My problem with evolutionary biology

[leftrightleftrightleft]

This quote represents my major qualms with making evolutionary biology the be-all and end-all of causes for life, humanity and human actions and interactions:

"Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.” ---Dr Philip Skell

I don't understand how natural selection can on the one hand bring about people who are inherently selfish and want to propagate their genes and on the other hand bring about people that are altruistic and helpful because this also in the long term propagates their genes and the species. It doesn't sit right with me that natural selection can be touted as the cause but give two opposing effects.

Please, please, please keep in mind that I am not suggesting an alternative in this thread, I am just looking for explanations from scientists/evolutionists who see evolutionary biology as the prime cause for our behaviors.

But I feel like people will forget that last point and this will just end up being another creation/evolution debate...

 

[Self Improvement]

This quote represents my major qualms with making evolutionary biology the be-all and end-all of causes for life, humanity and human actions and interactions:

"Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.” ---Dr Philip Skell

I don't understand how natural selection can on the one hand bring about people who are inherently selfish and want to propagate their genes and on the other hand bring about people that are altruistic and helpful because this also in the long term propagates their genes and the species. It doesn't sit right with me that natural selection can be touted as the cause but give two opposing effects.

Please, please, please keep in mind that I am not suggesting an alternative in this thread, I am just looking for explanations from scientists/evolutionists who see evolutionary biology as the prime cause for our behaviors.

But I feel like people will forget that last point and this will just end up being another creation/evolution debate...

I think society/culture/religion/whatever would also have an effect on those things, sort of like the nurture/nature thing but not quite that line of reasoning.

 

[Nostromo]

I don't understand how natural selection can on the one hand bring about people who are inherently selfish and want to propagate their genes and on the other hand bring about people that are altruistic and helpful because this also in the long term propagates their genes and the species. It doesn't sit right with me that natural selection can be touted as the cause but give two opposing effects.

Does it make sense to you that using strictly one approach to a complex problem in a wide range of scenarios is always going to give good results?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

If my benifit is consistent with group benifit than theres no problem in working for both, as they amount to the same in terms of benifit.

 

[Jade Margery]

The thing about natural selection is that it only produces a change in the overall species when an element becomes a disadvantage to survival. Both aggressive and altruistic behaviors help us to survive--as well as the ability to differentiate between when we should be aggressive and when we should be cooperative--therefore both of these behavior types are 'saved' so to speak. The second part of that is very important; a person who tries to cooperate when being attacked can get killed, and a person who is aggressive in passive situations causes problems for those around them and will be shunned or killed.


It's important to recognize that these are not opposite behaviors, they are just two sides to the same coin which is social instinct. Plenty of animals do not have a social nature, but among those that do we can observe the same mixture of aggression/cooperation. Aggression is usually used to determine pecking order in the group, fend off predators and dangers, obtain meat if the creature is carnivorous or omnivorous, and resolve conflicts (such as who should get to mate with whom or who gets the best part of a recent kill). Cooperation creates a safe environment for young to grow and survive in, establishes the pecking order as well (who is doing things for who?), cements familial bonds, and allows them to accomplish greater things than a single creature could. It is the same with selfishness and altruism. Sometimes it helps to be a little selfish, while in other cases it is better for the individual to share.

When we look at Jane Goodall's observations on chimpanzees, we see all of these impulses in equal play. (If you've never read any of her books I would highly recommend them, they are fascinating and very well written.) Aggression displays establish dominance, grooming creates group bonds, selfish hoarding of food means the individual has enough to eat, but sharing will happen with young and potential mates.

All of these behaviors are beneficial to the overall survival of the individual, so all of them are passed down, both in nature and nurture, to the offspring. Natural selection and evolution don't require that being able to perform one action means another is cut off forever. Neither being fully aggressive nor being fully passive are good for a creature's survival, which is why you never see social animals--or humans--that act like this.

Evolution doesn't create solutions to problems. It simply means that when a trait or behavior gives an individual an advantage in propagating, it is likely to be passed down to more offspring than a trait or behavior that gives a disadvantage. It is easy but ultimately fallacious to think, for instance, that evolution provided certain moths with a 'solution' to getting eaten in the form of camouflage. That makes it sound like there was a plan, things were tried, and this is what worked so this is what we're going with. In actuality, it is simply that given the natural variation in size and appearance between all members of a species, the moths that were easiest to see got eaten.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

The thing about natural selection is that it only produces a change in the overall species when an element becomes a disadvantage to survival. Both aggressive and altruistic behaviors help us to survive--as well as the ability to differentiate between when we should be aggressive and when we should be cooperative--therefore both of these behavior types are 'saved' so to speak. The second part of that is very important; a person who tries to cooperate when being attacked can get killed, and a person who is aggressive in passive situations causes problems for those around them and will be shunned or killed.


It's important to recognize that these are not opposite behaviors, they are just two sides to the same coin which is social instinct. Plenty of animals do not have a social nature, but among those that do we can observe the same mixture of aggression/cooperation. Aggression is usually used to determine pecking order in the group, fend off predators and dangers, obtain meat if the creature is carnivorous or omnivorous, and resolve conflicts (such as who should get to mate with whom or who gets the best part of a recent kill). Cooperation creates a safe environment for young to grow and survive in, establishes the pecking order as well (who is doing things for who?), cements familial bonds, and allows them to accomplish greater things than a single creature could. It is the same with selfishness and altruism. Sometimes it helps to be a little selfish, while in other cases it is better for the individual to share.

When we look at Jane Goodall's observations on chimpanzees, we see all of these impulses in equal play. (If you've never read any of her books I would highly recommend them, they are fascinating and very well written.) Aggression displays establish dominance, grooming creates group bonds, selfish hoarding of food means the individual has enough to eat, but sharing will happen with young and potential mates.

All of these behaviors are beneficial to the overall survival of the individual, so all of them are passed down, both in nature and nurture, to the offspring. Natural selection and evolution don't require that being able to perform one action means another is cut off forever. Neither being fully aggressive nor being fully passive are good for a creature's survival, which is why you never see social animals--or humans--that act like this.

Evolution doesn't create solutions to problems. It simply means that when a trait or behavior gives an individual an advantage in propagating, it is likely to be passed down to more offspring than a trait or behavior that gives a disadvantage. It is easy but ultimately fallacious to think, for instance, that evolution provided certain moths with a 'solution' to getting eaten in the form of camouflage. That makes it sound like there was a plan, things were tried, and this is what worked so this is what we're going with. In actuality, it is simply that given the natural variation in size and appearance between all members of a species, the moths that were easiest to see got eaten.

Great response right there. Why are there so many traits which we consider negative but also lead to greater survival rates? Greed is a good example. The people in this world that have the most opportunity to find any mate and make lots of babies are the ones that are very wealthy and take more than they give. The kings and lords of the past often had multiple wives or mistresses and fathered many, many children and yet they were quite greedy which is seen largely as a vice and not a virtue.

 

[Naraoia]

This quote represents my major qualms with making evolutionary biology the be-all and end-all of causes for life, humanity and human actions and interactions:

"Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.” ---Dr Philip Skell

Since Jade Margery dealt with most of this, I'll just pick out the issue of testability.

The key point is that seemingly contradictory behaviours, if adaptive, should occur in different situations. And it's possible (maybe not always, but often enough) to use natural selection to predict which situations should and shouldn't result in each behaviour.

For a simple example, you could argue that generally humans cooperate when it suits their selfish needs (or the selfish needs of their genes, as the case may be). This is a testable hypothesis. For example, it predicts that we will behave more cooperatively when we can't get away with selfishness, e.g. when others are watching. (As far as I know, this is actually true.)

 

[Ryal Kane]

To use an analogy, imagine a predator like the cheetah. They catch their prey by running very fast. But they can only do this for short burst then are exhausted.
There is only so fast they can be before it become inefficient and starts digging into other areas.
For example
- Cheetah A can catch an antelope at an average of fifteen seconds, then has to rest for ten minutes before returning with the food to her cubs.
- Cheetah B can catch an antelope in ten seconds but needs twenty minutes rest before returning the food.

B is better at catching food but A is better at getting it to her cubs. Over time, natural selection will find a balance rather than putting all resources into one trait( evolution can do this but often leads to an ultra-specialized bottleneck i.e. pitcher flowers and humming birds.

A greedy, power driven human might be able to spread his genes well but might be a terrible parent, thus leading to a diminished capacity for their offspring to have children, whereas a less driven but more nurturing parent might have a more stable line of descendants.

 

[roach]

Great response right there. Why are there so many traits which we consider negative but also lead to greater survival rates? Greed is a good example. The people in this world that have the most opportunity to find any mate and make lots of babies are the ones that are very wealthy and take more than they give. The kings and lords of the past often had multiple wives or mistresses and fathered many, many children and yet they were quite greedy which is seen largely as a vice and not a virtue.

Yeah, greed (especially the way you've used it here) is only negative because you've given it a cultural value (bad). Behaviors, emotions and every other product of the human mind may,indeed, have roots in the biological evolution of the species, but (as has been said) their value to individuals is not tethered to those of the whole. Further, "value" as I'm using the word here, is only based upon biological fitness; not the ability to gain status, money, influence, etc. I think your confusing Darwinism with "Social" Darwinism (though, its more like Social "Spencer-ism", since Darwin didn't want anything to do with applying his theory to culture). I'd recommend finding out about the recent history of socio-biology and where many of these types of fallacies originated from. E.O. Wilson's account is a good place to start...

 

[Jazer]

It doesn't sit right with me that natural selection can be touted as the cause but give two opposing effects.

Often after saying something for 100 years then all of a sudden they will say the opposite is true. Now they are saying evolution is NOT about diversity and change, evolution is all about lack of diversity and lack of change.

Sex is not about promoting genetic variation, researchers argue

"Heng and fellow researcher Root Gorelick, Ph.D., associate professor at Carleton University in Canada, propose that although diversity may result from a combination of genes, the primary function of sex is not about promoting diversity. Rather, it's about keeping the genome context -- an organism's complete collection of genes arranged by chromosome composition and topology -- as unchanged as possible, thereby maintaining a species' identity. This surprising analysis has been published as a cover article in a recent issue of the journal Evolution."

 

[Jade Margery]

Great response right there. Why are there so many traits which we consider negative but also lead to greater survival rates? Greed is a good example. The people in this world that have the most opportunity to find any mate and make lots of babies are the ones that are very wealthy and take more than they give. The kings and lords of the past often had multiple wives or mistresses and fathered many, many children and yet they were quite greedy which is seen largely as a vice and not a virtue.

We label a trait a 'vice' because when someone else has it, it lowers our chance for survival. It's the heart of hypocrisy really, do as I say but not as I do. Being greedy helps you survive, but so does convincing other people not to be greedy, because then maybe they will share with you. This is the sort of thing that gets enshrined in culture, as Roach pointed out. Different cultures have different ideas of what 'bad' behavior is. Greed is, as far as I know, universal, but other sins definitely aren't--Lust, for instance. There are several cultures that do not view lust as a bad thing because they don't see anything wrong or shameful about having sex, even with people you are not married to. (Although your spouse, if you have one, may be less than pleased, it is not on the same level as the response you get in a culture that has puritanical roots like ours.)

The lord or king with all the wives and mistresses may have been biologically successful because of his greed, but he likely also created a lot of resentment and anger in those who had less than him, which might have eventually lead to his overthrow and death to him and to all his children, meaning biological failure. (It happens pretty frequently like that in history actually.) But the point is that just because lots of people or a culture calls a behavior wrong, that doesn't mean the behavior is biologically wrong. It's only biologically wrong if it leads to the end of your genetic line. And when I say wrong, I don't mean in a good/bad sense, I mean in a works/broken sense.

Evolution and natural selection don't create perfect creatures that fit exactly into their niche in the puzzle of life and society. We're a tattered mess of tiny variations, an allele here, a protein there, some a little greedier, some a little smarter, some a little more fragile, with bits and pieces of useless junk DNA along for the ride. We're not masterfully designed and engineered, we're assembled in a metaphorical garage with whatever can be scrounged just so long as it works.

Which is, in the end, all that really matters. Does it work? Do we survive long enough to have kids? Do -they- survive long enough to have kids? If the answers are yes all the way down, then we're a (biological) success.



And Jazer? I'm updating your status from 'annoying' to 'adorable'. *pat pat*

 

[cupid dave]

I don't understand how natural selection can on the one hand bring about people who are inherently selfish and want to propagate their genes and on the other hand bring about people that are altruistic and helpful because this also in the long term propagates their genes and the species.

Neither did the prophets understand how.

How can men born with the original trait for self centeredness ever survive, long term, as a social animal?
Uless they would at some point accept The Truth, that love for one another is the only way to live their life with the welfare of the species in mind.

 

[roach]

Often after saying something for 100 years then all of a sudden they will say the opposite is true. Now they are saying evolution is NOT about diversity and change, evolution is all about lack of diversity and lack of change.

Sex is not about promoting genetic variation, researchers argue

"Heng and fellow researcher Root Gorelick, Ph.D., associate professor at Carleton University in Canada, propose that although diversity may result from a combination of genes, the primary function of sex is not about promoting diversity. Rather, it's about keeping the genome context -- an organism's complete collection of genes arranged by chromosome composition and topology -- as unchanged as possible, thereby maintaining a species' identity. This surprising analysis has been published as a cover article in a recent issue of the journal Evolution."

You're trying to say ...what?

While I understand you like to pick and choose from science whatever happens to fit your narrow world view (i.e. Shroeder, et al), science is not some thing that arrogates to the world that it is always right about everything, unlike every religion. Trying to point out where science has made errors is the basis of it's utility and predictive power. Quoting scientists about things you don't understand and crying "science always contradicts itself" doesn't add weight to your argument.

Wish I had the time and inclination to argue against such uncritical thinking...

 

[RickG]

What the theory of evolution actually states and what most Christians think it is are usually two different concepts. Unfortunately, too few Christians are willing to investigate the former with an open mind. Another unfortunate aspect between to two is the tendency to condemn one another rather than educate and understand one another.

 

[cupid dave]

What the theory of evolution actually states and what most Christians think it is are usually two different concepts. Unfortunately, too few Christians are willing to investigate the former with an open mind. Another unfortunate aspect between to two is the tendency to condemn one another rather than educate and understand one another.

What the BOOK OF GENESIS actually states and what most scientists think it says are usually two different concepts.

Unfortunately, too few SCIENTISTS are willing to investigate the former with an open mind.
Another unfortunate aspect between to two is the tendency to condemn one another rather than educate and understand one another.



FOR INSTANCE:

If they would:

It is clear that the Universe DID have a beginning, 13.5 billion years ago.
(Gen 1:1)

There were seven long Cosmic "days" since that Big Bang, which we call the seven cosmic/geological Eras.

A Cosmic Dark Age did precede that advent of let there be light to flood the cosmos.
(Gen 1:3-5)

There was one ocean, once, where all the waters had been collected together.
(Gen 1:9)

Pangea/Rodinia did actually confirm that the dry land appeared surrounded totally by water.
(Gen 1:10)

The Plant kingdom did establish itself before the Animal kingdom.
(Gen 1:11)

Man WAS the last step in the evolution of Dominant Life on earth.
(Gen 1:27)

 

[Naraoia]

Often after saying something for 100 years then all of a sudden they will say the opposite is true. Now they are saying evolution is NOT about diversity and change, evolution is all about lack of diversity and lack of change.

Sex is not about promoting genetic variation, researchers argue

(1) Sex =/= evolution.
(2) Evolution has never been about "diversity and change". It explains diversity and change, but at its heart, it's simply about reproduction. If having diverse offspring makes you more successful, that's what selection will favour. If having offspring exactly like you makes you more successful, then that's what evolves. (As always: context, context.)
(3) There has never ever been a consensus on the evolutionary advantage of sex, that I know of. Why sex evolved in the first place, and why so much of life engages in some form of it, are among the greatest unsolved questions in evolutionary biology.

FWIW, the abstract of that paper sounds a little suspicious to me. At the very least, it seems to be talking about a different level of evolution from the whole "sex is good for diversity" idea. Sex = diversity people don't care about major mutations or major change. Systems like this merely require the existence of frequency-dependent selection on ordinary allelic variation. Therefore, to use genome rearrangements as a counterpoint is pretty much attacking a strawman.

In case you care about a long-winded and occasionally technical tangent, here's some hastily assembled small print:

Some not-so-quick thoughts on the paper itself follow... (Mind you, my reading of it was rather quick, so I might just have garbled it completely )

(Since the rest of this is mainly poking holes, I just want to state that I find the basic idea that sex might constrain variation as well as enhance it very interesting, something I hadn't thought of before. This could have been a really cool article... though in the end I didn't think it was.)

The main text misrepresents this, by tacitly implying that bdelloid rotifers are typical asexual organisms, when the cited chapter actually discusses their weirdness. They also seem to misrepresent this chapter of the same book. They cite it as evidence that asexuals have as much genetic variation as sexuals, but the chapter in fact talks about an asexual plant with a complex history and possibly a regular input of genetic variation from its sexual ancestor. (And also, about allele divergence within individuals, whereas the variation that, say, the Red Queen explanation of sex depends on is between individuals.)

I totally didn't get how punctuated equilibria are supposed to demonstrate the slowing effect of sex. First, to my knowledge PE is not a universal phenomenon. Second, some of the most morphologically and ecologically conservative organisms on earth (i.e. bacteria) are not sexual in the sense the paper uses the word. Third, most truly asexual lineages (such as obligately parthenogenetic lizards) don't seem to survive long enough to compare to sexual lineages on palaeontological scales. (This review argues that the average asexual lineage is older than usually assumed, but "older" is still only on the order of a million years - using maximum age estimates for each lineage considered, where that maximum is sometimes two orders of magnitude higher than the minimum estimate.) And, of course, you usually can't tell whether a fossil belongs to a sexual or an asexual organism. So what are they comparing to what again?

I also don't quite understand the cancer analogy. I mean... all the rampant diversity in cancer genomes occurs because DNA repair is screwed. How is that relevant to any contrast between sexual and asexual populations, seeing as asexual organisms - and non-cancerous somatic cells - can repair their DNA just fine? Maybe I read this too fast?

Also also, the gist of their hypothesis seems to be that sex slows evolution by discarding large-scale mutations that wouldn't be selected out in an asexual organism. I have two issues with that.

(1) This category of mutations is basically limited to chromosomal translocations and whole genome duplications, because only these create problems specifically related to meiosis and/or fertilisation. Whole genome duplications are probably a significant evolutionary force, I'll give them that. I don't know much about translocations. For other types of rearrangements - inversions, duplications, transposon jumps - the likelihood of being deleterious or beneficial just doesn't seem connected to mode of reproduction in any way.

(2) "Macroevolution", whatever they mean by it, does not depend on major mutations. (For a couple of small mutations with big implications, meet the mutant Hox gene that made pregnancy possible, and the reason for naked sticklebacks.)

Overall, I thought actual population genetic data on variation of any kind (except for cancer karyotypes and the plant study of questionable relevance) is sadly missing from this argument. So is a good discussion of why limiting variation would allow sex to outcompete asexuality as it seems to do over and over again. I thought they were out to explain sex. "Maintaining a species' identity" is a handwave, not a plausible evolutionary advantage.

***

Huh. Apologies for the tl;dr. This thing managed to suck me in somehow

 

[Jade Margery]

What the theory of evolution actually states and what most Christians think it is are usually two different concepts. Unfortunately, too few Christians are willing to investigate the former with an open mind. Another unfortunate aspect between to two is the tendency to condemn one another rather than educate and understand one another.

I would say 'What the theory of evolution actually states and what most creationists think it is..."

After all, there are many scientists who are also Christians, as well as many regular Christians who accept the theory for its own merits and have modified their religious beliefs accordingly.

 

[cupid dave]

I would say 'What the theory of evolution actually states and what most creationists think it is..."

After all, there are many scientists who are also Christians, as well as many regular Christians who accept the theory for its own merits and have modified their religious beliefs accordingly.

Actually, a close reading of Genesis does ot oppose anything Scinece says.
And, as far as BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION... Henesis agrees that the Plant Kingdom came befoe the Animal kingdom.

Both science and genesis agree on the first life coming about by some sort of Spontaneous Generation.

 

[Jade Margery]

Actually, a close reading of Genesis does ot oppose anything Scinece says.
And, as far as BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION... Henesis agrees that the Plant Kingdom came befoe the Animal kingdom.

Both science and genesis agree on the first life coming about by some sort of Spontaneous Generation.

Look, if that's how you want to reconcile your religion with the facts, that's fine. Really. I don't want to discourage you from not opposing science, because frankly we need more people to think like you do.

But. Arrgh. I just can't help myself.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

THE STARS DIDN'T COME AFTER THE EARTH. THERE WAS NO LIGHT ON EARTH BEFORE THE SUN. THERE WAS NO EARTH BEFORE THE SUN. AAAARGH ATHEIST RANT.

Okay I'm done now.

 

[roach]

Actually, a close reading of Genesis does ot oppose anything Scinece says.
And, as far as BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION... Henesis agrees that the Plant Kingdom came befoe the Animal kingdom.

Both science and genesis agree on the first life coming about by some sort of Spontaneous Generation.

Another Schroeder-ite, great... It's time to move on