Review and Rant on "Language of God"
Mar. 28th, 2007 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakI'm going to have to stop reading this book. It is making me very frustrated. Over and over there are basic mistakes of fact about biology and evolution. Being realistic I shouldn't get frustrated. It isn't like the writer would have changed his mind if he'd encountered the actual arguments instead of some sort of evangelical cliffsnotes version of the research into altruism and genetics by evolutionary psychologists.
Here is my understanding of where the research is at combined with my knowledge of bee biology from reading too many books on the subject because I used to keep them.
Bees are not genetic copies of each other. That's not why females work to defend the hive and raise her mother's young. In fact it is male bees who are a sort of clone in that they grow from unfertilized eggs. This quirk of biology does mean that a female bee is more closely related to her sisters than she would be to her own female children as much as 3/4 vs. 1/2 (and 55% vs. 50% in most European Honeybee hives since queens are mated by an average of seven drones). But that is not identical. It just makes it a very, very good strategy for the individual to spread genes about by being helpful to a mother rather than just a good idea. This is how the pathways that made it mandatory to keep working together as a group developed. After all the hive structure does not fall apart when a daughter takes over from a mother as queen, or at least it does somewhat rarely. (Colonies sometimes experience problems when the new queens manage to kill each other or seriously hurt each other rather than one of them coming away as the undisputed victor.)
Furthermore a strict look at genetics would predict that in fully social bees where there is only one mating, such as many stingless bees, the female workers would be laying drone (male) eggs because they are more closely related to their own sons and nephews than to a brother produced by the queen. 100% in the case of a son and about 75% in the case of a nephew and only about 55% in the case of a brother. But actual evidence shows otherwise with it being extremely rare, even in species where the workers have developed ovaries, for them to lay drone eggs when the colony has a healthy queen. See selection doesn't work for individuals alone. An individual's genes CANNOT go on without the group's genes. So traits that reduce group/species survival ability are reduced to being rare, though often not entirely eliminated.
When we see males killing off the offspring of other males in nature that is because it a good strategy for the individual and either is neutral for the group or a positive thing. The male lion who defeated the previous male of the group may be slightly more genetically fit. Humans don't do this because we're not naturally a harem species.
Most everything in genetics isn't the BEST strategy. It is a playing of the percentages. This is why extraordinary altruism, putting ones self at risk for low reward, is so rare. It's one end of the bell curve. Just as being anti-altruistic is also rare. Also keep in mind not everything in humans or animals is of purely genetic inheritance. Especially with humans where we can learn the ideas of people who are dead and pass them on. Ideas pass from one human to another better when we're not trying to kill each other. So ideas linked to not killing the person in the next tribe over instead of evangelizing the idea have a better chance of becoming widespread.
Still I hoped for better from a scientist writing on god. Something that would actually challenge my atheism rather than the same arguments I'd read in Mere Christianity about how humans are different than the animals. We are, but we're on a continuum. Animals have many human traits to a lesser extent. And part of that is that we can't get inside the minds of animals to prove what they are thinking very easily. I suspect in some animals we would find they are just as generous and horrible as humans in a tribal state of existence.
Here is my understanding of where the research is at combined with my knowledge of bee biology from reading too many books on the subject because I used to keep them.
Bees are not genetic copies of each other. That's not why females work to defend the hive and raise her mother's young. In fact it is male bees who are a sort of clone in that they grow from unfertilized eggs. This quirk of biology does mean that a female bee is more closely related to her sisters than she would be to her own female children as much as 3/4 vs. 1/2 (and 55% vs. 50% in most European Honeybee hives since queens are mated by an average of seven drones). But that is not identical. It just makes it a very, very good strategy for the individual to spread genes about by being helpful to a mother rather than just a good idea. This is how the pathways that made it mandatory to keep working together as a group developed. After all the hive structure does not fall apart when a daughter takes over from a mother as queen, or at least it does somewhat rarely. (Colonies sometimes experience problems when the new queens manage to kill each other or seriously hurt each other rather than one of them coming away as the undisputed victor.)
Furthermore a strict look at genetics would predict that in fully social bees where there is only one mating, such as many stingless bees, the female workers would be laying drone (male) eggs because they are more closely related to their own sons and nephews than to a brother produced by the queen. 100% in the case of a son and about 75% in the case of a nephew and only about 55% in the case of a brother. But actual evidence shows otherwise with it being extremely rare, even in species where the workers have developed ovaries, for them to lay drone eggs when the colony has a healthy queen. See selection doesn't work for individuals alone. An individual's genes CANNOT go on without the group's genes. So traits that reduce group/species survival ability are reduced to being rare, though often not entirely eliminated.
When we see males killing off the offspring of other males in nature that is because it a good strategy for the individual and either is neutral for the group or a positive thing. The male lion who defeated the previous male of the group may be slightly more genetically fit. Humans don't do this because we're not naturally a harem species.
Most everything in genetics isn't the BEST strategy. It is a playing of the percentages. This is why extraordinary altruism, putting ones self at risk for low reward, is so rare. It's one end of the bell curve. Just as being anti-altruistic is also rare. Also keep in mind not everything in humans or animals is of purely genetic inheritance. Especially with humans where we can learn the ideas of people who are dead and pass them on. Ideas pass from one human to another better when we're not trying to kill each other. So ideas linked to not killing the person in the next tribe over instead of evangelizing the idea have a better chance of becoming widespread.
Still I hoped for better from a scientist writing on god. Something that would actually challenge my atheism rather than the same arguments I'd read in Mere Christianity about how humans are different than the animals. We are, but we're on a continuum. Animals have many human traits to a lesser extent. And part of that is that we can't get inside the minds of animals to prove what they are thinking very easily. I suspect in some animals we would find they are just as generous and horrible as humans in a tribal state of existence.