No, no, don't go dashing off trying to find your bible which you probably haven't looked at in years and will have forgotten where in hell you put it; here is the King James version:
[...] there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.
I am provoked to this bible-punching by a recent story in the Boston Globe by Leon Neyfakh, one of their staff writers. He describes what must have been a Bateman-like(*) scene in Darwinian circles when, in March this year, Nature magazine published a paper by E. O. Wilson (or God, as he is known in biological circles!) and a couple of maths swots by the name of Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita. In it they crucified (sorry, but this biblical stuff is catching) the long and dearly cherished notion of neo-Darwinists that altruism stems from kin relationships, that is, the closer you are related to someone the more likely you are to risk your life for them because they share your microscopically tiny bits of protein 'goo' called genes and which, according to 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins, entirely rule our lives and behaviours - well, if you believe that, you'll believe anything! But neo-Darwinists do believe it, indeed, they cling to it like ship-wreck survivors on a raft because, of course, according to them we are all entirely slaves to rule by 'gene-goo' which is, as Dawkins insists with eye-ball swivelling intensity, entirely selfish and thus, there is, there can be, no such thing as altruism. What we assume is altruism, is in fact, selfishness because by helping our kin who, depending on how closely bred they are to us, also carry our 'selfish' genes, we are really helping ourselves, er, even as we drown, get run over, shot, perish in a fire, or whatever we do to save our brothers, cousins, second-cousins and so on.
The fact that a skim through the papers, made so much easier today via the internet, produces a steady stream of stories of incredible acts of bravery, sometimes terminal, by complete strangers on behalf of others is a fact not allowed to disturb the priestly serenity of 'Archbishop' Dawkins and his acolytes. But now, E. O. Wilson, hitherto one of the most highly emminent members of the priesthood, a sort of papal figure in the neo-Darwinist sect, has arisen and claimed that all this kin altruism is wrong, and he goes on to make use of his two maths wizards to prove it! The fact that it was Wilson, himself, who years ago first discovered William Hamilton's obscure paper proposing kin selection and made it famous and accepted by biologists across the world, makes his recantation all the more explosive.
What Wilson now proposes, some 30 years later, is what he calls 'group altruism', in other words, members of the same group will sacrifice themselves for other members of the group irrespective of any kinship, and apparently his mathematical assistants have proved it. Under heavy bombardment from his erstwhile friends, Wilson, with sardonic humour:
paraphrases Arthur Schopenhauer to explain his current standing in his field. “All new ideas go through three phases,” Wilson said, with some happy mischief in his voice. “They’re first ridiculed or ignored. Then they meet outrage. Then they are said to have been obvious all along.”
(*) For the benefit of my foreign readers, H. M. Bateman was an English cartoonist famous and well-loved in the early part of the 20th century, particularly for a stream of cartoons with the catchphrase beginning "The man who . . ." and followed by some dreadful faux pas committed by some poor sucker who didn't know the rules.
Wouldn't these people (these "thinking" researchers) be better off doing something else, like painting the fence, or something?
And haven't you got something better to do, like mowing the church lawn, or something?
Posted by: Sassyandra | Saturday, 11 June 2011 at 22:24
Oh sorry. I see you've already mowed the church lawn, I hadn't read that post yet.
Well, something constructive... why don't you paint the ceiling of the church, that sounds like a good thing to do?
Paint the roof.
Paint my roof.
Posted by: Sassyandra | Saturday, 11 June 2011 at 22:29
Not wanting to "plagiarize" (at least directly, as some I know do) I was reading over on Mr. Haart's site the other day - anyway, I'm not too sure altruism is totally devoid of some evolutionary (tribal) foundation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac
(Now don't spend too much time on the diagrams - don't want you getting a migraine, but...)
"also think it’s not a coincidence that, in these societies where fbd marriage exists, you also get these extremely paternalistic societies where women are shrouded in burkas or aren’t allowed to drive or whatever. also, the whole honor killing thing. like rs said here, the males in such societies become “super homies” with each other. exactly! why? ’cause they are really closely related genetically."
http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/fathers-brothers-daughter-marriage/
[I know - my month's total of links.]
Posted by: JK | Sunday, 12 June 2011 at 16:36
Alas, JK, th eYouTube film would not run. As to teh problem of cousin marriage amongst Muslims, I blogged about it some time ago - please pay attention or you will be given 100 lines!
Andra, don't talk to me about painting anything - I'm still trying to sort the damage from my water leak - grrrrrh!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 12 June 2011 at 19:48