Altruism vs. Evolution

Why is altruism under attack? Why is this characteristic being beaten around so by the materialist scientism community? What would evolution lose if altruism is not force-fit into the “fittest” mold?

Altruism is a direct threat to the idea that evolution causes everything, just everything. So, along with the concept of a separable mind (A.J. Ayers' OBE notwithstanding), altruism must be conquered, and soon. Here are some of the recent assaults on altruism.

These are some headlines from the world of aforensic Abductive scientism.

Inner Workings Of The Magnanimous Mind: Why It Feels Good To Be Altruistic
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070528162351.htm

“One study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,* involved about 20 people, each of whom had the potential to walk away with a pot of $128. They also were given a separate pool of funds, which they could choose to distribute to a variety of charities linked to controversial issues, such as abortion and the death penalty. A computer presented each charity to the subjects in series, and gave them the option to donate, to oppose donation, or to receive a payoff, adding money to the pot. Sometimes, the decision to donate or oppose was costly, calling for subjects to take money out of the pot.

“It turned out that a similar pattern of brain activity was seen when subjects chose either to donate or take a payoff. Both types of decisions were associated with heightened activity in parts of the midbrain, a region deep in the brain that is known to be involved in primal desires (such as food and sex) and the satisfaction of them. This result provides the first evidence that the "joy of giving" has an anatomical basis in the brain – surprisingly, one that is shared with selfish longings and rewards”

How could there have been any question that the brain is involved with an altruistic decision? What is shown here is the presupposition of the 'materialistic mind', which preassumes that brain activity shows the mind's locus for a particular function, now and forever. This of course has been trounced by the findings that the brain map changes, and not only that, the mind can change the map. This is science, not science fictional stories.



Human-like Altruism Shown In Chimpanzees
ScienceDaily (Jun. 25, 2007) — http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070625085134.htm

Experimental evidence reveals that chimpanzees will help other unrelated humans and conspecifics without a reward, showing that they share crucial aspects of altruism with humans.

Debates about altruism are often based on the assumption that it is either unique to humans or else the human version differs from that of other animals in important ways. Thus, only humans are supposed to act on behalf of others, even toward genetically unrelated individuals, without personal gain, at a cost to themselves.

Studies investigating such behaviors in nonhuman primates, especially our close relative the chimpanzee, form an important contribution to this debate.

Felix Warneken and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology present experimental evidence that chimpanzees act altruistically toward genetically unrelated conspecifics.

In addition, in two comparative experiments, they found that both chimpanzees and human infants helped altruistically regardless of any expectation of reward, even when some effort was required, and even when the recipient was an unfamiliar individual--all features previously thought to be unique to humans.

The evolutionary roots of human altruism may thus go deeper than previously thought, reaching as far back as the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. In a related article, Frans de Waal discusses the issues brought out by this discovery.

The gambit is, if evolution is falsified, just push it farther into the "deep time" of antiquity, using Just So Stories, which will convince just everyone.

PBS and the Elephants
In a recent PBS airing of an elephant troupe being followed through a series of annual visits, at one point an elephant mother was found to be ailing. She had a calf, who tried to nurse, but the mother was too weak. The troupe remained in the vicinity, after all she was part of the family. When she ultimately died, the other females removed the calf, and took it with them when they left the area. This is a direct slap at the “pursuit of the fittest”, taken in its literal form.

In their book, “Evolutionary Dynamics of a Population”, the Grants document a male Finch which kept two nests fed, not just one. The second nest was not even of his species. The Finch was exhausted, but kept it up. There is no "Fittest" logic or stories to justify this behavior.

But evolutionists no longer stick to the original logic of the “fittest”. Their conundrum now is to devise a new forcing function that will jam the data into the theory. So, for starters, they place its genesis (they don’t call it that of course) back farther into unreachable dark antiquity, merely because multiple species exhibit the characteristic.

Then, they must explain why. After all, Dawkins tells us that we are machines built by our genes for their propagation, and nothing more. Therefore, altruism must come from the genes, not the free-will decision to help someone out. There is no free-will for us to use.

So stories must be created to cover the ground of why altruism is actually a selfish move, designed to help our success, not the recipient of our help. If you detect the standard logical inversion of atheism somewhere around here, raise your hand.

Dawkins, in his “Selfish Gene” muffs the program right up front on page 3, where he declares that altruism is a learned characteristic. He also says, right up front, that he “will be using factual details only as illustrative examples”. So apparently the book is a philosophical, non-empirical, non-forensic excursion through the dim, misty valleys of Dawkins' mind. Nonetheless, Dawkins has lent his mighty name to the “altruism is learned” camp.

But wait! By page seven, Dawkins gives the following account of the evolution of altruism:

“To put it in a slightly more respectable way, a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals.”
Dawkins, “Selfish Gene”, p7.

Whoa! Where in the world did the group of self-sacrificers come from in the first place? And, if the theory is right, all species would have a very large preemptive-strike unit composed of Kamikaze-like suicide interventionists. That is not what altruism is all about. I’m sure Dawkins knows that, too. Altruism is a decision made to extend oneself beyond normal limits in order to help another. On the other hand, a preprogrammed response is determinate, another Atheist requirement of behavior. It cannot be considered generous if the control program forces you to do it.

Moreover, the twist on the definition of altruism is a mark of intellectual dishonesty. The Finch was not preprogrammed to help out the nestlings of a different species. And the bird's action was not one of preemptive kamikazeism.

Dawkins, however, immediately takes off on a different tack. He discredits the "group theory", not with data of course, but just by saying that it is discredited. And he surges into his own theory of "selfish genes", a theory trashed thoroughly by philosopher David Stove, pointing out that anthropomorphizing molecules is a category error, at a minimum; molecules can't be selfish, they aren't cogent. They can't create vehicles for their own use, they aren't creative. They are molecules: an effect, not a cause.

This is the reason that altruism is not a product of evolution. The data does not match the Abductive story-telling being foisted off as science. It is not science. It is worldview propagation using corrupted science-fiction, passed off as science. And as such it is abhorrent to anyone looking to match experimental data to the intuited truths of the logical realities, both physical and non-physical. In other words, anyone who loves the truth.

Dawkins fails miserably at presenting his fantasies as science, which fall to dust under the slightest logical scrutiny.