Transcript The Implied Repeal of the Second Amendment by the

Darwin’s Practical Joke:
The Adaptive Origins of
Creationist Mythology
Jim Chen
University of Minnesota Law School
Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research
Law, Behavior & the Brain
Olympic Valley, California
May 22, 2006
Teaching evolution enables
sound environmental policy
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Legal Mythmaking in a Time of Mass Extinctions, 29
Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 279 (2005),
http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract =770976
– What is the most significant problem facing the world?
– Teaching evolution is vital to biodiversity conservation
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The anthropogenic nature of the sixth mass
extinction demands a coordinated human response
Without an appreciation of evolution and natural
history, that response won’t be effective enough
Natural history is a story of origins for all of us
Nicea revisited: everyone is begotten, not made
Vast segments of American
society reject evolution
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Two-thirds of the public and one-third of public
school biology teachers express some sympathy
for teaching “alternatives” to evolution
Evolution has few adherents (Kristof, NYT 2003)
– Virgin birth of Jesus: 83%
– Satan: 68%
– Evolution: 28%
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G.W. Bush: “the jury is still out” (March 2005)
Apocalypse now? 40% of Americans believe that
the world will end supernaturally
The smell of napalm: a nation truly “Left Behind”
Public rejection of evolution
cripples environmental law
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Efforts to ban the teaching of evolution and/or to
inculcate “intelligent design” are escalating
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State v. Scopes (1925)
Epperson v, Arkansas (1968)
McLean v. Arkansas Bd. of Educ. (1982)
Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)
Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish (2000) (Scalia dissent)
Kitzmiller v. Dover School Bd. (2005)
Shame on Scalia: “much beloved secular legend of
the Monkey Trial” gave aid and comfort to
creationists (sadly, a major GOP constituency)
In fairness, some evangelical groups have used the
Noah story to advocate conservation (Nagle 1998)
A prescriptive solution in
search of a descriptive
explanation?
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Resistance to the teaching of evolution has
bad consequences within law’s domain
– Uninformed environmental decisionmaking
– Competitive disadvantage for certain states and
for the United States overall
– Regardless of consequences, falsehood is evil
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Might resistance to the teaching of
evolution, perversely enough, be a product
of adaptive responses to natural selection?
Does natural selection
predispose humans against
evolutionary explanations?
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Religion is human behavior. Accordingly, its origins and
significance can be illuminated by evolutionary analysis
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Dennett, Breaking the Spell (2006)
Justin Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004)
Boyer, Religion Explained (2001)
Anderson, Ecologies of the Heart (1996)
Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds (1993)
“[R]eligion … is continuous with other systems of thought and
action such as science, art, and common sense” (Guthrie)
“Religion is a secretion of the brain” (Tiger & McGuire 2006)
Religious belief is adaptive
A creationist account of origins (such as the Abrahamic
narrative) seems singularly appealing to the adapted mind
Dichtung und Wahrheit: we must separate myth and history
Religion as the product of an
agency detection device
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Humans systematically interpret ambiguous
evidence as being caused by a living agent
– Not what went bump in the night, but who
– This cognitive bias prompts proactive responses to threats
to survival and to opportunities to reproduce
– Agency detection is a variant of Pascal’s wager
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Responding as if an agent existed may ensure survival or
secure a reproductive opportunity
The only downside is the cost of the response
Religion condenses a wide range of unseen agents
into an anthropomorphic deity
Um shih ah pien, ma huang da dyo: religion is not
the opiate of the masses, but rather the ephedrine
Indirect evidence of religion
as adaptive behavior
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Religion appears to be a human universal
– Humans are religious across time and space
– Efforts to crush religion fail, often spectacularly
– Active atheism demands extraordinary effort
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Components of agency detection emerge
very early in childhood
– Face, animal, and artifact identification
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Piety follows muliebrity
– Women are systematically more involved in and
committed to religion than are men
– Very stable sexual asymmetry (Paloutzian 1996)
Nature and mind: the
foundations of a universal
naturalist grammar
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Evidence of biophilia and biophobia (Wilson)
– Tree-studded promontories overlooking water
– Infants and infant-like artifacts are cute
– Insects aren’t the only ones who coevolved with flowering
plants (“Pollan on pollen”: The Botany of Desire)
– Spiders and leopards and snakes, oh my
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“Naturalist” intelligence flourishes within a system
of multiple intelligences (Gardner)
– Folk classifications converge at the genus level of Linnaean
classification (Atran)
– Children devote extraordinary effort to mastering
information about animals (H. Clark Barrett 2004)
More evidence of the
adaptive nature of biological
intelligence
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Not all manifestations of intelligence reflect
adaptation (Pinker 1994; cf. Arnold &
Zuberbühler 2006)
– Speech is universal and adaptive; writing is not
– “A dreadful language? Sakes alive – I mastered
it when I was five”
– Phonetic writing is a powerful meme, but it is
not a universal, adaptive behavior
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Biological intelligence is adaptive
Is evolutionary reasoning part of that
adaptive toolkit?
Biology inspires emotions,
perhaps even religious belief
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Humans code ecological knowledge in
religious terms (Anderson 1996; see also
Rappaport 1971; Slovic 2000)
Natural history is the real story of origins
(Ursula Goodenough 2001, Wilson 2002,
Takacs 1996, Dobzhansky 1973)
– East of Eden: “There is one story in the world,
and only one”
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Environmental policy is driven by emotion
– E.g., differences between folk and expert
assessments of environmental priorities
I spoke as a child, I knew as
a child, I thought as a child
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Children intuitively embrace many Abrahamic theological
tenets, almost favoring these faiths (Barrett & Richert 2003)
– Omniscient, superperceptive, immortal, superpowerful creator
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Children distinguish between natural and human-made things
(Petrovich 1997)
Children ascribe natural origins to theistic rather than human
agency (Petrovich 1999)
Creationism trounces evolution, human invention, and mere
emergence in polls of children (Evans 2001)
Children see living and nonliving things as purposeful, and
religion may merely confirm this instinct (Keleman 1999)
But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 1 Cor. 13:11
Why target evolution? We
can’t let the mystery be
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Textbook labeling, “intelligent design”
courses, etc., all target evolution
But biology denies with equal vehemence
other religious tenets
– E.g., virgin birth, resurrection
– These are the defining tenets of Christianity
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Why sweat the mote in creation’s eye when
there’s a beam in the eye of the
resurrection? Cf. Matt. 7:3
Against all odds: the
unavoidable offensiveness
of randomness
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Evolution reflects Ecclesiastes, not Genesis:
“time and chance happen to them all”
Humans expect virtue to be rewarded and
vice to be punished (Lerner & Miller 1978)
Right-and-wrong narratives dominate
popular views of science, religion, and art
– Spencer coopted Darwin into “survival of the
fittest” and made nonextinction normative
– Amoral denouements are deeply dissatisfying
Chance and choice,
wisdom and responsibility
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W.J. Bryan: “Destiny is not a matter of
chance. Destiny is a matter of choice.”
Resistance to evolution transcends ideology
– Enemies left
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Defenders of the tabula rasa approach to social science
Fear of racial, sexual determinism
– Enemies right
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Enough to turn fundamentalists into postmodernists?!
Achilles : Odysseus :: Calvinism : Catechism
You will know the truth, and the truth will
make you free
Thank you
Jim Chen
University of Minnesota Law School
[email protected]
612-625-4839
http://www.law.umn.edu/FacultyProfiles/Chen
J.htm
http://ssrn.com/author=68651