Skepticism

Todays blog comes from Skeptic Magazine and its most visible representative, Michael Shermer.

Both Skeptic and Shermer attempt to fact check ideas. The ideas come from people ranging from the ignorant to the fraudulent but everyone is fair game.

Being always interested in culture and biological evolution, I found Shermer's essay, The Evolution Wars, interesting. Though at first glance it appears to be a review of three books on science and science history, it rapidly becomes a discussion on the role of science and scientists within science.

TEW starts out discussing the debate on sociobiology-- human social and personal action in the light of biological imperatives. This really starts with E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology and involves the essentially political reaction Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. The problem centered on whether human activities were predetermined genetic operations or if there were extragenetic factors. That sounds like something very innocuous and simple. But for "predetermined genetic operations" you can also substitute eugenics and Social Darwinism. For "extragenetic factors" you can substitute the fight against injustice and altruism. Big, big stuff. My own personal understanding leans towards free will. I can't see a difference between something being foreordained by genetics or God other than scale.

The end conclusion of the review, derived from Jeffrey McKee’s The Riddled Chain, is something called "autocatalysis". That is, the effects of evolution on the organism is itself fodder for evolution. In humans, this shows up (among other places) in sexual selection. The reason some mates are better than others might not be just for reproductive purposes. People choose mates on how close they adhere to the latest body fashion-- thin vs. zoftig, for example. Because they like the conversation or their sense of humor. None of these necessarily result in more children. Strict adaptationists, such as Dawkins, hate this sort of reasoning. If it doesn't result in reproductive success, what good is it? However, when it comes to human survival and dispersal, basic reproduction isn't the name of the game. Societal cooperation is. And, as we've discovered, societal cooperation is all about extragenetic factors. For example, who would have expected that Henry Ford would have been responsible for an uptick in population growth in the USA? He created a mass produced vehicle with a back seat. Didn't benefit him but benefited lots of other people and created a niche for many other people just like him. Any biological model of human behavior somehow has to account for human activities that benefit the reproductive success of other humans.

Of course, the Skeptic article initially frames the debate in terms of Creationism-- skepticism that's the reason it exists, after all. However, it veers quickly into how scientists frame their own debate and how the political debate can be used to create a scientific debate.

Which brings me to the next article, Is God All in the Mind? This is a review of Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili's Why God Won't Go Away, an extremely interesting book that details the neurophysiological responses observed when religious experiences are experienced. Shermer suggests that the experience, as well as the presumption of the reality of the experience, as delusional. I think this misses the point of the book. The history of human evolution continually shows us subverting the original use of a mechanism for new uses-- evolution does this in general. We developed a whole cortex beyond our ape brethren. Subverting a small piece of it for religious experience doesn't seem too difficult to believe. If the cortex can be believed to be a selective advantage then so can the underlying neural process that create this "delusion". Dismissing it as a delusion trivializes it. A delusion becomes a psychopathology and is therefore a disease. Viewing it as something that was selected for gives it a whole different perspective.

Of course, the same mechanism that might be advantageous in one circumstance might be disadvantageous in some other context. One area where this shows up is in catastrophe deniers. Two leap to mind: 9/11 deniers and Holocaust deniers. Shermer has dealt with both.

Catastrophe deniers have the same approach to the problem as evolution deniers: take the reporting of the event and poke holes in it (sometimes faking holes in it) thereby "proving" that their alternative is the only reasonable choice. This is wrong for (at least) two levels: the holes are often incorrect and the presented alternative isn't the only option.

Shermer takes apart the 9/11 conspiracy model beautifully here. Shermer is now on a book tour for an unrelated book but that didn't stop the "truthers" from pursuing him. You can see that here.

Shermer also took on the Holocaust deniers. He, in fact, wrote a whole book on it, Denying History, of which you can find an excerpt here. and additional information here. I've not read the entire book but I did read the excerpts and I found myself disappointed. The Holocaust is narrowly defined to be the extermination approximately six million Jews by the Nazis-- as horrible a thing as has happened in human history. However, there were an additional approximately five million other groups also murdered. From his excerpt and the endorsements, I gather that Shermer did not address the additional crimes.

This bothers me. Holocaust deniers deny more than just the murder of Jews-- though they rarely realize it. To narrowly dismiss the deniers of the Holocaust as opposed to the denial of all the murders is a denial in and of itself.

Of course, I should read the book completely. It may be much more complete than the excerpts and endorsements suggest. Still, the two pages are on Shermer's website. It seems incumbent on him to be thorough.