Darwins Practical Joke: The Evolutionary Bases of Resistance to Evolution

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Darwins Practical JokeThe Evolutionary Bases
of Resistance to Evolution

• Jim Chen
• University of Minnesota Law School
• Society for the Evolutionary Analysis of Law
• 2006 Scholarship Roundtable
• Vanderbilt University Law School
• April 2, 2006

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Appreciating evolution holds the key to sound
environmental policy

• This project extends previous work on the
  teaching of evolution as a component of
  biodiversity policy. Legal Mythmaking in a Time
  of Mass Extinctions, 29 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 279
  (2005), http//papers.ssrn.com/abstract 770976
• What is the most significant problem facing the
  world?
• How can we incorporate an environmental ethic
  into core questions of governance?
• Does resistance evolution matter to law?
• Might that resistance, perversely enough, be a
  product of adaptive responses to natural
  selection?

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Vast segments of American society reject evolution

• Two-thirds of the public and one-third of public
  school biology teachers express some sympathy for
  teaching alternatives to evolution
• Evolution has few adherents (Kristof, NYT 2003)
• Virgin birth of Jesus 83
• Satan 68
• Evolution 28
• G.W. Bush the jury is still out (March 2005)
• Apocalypse now? 40 of Americans believe that
  the world will end supernaturally
• Result a country that is truly Left Behind

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Public rejection of evolution cripples
environmental law

• Efforts to ban the teaching of evolution and/or
  to inculcate creationism or intelligent design
  are in their ninth decade and appear to be
  escalating
• Scopes (1925)
• Epperson v, Arkansas (1968)
• McLean v. Arkansas Bd. of Educ. (1982)
• Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)
• Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish (2000) (Scalia
  dissent)
• Dover School Bd. (2005)
• Some evangelical groups have used the Noah story
  to advocate conservation (Nagle 1998)

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Does natural selection predispose humans against
evolutionary explanations?

• Religion is human behavior. Accordingly, its
  origins and significance can be illuminated by
  evolutionary analysis
• Dennett, Breaking the Spell (2006)
• Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004)
• Boyer, Religion Explained (2001)
• Anderson, Ecologies of the Heart (1996)
• Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds (1993)
• Religion is continuous with other systems of
  thought and action such as science, art, and
  common sense (Guthrie)
• Religious belief is adaptive
• A creationist account of origins (such as the
  Abrahamic narrative) seems singularly appealing
  to the adapted mind

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Religion as the product of an agency detection
device

• Humans systematically interpret ambiguous
  evidence as being caused by a living agent
• Not what went bump in the night, but who
• This cognitive bias prompts proactive responses
  to threats and opportunities relating to survival
  and/or reproduction
• Agency detection is a variant of Pascals wager
• Responding as if an agent existed may ensure
  survival or secure a reproductive opportunity
• The only downside is the cost of the response
• Religion condenses a wide range of unseen agents
  into an anthropomorphic diety

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Indirect evidence of religion as adaptive behavior

• Religion appears to be a human universal
• Humans are religious across time and space
• Efforts to suppress religion have failed, often
  spectacularly
• Active atheism demands extraordinary effort
• Components of agency detection (face, animal,
  artifact identification) apparently emerge very
  early in childhood
• Women are systematically more involved in and
  committed to religion than are men
• Very stable sexual asymmetry (Paloutzian 1996)

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Biological intelligence is almost certainly
adaptive

• Extensive evidence of biophilia/biophobia
  (Wilson)
• Tree-studded promontories overlooking water
• Infants and infant-like artifacts are cute
• Spiders and darkness and snakes, oh my
• Naturalist intelligence flourishes within a
  system of multiple intelligences (Gardner)
• Not all manifestations of intelligence reflect
  adaptation (Pinker)
• Human speech is universal writing is not
• Phonetic writing is a powerful meme, but it
  assuredly is not universal, adaptive behavior
• Biology is adaptive. Is evolutionary reasoning?

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Biology inspires emotions, perhaps even religious
belief

• Humans code ecological knowledge in religious
  terms (Anderson 1996 see also Rappaport 1971
  Slovic 2000)
• One scientific response to creationism is to
  offer natural history as the real story of
  origins (Ursula Goodenough 2001, Wilson 2002,
  Takacs 1996, Dobzhansky 1973)
• How much environmental policymaking is
  constrained or driven by emotion?

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Doing what comes naturally

• Sakes alive I mastered it when I was five
  (Pinker 1994)
• Children intuitively embrace many Abrahamic
  theological tenets, almost to the point of
  favoring these faiths (Barrett Richert 2003)
• Omniscient, superperceptive, immortal,
  superpowerful creator
• Children distinguish between natural and
  human-made things (Petrovich 1997)
• Children ascribe natural origins to theistic
  rather than human agency (Petrovich 1999)
• Creationism trounces evolution, human invention,
  and mere emergence among children (Evans 2001)
• Children see living and nonliving things as
  purposeful, and religion may merely confirm this
  instinct (Keleman 1999)

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Against all odds the unavoidable offensiveness
of randomness

• Evolution reflects Ecclesiastes, not Genesis
  time and chance happen to them all
• Humans expect virtue to be rewarded and vice to
  be punished (Lerner Miller 1978)
• Right-and-wrong narratives dominate popular
  understandings of science, religion, and art
• Spencer coopted Darwin into survival of the
  fittest and made nonextinction normative
• Amoral denouements are deeply dissatisfying

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Chance and choice, wisdom and responsibility

• W.J. Bryan Destiny is not a question of chance.
  Destiny is a question of choice.
• Resistance to evolution transcends ideology
• Enemies left
• Standard social science models tabula rasa
• Fear of racial, sexual determinism
• Enemies right
• Achilles Odysseus Calvinism Catechism
• You will know the truth, and the truth will make
  you free

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Thank You

• Jim Chen
• University of Minnesota Law School
• chenx064_at_maroon.tc.umn.edu
• 612-625-4839
• http//www.law.umn.edu/FacultyProfiles/ChenJ.htm
• http//ssrn.com/author68651