Can we get a less misreading summary of evolution than "Survival of the fittest"?

I don't think there are many Gaia theorists out there, and I think you're underestimating the general puplic of the developed world. I could go into my views on teleological reasoning, but it seems a little out of place here, and I don't know if I want to open that can of worms. But I'm not sure if we're going to find a single phrase that sums up an entire theory that's completely free of ambiguities.

If we're looking for a replacement term for "survival of the fittest," then I think "struggle for existence" works just fine because we're talking about the survival of individual organisms. If we're looking for a term that summarizes evolution by natural selection, which I think was what you were asking for in your first post, then I think we're going to be here for a while. As I said before, I'm not sure it can be summed up in such a tidy, little way. Maybe "Principle of Geometrical Increase + Struggle for Existence = Evolution," but I'm sure something's been left out and it's a bit of a mouth full.

 

How about "reproduction for the craftiest"

crafty (adj.)
artful, astute, calculating, canny, clever, cunning, deceitful, devious, dodgy, foxy, guileful, insidious, knavish, knowing, lying, Machiavellian, sharp, shrewd, slick, slippery, sly, smart, subtle, tricksy, tricky, unscrupulous, wily.

Insidious, certainly describes how religion evolved!

 

If you're referring to conservation, Man doesn't have to do that.

 

Sometimes it's just dumb luck, stubborn persistence, and/or a strong sex drive. I wouldn't call cockroaches "crafty", but they've done well for themselves in the evolutionary struggle. Your point about religion is interesting. Dawkins suggests that cultural memes are units of evloution, willing at times to sacrifice the well-being of their hosts for their own survival and reproduction. That might make and interesting discussion topic relevant to this one. Why have some religions, or versions of religion, survived and others perished? The religion we call "Christianity" today would be unrecognizable to Jesus, and the fossil record is strewn with earlier versions that once had sizeable followings but didn't make it:Ebionites, Gnostics, Marcionites, etc. The versions that have survived are evolutionarily "fittest" (because they survived), but better? Morally or intellectually superior? Not necessarily. Doctrinal practicality, adaptability, ruthlessness, and a propensity to breed played key roles.

 

I think religions tend to survive that allow us to do what we want to do anyway. Of course, what we want to do is partly resultant from religion (or culture, which is no different really). But a religion that requires people to do things which are strongly against their survival instincts is likely to need a lot more muscle to back itself up than one that more or less leaves them alone and tells them not to eat shellfish, what with them living in really hot countries and all.

 

Sometimes, religion requires people to do things which are "strongly against their survival interests" (I'm thinking of Muslim suicide bombers and the Christian martyrs). They do it because someone has convinced them they'll benefit from it in the afterlife--all those virgins for the Muslim martyrs, heaven for the Christian ones. It works for the religious meme, provided the believers breed at a significantly greater rate than they off themselves. Martyrdom is a powerful influence in attracting converts, by demonstrating the commitment of the faithful and suggesting that any religion that people will die for must have something to offer.

 

How about finding 'my DNA' in split second timing for doing what WE want to do. As the expression goes: I didn't know that wanted that. I didn't know what I wanted. I know what I want.

 

See, I disagree with that. If it was just about persuading people that there was an afterlife, more people would be doing it. I think a person's quality of life now has a far greater impact, just like holy wars tend not to break out without a very non-esoteric reason to contribute to the religious one.

 

Yes, Eugenics is a misreading of the theory of evolution, that certain traits which can promote survival are perfect and have to be homogenized in one race. Yet, diversity promotes better adaption in future situations.

 

The secret of martyrdom's evolutionary success is that few people do it. If everybody in the religious community did it, there would be no more religious community. That happens sometimes. Everybody drinks the Kool Aid. But the main thrust of evloution is toward survival, and the individual is the basic unit for this development. Sometimes there's evolutionary advantage to collective action against individual interest--the charge of the light brigade, the duty of the captain to go down with the ship, etc. At times, martyrs have their collective advantages. The kamikazees made it challenging for the Yanks during World War II, just as Muslim suicide bombers are making it challenging now. And there is both collective and individual advantage to making religion at least a little uncomfortable. Being an Orthodox Jew is difficult--keeping all those dietary and other laws. But it helps to preserve group identity and gives the individual a sense of being somewhat special or macho. In the United States, the religions that are growing tend to be more demanding than their rivals--up to a point. The liberal mainline Protestant "anything goes" churches, like the one I belong to, aren't doing well. I've often been told I belong to just a "social church".

 

Just as an aside on this, aren't the dietary laws just there to "explain" things like shellfish going off in a hot climate before we could explain why they do?

And yeah, you get more religious observancy when people are "under fire", or at least when they think they are. It's pretty sad to watch, to be honest.

I think there are evolutionary advantages mirrored in nature in a lot of cases. It's less about trading individual benefit for group benefit as it is trading short-term benefit for a long-term one. A strong person can probably do better on their own in the short term than a community of strong and weak people. But there are advantages to communities that no amount of strength would provide. The basic example is that or the antelope and the cheetah. Even a really fast antelope is no match for a cheetah in terms of speed. But if he runs with a group, he doesn't need to be as fast as a cheetah; he just has to be faster than the slowest antelope! It's messed up that something as complex as human society probably derives from something that basic.

 

I agree. But as for the Jewish laws, I think there's more to it than that. Besides not eating shellfish and pork, there's a whole elaborate slew of dos and don'ts, including Sabbath observation, that an orthodox Jew is expected to follow. Are all these based on scientifically grounded health considerations or other practical benefits for individuals? Somebody must have done a dissertation on that, but my suspicion is that they aren't. I read a book on the taboo against pork that made a convincing case for an origin in the theory that pork competed with the more environmentally practical sheep in a desert culture. But it was the Pharisees that pushed the idea that many of the purity laws that were previously practiced by priests should be adopted by ordinary people in their daily lives. They did this at a time when Judaism was experiencing pressure from cultural Hellinization, Roman rule, and Temple priests who had become collaborators with both. The movement for cultural purity, which was carried to even more extreme lengths by the Essenes, was a defense of the community against these influences. As another illustration of evolution at work, the more extreme of these elements joined in a revolt against the Romans in 70 A.D., which was ruthlessly crushed, the leaders eradicated, and the Jews dispersed. The survivors--the more liberal Hillel school of Pharisees and the Christians--set their respective religions on new foundations free of competition from the purists, just as extinction of the dinosaurs left the way open for mammals.

 

I agree. But as for the Jewish laws, I think there's more to it than that. Besides not eating shellfish and pork, there's a whole elaborate slew of dos and don'ts, including Sabbath observation, that an orthodox Jew is expected to follow. Are all these based on scientifically grounded health considerations or other practical benefits for individuals? Somebody must have done a dissertation on that, but my suspicion is that they aren't. I read a book on the taboo against pork that made a convincing case for an origin in the theory that pork competed with the more environmentally practical sheep in a desert culture. But it was the Pharisees that pushed the idea that many of the purity laws that were previously practiced by priests should be adopted by ordinary people in their daily lives. They did this at a time when Judaism was experiencing pressure from cultural Hellinization, Roman rule, and Temple priests who had become collaborators with both. The movement for cultural purity, which was carried to even more extreme lengths by the Essenes and Zealots, was a defense of the community against these influences. As another illustration of evolution at work, the more extreme of these elements joined in a revolt against the Romans in 70 A.D., which was ruthlessly crushed, the leaders eradicated, and the Jews dispersed. The survivors--the more liberal Hillel school of Pharisees and the Christians--set their respective religions on new foundations free of competition from the purists, just as extinction of the dinosaurs left the way open for mammals.

 

Well, it never hurts to have a few rules that don't make much sense, to stop people getting arrogant and thinking they don't need to follow instructions.

The band Van Halen used to request, as an item on their rider, a brandy glass filled with M&Ms of a certain colour. While this might seem like a rock star extravagance, it was actually a very clever way of testing whether a venue had fulfilled their requirements. On a previous tour, the band had played on a school basketball court, only for the weight of their equipment to see them plunged into the parking garage below. As a consequence of this, they introduced the brandy glass test. The purpose had nothing to do with M&Ms. It simply meant that the band could tell at a glance whether the venue had a conscientious and thorough attitude; if they had taken the time to count out a brandy glass full of a single colour of M&Ms, it would be likely that they had followed all the other instructions as well.

Bit of a tangent, but it comes to bear: the purpose is to ensure that people are on their toes, that they aren't complacent in thinking they know the rules, or arrogant enough to make them up as they go along.

 

Mary Douglas, a scholar who deals with purity issues and religion, originally wrote that the Jewish laws about diet seem to be there for that reason. She later etracted that in another publication (and I wish I was at home because I could find the passages in my old notes) because she found that the animals that the Hebrews ate were the same ones that were sacrificed to god so in eating those animals they shared with God. Also, i think there is the issue of seperating themselves from other groups in the near east at the time and that is partially where many of the other laws come into play if you are approaching it fom a anthropological secular viewpoint.

AJ Jacobs who wrote a book detailing his attempt to live by all 300+ commandments in the OT and NT wrote that it is possible that to the Hebrews, the stranger laws were the ones that were most important because it showed true devotion to god (accutally, it was a rabbi he was discussing with, but that is beside the point).

 

But wouldn't the anti-evolutionist claim that this is why evolution is bad (or I guess in their terms "Darwinism") because then we as a people strive to be better than another in detriment to another, or that we then should conciously pillage other people to better our own society...(I am speaking of social darwinism)...

 

If you're confining your remarks only to Social Darwinism, the pseudo-scientific misapplication of Darwin's evolutionary theory put forward in the nineteenth century by Herbert Spencer, this objection would hold. And I think it is bad, but I'm not an anti-evolutionist, and I don't hold it against Darwin. Dawkins and Dennett have demonstrated convincingly enough that altruism and humanitarianism have survival value. But as a matter of fact, there is a lot of Social Darwinism driving actual human and international behavior, and science is about explaining and predicting actual phenomena, not passing moral judgment on them.

 

I was confining my remarks to social darwinism. I was taking the side of an anti-evolutionist who would use the argument that human society came out of the "safety in numbers by way of the weak getting killed off" linking it to social darwinism as a reason on why evolution is bad.

My point was that the link could be made (and I think may be avoided because there are other reasons for humans and human ancestors to live together besides the sick and "unfit" getting eaten). What about the ability to raise more offspring when they are reared together? The ability to hunt larger game when living together?

I guess my point was that the type of thinking that all humans have to do is be better than one other person is possible to lead to social darwinism (especially if you ignore other reasons why human societies developed).

 

Evolution is about adaptation rather than "survival of the fittest" which implies a sense of improvement from one generation to another: Although greater diversity and complexitity has been a result evolutionary processes.

It has to be remembered that Europe's Imperial project was at its high when social darwinist's like H Spencer & racists like H Chamberlain were writing in the late 19th century. Africa was being partitioned, China looked like it would be and most of the rest of the populated world was under some form of European rule. It was an age of aggressive conqests and therefore naturaly of philosophies of aggressive conqest/subjegation of so called inferior and alien peoples. In some sense the Nazi ideology and racial mania was a cumination of all this. Its distruction marked an end of an Ira sort of. The French will allways misbehave if given a chance as in Indo China and more recently in Africa and the British will always get down and dirty when ever they can. Indeed in Iraq there is more than a hint of an orientalist project of bringing western civilisation to the natives.

 

I think "social Darwinism" functions best as a metaphor. Superficially, we can imagine that our intuitive behaviour has "evolved" because unfavourable behaviour provoked negative repercussions. It makes sense in a crude, carrot vs. stick way, and equally crudely does away with the notion that we have an innate sense of right and wrong, polite and rude, etc., which would otherwise have to be explained by some other apparatus.