the evolving mind

It appears that democrats and republicans differ in their values.  This seems almost ho-hum ordinary, common-sensical, yet intruiguing.  Consequently, upon spying the article title, Republican And Democratic Values Compared, I was drawn to it.

In the article I discovered that while republicans are the moral equivalent of three-headed monsters, democrats have the ethical development of slime-mold.  Actually, I didn’t.  That was a joke.

What I did encounter was a few nuggets of information such as this:

Sheldon, a professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Science, found Republicans to be consistently higher on the extrinsic value of financial success and lower on the intrinsic value of helping others in need.

However, at the very foot of the article, and I hope most readers read past the title and into the body and progressed to the end of the piece, I found this quote by the author of the study:

“The one thing that struck me the most was that the value differences were rather small – really, people were more alike than different, in that almost everybody favored intrinsic values more than extrinsic values,” Sheldon said.

That, to me, is the bigger story.  And yet it is a much less glamorous story, a much less exciting story.  We tend to focus on the sexy differences and yawn in response to, even look past, the similarities between individuals, groups of people, even between animal species.

Sometimes the real story hardly seems noteworthy but is important nonetheless.  Additionally, when small differences are exaggerated we can unknowlingly promote a skewed vision of the world.

Technorati Links: morality

If you were in my shoes, you would understand.

I might understand your perspective better, but the question of whether or not your perspective is clearer, truer, better than mine may be a separate question.

Often, when people argue that we must see the world through a different lens, they are engaging in a form of special pleading. If you only saw things from my point of view, you would recognize the validity of my point of view.

Hmm. Shouldn’t critical thinkers strive for a more objective POV?

Certainly, we often use language crudely. By saying, you need to consider this issue from another perspective, a person often means, there are more variables than you are presently considering.

And that is a valid argument.

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Because roughly 50% of Americans do not recognize the validity of the theory of evolution, I think today we should put fish fingers on the menu.  There is going to be no dipping sauce, for my use of “menu” is metaphorical. 

According to a recent article over at ScienceDaily titled, Primordial Fish Had Rudimentary Fingers,

Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes. Now researchers at Uppsala University can show that this is wrong. Using medical x-rays, they found rudiments of fingers in the fins in fossil Panderichthys, the “transitional animal,” which indicates that rudimentary fingers developed considerably earlier than was previously thought.

Two things that make a good theory strong are explanatory power — it can provide insight into the mechanisms behind some phenomenon – and its generation of testable predictions.  Evolutionary theory does both.  We could be justified in saying that finding this new fossil is yet another way that evolutionary theory has passed a test.  Voila, one more transitional form.

On the other hand, a hand that may be webbed or not — I’m not sure – we’ve got the alternative, or alternatives, which, among the American populace, are largely religion-based and/or inspired.  God done it or Things are so complex it couldn’t possibly be the product of natural mechanisms.

If creationism/ID were a valid theory, there should be some explanatory power accompanying it.  It should be able to explain why, for example, we might find a fossil of a fish that has rudimentary fingers.  Of course, creationism by any name doesn’t offer any comprehensible reason for this to be the case.

Intelligent design likewise does not provide testable predictions.  Can we test whether a god had its hand in creation?  Clearly we are not talking about an alternative to evolutionary theory.  We’re talking about an untestable hypothesis, at best.  Which is definitely not science.

Pass the tartar sauce of rationalization.  I think most fundamentalists are going to find the rapidly accumulating data unearthed by scientific inquiry, such as this one about rudimentary fish fingers,  to be completely unpalatable.

Technorati Links: Intelligent Design, religion

I wonder if a city pigeon would be happier living in a more wild/natural environment.

By wild/natural, I mean one that more closely resembles the one in which its species evolved in.  For a “rock dove,” that would be a place of cliffs.  Of course, to conduct this experiment you’d have to control for as many variables as you could.  Availability of food, presence of predators, climate, comfy roost spots with nice views . . . .

And how would one measure a pigeon’s happiness?  Lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol?  Higher serotonin levels?  Could a pigeon be trained to peck out its responses to a “subjective well-being” psychological questionnaire?

Of course, I wonder the same about human beings.  Do we have a “natural” environment?  Could we be truly human and feel fully satisfied if living out our entire lives on a space station?  Just how plastic a species are we?

Time for me to go grab a bottle to quench my thirst.  This afternoon I’m going to watch a color-box view of other animals of my kind engaging in a form of inter-group territorial warfare.  Or maybe it’s competitive group hunting, with the goal being transporting a pigskin to a zone where it can be counted as a valued resource.

Interesting place, this orb called “Earth.”

Technorati Links: birds, evolution

Fresh from the womb newborns respond to almost anything vaguely reminiscent of a face. Two black dots and a line beneath it will set neurons firing. We leave a world of liquid and enter one of gas ready and eager to find faces. They are that important to us. And so we find them. We even find faces where they don’t exist: in inkblots, in oil stains, in wisps of frozen water vapor, even in the charring of a grilled cheese sandwich.

Pareidolia is the psychological tendency to find patterns where none exist. Place three 60 degree angles in line with one another, but separated by a great white space, and the human mind will “see” a triangle. Our minds jump to premature conclusions because this is the safer tendency. What triggers our inferences is not particular, but general. While this is adaptive, it is far from always correct.

Because we are a fundamentally social species, our mistaken inferences frequently consist of “finding” human or human-like forms and behaviors.

The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush (Exodus 3:2, New American Standard Bible).

. . . and God answered in thunder. (Exodus 19:19, NASB)

In very few contemporary religions does a supreme deity consist of an animal or blind force. Where this is the case, my guess is that people do not view themselves as apart from nature. How many people worship an “It” completely alien to and unconcerned with human life? People are much more likely to find human-like behavior and concerns compelling, and hence believable. As Daniel Dennet put it, “People want a God who can be loved and feared the way you love or fear another person.” (27)

It is my belief that at the core of the religious impulse you will find mistaken inferences shaped by the nature of the human mind.

Our pet dogs cower during thunderstorms. Do they do so because the sound too closely resembles the growling of beast of super (natural) proportions? I don’t know. But it is curious that chimpanzees have been observed responding to thunderstorms with threat displays, as if attempting to chase the storms away. (28) Do human beings make such fundamental errors in their inferences?

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(27) Dennett, D., Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Viking, New York, 2006, p. 266
(28) McCrew, W. C., The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 156

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[first posted here: http://almightyalpha.blogspot.com/2008/02/pattern-recognition-and-personification.html on 1/12/08]

Technorati Links: belief, bible, evolution

I get a bit melancholy this time of year. Is it the decreasing daylight hours triggering my pineal gland?

The sunshine bone is connected to the serotonin bone, and the serotonin bone is connected to the happiness bone . . .

This week I’ve awoken to temperatures in the 60s. What a refreshing sensation! Here in Florida we don’t really have four seasons. I describe our two as “summer” and “not-quite-summer.”

Oh sure, there are a number of changes in the vegetations and wildlife that I am able to amplify into a cause worth using the word “autumn.” My first sign is the raintrees in our neighborhood pushing out buds. And they are. The buds blossom yellow. Then they form delicate paper pods that turn a lightly saturated, deep red.  Cypress trees lose their leaves. The hummingbirds disappear. Grass growth slows dramatically. It’s not much, but it’s something.

In a couple months, when the goldfinches arrive at our feeders, I’ll know its winter. Somewhere.

Technorati Links: biology, psychology

When my wife and I go snorkeling, it seems I am always venturing ahead, drawn to what may lie beyond my present line of sight.  She, on the other hand, proceeds more slowly and is more often than not the one to spot a camouflaged flounder, or an octopus crammed into a hole in the coral.

Is my wife’s brain better at picking visual berries, whereas mine likes to go hunting for something new?  Yes, that is a stereotype of sexual differences.  But there might be something to it, on average.  Might be.  However, we must always keep in mind that average differences usually resemble two bell curves that overlap more than they don’t.  Individual differences tend to be greater.

As for my wife and my diverging snorkeling styles — there may be a number of things involved.  Yet when contemplating our differences, I am primarily grateful to have someone in my life who is not like me.  What a tremendous lesson, what a great opportunity for learning.

No everyone is like me.

Technorati Links: nature photos, snorkeling

Yesterday a reader asked why I am anti-religion. Sagely, he noted that it seems that way from my recent writings at this site. (Yes, there is more to me than what I blather about here.) Because I think it is a very important question, I thought I’d answer it in a post.

True, in the context of writing-slash intellectual discourse and exploration, and perhaps a few other areas as well, the classification “anti-religion” is probably fitting. Not coincidentally, I am currently putting the finishing touches on a manuscript tentatively titled, When a God Gets in the Way. That book fully explores my thoughts and experiences as a person opposed to religion.

Why the beef? Well, it seems to me that religion, like no other cultural phenomenon, impedes social and intellectual progress. How is religion unique that way? Strength in numbers thanks to an ideology to rally around, and the central idea of the “sacred.”

(Interestingly, atheists have no real ideology to rally around, so if religion were to disappear, so would atheism. I doubt the reverse is true.)

When something is sacred, thou shalt not question it, criticize it, or oppose it. And my group just might get violent with your group — of living, breathing, individuals — if you disrespect my sacred idea/object.

Talk about a barrier to progress and a threat to peace!

I write and sometimes speak about religion because, as a social being, I care about the social goings-on about me. Because I see religion as a net negative for society-at-large, I oppose it. In our country it seems cultural inertia is largely responsibly for the tolerance shown to our favored forms of religion even in/among moderate/liberal non-believers.

Consider this hypothetical. We live in a time and place of rampant “Freudianity.” There are psychiatrists going door to door to convince people that the only way to be saved is to attend their church and participate in dream interpretation. Meanwhile, politicians and throngs of believers attempt to get such concepts as the Oedipus and Electra complexes, castration anxiety, penis envy, etc., taught in health classes across the land. They claim that repressing sexuality, even during the teenage years, leads to neurosis, and they want this bit of their creed inserted into the public school setting.

Would I be likewise anti-Freudianity? I think so.

Beyond the above cognitive reasons why I oppose religion, I recognize that there are, no doubt, situational and dispositional factors involved as well (to use psychological jargon). If our present political situation were different, and if I didn’t reside in “the Bible Belt” – and thus not daily exposed to religious inanity of all sorts — my behavior might be different. Also, perhaps my innate disposition is that of a habitual contrarian, to one degree or another. I like to pick at intellectual puzzles and to debate. I tend to focus on ideas, sometimes at the expense of emotional consequences. So I can’t deny that there may be unconscious dynamics involved . . . Freud’s erroneous ideas notwithstanding.

To conclude, I have some ideas why I can be anti-religion, but no final answer.

I wonder: Would this world be better off if all people approached one another willing to both accept criticism of their ideas and to admit that their answers may not be final?

Technorati Links: atheism, religion, skepticism

The 96th edition of the Skeptics’ Circle has been posted over at Endcycle. 

Hmm.  Could skeptics be described as intellectually picky individuals?  Do they take their mental forks to the plate of common beliefs, closely examine the items, then spear and reject what they deem as bogus and bad?

BTY – When I write about skeptics I include myself in the category. 

Religious peas!!!  Get those out of here!

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When we are stunned, stimulated, overwhelmed, we tend emit noises. Personally, I tend to say, “Oh, my, gosh.” Others use “god.” But they aren’t being religious, not usually. They are just putting words to wordless feelings or what they otherwise lack words for.

Hmm. Words for what they lack words for . . . . Have I just described ONE of the reasons why religious beliefs persist today?

Technorati Links: critical thinking, language