November 19, 2004

• Yes, because "creationism" is an dominant, immutable, inherited trait. I believe that further research into this area will reveal that creationists and atheists are in fact two seperate species, who diverged from a common ancestor around 13 million years ago and have not interbred since. It certainly cannot be the case that any secular individuals today had religious parents - how would that work? In much the same way, it's good to note that he provides further evidence that Europe has passed the point of no return, and will inevitably become a Muslim empire over the course of the coming decades. Many good and noble people have been advancing this thesis on this side of the Atlantic, and it's pleasing to note support for their position from their natural allies in American progressive circles. I believe now that our only hope is to form a breakaway colony on the moon, where we will teach people the principles of Darwinian evolution every bit as well as this gentleman has been taught them.
• EvolutionFilter: It's Raining Men
• Always with you breeders, breeding everywhere.
• Alex, you do realise that only the homosexual agenda can save us now? You must work tirelessly to convert, convert, convert! Get them at an impressionable age, promote the lifestyle through every educational and media channel available, and maybe this catastrophe can be averted... We're all counting on you.
• If we assume a person's mindset is only a matter of lineage, we've lost the Enlightenment right there.
• also, what flashboy said. Although I should point out that, based my previous dating experiences with those devout enough to be creationists, breeding with them is alot tougher than with fellow evolutionists.
• Well, the case could also be made that the capacity for rational thought is somewhat genetic, as is intelligence (and not to stereotype too much, but anyone who thinks the world's 6000 years old needs a bit more of that). So even though we have regression toward the mean, that's not good enough. This is why I'm donating bunches of eggs.
• It's not that it's inherited; it's that it's ingrained. Assuming that those pumping out the kids are also raising them and making an effort to indoctrinate them. Any group that aggressively converts others is going to grow. Children are an easy sell. Wanna catch up? Convince people. Anyone. okay, out of Ms. Obvious mode now.
• We're all counting on you. I'm doing what I can, flashboy. Join in anytime.
• Yes, because "creationism" is an dominant, immutable, inherited trait C'mon, DNA is not the only thing we pass along to our children. Being indoctrinated with certain "facts" during your upbringing is going to have a profound impact on what you believe as an adult. If one of my kids were taken and raised in the home of an evangelical Christian, I wouldn't be counting on their "California" gene to kick in at some point and for them to start questioning what they've taught their whole life.
• oops, ... what they've been taught ...
• I suspected as much when my atheist husband and myself chose not to be parents. Last week I saw a program on A & E titled something on the order of "14 Children...And She's Pregnant Again!" Yes, they were fundamentalist Christians. But in the broader sense, wither critical thinking? Question the Bible, question whether there are 'weapons of mass destruction', question everything. Our lives depend on it, and so do your liberties.
• If there are breakthroughs in embryonic stem cell treatments for various lifethreatening diseases, fundmentalists will have to decline their benefits on moral grounds. That alone could even the score.
• Its that old catch 22, people who believe in evolution believe in birth control as well
• If we assume a person's mindset is only a matter of lineage, we've lost the Enlightenment right there. Some say (reprinted NYTimes piece) it's gone already.
• I wonder if there are any studies to show how much of an effect childhood indoctrination has on one's long-term religious ideology, and whether the effect is what you'd expect. Anyone know of any?
• Being indoctrinated with certain "facts" during your upbringing is going to have a profound impact on what you believe as an adult. Yeah -- if my parents hadn't been fundamentalist Christians, I wouldn't have been able to throw it all away and become an atheist.
• Savannah: Your argument of "our lives depend on it" runs up against the Christian "our reward will be in heaven" thingy. Just pretend I phrased that better, please.
• Look, it'll take one heck of alot of fundamentalists to really make things awful here in the states. Sure it's much worse than it could be, and things ain't lookin up if you happen to be a secular humanist, or god forbid, gay. But, if and when that time comes I'll be outta here. Not to godwin the thread, but take a look at Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr. Smart, creative, innovative people tend not to stick around oppressive societies. Go into your local Biotech research lab. I beg of you. Talk to some of the people about their beleifs. try and get a good, large, random sample. Compare and contrast with your local baptist or fundamentalist church. Think about how the bio people would fare if the world was run by the fundies. I personally want a cure for cancer and aids. but hey, if we don't make it here in the states, I won't be all that surprised. Brain Drain is a significant issue. I hope the fundies realize that. Jesus, i think, isn't going to multiply the flu vaccines this year.
• a22lamia: strange that people who don't beleive in evolution also don't beleive that their remote control is magical, or that somehow there are little gremlins who make their cars run. I wish people who don't like science would stop using all those things that are made possible by science. Like the amish. Heck they are a perfect model for fundamentalism, in fact, i think they are fundamentalism done right. Non-hypocritical religious fundamentalism. I you really believe in the myths of a 2000 year old agrarian culture, well then dammit, live like it. Gerund, you are the exception. Congradulations. I did much the same with my folks. The issue at hand here is when you take populations as a whole who happen to believe X, their children are significantly more likely to believe X. Just te way the world works. There is a good reason that I don't speak polish, and my friends whose parents are polish, and who grew up in a heavily polish neighborhood do speak polish.
• But is gerund an exception? Are you and I, too? I'd be interested to see some research on it, if it exists.
• Gallup's New Evolution Poll
• Yes, people can pass their beliefs on to their children. It's not a process with any high level of fidelity, which is how, y'know, progress happens. And it's not a direct analogy for biological evolution. This guy is taking a biological trait (higher reproductive rate - for which he presents no evidence, incidentally, but we'll let that slide), and casually applying it to something that lies in the vague are of "memes", which do not operate in the same way. Darwinian natural selction is not a fucking metaphor. It's an algorithmic biological process. People supposedly on the side of reason, rigour and science would hopefully appreciate that. Furthermore, a person on the side of reason, science and left-wing progressive thought would hopefully pause for a second or two before off-handedly making arguments that - when applied to another continent, as he explicitly does - are right from the top of the hymnsheet of the most extreme, vicious right-wingers. Regrowth of religion in the western world? Perhaps. I don't rule it out. Tell you what, go off and collect some demographic data that shows a year-on-year growth in self-defined devout religious believers for a decade or two, and we'll have this conversation in a ten years time, okay? Until then, I hope you'll forgive me if I file this under "Daft over-reactions to the 2004 election #4736".
• There's an "area" that's become an "are" somewhere in that lot.
• Now I understand why I was an only child! And I had only one child. And she and her husband are happy with their cats and dog. It's my father's fault. He didn't believe. /Mother only used religious belief when the circumstances showed it to be of personal benefit. I'm not sure how to quantify that.
• I personally want a cure for cancer and aids. but hey, if we don't make it here in the states, I won't be all that surprised. Start investing in foreign stem-cell research companies. Somebody's going to run with this, and too bad it won't be us.
• Kids Against Creationism
• flashboy, you're wildly far off the mark. 1 - This guy's argument can be made without any reference to memetics whatsoever. His point isn't that creationism *itself* is a successful replicator, it's that believing in creationism *makes one* a more successful replicator in our current environment. There's a huge difference between the two arguments; the latter is entirely explainable in terms of ordinary natural selection, and would predict that we would see more creationism in society than less. What's so contentious about that? 2 - Even if he were saying something about memetics (which isn't clear aside from the one "Cultures evolve as well as species" quote, and he could have just been using that as a metaphor), you're dismissing memetics for incorrect reasons. There's a remarkable degree of fidelity in concept transmission - how in the world could we understand anything from previous generations otherwise? The *only* person who has even come close to arguing otherwise is Dan Sperber, and Daniel Dennett has done an excellent job of dismantling his objections. There are reasons to be wary of memes, but citing lack of fidelity in cultural transmission is not going to do the job without some sort of argument that has yet to be given. If you want to try, be my guest. Moreover, natural selection is a biological process, it's true... but Darwin's great achievement was to identify an algorithm that is substrate neutral. There's no need to limit it to biology - wherever replication, variation, and selection occur, there it is. We're already doing great things with it in computer learning, and there's no biology at work there.
• This is nothing new. I brought it up in a college Sociology class in 1974 and got a grudging agreement from a rather conservative professor. Growth of the "secular liberals" and other such groups has always been dependent upon getting converts from the more religious "breeders".
• homunculus - that link was great. Very heartwarming. Especially considering that when I was in high school, we had a walkout in protest of the previous war in Iraq, and I didn't feel informed enough to participate. I'm glad these kids are more on the ball than I was.
• If creationists have a tendency to proliferate faster than evolutionists in a given population, it's a bit of a mystery how evolutionism has gone from a small minority belief to the view of the overwhelming majority pretty well everywhere over the last couple of centuries.
• This guy's argument can be made without any reference to memetics whatsoever. His point isn't that creationism *itself* is a successful replicator, it's that believing in creationism *makes one* a more successful replicator in our current environment. There's a huge difference between the two arguments; the latter is entirely explainable in terms of ordinary natural selection, and would predict that we would see more creationism in society than less. What's so contentious about that? Which brings us right back to the whole "creationism isn't a biologically inherited trait" thing. Yes (well, maybe) creationists breed more. But there is no guarantee, not even any fixed probability, that their offspring will be creationists. So Darwinian natural selection isn't even in it. That's not contentious, surely? Darwinism is substrate neutral, for sure, but that doesn't mean one can switch substrates halfway through the argument... On your second comment, I concur up to a point (it's a few years since I read Dennett, so I may be a little shaky on the details). I possibly shouldn't have used the term memetics in my post, and my muddle seems to have made its way over into your comment. Memetics is a model for the replication of memes within populations, not a model for cultural inheritance. I don't contend that there is often a high degree of fidelity in cultural transmission (although that degree is highly variable - compare the relative fidelity of "my mum's recipe for meatloaf", "hatred of Protestants" and "fondness for the music of Barry Manilow"). But what we inherit is not fixed throughout life - anything but - and from a very young age, we go from being vessels for the units of cultural inheritance passed on by our parents, and instead become an environment for huge populations of competing memes, which swarm at us from every direction*. What we get out of that is what we attempt to pass on to our own kids. So cultural inheritance isn't Darwinian at all. It's... well, it's closer to being Lamarckian, if anything. *Having said that Darwinian evolution isn't a metaphor, that sentence was an attempt to break the world record for largest number of mixed metaphors in one simple statement.
• "Which brings us right back to the whole "creationism isn't a biologically inherited trait" thing. Yes (well, maybe) creationists breed more. But there is no guarantee, not even any fixed probability, that their offspring will be creationists." Well, I don't think it's true that there's no fixed probability that their offspring will be creationists - surely most Hindus have Hindu parents. But you're right that it's unclear exactly what position this guy is taking. He could be saying that religion is a bioligically inherited trait (probably false), he could have said that an disposiion to accept a higher power is selected for (the Baldwin effect), he could have a said we have biologically inherited traits to believe what our parents and institutions tell us (this is what Dawkins thinks), or he could have made a claim purely based on memetics. Any of these would do; perhaps there's a little truth in all of them. FWIW, I think all you need to look at is the fact there's a higher probability that kids brought up in creationist homes will become creationist than those brought up in non-creationist homes... and if a belief in creationism makes me breed more , then there's bound to be a lot of creationism. That said, it's not certainly the case that society can't undo the beliefs that parents install in their kids, so it's not a losing battle we're fighting... just a very tough one. About memes being Lamarckian - I've never quite understood the objection. Every time we recite a song in our heads, every draft of a poem we write - that's an instance of replication. It's not that there's this one democracy meme that's changing and getting shuffled around, it's that there are a whole bunch of slightly different conceptions of democracy, each one of which has slighly memetic structure. So, whenever someone slighly alters their views on democracy, it's an instance of memetic replication with mutation, not an instance of a memetic individual (democracy) gaining an environmentally acquired trait. It's much harder to think of memetics like this, and some would resist this move (Blackmore, for instance), but it seems to me to be the only workable way to think of memes (it's Dennett's position). And it avoids the Lamarckian charge.
• This thread over here has some relevant shizzle.

  The vast majority of Americans, according to polls taken in 2002, cannot be religious exclusivists. Only 18% of people surveyed in two different polls taken in 2002 said yes to “My religion is the only true religion.” Another example: In a Gallup poll taken in 1963, 65% of the sample were biblical literalists. By 2001 that figure had gone down to 21%.

  and

  ...they analyzed General Social Survey (GSS) data and found, among other things: (1) liberal churches won proportionately more members from other churches than did conservative ones, but they also lost more; (2) conservative Protestant memberships were, on average, younger than mainline memberships; and (3) conservative Protestant families had more children, on average, than did moderate and liberal ones... Conservative churches are no better now than they were fifty years ago at holding onto their young people. Instead, greater numbers of them have been switching to Roman Catholicism, to miscellaneous other religions, and to no religion. Indeed, Roof and McKinney found that "no religion" has been the big winner in game of religious switching since the 1960s, and that its "membership" is disproportionately male, well-educated, and urban-dwelling. These changes in switching patterns combine with the fertility data to explain 100 percent of the rise of conservative churches and decline of the mainline.

  So different fertility rates may account for the changing proportion of moderate/coservative church attendance, but do not appear to be conferring any Darwinian advantage within the population as a whole.
• painquale - yes, I agree with most of what you say. To clarify, I wasn't saying that memes worked on a Lamarckian basis, I was saying that cultural inheritance (parent --> child) works on that basis. As I said, memes are not a good model for cultural inheritance. To rephrase the point you make in your last paragraph: the mistake people make when thinking about memes is to incorrectly assume that, in the meme to gene analogy, our minds have the same relationship to memes as our bodies have to our genes. Which isn't the case. Our minds (or rather, the population of minds) are analogous to the environment. Just as genes build bodies to replicate within an environment, memes build thoughts to replicate within a population of minds. Or something like that. That a predispostion for initially accepting what your parents tell you is an evolutionary advantage seems very plausible; but so, it seems, is a predisposition for being able to question and alter that. "Believe your parents when young, but then try to work out if they're wrong as you grow up" would seem to be the optimum evolutionary strategy (and would also seem to tie in quite nicely to observable behaviour). The evolution of evolvability, and all that. That there might actually be a genetic trait which makes one more likely to have faith in a supreme being of some sort is an intriguing one, but my gosh, it's a tricky old argument to have... I'd thought about mentioning it, but- oh, the amount of clarification required to even get a simple sentence out! *sigh*
• Oh, and don't forget, you have to take other environmental factors into account. :-)
• The church air link you posted is pretty great! It's dangerous to be religious.... Anyway, I pretty much agree with you now - we're definitely on the same page. Most memeticists think that memes do model cultural inheritance pretty well, but it's not cultural inheritance in the standard sense. That kind of standard, casual understanding of cultural inheritance definitely is Lamarkian. I'm still undecided about memes. The main problem, I think, is that even the "experts" have yet to figure out exactly how to talk about memes in a standardized way. Like you say, it's really difficult to clarify this stuff, and everyone seems to talk past one another when it comes to human evolution that's going on right now.
• Professor beaten; attackers cite KU creationism class
• Yay "Christian" cloven-hooved pigfuckers. Loookeeeen Goood! /Freddie_Prinze
• Come on, don't you remember Leviticus, 1:9? "And thou shalt smite anyone who doesn't think the same. Hard."
• Sorry, kids -- you don't get to beat up the prof unless you've actually taken the class.
• No one would have beaten Darwin because he would have poked their eyes out with his beard.
• WorldNetDaily, apparently a fundie favorite, questions the scientific basis for professor's attack. Attaboys! Question that shit! Yeah! Go! Your Favorite Deity Sucks
• Attention Liberals: Please Breed
• To paraphrase Eliot, humankind cannot stand too much science.