so far.
Lamarck: Which is what actually happens.
Me: No. Lets stop you there, and remember your great and good contributions to evolution, not the fact like all good theories, it was later improved upon.
Idiots: No, he was right, don't you see! LAM-ARC-KISM!
Me: Moving right along.
Darwin: Evolution by natural selection.
Idiots: VILLIFY! EVIL! WE AM NOT A MONKEY!²
Many people: What? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever... hold on, it does kind of explain a lot, doesn't it?

Thesis

If everyone believes Darwin's theory (or a more modern version thereof), they can be described as Darwinist (although that's a little misleading). But if you are Darwinist, what does it mean to be more Darwinist or very Darwinist?

It sounds meaningless but I think most people have an intuitive idea of what it would mean, and that's someone who places more importance on the idea. So if I think women should have equal rights with men I'm feminist, but if I think that's one of the largest injustices of the society and fighting it one of my personal highest priorities, then I might (ambiguously) be described as "more" feminist.

An atheist might be someone who says there is no God. You might describe as "very" atheist someone for whom saying there is no God is something they think about a lot, find it important to persuade other people of, is desirable.

According to the encyclopaedia, "Neo-Darwinism" means the current theory of evolution, ie. what Darwin said with the refinements made since. But since just about all people involved believe that, the term is ripe to be adopted to refer to people who place disproportionate importance on it.

People, both militant atheists who are vociferous about evolution to combat creationism, and people who are decrying militant atheism, sometimes give the impression militant atheism is an extreme of atheism or Darwinism. I don't know who's at fault. Yrieithydd described people having this impression of Dawkins; Miriam linked to an essay which used this sort of language).

But I guess this is what AoC is referring to when he describes things as Neo-Darwinist. That "pseudo-science" means not "evolution" but "people treating evolution as a panacea, using it as a reason not to believe religion, and developing over-the-top theories that societies also evolve, and that religion will be and should be eventually weeded out, and that that's a scientific fact."

However, it's much too late at night to decide if that's at all true -- certainly some militant atheists go too far, but whether that's at all endemic of anything. And anyway, this is all about one sentence, I'll parse it more fully when I know the surrounding.

(Many thanks to the comments of miriam, yrieithydd, robhu, woodpijn, etc. who may have actually said things a lot clearer than I did.)

[1] Reference to (a) the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Once More with Feeling and (b) Descarte's cartesian demon thought experiment.
[2] Apologies, not that disbelieving Darwin is inherently wrong, but that many people do it for stupid reasons.

Comments

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Descartes: I have a theory.
Descartes: That it's a demon
Descartes: A dancing demon.
Me: No, something isn't right there.


OMG. You win the Internet.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Thank you! That was all entirely irrelevant to my post, but just so very very much wanted to include it! :)

[cartesiandaemon.testopenid.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Test third party openid...

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

it's got three dots in it! mine only has two!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, you use myopenid too. I assumed you'd set up a server yourself :)

The first dot was an underscore when I typed it, but it turned into a dot. cartesiandaemon_testopenid also works.

That's just to test. Although it doesn't matter what the account is called or what server I use. If I switch to an openid identity I need my own URI. I wish I could use jackv.cantab.net, as I'm already based there, but alas, no.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

yeah, I use myopenid. How can you tell that?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, the link to the openid server kinda sorta has to be public, doesn't it? Isn't that part of the point? I was curious, clicked on "pizza.maircrosoft.com", and saw at the top "link rel='openid.server' href='http://www.myopenid.com/server'" etc :)

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

yeah, it is public. I just didn't have you down as the kind of geek who goes peering at people's source code (not that there's anything /wrong/ with being that kind of geek).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I just didn't have you down as the kind of geek who goes peering at people's source code

ROFL! Well, I'm not sure if I am or not, what is that sort of geek? I don't view source code by default, but when I have a reason to find something out. When you said "my openid only has two dots" I wanted to see if it was provided by the same place, so I went to your blog home and looked for the openid rel link.

*hugs*

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I view the source.

Did you see the girl in the red dress?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:)

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I want to read your argument, I really do, but I'm stuck on Anya panicing about bunnies. It's distracting.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ironically, I'm sure I had something really funny to say about bunnies in the post unrelated to Anya (Something the archbishop might have said about not upsetting the bunnies, and then a footnote to say or the son of god, whichever the modern church celebrates most at easter) but I can't remember what it is.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Isn't it the Easter Bunny's birthday?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

We really must not redefine neo-Darwinism to mean anything to do with atheism. Apart from the fact that this just causes confusion as the word already has a particular meaning used in the literature, books, and by the scientific community in general, there is another extremely good reason.

There are a lot of prominent Christian scientists who 'believe' neo-Darwinism. Consider Francis Collins, he is a neo-Darwinist, was head of the human genome project, and is an evangelical Christian, or Kenneth Miller, who is a neo-Darwinist, a well known professor at Brown University (in the States), and is a Roman Catholic. The term, like the rest of science, does not belong to the atheists!

I think the correct response here is to ask what term we should use for a belief that there is no god that is supported by neo-Darwinism. There probably is a term that I'm not aware of, but ignorance of the term should not lead us to redefine the term we have closest to hand. That might save us some thinking / research time, but at the cost of causing general confusion and trouble for the people who have been using the term for the last 20 years.

I don't think your example with feminism holds. Someone isn't more neo-Darwinist if they think there is no god because neo-Darwinism doesn't make any statements about god. At best it can show that certain ideas from certain religions (e.g. special creation) are incorrect, but it does not nor can it make any statements about the existence of god.

Another error people seem to be making is to assume that Dawkins argument is 'neo-Darwinism happened therefore there is no god'. So they jump from that to redefining neo-Darwinism to be some atheist conspiracy. That isn't Dawkins argument, so it's annoying when people think it is. Dawkins thinks that neo-Darwinism shows that creationism didn't happen (at least for life). It's a piece of his overall argument which is made up of various things from science, philosophy, statistics, and guess work.

Calling neo-Darwinism an atheist pursuit of any kind is to my mind as bad as when the creationists equate nazism with evolution because Hitler Was An Evoutionist So Evolution Is Nazi.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

We really must not redefine neo-Darwinism to mean anything to do with atheism

Yes, I agree completely. But we should argue with what he did say if we want to argue.

(1) "Conflating the theory of evolution with atheism and militant atheism is misleading and possibly extremely pernicious." ✓ I AGREE.
(2) "Archbishop redefined the term" ✗ I DISAGREE. Although I think redefining the term is wrong (i) I think it was a pre-exisitng bad usage the Archbishop perpetuated rather than just made up and (ii) it might sound like it's redefined to be widely different, but as I described in my post, I think there *is* a way most people would understand the drift (iii) militant atheists proposing theories may have helped lead to this confusion of the word.
(3) "Archbishop thinks evolution is pseudo-science" ✗ I DISAGREE. Although he may implicitly conflate certain views, I think in this understanding it would be clear he misused the word "Neo-Darwinism" rather than supporting a literal reading of the sentence.

To what extent any of that is ok depends on the rest of the speech -- if he incidentally misused the term, or was talking about it a lot.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Can you give some high profile examples of this alternate usage? People keep referring to it existing but I haven't seen any yet. A lot of people have said "I don't know what it means" or "I don't know what it means, but I'm now going to have it mean what Darwin means", but I've not seen any examples of it being used in that way (outside of creationist literature) by anyone mainstream (err... if creationists are mainstream). I would expect the odd blogger or newspaper writer (hell, even the odd clergyman) to get it wrong, but I haven't seen any evidence of this incorrect use of the term being widespread.

I'm also still unsure what a "militant" atheist is. AFAICT it's applied to people who say "I think religion is wrong and that the world would be a better place without religion" then write books about it and want to have debates about it. This doesn't sound terribly militant to me. If we were, oh I don't know, killing people to convert them to our cause, or blowing ourselves up because of our beliefs then yeah - militant, otherwise I think it's terribly unfair.

I still don't agree with you that he means something other than neo-Darwinism, and has just got his terms muddled. I think he has committed the Schönbornian error (more on this after the strike...).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry. No, you're right I couldn't find any good examples. I don't think it's become an accepted usage, but I guessed that it was a common confusion of thought that is becoming widespread. The guardian essay linked in my post confuses the ideas, but don't know if actually uses the term Neo-Darwinism. If you've noticed people misusing the term in this way, that seems to suggest it's very likely the Archbishop did too -- it seems more likely he did that than doesn't believe in evolution.

I'm also still unsure what a "militant" atheist is.

It's a bad term for lots of reasons, but most people understand what you mean by it, so use it for lack of a better one.

BTW, I'm going to Eastercon tomorrow, so won't be able to continue the discussion over the weekend.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

That "pseudo-science" means not "evolution" but "people treating evolution as a panacea, using it as a reason not to believe religion, and developing over-the-top theories that societies also evolve, and that religion will be and should be eventually weeded out, and that that's a scientific fact."
This is a straw man, I'm pretty sure of that.

Can anyone give any examples of people who believe that?

Even Richard Dawkins, everyone's favourite boogeyman doesn't believe that, as others have said recently in your blog - Dawkins believes that religion is an exceedingly good meme that isn't going to disappear.

Certainly no one says "and that's a scientific fact". I double dog dare anyone to find an example of someone well known who says that. Let me be clear and say if anyone says that they're wrong, and I say this as a "militant atheist" (whatever that means - why do people use that term? atheists don't go around blowing themselves up as some religious people do, so why are we given that label?) similar to Dawkins in views.


FWIW I'd like to believe that society will evolve and religion will evaporate, but I think the evidence of post scientifically enlightened Europe has proven that this only happens to an extent. A lot of people have a deep inbuilt need for a religious or spiritual belief, and we know that brain is wired for religious experience. People trust their experiences, if their brain zots them and they're in an atmosphere where people say that's Jesus talking to them they're going to believe that, no matter how much science they've had explaining the phenomenon. I'm talking from first hand experience here, religious experiences are overwhelmingly compelling.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

This is a straw man, I'm pretty sure of that.

I think I was trying to describe him lumping together, things we do believe, things Dawkins says which I basically agree with but think sometimes go a little too far, things someone into a lunatic fringe claims in the name of atheism, and some things no-one ever has.

But I was also referring to what woodpijn said in your post, that society is too in love with rationalism (or something) which I don't agree with but think is conceivable.

[ravingglory.livejournal.com]

being nit-picky here: It's not "refinements made since", it's the synthesis of two major fields in biology. Understanding how genetics relates to natural selection might seem easy form a modern few point but it wasn't so much. See wiki for a summary of the difficulties.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

What?

Can't the word mean whatever I want it to mean?

This is a democracy after all.

[ravingglory.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure Neo-Darwinism means what you want it to mean, i.e. how we understand evolution today taking into account both natural selection and the genetic mechanisms first studied by Mendel. It's just that Mendel's ideas where once viewed as contradictorily to Darwin's gradualism, get the two to go together was a big deal. So it's more than refinement.( Refinements are things like kin selection and neutral mutation theory)

However looking back at my experience I think wiki is right to say Neo-Darwinism is a popular term and that the Modern evolutionary synthesis is more likely to be used in a scientific publication.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That sounds right; indeed, it is very relevant, because it explains why there is a term neo-darwinism, rather than just "darwinism", which if you don't know gives the impression neo-darwinism was something else.

I think Rob was being sarcastic to people who misuse the term to mean something else entirely.

(Welcome to Cambridge, Robert! Have a good Easter. See you when I get back.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course, I'm sorry. Obviously, I should know modern theory is mainly that synthesis, since I know how both are necessary, and that that was what a term meaning modern evolutionary theory would refer to. But I hadn't thought it through.

I'd been bashing my brains talking about the questionable use of Neo-Darwinism, I just wanted to quickly clarify the dictionary definition referred to what's actually true, not some freaky modern perversion of Darwin's ideas, without having to actually define evolutionary theory in depth to do so. As I was typing it I knew it would be wrong, but tried to say the least possible so people might know what i mean even if I wasn't exact.

[ravingglory.livejournal.com]

It's somewhat tangential to the meaning of your post. I'm just being super picky about science, because I think it is rather brilliant the way you phrased it makes it seem minor. I'm sure that not what you where trying to do.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Sorry. No, that actually was helpful. I was just annoyed because the point was being missed elsewhere, so I was a bit frustrated -- no fault of yours.

Hello

[(Anonymous)]

I'm new here, just wanted to say hello and introduce myself.

Re: Hello

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hello?