Rational Philosophy

On the reproductive strategies of Komodo Dragons — what they tell us, and what they don’t. And a parallel in the trends of religious affiliation.

Neil Shubin, associate dean at the University of Chicago and the provost of the Field Museum, tries to shrug off objections to cloning as “unnatural” by explaining that female Komodo Dragons, and other species, can reproduce without the need for male fertilization. Shubin reasons that this phenomenon, reported in Britain and Kansas, in which the offspring have identical DNA to the mother, shows that we’re on shaky ground if we turn to nature to determine that cloning is unnatural. Since nature can encompass all kinds of odd survival mechanisms, Shubin argues, when it comes to survival, “anything goes.” But in his rush to eliminate nature as an infallible moral compass (a sensible intent, since, as he says, only humans have a sense of morality) Shubin unfortunately shuffles out of the door the question of what’s “natural.”

Shubin’s argument goes like this: Cloning happens in nature (through the phenomenon of virgin births). Therefore cloning can’t be said to be unnatural.

He has, of course, stooped to a very basic form of sophistry by taking two different ideas and equating them. Virgin birth in Komodo Dragons has evolved over millions of years as a survival mechanism when male fertilization is unlikely or difficult. When humans clone a species we deliberately achieve our means with mechanisms that haven’t evolved. That’s the whole point of applying science to cloning — to hoodwink nature.

In amongst this sophistry though, Shubin points out that male fertilization persists as by far the most likely form of reproduction in Komodos, despite the possibility of virgin birth, because it mixes up the gene pool of the offspring and in so doing allows for adaptation. (Passing on the same genes makes adaptation impossible.)

“Without variation,” as Shubin notes, “the world would be static and unchangeable, and species would gradually disappear as they failed to meet challenges…”

This put me in mind of a new survey on religion from the Pew Forum. In its survey of over 35,000 Americans (a relatively large sample), Pew found that “more than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all.” “The number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.”

I should quickly state that non-affiliated does not necessarily mean non-religious; overall about 10% claimed to be non-religious (1.6% atheist, 2.4% agnostic, and 6.3% secular unaffiliated).

I’ve spoken at length in other posts that statistics mislead and get misused. But here I want to say something that would, I believe, hold true even if the statistics told another story; it would just lead to a different prediction.

The decision to change one’s religious affiliation requires as a prerequisite some openness to the idea of change. In making such a change one must be prepared to let go of the old affiliation in favor of the new one. In this way the process is analagous to evolution. Just as the body of an organism responds to physical impulses, so, too, our consciousness responds to mental impulses. And just as the natural world would be static and unchangeable without variation, so, too, the world of ideas would be static and unchangeable without variation.

If we take the Pew statistics at face value, they indicate that the world of ideas has begun to bring about a move away from particular religious affiliation, particularly in young people. Depending on our own religious beliefs, we may wish this to be otherwise. But we cannot argue that the capacity for change, the flexibility and adaptability of beliefs is a healthy sign — it is the evolution of consciousness.

Now for the subjective, but rational, commentary: I am not surprised by the trend that is apparently revealed in the Pew survey. It tracks with similar surveys in Europe (although charting a less dramatic move toward secularism than Europe has seen). And it makes rational sense. Relgions started out as mechanisms by which people tried to make sense of the world. Inspired by doubt, wonder, and fear, early humans invested inanimate objects with the power of deities. Once these inanimate objects were more fully understood, the sense of the divine moved ever further from the tangible world until in more recent times it became invested in an unseen, unseeable, omnipotent but ultimately elusive deity (after all, what was left?)

The more people become aware and convinced that existence can be understood without recourse to a god, the more they will be to change and even let drop their religious affiliations.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

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The AP reports on the success of a Japanese team in making genetically modified mice that show no fear of cats. This demonstrates that mice fear cats instinctively, upsetting the more commonly held view that the fear is learned.

The scientists from Tokyo University found that the modified mice quite happily cosied up to the unmodified cats and played with them.

I’ve been reading a fascinating biography of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is getting a lot of play at the moment because of his role in insisting on the separation of church and state as America was being constituted. Jefferson, a Virginian, saw and felt the unfairness of a system in which religion gets forced on people. Fortunately for the country he was a persistent and forceful person who carried forward this conviction even when others would have been OK allowing some degree of intermingling.

Roger Cohen invokes Jefferson’s ideas in an opinion piece that counters Mitt Romney’s vapid criticism of European Secularism, echoing to some degree my own response the other day. Jefferson was an enlightened man. His father read the classics out loud to his family. He had a classical education at home and then at university. Jefferson had great sympathy for the enlightened movements of Europe, and considered anything short of a rational grounding for society unacceptable. In his native state, he reformed the laws of inheritance, for instance, because he thought them inherently unfair.

Jefferson, one can imagine, must be turning in his grave. As Europe has marched on to become widely secularist and for the most part enlightened, America has slumped into a nation riddled with weird zealotry and faith-based fervor, where politicians either make it in part because they genuinely appeal to the religious community or are cowed into pandering to that community. As I sit here, I can think of several reasons why this gap has opened up — the sheer size of America, isolating far-flung communities from the influence and challenge of rigorous thought, the psychological composition of the people who populated America — people came here seeking peace and prosperity trusting largely in their faith that God would provide, the long, lingering influence of slavery and segregation, which was propped up by the idea that whites were somehow better than blacks, a very irrational proposition. I’m sure there are many other potential explanations.

But, as I see it, the point is less how did this happen, and more, how will this change.

The NY Times reports on a new study that indicates that human evolution accelerated rapidly in the last 40,000 years. There’s debate about whether that acceleration has continued over the past 10,000 years, but the study brings with it some hope that we’re not done yet.

Back to those mice…

If mice are genetically programmed to fear cats, this tells us two things: First, that while environment can affect our thoughts and behavior, we start from a predisposition toward a certain psychology and physiology. (My fear of spiders, for instance, may have been influenced by my mother’s fear of spiders, but it was probably also an inherent fear.) Second, that mice evolved their fear of cats.

And if mice can evolve a fear of cats (which seems self-evident to my mind), then human beings can evolve to become more enlightened.

Did I skip a step or two? I fear I did.

1. Is it evolutionary progress to become more enlightened? If you question the answer to this, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

2. What evolutionary pressure will cause the human race to become more enlightened?

Again, I can come up with several theories in answer to the second question, and I’m sure you’ll find your own. All other things being equal, I think that women are more likely to find enlightened men attractive and vice versa. Who wants to be married to a cave-man? An enlightened man will also be more helpful around the house and with the kids, prompting the woman to be OK having more kids with him. And enlightened people are probably less likely to die stupid, meaningless deaths.

As I argue in my book we’ll one day look back on religious fundamentalism as an anomalous blip in the history of America. The Japanese modification of mice to fear no cats gives me fresh hope that American genes will adjust over time to fear no smiting from on high. At which point the Bushes and the Huckabees and the Romneys of the world will disappear from the political scene with a puff of enlightened smoke.