Spandrels and Expelled

I assigned The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm by Gould and Lewontin to my students in evolution today. I find the contrast between the reality of such a sharp critique of evolution and the propaganda coming from the makers of the movie Expelled funny. From what I have heard, the central argument of Expelled (besides that "Darwinist" are like Nazis) is that dissent from "Darwinism" isn't tolerated within the academic community.

Spandrels was a full frontal assault on evolutionary biology. It was especially targeted at the young field of sociobiology, but also at the study of adaptation in general. Gould and Lewontin were attacking the way evolutionary biology was done. Were they expelled from the academy for their blasphemy? Of course not. There were many replies and critiques of their paper. A debate ensued that sometimes got quite heated. Science isn't pretty. But the debate was always in terms of science, not ad hominen. The paper introduced terms such as "just so stories" and "spandrels" into our vocabulary. It is widely cited. Even those who disagree with Gould and Lewontin must address the issues that they brought up. Rather than being expelled or black listed by the establishment, Gould and Lewontin are famous for their paper.

Of course, Gould and Lewontin did not attack evolution itself, just some aspects of it. There are many other examples of biologists attacking the orthodoxy, but there are no celebrated examples of biologists attacking evolution itself and being lionized. That isn't because biologists are Nazis enforcing an orthodoxy. It's simply because such attacks are always bad science. Evolution has the advantage of actually being true. It is very difficult to come up with a strong argument to disprove something that is in fact true, and those who attempt to do so are rightly laughed at or ignored.

What is strange is that those who see a Darwinist conspiracy never briefly consider the possibility that the reason their ideas aren't taken seriously is because their ideas are not worth taking seriously. If they ever come up with a good argument disproving any aspect of evolution, they will become heroes.

What seems to work

With teaching it’s hard to say what works. Confirmation bias is rampant, educational outcomes are hard to measure. Often we just say that this seems to have worked well, based on positive feedback from students. I would like to discuss a few things that I think have worked for me in teaching evolution. I can’t claim any thing more than it seems to work.

There are three things that seem critical. The first is the nature of science. Of course, I am not alone in saying this. Groups such as AAAS and NCSE have all emphasized that evolution should be taught in the context of the nature of science. Before we talk about how we know evolution happened, we should talk more generally about how we know anything happened. When we teach the nature of science, we have to avoid simplified versions of it like they had in high school. Again, my approach isn’t that different from AAAS.

The second thing is a discussion of evolution and religion. It’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room and we can’t pretend it isn’t there. The most important thing is to overcome the false dichotomy many of them have—evolution or creation. I point out the wide range of views people have on the relationship of evolution to religion and give them excerpts from people holding each view, from Henry Morris to Richard Dawkins. I do not try too push one view over another, I just make them aware that it isn’t as black and white as they might have been lead to believe. I do make it clear that the science flatly contradicts a few of the views.

The third point is the history of the idea of evolution. I discuss ideas that came before evolution, evidence that was suggesting evolution before Darwin, and I also discuss the reaction to the Origin. I discuss scientific objections, how they were eventually answered, alternative views that were considered and rejected, and how this lead to the modern synthesis. I think the history of ideas is valuable in teaching all sciences, but especially so in evolution. They clearly see that there wasn’t a “Darwinistic establishment”. Evolution was not considered uncritically. Darwin got things wrong. The great age of the earth was accepted prior to evolution. They can see that objections to evolution that they hear today were first brought up over a century ago, and answered then. They can see that evolutionary biology emerged gradually from the evidence and is not an arbitrary theory from on high, which is how many people think of evolution.

I cover those three topics in the first three weeks of class. It lays the groundwork for much of what is to come. I revisit the nature of science throughout the course, and eventually discuss specific criticisms of evolution, once they have a stronger background in the science. It seems to work.

Alvin Plantinga, Part II

This is part II of my discussion of Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism. Part I was here.

There are four possible hypothesis regarding the origins of our ability to reason. 1) Our brains arose by natural selection or other natural processes and has produced reliable mechanisms of finding truth. 2) Our brains arose by natural selection or other natural processes and are not reliable. 3) Our brains arose by some mechanism other than natural selection, perhaps supernatural, and has produced reliable mechanisms of finding truth. 4) Our brains arose by some mechanism other than natural selection, perhaps supernatural, and are not reliable.

I need to clarify two things. First, this is artificially restricting the possibilities. For example, reason might have arisen by evolution, but not by natural selection (it could be a Spandrel, for example). Perhaps we were designed by Aliens. Since Plantinga is basically arguing against naturalism, more than against evolution, I tried to group all natural explanations in one, and supernatural in another.

Second, in 1) and 3), I only claim that we have at least some means of determining true beliefs. I need not claim that all of our senses or brain function produces true belief. We could easily argue whether or not beliefs that aid in survival are likely to be true beliefs or not. Much of the discussion of Plantinga’s argument revolves around these. Some of it has the form of just so arguments—it is easy to come up with a story to show how survival could or could not correlate with truth. For this, I will make the reasonable assumption that sometimes there will be such a correlation, and sometimes there will not be. If that is true, then our brains and eyes should sometimes give us accurate information about the world, and sometimes deceive us. Regardless of whether we are the product of natural selection, this is what we observe—we are prone to logical fallacies, visual illusions, etc., but also seem capable of higher reasoning.

I understand Plantinga as arguing that if we arose by evolution, we have no way to distinguish between 1) and 2). We can’t tell if our beliefs are reliable or not. If he is making the much stronger claim that 1) could not be true, he requires a much higher standard of evidence. He must show not just that evolution can produce false beliefs, but that it could never produce true beliefs. He must show that survival and true beliefs never coincide. I do not believe such a claim could be supported, as I discussed above. I fully agree that sometime evolution will produce false beliefs, but contend in 1) that sometimes it produces true beliefs.

If 2) were true, then our brains should be well designed for survival, but should not be able to do things that require true understanding of the world but do not aid in survival. That is a testable prediction. If 2) were true, we should not be able to make airplanes or solve the Rubic’s cube. The success of science, and the many other ways we use our brains for things other than survival, is evidence that our brains are reliable, at least sometimes. Therefore, we can rule out 2) and 4). We are left with a reliable brain that either arose by natural processes or by supernatural processes.

Since we have determined that our brains are reliable, we can no longer dismiss all of the evidence for evolution. Plantinga tried to dismiss the overwhelming case for evolution by saying we can’t trust our brains and thus can’t trust the evidence for evolution. Now that we have shown our brains are reliable, the way to distinguish between 1) and 3) is simply to look at the evidence. We have escaped Plantinga’s circular and unfalsifiable argument.

Plantinga would claim our brains are reliable, but arose through supernatural means. He then has a few conundrums of his own. He believes we can trust our brains, and therefore we can't dismiss the evidence for evolution. It's only once you dismiss evolution that he has a way to dismiss the evidence. Also, evolution can easily explain both why our brains are sometimes reliable, and why they so often fails us. If we arose by supernatural means, why did God give us such imperfect brains?

Unlike most anti-evolution arguments, this is not a scientific argument. It is a philosophical argument, an argument from epistimology. I respect much of philosophy. It can help us to know the world. However, sometimes it becomes nothing but word games and sophistry. I think that is what we have here.

A smokescreen for the gospel

For being a small, conservative area, there have been remarkably few flair ups regarding evolution in Jamestown. There was a series of letters to the editor in the local newspaper in late 2005, but other than that, it is not an issue that has come up publicly. In fact, I'm not aware of any flare ups involving school boards anywhere in the state of North Dakota in the 15 years I've been here.

There are occasional talks about evolution in churches, but nothing public. This winter there was a more public display of anti-evolution sentiment. There was a large billboard downtown, declaring:

Evolution Disproved
Intelligent designer, Jesus Christ
Jn 3:18
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

That was it. There was no indication what group paid for the billboard. There was no indication of how to find out more. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the verse from John, and the billboard was taken down a week ago. I think it was 3:18, but it might have been 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life". What I am certain is that the verse said nothing whatsoever even remotely relating to evolution.

I'm very familiar with creationists and other pseudoscience beliefs and how people think differently about these things. But this billboard still perplexed me. Were they claiming that the verse is what disproves evolution? What does God requiring belief in him even have to do with evolution? Do they really believe they had made an argument? They even got the theology wrong--I thought the Father was the designer, and Jesus was the redeemer. I was amazed by the complete irrelevance of the billboard.

This must have made sense to someone. There is someone that believes a single sentence from the Bible about Jesus is a disproof of evolution. They were impressed enough they wanted to tell the whole city. And it was self explanatory enough that they didn't need to refer us to any other resource. I wonder at that mind set. No matter how much I study these views, I can't understand how they think. If they had quoted something from Genesis 1 about God creating the world, it would not be in the least convincing, but I could at least understand the relevance to evolution.

I wonder if they really hoped to change anyone's mind. I suppose a few believers would feel special or smug seeing it, but they already believe. The people you are most likely to reach are the undecided. Is it at all possible there is someone who wasn't sure about this topic, read the billboard, and said "Now I get it"? I can't imagine there is, but I can't imagine the mindset even of the believers who put this up.

I suppose one thing this billboard shows is that to the ardent opponent of evolution, the science and arguments they put up are completely irrelevant, a smokescreen for John 3:16.

Alvin Plantinga and The Matrix

The student newspaper on campus recently had a point/counterpoint between me and a philosophy professor, Dr. Brian Lang, regarding evolution. He summarized an argument by Alvin Plantinga. I gave a response in the newspaper, but here I would like to focus on another aspect that I did not have space to discuss in my first response.

The basic argument is below:

The general conclusion of Plantinga’s argument is that belief in current evolutionary doctrine is self-defeating. In order to show how this is the case he differentiates between true beliefs and beliefs with survival value. It is possible that there is some overlap between these types of beliefs. That is, sometimes believing the truth better equips a creature to survive. But this need not always be the case. ….

Plantinga’s critique focuses on one specific implication of modern evolutionary doctrine. That is, if humans have evolved by natural selection over a long period of time then our minds have been fine-tuned to produce false beliefs with higher survival value over and against true beliefs with lower survival value. This is because creatures that held true beliefs with lower survival value would have tended to propagate less. … Therefore evolution gives humans a reason to think that our belief-forming mechanisms (brains, eyes, etc.) are generally useful for survival rather than that they are truthful. This includes when our brains tell us that the theory of evolution is true. So we have the interesting consequence that if evolution is true, then we have a powerful reason to comprehensively distrust our brains—including when our brains inform us that evolution seems to be true!

… The standard response is for scientists to point out that true beliefs typically have high survival value. For example, having eyes that tell you the truth allows you to avoid falling off cliffs, going near predators, etc. The problem with this response is that evolution undermines our trust in all of our beliefs—including this one. The fact that it appears that having trustworthy beliefs would have great survival value is itself a belief produced by our brains. …. By accepting the evolutionary premise that our minds have developed under conditions that favor survival over truth, evolutionists have undermined their own ability to trust their thoughts about anything—including any rebuttal they might put forward against Plantinga.

In my response here, I do not want to focus on the biology of the argument as I did in my first response. Instead, I would like to point out that this argument is self defeating and in fact is a critique of the possibility of any knowledge.

Plantinga’s argument is unfalsifiable as presented, since any argument to show that evolution can produce true belief could itself be the product of our defective brain. However, this circular and unfalsifiable position is not restricted to a brain derived by natural selection. As is typical of anti-evolution arguments, no alternative explanation is offered.

The emptiness of this argument becomes apparent when you realize that it would also apply to a world like the Matrix. In the move The Matrix, the world we experience isn’t real. It’s a virtual reality created by machines as our bodies sit in vats. A person in the Matrix could come up with all sorts of arguments to show that his or her brain and senses are reliable, but all of these arguments fail because the very brain and senses we are using are what is in dispute. According to Plantinga, if evolution is true, we live in a Matrix-like world, where we can never trust what our brains tell us because our brains are systematically biased.

There is no way for me or anyone to positively prove that they do not live in the Matrix. There is no way to prove there is an external reality at all. However, everyone lives there lives as if there is an external reality and the world is real. Regardless of what they profess, no one really believes we live in the Matrix, and there are no true solipsists. It is reasonable to live your life as if the world exists unless something suggests otherwise. In the same way, it is reasonable to assume our senses are a reflection of reality unless something suggests otherwise (and we do know of some specific ways in which our senses are not accurate). If Morpheus starts to speak to me through my computer and a white rabbit shows up at my door I might change my mind about living in the Matrix, but until then, I won’t waste my time on self defeating naval gazing.

Any alternative explanation for the origin of our brains will suffer from the same problem. Perhaps God gave us our brain. But how do we know He gave us a reliable brain? Martin Luther said that reason is the devil’s whore, so he clearly did not believe our brain is a reliable tool. Or perhaps God gave us a brain that is only useful for survival and not for finding truth, just like selection. There is no a priori reason to think otherwise. I would challenge someone who follows Plantinga’s argument to prove that their brain is reliable in a way that doesn't fall victim to the same unfalsifiable Matrix world. Just the possibility that our brains are wired for anything other than truth, for any reason, will undermined our ability to trust our thoughts about anything—including any rebuttal we might put forward against this deceptive God.

I will address Plantinga’s another aspect of Plantinga’s case in a later post.

A reverse Pascal's wager

I think Pascal’s Wager is behind considerable opposition to evolution. This is the argument for belief in God put forth by Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century. His argument is that if you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you have lost nothing, but if he does exist, you have gained eternal life. If you do not believe in God and he does exist, you risk eternal damnation, but gain nothing if you are right. Therefore, you should believe in God.

I think that is one of the weakest of all possible arguments for the belief in God. It is based on a false dichotomy, assuming only a Christian God who rewards belief and punishes disbelief, or no God. Once you consider the consequences of not believing in Muslim or Hindu Gods, it is a less attractive. There are many other problems with it as well. Nevertheless, I think that the fear of damnation is behind a lot of opposition to evolution. People have been told many times that evolution is evil. If you believe in it, you might be damned to hell. If you don’t believe evolution, even if you are wrong, you lose nothing, so to be on the safe side, reject evolution. People will not even look at the arguments for evolution if their soul is on the line. As a teacher, I do not care if students believe everything I tell them, but it is frustrating when they refuse to even listen. It's bad enough when a student does this, but I even had a colleague teaching a class with me who refused to attend my lectures on evolution, apparently unwilling to even let such words into his brain.

The same problem with Pascal’s Wager for an argument for God applies to it's use against evolution. It is a lot less convincing as soon as you show that there are more than two possibilities and rejecting evolution can have a cost as well. If we expect people to at least be open to looking at the science of evolution, they need to know that it’s OK to study a little science without risking damnation. Believers in theistic evolution should make a stronger case for acceptance of evolution.

One argument for the cost of rejecting reason was made by St. Augustine in “The Literal Meaning of Genesis” from the 4^th century. He argued that if you spout nonsense in the name of religion, then you are hurting the cause of religion.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. …. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

If more people realized that they are making religion a laughingstock and harming the credibility of belief, perhaps they would see that there is a cost to rejecting evolution as well.

Galileo also viewed the risks of following reason to be less than blind faith in ignorance:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo there use.

I suppose some would argue the way to overcome Pascal’s Wager is simply to tell people there is no God and they have no soul to lose. If many people hear that, it will just confirm their fears and make them even less open to considering the evidence. Those would be the last words they would hear from you.

I have never had the experience of being afraid of my own thoughts. I was never exposed to that kind of religion. I am glad that I don’t have to be afraid that any new idea I hear might cause eternal torment. It strikes me as a frightening and rigid world. I think we should emphasize the quotes above and similar arguments, a reverse Pascal’s Wager, to help people to step outside of that world.

Epic Anti-creationism Speeches and the Teaching of Evolution

I will be presenting my epic anti-creationism speech this week in Evolution. It's an hour and a half long speech in which I defend evolution, skewer creationism and ID, discuss evolution education, and end with some thoughts on the meaning of it all. It's my favorite day of teaching. The rest of the time I try to be very respectful of evolution deniers. Although I don't back down at all from presenting evolution for what it is, I don't use sarcasm or jokes or mock the deniers. I don't want to call my students idiots. In this speech, I take out all of the stops and tell it like it is and put on a show. I like it, and the students overwhelmingly like it.

That raises the question of how to present evolution to students. In my evolution class, which is taken by biology majors, I have been very successful in convincing them of the strength of evolution. In the past 12 years, there have only been a few students who were still creationists after taking the course. Of course, that is not a representative sample of the population. They are biology majors, so many already accept evolution before they take the class, and even those who don't at least have a background in science and a more scientific mindset. Nevertheless, a reasonable number of them doubt evolution at the start of the class. Almost none of them do by the end, and many become very vocal in their defense of evolution. I know that it is possible to change someone's mind about evolution.

There is a debate about how to deal with creationist views in the classroom. Should we be confrontational or respectful, should we bring up creationists arguments at all or just teach the science? In this and future posts, I will write about my experiences with these issues.

My epic speech works well in Evolution, but I think we have to be very careful about using this approach. I am presenting it to upper level biology students who have already had eight weeks of evolution and have spent the previous two hours reviewing creationists arguments. In the early weeks of the class, I discussed the different views on the relationship of evolution and religion. I do not take a stand, I just make them aware of the different views. I also discuss the nature of science. I think all of these parts are important. The same speech that these students find convincing would be seen as an assault by students without that background and would probably turn them off. The strong confrontation works best when you are preaching to the choir, or for people sitting on the fence but leaning towards evolution. With students that are not open to evolution, I think it is better not to be confrontational or make them take too defensive of a stance. They will put up a wall against you. What we need to do is plant the seeds of understanding evolution, let them see just a few things they didn't see before, make them think that there is at least a little bit more to this than they previously thought. They won't change their mind right away, but the seed is planted.

When I took evolution as an undergraduate, creationists arguments were not discussed at all. I am sympathetic to that approach. The science is fun and you don't want to waste your time discussing long discredited arguments. Let's talk about the evolution of sex or evo-devo or mass extinctions instead. I'm glad I don't have to waste time discussing meiosis deniers in Intro to Biology. But that approach also denies where the students are coming from. Like it or not, they have been exposed to these ideas and much of their previous interactions with evolution have been in the context of the social and political controversy. They honestly believe evolution is controversial. To act as if that doesn't exist will fail. The students are interested in it, and if we act as if this background isn't there, we are not teaching the students we have.

I can't claim as much success in changing minds in teaching non majors or in Introduction to Biology, when I have only ten lectures to cover evolution. In future posts, I will discuss what I think does and does not work. If any readers have experiences to share, I would like to hear them (assuming I have any readers).

We are all transitional species

There is a debate from ABC (link) between Kirk Cameron and Ray comfort and the Rational Response Squad, in which they discuss evolution. Cameron and Comfort have poor arguments against evolution even for creationists. Cameron bring out the standard "there are no transitional fossils" line, complete with silly pictures of what he thinks a transition should look like. Unfortunately, the response squad blew the response.

They said that we are all transitional species, everyone in the room is. Of course, that's wrong. I think I know the point they were trying to make, but they failed utterly to make it. What opponents of evolution never understand about transitional species, is that you can never tell a species is transitional by itself. If all you have is one organism, there is nothing about it that says it is transitional. It is only transitional in comparison to something that came before it and something that came after it.

That is why claiming that everyone in the room is transitional is wrong. There is nothing after us. I suppose for those of us with children, we could say that we are transitional between grandad and grandkid, but that isn't the point he was making. He wanted to make the point that a transition doesn't look transitional by itself, but only in reference to other species, I think.

A transitional fossil does not look incomplete. It is absolutely impossible to tell whether an organism is transitional by itself. It is well adapted for its way of life, every organ and structure is fully formed and functional. There is no difference at all between a species whose line will lead to extinction and one that will lead to other species. Only in retrospect can we see that this organism has some traits of species before it and some of those after it. Archeoptyryx is a transition only because birds eventually evolved. While it lived, it was fully formed, and it had no structure struggling to be something else. Perhaps seals today will eventually give rise to fully aquatic organisms. Then they will be transitional, in retrospect. Or perhaps they will change little.

There are many other ways in which transitions are not understood. People fail to understand that it is the traits that are transitional, not the organisms. Cameron was thinking of evolution as a ladder, imagining direct transitions between organisms that are the end twigs of a bush. The common ancestor may have resembled neither of the descendants. But the most common misunderstanding of transitions is the persistent belief that a transitional species would somehow look different from a non transitional species. It is unfortunate that the ignorance of evolution is pervasive enough that a caricature such as what Cameron presented could actually convince anyone.

Where are the rejected design arguments?

Intelligent design wants to claim the status of science. All real sciences have good science and bad science. Science is littered with the remnants of discarded theories, poorly done experiments, rejected arguments, mistakes, corrections. If a science is real, you can point to the ideas that it has rejected. In evolutionary biology, ideas such as group selection or hopeful monsters are rejected, at least in their original formulations. The mainstream is constantly challenged, and there is work that simply doesn't hold up. Lynn Marguilus challenged the establishment when she suggested mitochondria arose by endosymbiosis, but we accepted her ideas. She has also pushed symbiosis for organelles and in places in which the evidence just doesn't hold up, and we have rejected it.

So where are the theories that ID has thrown out? If the ID community is legitimate science, there must be some ideas that the community once accepted and no longer accept. There must be some studies that were poorly done (assuming they did studies). There must be some modifications that were made. There should be some examples of vigorous debate within the ID community about details, with each side marshaling evidence to support their case.

You won't find any of that. Remarkably, of all of the sciences, ID is the only one in which all of the major proponents got it 100% right the first time. As a community, they have even failed to reject a young earth. You will not find any criticism of ID by ID. You can recognize legitimate science as easily by what it has admitted is wrong and how it faces criticism as by what it gets right.

Mainstream science thrives on criticism. Unless there is criticism, it isn't science. Yet to ID, all criticism is bias or repression. They complain loudly when they are being criticized, failing to realize that it is the essence of the legitimacy they crave. If they actually changed their views or rejected an argument occasionally in response to criticism, we might take them seriously.

Not only is any criticism seen as discrimination, they claim it is religious discrimination. And they want to be taken seriously as science.

Trial blog

Hello,

I've never blogged before and I'm just trying to figure out how to get around. Eventually I hope blog about evolution and science and pseudoscience and education.