The eminent evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is also an articulate spokesperson for atheism and critic of religion. His most recent statement, “Yes, There is a War Between Science and Religion”, was published in the online magazine The Conversation.
I am also an evolutionary biologist who helped to pioneer the study of religion from an evolutionary perspective with my book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. I often call myself an atheist, although that depends upon how one defines religion, a point to which I will return.
Those who are familiar with both Jerry and me know that we seem to disagree a lot—not just on religion, but on what seems to be the purely scientific topic of Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory. But that’s not quite right. There is a large zone of agreement between us and staking it out can help to understand the zone of disagreement.
The Zone of Agreement
Jerry and I agree upon the need to stay within the bounds of Methodological Naturalism. What is the meaning of this two-word phrase? Naturalism is defined as “A viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes and supernatural explanations are excluded or discounted.”[1] The word “methodological” softens this claim by acknowledging that there is no definitive proof of naturalism. Specific conceptions of supernatural agency can be rejected, such as the creation of the earth in six days, but other conceptions remain, such as a God that set the laws of nature in motion and did not thereafter intervene. This conception can never be disproven because it doesn’t make any predictions that depart from naturalism.
It is important to stress that when methodological naturalists reject supernatural explanations as a practical matter, this is not arbitrary or capricious. It is based on a long history of supernatural explanations that do make testable predictions failing again and again. As early as 1872, Darwin’s cousin Sir Francis Galton was applying statistical methods to test whether prayer has any efficacy on such things as recovery from disease, lifespan, or newborn stillbirths. Here is a passage from his article titled “Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer”:
The universal habit of the scientific world to ignore the agency of prayer is a very important fact. To fully appreciate the ‘eloquence of the silence’ of medical men, we must bear in mind the care with which they endeavor to assign a sanatory value to every influence. Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, it is incredible but that the doctors, who are always on the watch for such things, should have observed it, and added their influence to that of the priests towards obtaining them for every sick man. If they abstain from doing so, it is not because their attention has never been awakened to the possible efficacy of prayer, but, on the contrary, that although they have heard it insisted on from childhood upwards, they are unable to detect its influence. Most people have some general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer, but none seem willing to admit its action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognizance.
So, Jerry and I agree on the need to remain within the bounds of methodological naturalism, which requires rejecting the major tenets of the Abrahamic religions as scientific truth claims, however useful they might be as meaning systems. Unless a religious believer is comfortable with the fact that religions are 100% human constructions, then there is a conflict between science and religion. That’s a pretty big zone of agreement!
Another important point is that new scientific discoveries might stretch the borders of methodological naturalism. Perhaps space aliens and psychic phenomena such as telepathy actually exist. Forces such as magnetism that operate at a distance were astounding when they were first discovered and perhaps we will be astounded again. Some spiritually oriented people place a lot of faith in this possibility, to use a word that Jerry likes to criticize as a defect rather than a virtue. But I am not among them. My interest is to understand all aspects of religion and spirituality in terms of natural processes that are already well established. I think that the gold lies buried beneath our feet, not in some territory yet to be explored. I expect that Jerry feels the same way.
The Zone of Disagreement
With so much to agree about, what is left for disagreement? Let’s begin with the curious fact that there is not one but two major definitions of religion. One is based on belief in supernatural agents. The other is Emile Durkheim’s definition:
A system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.[2]
It is amazing, when one pauses to think about it, how much non-overlap there is between these definitions. It is easy to imagine beliefs in supernatural agents that don’t even come close to forming a moral community (example: the flying spaghetti monster). And it is easy to imagine a moral community organized around things regarded as sacred that doesn’t invoke any gods. Jerry himself signals the inadequacy of the first definition when, after providing it, he adds “of course many religions don’t fit that definition.”
Durkheim is regarded as one of the fathers of sociology in addition to his great work on religion, which is still worth reading today. He helped to found the tradition of functionalism, which interpreted the features of human society as primarily for the good of the group. Functionalism reached its peak in the mid-20th century and then declined, in part because it was too axiomatic, as if every feature of human society must be good for the group, and said little about the process whereby groups evolve to be functionally organized units. It was largely replaced by the tradition of methodological individualism (there is that word “methodological” again) which sought to understand all social phenomena in terms of the actions and motives of individuals.[3]
Much has happened during the last few decades to revive the tradition of functionalism and provide a robust alternative to methodological individualism. This brings us to the purely scientific zone of disagreement between Jerry and myself on topics such as MLS theory. But I don’t want to lose sight of the topic of religion. Here is a summary of neo-functionalism in relation to religion plus more.
1) We are a highly cultural species. Our behavior is governed by symbolic meaning systems learned and transmitted across generations, in addition to our genes. A meaning system is defined as a set of beliefs and practices that receives environmental information as input and results in action as output. A meaning system literally “makes sense” of the world.
2) Not everyone is religious, but all normal humans have a meaning system and could not function without one. However we define religions, they are a subset of meaning systems. It is therefore important to establish what we can say about all meaning systems.
3) Meaning systems are selected—by our own minds and by the environment—primarily on the basis of what they cause us to do. Call this practical realism, in contrast to factual realism, which is objective truth in the scientific sense of the word. The statement “mountains existed before people” scores high on factual realism but its practical value could be positive, negative, or neutral depending upon the context.
4) In general, the relationship between factual and practical realism is complex and context-dependent. Sometimes it is useful to know the world as it really is, but sometimes massive distortions of reality are more adaptive. We already know that this is true for our genetically evolved perceptual abilities. We only see a narrow slice of the light spectrum and hear a narrow slice of the sound spectrum. What we see and hear is highly rendered to enhance the adaptive value of the information (e.g., seeing discrete colors instead of a continuum). Our sense of smell is poor and we can’t sense some aspects of the environment at all, such as magnetic and weak electrical fields, even though other species can. It is humbling to think that our culturally evolved meaning systems are the same way!
5) This complex trade-off between practical and factual realism exists for all meaning systems, not just religions. If the big problem of religion is believing stuff that’s not out there, then the problem is much worse than that and extends to secular meaning systems as well. This is my first big complaint with Jerry and other atheists who single out religion for criticism, as if whatever counts as non-religious for them—perhaps even their own atheistic meaning system—doesn’t suffer from the same problem.[4]
6) As an example, consider the book The Invention of Tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger and published in 1983. It shows that for most cultures, beliefs about ancestry and history are at least as important and relevant to action as one’s gods. What most cultures regard as their ancient traditions are much more recent fabrications that perform the same function as the gods. Other examples of adaptive fictions can be recited almost without end—including our beliefs about ourselves as individuals,[5] orthodox economic theory,[6] and Ayn Rand’s brand of atheism, which can be shown to be as fundamentalist in its structure as any religion.[7] The bottom line: Almost everyone believes in stuff that’s not out there, regardless of whether they are classified as religious. A meaning system that scores high on both factual and practical realism is something that must be constructed in the future.
This concludes my summary of neo-functionalism in relation to religion plus more. Against this background, consider the last paragraph of Jerry’s article:
In the end, it’s irrational to decide what’s true in your daily life using empirical evidence, but then rely on wishful-thinking and ancient superstitions to judge the “truths” undergirding your faith. This leads to a mind (no matter how scientifically renowned) at war with itself, producing the cognitive dissonance that prompts accommodationism. If you decide to have good reasons for holding any beliefs, then you must choose between faith and reason. And as facts become increasingly important for the welfare of our species and our planet, people should see faith for what it is: not a virtue but a defect.
I would come close to agreeing with this statement (with some caveats about faith detailed below) if it is applied assiduously to the adaptive fictions of all meaning systems–religious and secular, including one’s own. I suspect that Jerry would agree with me in principle—how could he not?—but putting it into practice is another matter. More humility and tolerance would be called for than he often exhibits.
Next, we come to science as a way of thinking that can somehow save us from wishful thinking and ancient superstitions. I share Jerry’s reverence (to use a religiously flavored word) for science. Individuals are largely unable to apprehend factual reality on their own. A very special social process is required. This social process is not “natural” and didn’t exist for long periods of human history.[8] It could be snuffed out in the future. After all, both as individuals and cultures, it is far more “natural” to apprehend practical realism than factual realism. Nor is this a bad thing. Unless a meaning system that scores high on factual realism also scores high on practical realism, it isn’t worth wanting.
The core of a scientific meaning system is well known. Because we can’t directly apprehend factual reality, we must probe it by proposing and testing falsifiable hypotheses—a bit like blind people tapping with their canes. This is easy to understand but an elaborate culture is required to make it happen. The search for objective knowledge must be established as the cardinal norm. In other words, it must be sanctified. Appropriate behaviors must be reinforced and deviant behaviors must be punished. Chronic deviant behavior or even a single serious first offence results in exclusion. Scientists are more strict about enforcing their norms than most religions! Science therefore qualifies as a religion according to Durkheim’s definition, or a meaning system according to my definition. What sets it apart from all other meaning systems, however, is that it worships factual realism as its God. Thus, I am not proposing that science is “just” another religion or meaning system, because it is so distinctive in that one respect. Other meaning systems might adhere to factual realism in some contexts, but easily disregard it in other contexts.
I don’t know whether Jerry would agree with my thumbnail characterization of science. He will need to speak for himself. But I disagree with his characterization of science and I think that most serious historians and philosophers of science would as well. The main problem with Jerry’s account is that he thinks that scientists can easily rise above the biases of their own non-scientific meaning systems. He doesn’t acknowledge the problems that exist when the entire community of scientists is embedded within a non-scientific meaning system and is incapable of seeing beyond it.
Yet, we know that this is the case for Darwin and his contemporaries during the Victorian era. Nearly everyone back then assumed that European culture was superior to other cultures and that cultural evolution was a progression from savagery to civilization. Like the proverbial fish that can’t see water, the Victorians could only see what their culture made sense to them. It took Europeans who gained respect for indigenous cultures by living among them, such as Franz Boaz and Bronislaw Malinowski, to promote a view that in retrospect makes much more sense from an evolutionary perspective; that all enduring cultures are impressively well adapted to their respective environments.[9] Even today, the human social sciences suffer from being WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic).[10] A similar story can be told for scientific theories of sex differences during the Victorian era, persisting to the present.
What are the biases of our meaning systems, the cultural water that most of us can’t see? I nominate individualism, which begins to explain why Jerry and I disagree on the purely scientific topic of MLS theory. I propose that evolutionary biology’s individualistic swing—from the “theory of individual selection” in the 1960’s to “selfish gene theory” of the 1970’s, was part of a broader cultural shift that included methodological individualism in the social sciences and neoliberal economics. In all cases, the self-interested individual (or gene) is conceptualized as the fundamental unit to which all higher-level phenomena must be reduced. As UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously put it, “There is no such thing as society; only individuals and families”. Her individualistic meaning system made the concept of society literally disappear!
Like the biases of the Victorian era, the biases of the individualistic era are becoming obvious with the passage of time. Consider this passage from Richard Dawkins, written in 1982 [11]:
We painfully struggled back, harassed by sniping from a Jesuitically sophisticated and dedicated neo-group-selectionist rearguard, until we finally regained Darwin’s ground, the position that I am characterizing by the label “the selfish organism”, the position which, in its modern form, is dominated by the concept of inclusive fitness.
Never mind that Darwin was the first person to clearly see the need for group selection to explain social adaptations[12] and that Hamilton, the inventor of inclusive fitness theory, was among the first to begin rethinking group selection in a positive light.[13] This passage has all the zeal and revisionism of a patriotic history of nations. Nor was Dawkins the only one. Michael Ghiselin wrote “scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.”[14] Richard Alexander described a scientific worldview based entirely on selfishness as the greatest intellectual revolution of the 20th century.[15] And Williams ended his book Adaptation and Natural Selection with the words “I believe that it is the light and the way”.
MLS Theory provides a robust alternative to Individualism.[16] To see why, let’s look at how evolutionary biologists such as Jerry study a solitary species such as the fruit fly. They anchor their analysis on the individual fly, because its properties have been shaped by natural selection. They spend a lot of time going below the level of the individual fly to study organs, cells, genes, molecules and the like, but always in terms of how these lower-level units are structured and coordinated to allow the survival and reproduction of the whole fly. Fruit fly biologists also go above the individual to study fly populations and flies as parts of multi-species ecosystems, but always with the adaptive strategies of the individual flies in mind.
This is a kind of individualism that can be justified by evolutionary theory, but only when the individual is the unit of selection–or vehicle of selection in the parlance of selfish gene theory; it is the concept of vehicles, not replicators that is most salient. In eusocial insect colonies such as the ants, bees, wasps, and termites, the analysis is anchored on the colony because it is the primary unit of selection. If multispecies ecosystems were the primary unit of selection, then it would become the anchor of analysis and species would be studied in terms of their role in sustaining the ecosystem, just as we study organs for their role in sustaining the organism.
In short, there is no warrant for axiomatically making the individual the analytic anchor. This is as wrong as the old-time functionalists axiomatically assuming that everything is for the good of the group. Instead, how we anchor the analysis depends upon the unit(s) of selection. There is no escape from this conclusion. Way back in 1966, G.C. Williams wrote:
It is universally conceded by those who have seriously concerned themselves with this problem that…group related adaptations must be attributed to the natural selection of alternative groups of individuals and that the natural selection of alternative alleles within populations will be opposed to this development. I am in entire agreement with the reasoning behind this conclusion.
The fate of individualism therefore rests upon the empirical claim that between-group selection is invariably weak compared to within-group selection. This claim has now been thoroughly refuted and the only reason that it seemed strong in the first place was based on the fallacy of averaging the fitness of lower-level units across higher-level units and calling it an argument against group selection.[17] Today we have all the theoretical models, laboratory experiments, and field studies that we need to conclude that higher-level selection often prevails against lower-level selection, such that the higher-level unit becomes the anchor of analysis. The burgeoning literature on microbiomes provides an example.[18] When selection acts at the level of multicellular organisms, it is also acting at the level of their microbial ecosystems, consisting of thousands of species numbering in the trillions of individuals. Only now are we beginning to realize how much these two levels of selection are entwined in the evolution of traits that we have mistakenly attributed entirely to individual-level selection—such as those fruit flies that Jerry studies.
But it is the human evolutionary story that is most transformed by MLS theory, starting with group selection at the scale of small groups during our genetic evolution and continuing with the cultural group selection of large-scale societies during the last 10,000 years. As Peter Turchin puts in his book Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans The Greatest Cooperators on Earth, “the central theoretical breakthrough in this new field is the theory of Cultural Multilevel Selection”. Turchin’s panoramic book covers all kinds of meaning systems, religious and secular, which cannot be understood without acknowledging their adaptedness at various scales above individual actors. This is why Durkheim’s tradition of functionalism now stands upon a strong scientific foundation and methodological individualism has lost its foundation—for good.
What’s a committed individualist to do in this situation? In an interview that I conducted with the evolutionary social psychologist Jonathan Haidt,[19] he wisely remarked that if you want to find science denial in any person, just find what is sacred to that person. Religious believers find it extraordinarily difficult to accept evolution, liberal thinkers find it extraordinarily difficult to accept sex and race differences, and individualists find it extraordinarily difficult to accept MLS theory. It just comes too close to their cherished values. They are like a fish out of water.
Hence, I am not surprised that my zone of disagreement with Jerry spans not only religion but a purely biological topic such as MLS theory. What about the nature of faith? Faith is a requirement for all meaning systems because it is required to behave in uncertain situations. If we insisted on evidence for everything, we would be paralyzed. When Jerry places his entire faith in science and regards everything else as “wishful thinking and ancient superstitions”, especially with respect to their practical realism, he is acting on faith as much, if not more, than any religious believer.
You know there is a problem when a call to solve the problems of our age begins with a declaration of war. A more peaceful way to proceed is based on the following premises.[20]
- We are not just another species. We are also an evolutionary process—cultural evolution—which vastly surpasses cultural evolution in other species.
- The concept of organism has a movable boundary that can extend above the level of the individual organism. This provides a scientific foundation for the idea that we are part of something larger than ourselves, which suffuses so many religious and secular meaning systems.
- The iron law of MLS is “Adaptation at any level of a multi-tier hierarchy requires a process of selection at that level and tends to be undermined by selection at lower levels.” This is what Williams called “universally conceded” in the passage quoted above. It follows that all meaning systems that succeed in adapting human populations to their environments are likely to create problems at larger spatial and temporal scales. This conclusion holds for religious and secular meaning systems alike.
- The only way to solve problems at the global scale is to select policies with the welfare of the whole earth in mind. Many people already have a whole-earth ethic, which exists in both religious and secular formations, but MLS theory provides a stronger scientific justification for it than ever before and also a conceptual toolkit for becoming “wise managers of cultural evolutionary processes[21]”
- All meaning systems that adopt a whole-earth ethic are welcome to join in the effort to evolve a planetary organism. A common goal, defined in terms of action, is the ideal starting point for integrating the plurality of meaning systems that lead to the common goal.
- A person’s meaning system is like their DNA: very important for their wellbeing, poorly understood, and not to be lightly trifled with. Evolving a meaning system needs to be a consensual process, not a conquest.
I develop this approach at book length in This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, which can be regarded as an update of The Phenomenon of Man, by the scientist and Jesuit Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who thought deeply about evolution in relation to his religious beliefs. As I end the introduction to my book:
Our journey ends with a reflection on how the secular imagination and the religious/spiritual imagination can converge on the conscious evolution of our collective future. It is striking how these two imaginations often seem at odds with each other, yet both arrive at the same conclusion: that the concept of “organism” has a movable boundary, which must be expanded to solve the problems of our age. It’s as if two separate languages are being spoken, each of which apprehends the same reality in its own way but which are mutually unintelligible to most of their speakers. In my own journey, I have learned to speak both languages and to appreciate how they both add value to consciously evolving our collective future. I hope that by the end of this book, you will become bilingual as well.
This is why science and religion need not be at war.
References:
[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/naturalism
[2] Durkheim, E., & Fields, K. E. (1912). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press.
[3] See Chapter 2 of Wilson, D. S. (2002). Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[4] https://evolution-institute.org/the-new-atheism-as-a-stealth-religion-five-years-later/
[5] Gottschall, J. (2012). The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
[6] Cox, H. (2016). The Market as God. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[7] Wilson, D. S. (1995). Language as a community of interacting belief systems: a case study involving conduct toward self and others. Biology and Philosophy, 10, 77–97.
[8] McCauley, R. N. (2011). Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not. Oxford University Press, USA.
[9] https://evolution-institute.org/cultural-anthropology-and-cultural-evolution-tear-down-this-wall-a-conversation-with-robert-paul/
[10] Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61-83-135. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X
[11] Dawkins, R. (1982). The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press. P. 6
[12] https://evolution-institute.org/was-darwin-a-group-selectionist-a-conversation-with-elliott-sober/
[13] https://evolution-institute.org/was-hamilton-a-group-selectionist-a-conversation-with-oren-harman/
[14] Ghiselin, M. T. (1974). The economy of nature and the evolution of sex. Berkeley: University of California Press. P 247
[15] Alexander, R. D. (1987). The biology of moral systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. P. 3
[16] Wilson, D. S. (2015). Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
[17] Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. See also https://evolution-institute.org/focus-article/reaching-a-new-plateau-for-the-acceptance-of-multilevel-selection/
[18] Yong, E. (2006). I contain multitudes : the microbes within us and a grander view of life. Ecco.
[19] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9kJkuuedw0
[20] Wilson, D. S. (2019). This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. New York: Pantheon/Random House.
[21] Wilson, D. S., & Hayes, S. C. (2018). Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and Influencing Behavior. Menlo Park, CA: New Harbinger Press. See also Wilson, D. S., Hayes, S. C., Biglan, A., & Embry, D. (2014). Evolving the Future: Toward a Science of Intentional Change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 395–460.
“Evolving a meaning system needs to be a consensual process, not a conquest.” I believe this will be the greatest challenge human cooperation has ever faced. God help us.
Chris–thanks for your comment. The way to make the challenge manageable is to smart working with small groups and scaling up. Once small groups demonstrate enhanced evolvability and its benefits, then it can spread to other small groups and begin to influence intergroup relations virally. Please visit http://www.prosocial.world for more.
I sent a comment last night?? Did I put it in the wrong place or something? I support your perspective and can’t for a moment imagine that anyone really thinks an evolved mental, emotional, and social capacity as is our propensity for “faith,” i.e. religion is inherently contradictory to another evolved mental/emotional capacity, i.e., science. .
Dear Lynn–Not sure what happened to your first comment, but thanks for your second one. Focusing on what can be said about all meaning systems and treating religions as one kind of meaning system is the single most important step that can be taken toward clarity and tolerance. In essence, it turns a “us-them” mentality in to a “we” mentality. Thanks for all the great work you do on prosociality–d.
Ooh, what a great tease for your next book! I very much look forward to reading it. This phrase in particular hooked me:
“the concept of “organism” has a movable boundary, which must be expanded to solve the problems of our age”
I wrote an article for Alice Andrews’ Sacred Naturalism group that argued precisely for this expanded view. It’s called: “Replacing Maslow with an Evolutionary Hierarchy of Needs.” I think you would enjoy it. (But only a fraction of how much I enjoy your work. ; )
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/sacrednaturalism/2017/10/an-evolutionary-hierarchy-of-needs/
Do you really think that you “need” group selection to explain social adaptations?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Can you articulate an alternative?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Can you articulate an alternative? Show me a social adaptation that isn’t vulnerable to disruptive self-serving behaviors including free-riding and active exploitation.
My local group affiliated with ‘counsel for inquiry’ which publishes Skeptical Inquiry (and another small magazine) had an interview with Dawkins on hs book ‘selfish genes’—30 years later. He said he could have called it ‘cooperative genes and it would have said the same thing. He might have noticed that earlier if he had read his book ‘the extended phenotype’.
(I’ll add my local CSI group, for atheists, agnostics (i call my self an agnostic, and many people thing that is a religion) and so on, do not believe in God. They believe in Dawkins and S Pinker, and are basically controlled by evolutionary psychologists. Last time I went–they meet in a restaurant—they told the restaurant security i was making them feel uncomfortable so I was told to leave or face arrest. I left without paying my small bill.)
I see you mention Durkheim, Turchin, etc. I sort of viewed Radcliffe-Brown as a ‘functionalist’, but i guess the term has many uses.
Durkheim, le Bon, the book ‘the true believer’ (hofstader perhaps?), i view as the forerunners of modern ‘MLS” theory (i still prefer group selection, though there are different forms—i’m in the Boyd and Richerson camp, because its the biological version of condensed matter physics) –and every subfield including behavioral genetics and evolutionary pyshcology have some truth—but we dont know what truth.
Georges Lemaitre was a Belgian Priest . He is also partly credited with coming up with the Hubble’s law and ‘Big Bang theory’ in 1920’s-30’s’ Its interesting that someone with such a theological background was more advanced in math and physics than most people then and now .
Soon…..kunundra will appear in the sky as foretold by the shaman of of Jersey City.. and all will be revealed.. if you happen to be looking that is..and now for something totally different… I’m watching for and reading of .. discovery in the Sinai, were there were leaves-manuscripts, and they were written over erased and written over time an again.. and are now being deciphered using high-tech cameras and a 3D imaging system which stacks the leaves and forms a 3D cube of sorts which reveals the overwritten erased information on the leaves.. a mixture of religion science and mythology.. this should be most interesting.. photographs of the manuscripts will be available under the name known as “Arabic new finds 66″…. And I leave you with Bill and Ted’s great adventure wisdom… Be good to each other….
Loved the article! I am part of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature which is part of a fast growing movement advocating aligning human governance systems with the laws/ principles of Nature (“Earth jurisprudence” as explained in my book Wild Law). This is based on recognition of need to align meaning systems about social norms (e.g.legal systems) with reality that we exist within greater system of order, and disputes must be resolved on basis of what is best for Earth as a whole / organism.
“…which cannot be understood without acknowledging their adaptedness at various scales above individual actors.” This is very correct. But it is just like adapting to the role defined by money, money power, originating from the central bank (CB). We will never be able to understand our behaviors, without understanding the role of money. It controls science, religions, education, economics, and everything we can think of. CB has a remote control, it can press a button, and anybody can be destroyed. Therefore, this not evolution and not even the truth, it is an adaptation.
“Naturalism is defined as – A viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes and supernatural explanations are excluded or discounted.” – This is not correct. You are a supernatural person and so is every human, every animal, and every object in the universe.
A very simple proof of our supernatural characteristics is that – you do not have freewill. All our actions are based on our reasons. But since reasons come before we act, our reasons control our actions. That means at the present moment we do not have freewill, we are controlled by our past. In fact the sow-reap statement of Bible supports the above logic. Here is an example that demonstrates the lack of freewill.
Pat Norris came to see a visiting yogi from India during early 1970s in USA. When she entered the office of the yogi, he told the woman to ask seven questions and one by one she did. Then the yogi picked up a paper from his desk, turned it upside down, and gave that to her. In that paper all her questions were already written along with their answers.
All such examples, there are many of them on the internet, and a collection can be found in the free book at https://theoryofsouls.wordpress.com/ proves that we are all supernatural beings or objects. We are controlled by the global destiny of the universe. Thus the CB is also a feature of the global destiny. Bible talks about destiny too.
Fascinating article, and I agree with the majority of your argument.
The leap from communal organization at a localized (probably tribal) level to a “world community” is the nature of a conscious, cultural species. “God-fearing” people of different religious beliefs will intermarry if the belief set is similar enough for mutual unspoken comprehension of their Creator.
Such a wonderful outcome will take at least a century (all humans currently living in poverty will have to be dead) and a global rejection of interventionist theist religion, and will require a “MidWesternification” of culture (News anchors on TV have neutralized regional accents) that will probably require another century for belief harmonization.
The problem is getting from “here”- a sclerotic system of extremely large multinational organizations Hellbent on making it happen NOW!, damn the Deplorables and Brexiteers and other dissidents- to a peaceful, robust, mutually beneficial, healthy, dynamic and prosperous system.
Technocrats, Crony Capitalists, Banksters, Multinational Corporations and NGOs…they’re robbing us blind and using the government to do it.
Decentralization of power back to the local level- the USA should probably allow each county to secede, creating a robust network of hundreds of competing city-states that have to be innovative to retain/attract population- is the only peaceful solution. The current system is far too powerful, intrusive, unaccountable, reckless, corrupt and financially bankrupt.
[…] Science and Religion Need Not Be At War – The Evolution Institute — Read on evolution-institute.org/science-and-religion-need-not-be-at-war/ […]
Truly satisfied as to how you have progressed, I am.
[…] Creativity scholars (Csikzsentmihalyi, DK Simonton, RK Sawyer, etc) note similarities in the evolution of biology and culture. As do Evocrit scholars (Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, Scalise-Sugiyama, Gottschall, E O Wilson, D S Wilson). […]
Terrific article, thanks for it David. I admire your turning an “us-them” mentality into a “we” mentality like this. I am a fan of all your work, that I’ve read. And I too am a fan (and a proponent) of MLS. e.g. https://storyality.wordpress.com/2019/07/14/storyality154-units-of-culture-vs-units-of-biology/ I also liked many parts of Coyne’s `The Conversation’ article (about `the war’) …just as, it seems a good pushback-salvo in the current `War on Truth / Science’.
Long live: Science and Truth, and Methodological Naturalism. At the same time as I greatly admire your cooperative move, I also would like to see, a competition, as well… Namely – turn Science into a formal religion – and, let it rip. In the same way that some religions have `absorbed’ others over deep time, (much like Margulis’s endosymbiosis), I think Scientism (or Harari’s `Dataism’, or `Methodological Naturalism’) as a formal religion – if designed/planned right – could `eat up’ (absorb) all of the other (extant) religions, and it would solve the problem / end the `war’… One such proposal of mine is here (https://outrageous-bullshit.blogspot.com/2019/05/scientism-newest-and-oldest-religion.html), presented as a satire – to hide the fact I’m quite serious about the idea. Most religions are already `at war’ anyway (or at the least, compete with each other) – so, let’s just bring out the Big Guns (and, the Big Data) and turn it into a real `shooting’ war. Just to see what happens? Just as: an experiment. (The only problem I can foresee with it is: Human Nature. But I think, we can fix all that (redesign Human Nature, and fix all of the flaws within it) using: science, biotech, and AI?)
Anyway, great article either way – thank you for it. I feel much smarter for having read it.
Thank you for this excellent article. It made me buy the book and I am in the process of reading it.
Your article made me feel you are perhaps pointing to a promising direction where I might find what I have been looking for. Perhaps the best way to explain what I have been looking for is illustrated by my comment on the following article;
https://blog.oup.com/2015/09/religious-belief-natural-causes/
Very nice article, I particularly enjoyed your distinction between functional and actual truth in meaning systems, a distinction that I used to make in a scientific reasoning course I developed 30 years ago. One point that I’d like to add regarding science–as I see it, science is still incomplete. Not in the sense that there are still more things to discover, but in the sense that it is incomplete as a knowledge generating system. I’ve been working on a history of science since the early 90s (obviously as a side project, until I retired several years ago) based on the idea that there have been three developmental crises in this history, the third one now in the present day. These crises have to do with the idea that an important aspect of science is development of tools and methods to avoid “cognitive illusions” that fall into three general classes. The first crisis (the crisis of categorical reason) was in Ancient Greece where they had to develop the criteria for a rational argument. The second was the 17th century scientific revolution with the necessity of developing criteria for evaluation of empirical data (the crisis of inductive reason), and the crisis today I’m calling the crisis of paradigmatic reason will require development of criteria for evaluation of insights gained from distinct paradigmatic approaches (or distinct meaning systems). I’ve given several presentations about this over the years (e.g., History of Science Society, SFI) and, with luck, will finally have a ms to submit in a year or two. I’ve read Darwin’s Cathedral and this essay leads me to your newer book, so thanks.
The predicted and supernatural events of Biblical History means that 2.1 billion Christians did not construct their own religion nor have the continuous generations of followers created the fantastic prose of Biblical origin. Anyone with even a modest interest in truth can find truth. J Werner Wallace, a retired Cold Case Detective perhaps put it best when he said “My life before becoming a Christian was just fine and it hasn’t exactly been easy since I converted, but my high regard for the truth leaves me no alternative”. God Bless
Reference [4] is a broken link?