The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), not a religious man and no defender of any type of creationism, wrote a book Darwinian Fairytales (Avebury Press, 1995), which seems to be part of the Avebury Series in Philosophy, that shows clearly why the principal neo-Darwinian concepts of kin selection and inclusive fitness simply do not conform to the available evidence - certainly not for humans, and probably not for many other life forms. This series of blogs briefly introduces the topics covered in the 11 chapters of the book, with some other links, as available. This is a brief comment on Chapter 8 of 11, "'He Ain't heavy, He's My Brother' or Altruism and Shared Genes.")

Stove introduces the basic sociobiological belief that generally, how altruistic (unselfish) an organism is toward another of the same species depends on the proportion of genes they share. This is part of the theory of kin selection or inclusive fitness — inclusive means that you will care about someone according to how many genes you share. Altruism has always been a problem for Darwinism.

Stove has little sympathy with the Darwinists on this point for, as he says, "The problem is evidently a self-inflicted injury, and as such deserves no sympathy. ... If you don't believe the theory that conspecifics [members of the same species] are always struggling for life with one another, where is the problem in the fact that altruism survives? There is none." But the Darwinists did believe that there was a problem with why altruism survives, and therefore they had to come up with a theory that explained why some creatures sacrifice themselves for others.

Now the mid-twentieth century kin selection theory sounded plausible when explaining the behavior of social insects, which feature a rare genetic situation in which the workers are actually more closely related to each other than they are to their own mother, the queen. But how well does it explain animal behavior generally, let alone human behavior?

According to the theory, bacteria, which reproduce by simple fission and share their genes should be filled with altruism toward each other, and so should plants and insects that boost their numbers by reproducing parthenogenetically (p.144). Yet neither the petri dish nor the roadside demonstrate any such thing.

For that matter, identical twins, however emotionally close, do not consider their interests identical (pp. 146– 47), but inclusive fitness would suggest that they should. If anyone wonders about this, a simple test would be to watch what happens when an identical twin steals her sister's boyfriend. The most altruism you are likely to get from the bereft twin is, "Well, honestly, I would have shot her, but Mom would be devastated ... " It's hard to imagine that matters are much different among twins in the animal world where what mother might think would hardly figure.

Not surprisingly, Stove provides many reasons to doubt the theory of kin selection, but there is no reason to list them here. Anyone who observes families in the immediate neighborhood can generate their own objections with little trouble. Stove does propose an interesting thought experiment, however.

Suppose one day, at maternity hospitals, there is a massive baby switch. Groggy women recovering from anaesthetic are given a bundle and told it's theirs. The size, sex and skin colour arouse no suspicion.

Now what? If the kin selection theory is correct,

"Every one of those babies, consequently, is going to feel the effects of a total absence of parental altruism toward it. There is going to be, in fact, a simultaneous world wide disappearance of parental altruism. Infant mortality is going to undergo an enormous and inexplicable increase, etc., etc." (p. 148)

As Stove points out, the fact that no one thinks that anything of the kind will really happen is not as significant as the fact that, if kin selection theory is really thought to be true, very many people ought to think it will happen. Yet the theory's supporters apparently do not believe it either.

For what it is worth, even among many animal species such as cats , nursing mothers can be got to accept offspring not their own, if the nursling is slipped in unobtrusively. If a cat really knows that the new kitten is not hers, she gives no sign. Bereft cats have been known to steal kittens from other, luckier cats. Similarly, jealous chimpanzees will steal babies from other females, a fact that even Dawkins admits. And the cuckoo's and cowbird's trick of getting other species of she-bird to raise their eggs depends precisely on the fact that birds do not seem to know who their kin are.

In a humorous passage, Stove asks us to consider the plight of the cock robin, whose territory is invaded by a rival. Even assuming that the cock robin knew that the intruder was his nestmate, what use is he to make of the information?:

A robin defending his territory is an extremely busy man, and he is not running a charity either. ... Even if he is as altruistically disposed to the bum as the shared genes theory says he must be, he cannot get him a paid job, or find him a wife who works or is rich. What can he do about the situation at all? Nothing whatever.

Thus, shared genes or not, the cock robin must simply drive the intruder out, just as if they were not closely related at all. (p. 152)

The real question, of course, is why Darwinian biologists believe a theory that must so obviously be false. Stove offers an explanation:

Scientists sometimes (as is well known) continue to work with a theory which they themselves know is false. Laymen, when they hear of such a case, are apt to be audibly critical of the scientists' conduct; but of course they have no better theory to suggest, and the only result is, that the scientists grow angry and impatient with their lay critics. But these features of scientists' behaviour are not ones which deserve esteem, and still less, imitation. They are departures from rational behavior, not forms of it. They arise only because professional scientists, without the guidance of some theory, however unsatisfactory, do not know what to do with themselves.

He sums up,

A rational interest in science, as distinct from a professional one, is an interest in what is true, or probably true, or probably close to the truth: in that, and in nothing else. If a scientific theory is certainly not even near the truth, then, whatever attractions it may have for scientists, it is of no interest to a person who is simply trying to have rational beliefs and no others.

But today, the lay person may well find that Darwinism is by law established, much as if it were an established church, even if it is contradicted by common experience available to anyone.

Chapter 9: "A New Religion", he discusses the ways in which Darwinian sociobiology's selfish gene must be understood as a new religion, featuring powers greater than ourselves.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), not a religious man and no defender of any type of creationism, wrote a book Darwinian Fairytales (Avebury Press, 1995), which is part of the Avebury Series in Philosophy, that shows clearly why the principal neo-Darwinian concepts of kin selection and inclusive fitness simply do not conform to the available evidence - certainly not for humans, and probably not for many other life forms. This series of blogs briefly introduces the topics covered in the 11 chapters of the book, with some other links, as available. This is a brief comment on Chapter 9 of 11, "A New Religion.")

Selfish gene theory (your behavior is ultimately controlled by your genes, which get you to copy them by producing offspring) is certainly the best-known neo-Darwinian theory today, spawning scads of adulation for Dawkins and an amazing amount of nonsense. Stove here introduces the point that began to function more or less like a religion, , a point he will develop further in Chapter 10.

One problem is that, while sociobiologists (adherents of selfish gene theory) claim on the one hand that genes are not really selfish or consciousness or purposeful, they write as though they in fact are. For example, Dawkins informs us (in The Extended Phenotype ) that when the cuckoo lays its egg in the nest of a reed warbler, the cuckoo's genes are manipulating the reed warbler's genes, to the cuckoo's advantage. But manipulation implies intelligence and purpose (though causation as such does not necessarily imply that.

And what are we to make of the cleverness of the cuckoo's genes in such a case? Stove writes,

If the nest parasitism of cuckoos is a case of manipulation, it is certainly a staggeringly clever one: far too clever for cuckoos, in particular, to be capable of. Can a cuckoo have a purpose as complicated as that of getting a reed warbler to feed a cuckoo nestling better than it fees its own young? That must be extremely doubtful. Still, let us suppose that a cuckoo is clever enough for that. He would need to be cleverer still, to be able to think up a way of achieving this purpose. In particular, could he think up a way of achieving it which did not involve any cuckoo's every going even within a mile of a reed warbler? No: there is no one who will credit cuckoos with so great an intellectual feat. (p. 173)

Here we are talking about a bird that cannot even build a nest. In sum, for Dawkins's idea to work, the cuckoo's genes must be not only smarter than the cuckoo itself, but probably smarter than most human beings, which raises certain problems. They must then be the equivalent of pagan immortal gods.

Not surprisingly, Dawkins attributes immortality to the genes (p. 174), which Stove suggests, provides a clue: Yes, this is a religion. Now, Stove has not much time for any religion, but of sociobiology in particular, he says,

Sociobiology is not incomprehensible, but it is one of the religious that are obviously false. The only part of it that is true is the doctrine that genes are invisible. But this is not something peculiar to sociobiology. Everyone agrees that genes are invisible .... (p. 175)

The problem is that genes are so unlikely to really function the way the sociobiologist needs them to that the self gene hypothesis can only be held on faith as a religion:

They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

This excerpt from Dawkins gives the general idea. The genes are our masters and we are the flock of their pastures and the sheep of their hand, as the BOok of Common Prayer would say, addressing a more august deity.

It is not really surprising that most people who are drawn to religion prefer traditional monotheism to this stuff.

In Chapter 10 , Stove shows how, consistent with the religious aspect of their enterprise, the Darwinians have smuggled purpose back into biology, in the form of the selfish genes, thus giving 19th century clergyman Paley, long a butt of criticism, his ultimate revenge.

(Note: This is the third of 12 posts, working backwards to the Preface. I will replace this note with links to the other chapters later, for reader convenience.)

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), not a religious man and no defender of any type of creationism, wrote a book Darwinian Fairytales (Avebury Press, 1995), which is part of the Avebury Series in Philosophy, that shows clearly why the principal neo-Darwinian concepts of kin selection and inclusive fitness simply do not conform to the available evidence - certainly not for humans, and probably not for many other life forms. This series of blogs briefly introduces the topics covered in the 11 chapters of the book, with some other links, as available. This is a brief comment on Chapter 10 of 11, "Paley's Revenge or Purpose Regained.")

Essentially, Stove shows, selfish gene theory smuggled purpose back into biology, only now it is a gene, not a god that has a purpose, to replicate itself. He explains how the god-like "selfish gene" entered Darwinian theory in the first place. Why was it so important?

While the major theoretical work on the idea of the gene that selfishly perpetuates itself was done by George C. Williams ( Adaptation and Natural Selection, 1966), the idea was popularized by Richard Dawkins, a far more interesting writer, in The Selfish Gene (1976).

The problem, of course, is that everywhere in biology we see apparent purpose: Caterpillars that look like bird droppings, praying mantises that look like fallen pink petals, plants that trap insects and eat them. The source of the purpose is unlikely to be the plant or animal's own unintelligent ancestors, or the human observer - and for philosophical reasons the Darwinist rejects divine purpose or cosmic law. Speaking of a spider that mimics a bird dropping, Stove remarks,

The intelligence displayed in this case probably exceeds human intelligence, and certainly exceeds the intelligence of spiders or their ancestors; and the engineering ability displayed enormously exceeds human ability, which in turn far exceeds the engineering ability of any other animals. (p. 181)

Most people prior to Darwin (1859) had simply shrugged and attributed the purpose to divine design, whether or not they were religious believers, let alone churchgoers, in any usual sense.

Darwin famously proposed that a long, slow series of adaptations could result in such enormous changes. And he carried the day because he eliminated the element of divine purpose at a time when many people dearly wanted that. But - and this is what you will not hear from the Darwinist - he did not in fact solve the problem.

As many have pointed out, looking only one per cent like a bird dropping will not save a caterpillar from a hungry bird. Probably not even five percent or ten. Some purpose working behind the scenes is required to sustain major projects over the long periods in which they do not appear to pay.

That's where the selfish gene comes in. It attempts to get itself replicated in as many descendants as possible. It will persist through many iterations until it succeeds, and is thus capable of these apparently miraculous transformations.

As Stove remarks, referring to William Paley, a nineteenth-century clergyman who insisted that nature showed divine purpose,

Thus has Paley had his long delayed revenge on Darwinism. For more than a hundred years, the proudest boast of Darwinians had been, that they had at last complied with Bacon's famous injunction, and expelled 'final causes from their science. Paley was remembered, when he was remembered at all, only as the most atrocious of all offenders against that injunction. And yet we find, in the last third of the 20th century, many Darwinians of the highest reputation ascribing adaptation to the purposive activity of beings which possess more than human intelligence and power. This is certainly a sufficiently remarkable historical comeback; een if Paley redivivus has had to settle, (as I said), for plural and immoral divinities. (p. 186)

Stove shows that Darwinians often use language to describe the activity of genes (plural and immoral divinities) that implies that they have a sense of purpose (pp. 184–86). Darwinists deny that they "really" mean purpose, of course. Dawkins writes, "Natural selection ... has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all."

But the problem is no one believes that abstractions such as "natural selection" or "artificial selection " or "warfare" have purpose. To deny that abstract entities have purposes is to deny what no one has ever maintained.

Concrete existences do have purpose, however. Are genes such existences or not? Stove reminds us that consciousness is not needed for purpose. Indeed, an ant can intentionally sting you, but we need not suppose that the ant is conscious. A pitcher plant traps bugs for the purpose of eating them, but the plant is certainly not conscious. Genes are not even whole organisms, like plants, they are merely nucleotides strung together inside the nucleus of a cell. So then we must ask, does Dawkins really attribute purpose to genes or doesn't he?

He says no, but Stoves notes,

... for every once that Dawkins says that genes are not purposive, he says a hundred things, (many of which I have quoted), which imply that genes are /em> purposive. And that Williams, likewise, says countless things which imply that genes are purposive, although he doubtless believes (while never actually saying) that they are not. If the writer of a book says a certain thing twice or once or never, but implies the opposite over and over again throughout his book, a rational reader will take it that the writer's real opinion is the one which he constantly implies; not the other one. (p. 187)

The basic problem is that Dawkins and Williams before him never address a central confusion between the language of description of what genes do and the language of purpose, which makes them into plural and immoral gods.

The central question is: Can genes indeed superintend a project that transforms a caterpillar into a living likeness of a bird dropping if they do not have purpose, and if they do have purpose, how do they have it? It is no use protesting that they only appear to have purpose. Stove suggests that the Darwinists owe the world a translation manual (p. 190).

Essentially, Stove puts his finger on the problem: Darwinism has an unpaid teleological debt (a debt regarding purpose), even since Darwin was hailed as banishing purpose, when he didn't really do so.

they never paid this debt: they have in fact become progressively less conscious, with time, of the fact that they owe this debt. This is a natural failing, of course, in people with debts which have remained unpaid for a long time. But it is not the less, on that account, an inexcusable failing. (p. 191)

In other words, in attempting to explain complex adaptations, Darwinism transferred purpose from an unselfish God to selfish genes, without giving any clear account of how or why genes should do all that Darwinists need them to do. Nor have Darwinists ever demonstrated that they actually do.

Stove shows that if Darwinists were prevented from smuggling teleological language into their descriptions of the activity of genes, they would not be able to demonstrate that genes ever even "try" to get themselves replicated at all. How could they? They are rows of molecules, not mail order brides.

Because he is not a religious believer, philosopher Stove does not write with the intention of substituting a more conventional theistic explanation for the Darwinian religion of the selfish gene (he describes it as such). He is content to point out that it is a religion, which transfers the debt of purpose to the gene. Indeed, the religious character of Darwinism has often been remarked on by other sources. Dawkins has famously said that Darwinism made him feel fulfilled fulfilled as an atheist.

That's as may be, but forcing it on the public as the only acceptable explanation for a variety of puzzling life forms is increasingly, and very understandably, controversial.

In Chapter 11 , Stove addresses Darwinism and human nature.

(Note: This is the second of 12 posts, working backward to the Preface. I will later replace this note with links to the other chapters, for reader convenience.)

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994), not a religious man and no defender of any type of creationism, wrote a book Darwinian Fairytales (Avebury Press, 1995), part of the Avebury Series in Philosophy, that shows clearly why the principal neo-Darwinian concepts of kin selection and inclusive fitness simply do not conform to the available evidence - certainly not for humans, and probably not for many other life forms. This series of blogs briefly introduces some key topics covered in the 11 chapters of the book, with some other links, as available. This is a brief comment on Chapter 11 of 11, "Errors of Heredity or The Irrelevance of Darwinism to Human Life.")

In the eleventh and last chapter, Stove addresses the fact that, from a Darwinian perspective, humans must be a biological error. "A biological error, or error of heredity, is an organism which does not have as many descendants as it could have. or a characteristic of an organism witch prevents it having as many descendants as it otherwise could." (p. 212)

Now, he reasons, among plants or cockroaches, there is no biological error. They do not fail to have as many descendants as they can. Yet humans routinely do so, for a number of reasons, ranging from natural or voluntary celibacy through lifestyle choices that reduce fertility through heroic self-sacrifice.

Stove quotes major Darwinians on human biological errors: Darlington on celibacy, Wilson on failing to kill your enemies, Dawkins on adoption, and Fisher on heroic self-sacrifice. Stove is particularly hard on Fisher, who remarks, amazingly,

The hero is one fitted constitutionally to encounter danger; he therefore exercises a certain inevitable authority in hazardous enterprises, for men will only readily follow one who gives them some hope of success. Hazardous enterprises, however, are not a necessity save for the men who, as enemies or leaders, make them so, and the high esteem in which tradition surrounds certain forms of definite imprudence cannot be ascribed to any just appreciation of the chances of success. (pp. 215–16)

In Fisher's world, there is no need for self-sacrifice, not even on 9-11. But heroes do apparently insist on coming along and making trouble. I wonder what he would have made of the two young men who jumped into the pit of the Toronto subway in 2005, to pull out an older woman who had fainted? In what sense can we say that their "hazardous enterprise" was unnecessary? Dangerous, yes, and not at all likely to improve their chances of leaving descendants. Transit officials perform their duty, of course, when they counsel riders against such heroism. But very few of us would admire the young men more for taking the officials' advice.

As Stove points out, Fisher is living in a different mental space from most human beings on this point. Most of us, even if we accept religious teachings against artificial contraception, have never attempted to maximize the number of our descendants.

Now, Stove's key point - and if you grew up with Darwinism, you may miss it at first - is that humans cannot, by definition, be biological errors. A state of existence can neither be true nor false. It simply is or isn't. If human behavior is not what the Darwinians make it out to be, the reason is that the Darwinians are wrong.

But, he notes, that is not what Darwinians conclude. Rather,

"Wherever Darwinism is in error, Darwinians simply call the organisms in question or their characteristics, an error! Wherever there is manifestly something wrong with their theory they say that there is something wrong with the organisms. ..." (p 220)

Or, they simply deny the facts and assert a contrary propositions. For example, a respected sociobiologist, R.D. ALexander, wrote in 1979, " ... we are programmed to use all our effort, and in fact to use our lives, in reproduction." (p. 221)

Stove responds,

This is one of those statements which are so breathtakingly false, that initially their only effect on the reader or hearer is to produce stupefaction. One can at best only gasp out something like, "Well, in that case, the programme isn't working and never has worked."

Of course, another possibility would be for the Darwinian to exempt humans from his discussion of natural selection, as - whatever may be the case with other life forms - his theory definitely does not describe the behavior of humans. But that is precisely what he would never want to do. The principle Darwinian project has always been to include include humans in the grand theory.

I hope it will be clear to the reader that my account of Stove's critique of the Darwinist account of human nature (and many points of animal nature) leaves out much very informative material, incisive arguments, and entertaining digressions that readers can enjoy at their leisure.

One thing his account certainly clarifies for me is why Darwinists today need to entrench their theory in school systems, contrary to public opinion. They must get students to accept it implicitly and uncritically, because it will not withstand common-sense criticism such as Stove supplies. The child must learn that Darwinism is absolutely true and accepted by all scientists before he learns that most adults do not embrace parenthood nearly as readily as a child assumes - before he learns, for example, about the rapidly growing demographic crisis of low birth rates . That way, he won't be tempted to blurt out embarrassing questions in biology class, with the devil to pay later.

On the other hand ... the willingness to think clearly cannot be so easily suppressed as the Darwinist supposes. In the end, Stoves main achievement in Darwinian Fairytales is to show that the theory was always conceptually flawed in important ways. Its status as an ideology is its best protection.

(Note: This is the first of 12 posts, working backwards to the Preface. I will replace this note with links to the other chapters, for reader convenience.)

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).