2 Humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz is professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, CSI, and Prometheus Books (see note 1).
3 One of the ICR's "Tenets of Biblical Creationism" (see H. Morris 1984b, 363-365) is that those who reject or "neglect to believe" in Christ "must ultimately be consigned to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
4 Tennyson's In Memoriam 56. See Gould 1995, 63-75. On predators and prey in nature, see McGowan 1997; also Baumiller and Gahn 2004 and Stokstad 2004.
5 Dobzhansky (1967, 5) sees "a greater urgency" in the term Weltanschauung than in "world view," the latter sounding rather like "a view from a mountaintop," pleasant but something one can live without.
6 H. Morris and Parker 1987, xii; H. Morris 1988. On the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), see "General Prologue," note 21.
On aggressive behavior, see Wrangham and Peterson 1996. (For a critical review, see Sussman 1997.) Such behavior, to the extent it may have been favored in our evolutionary past, is a product of natural selection, not (as creationists would have it) of belief in natural selection. On how altruism paradoxically came also to be favored, see Hamilton 1996. On human cooperation as an "evolutionary puzzle," see Johnson et al. 2003; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Fehr and Gachter 2003; Boyd 2006. On the evolution of human social behavior, see de Waal 2001 and Matsuzawa 2001. On game theory and the theory of evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), see Maynard Smith 1982. On the game-theory concept of the Prisoner's Dilemma in the study of cooperative action, see Klarreich 2004; Stephens, McLinn, and Stevens 2002; and Mesterton-Gibbons and Adams 2002. For more on cooperation, see note 11 below.
7 H. Morris 1978, viii; 1985, 14. Henry Morris referred to behavior based on world view as the "fruit test" ("By their fruits ye shall know them") (H. Morris 2001).
8 On altruistic behavior, see Trivers 1971 and notes 6 and 11. Darwin's high moral character is well reflected in words of his son Francis: "The two subjects which moved my father perhaps more strongly than any others were cruelty to animals and slavery. His detestation of both was intense, and his indignation was overpowering in case of any levity or want of feeling on these matters" (Rachels 1990, 213). For a creationist view that Darwin's passion as a youth for shooting and hunting "bordered on sadism," and might have played a part in developing his "ruthless" theory of natural selection, see Bergman 2005. For a biography of Darwin, see Desmond and Moore 1994.
9 H. Morris 1970, 71; 1989, 255-260. According to Henry Morris, "Satan has sought very successfully to gain control of education--especially higher education. His system of evolution is the key weapon in his control of education and he bitterly opposes all who presume to teach against that system" (2005b).
10 The late Morris (1982a, 10-11) believed that evolutionists are not actually "agents of the devil" but rather "unknowing victims of the one who has 'deceived the whole world' (Revelations 12:9)." For the creationist view that "Darwinism has had a devastating impact, not only on Christianity, but also on theism," see Bergman 2001.
11 In the 1970s the nature/nurture debate (the question of which contributes more, genes or environment, to our behavior) was enlivened by the book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, by Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson. Wilson defined sociobiology as "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior" (1975, 4; see also 1998a). In his book Wilson drew most notably upon the works of biologists William D. Hamilton (1963, 1964; see Pennisi 2000b) and John Maynard Smith (1964) on "inclusive fitness" and "kin selection," and Robert L. Trivers (1971, 1974) on "reciprocal altruism" and "parent-offspring conflict." Wilson gave these and similar studies the name sociobiology.
According to Wilson (1979, 18), "Each person is molded by an interaction of his environment, especially his cultural environment, with the genes that affect social behavior." This was really nothing new, given the long history of research in what has come to be called behavior (or behavioral) genetics, according to which genes "influence virtually every aspect of human personality, temperament, cognitive style, and psychiatric disorder" (Hamer 2002). In the '70s, however, this view that human nature is genetically influenced--"The genes," as Wilson put it in his book On Human Nature, "hold culture on a leash" (1978, 167)--was wrongly equated with genetic determinism and vehemently attacked by the left as politically incorrect. Adding fuel to the fire was the 1976 book The Selfish Gene, described (in the 1989 edition) by its author, zoologist Richard Dawkins, as extolling "the gene's-eye view of evolution," a perspective found in the works of Hamilton (1964) and biologist George C. Williams (1966; on Williams, see Zimmer 2004a). According to this view, the gene, not the individual or group, is the "fundamental unit of (natural) selection" (Dawkins 1989, 11), with all organic adaptations having meaning "only as mechanisms that promote the survival of the genes" (Williams 1966, 159-160). On the "selfish gene" as useful metaphor, compare the metaphorical concept of DNA as "information" based on a "code" etc. [see "The Biochemist's Tale," note 2].)
It should be noted, in discussing the gene's-eye view of evolution, that in modern evolutionary theory, fitness is defined in terms, not of dog-eat-dog competition, but of "differential reproductive success" (Eldredge 1982, 56). "Natural selection favors fitness," wrote George Gaylord Simpson (1964, 24), "only if you define fitness as leaving more descendants." The chances of that are enhanced, of course, by having multiple partners and/or choosing mates with "good" genes, to help successfully pass one's own genes along. Thus male peacocks flamboyantly display vivid feathers to attract females ("look what good genes I have"); bright-billed male blackbirds and zebra finches attract more females than do those with duller bills (bright bills reflect carotenoid pigments that strengthen the immune system) (Faivre et al. 2003; Blount 2003); male barn swallows with darker breast feathers attract more females than do males with paler plumage (Safran et al. 2005; Perkins 2005a); female gray tree frogs respond to males with the longest mating calls (a study shows that such males sire higher quality young) (Ecker 1998); and male satin bowerbirds compete for females by decorating bowers to display, and by doing songs and dances (Coleman et al. 2004; Morell 2004). As Rebecca Jo Safran and colleagues have put it, "Paternity in male animals can be influenced by their phenotypic signals of quality" (Safran et al. 2005). (On "sexual selection," which Darwin noted "gives fewer offspring to the less favoured males" [1859, 157], see Miller 2000; see also Jolly 2001 on sex in human evolution. Sexual reproduction is almost ubiquitous in animal species due to the advantage of higher genetic diversity of offspring, outweighing asexual reproduction's advantage of allowing twice the number of genes to be passed on to offspring [Pearcy et al. 2004]. On the hypothesis that sexual reproduction inhibits the accumulation of deleterious mutations, see Paland and Lynch 2006. On homosexuality, see Burr 1997; Savic et al. 2005; Wade 2005b; Pinker 2005. On homosexuality among animals, see Smith 2004; Bagemihl 2002; Zuk 2003.)
Altruism in the form of parental care and kin selection, that is, caring for close relatives with whom one shares the most genes, derives from this innate drive to preserve and pass on one's genes (Dawkins 1989, 88-108). For a study of male parental care among baboons, see Buchan et al. 2003. For a study of kin selection among workers in the ant species Formica fusca, see Hannonen and Sundstrom 2003. For kin selection studies involving crows and lizards, see Baglione et al. 2003, Sinervo and Clobert 2003, and Dickinson and Koenig 2003. For a landmark study of kin selection in bluegill sunfish, see Neff 2003. See Griffin and West 2003 for studies across 18 cooperatively breeding vertebrate species (15 birds and 3 mammals) demonstrating that "kin discrimination" is more likely in species where helping provides greater benefits, confirming "Hamilton's rule" (altruistic or cooperative behavior will be favored if Rb - c > 0, where R is the genetic relatedness between the helper and the recipient, b is the fitness benefit to the recipient, and c is the fitness cost of helping) (Hamilton 1964).
Cooperation among non-kin can be seen as a form of mutual benefit or trading favors ("you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours"). Reciprocal altruism may have evolved early in human societies when people lived in small groups, with recipients of favors being expected to return them or else risk being punished as cheaters (Vogel 2004). For a study of how social bonds among female baboons enhance infant survival--in other words, sociality confers fitness benefits, or "sociality is good for you" (Dunbar 2003)--see Silk et al. 2003. See also Milius 2003 on the question "Do animals have friends?". For a study of how the brown capuchin monkey responds negatively to unequal reward distribution, a response supporting "an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion" or "a sense of fairness," see Brosnan and de Waal 2003.
There is also the theory of indirect reciprocity, according to which people may help someone who won't pay them back as long as it helps build a reputation for cooperation, others seeing the charitable act (Vogel 2004). This increases one's social status and is thus a sophisticated form of investment in one's own future (Wedekind 1998) ("I help you and somebody else helps me" [Nowak and Sigmund 2005]). Then there is strong reciprocity, the theory that an innate sense of fairness leads people to reward cooperators and punish defectors or cheaters. Some researchers see this theory as unnecessary, reciprocal altruism and indirect reciprocity being enough to explain "the evolution of the golden rule" ("Do unto others as you would have others do unto you") (Vogel 2004). For more on the evolution of cooperation, see Hammerstein 2003; Doebeli et al. 2004; Bhattacharjee 2006; Bowles 2006.
The ICR's John Morris (1998b) has characterized sociobiology as an attempt "to apply animal behavior to human society"--as if evolutionists were claiming, given our animal ancestry, that animal-like behavior "must be appropriate for humans." For a defense of sociobiology today, see Alcock 2001. For a history of the sociobiology controversy among scientists themselves, see Segerstrale 2000. For Wilson's own account, see Wilson 1994, 307-353.
The new discipline of evolutionary psychology, according to which everyone "is a victim not of genes, but of genes and environment together" (Wright 1994, 348), is essentially sociobiology under another name (Wilson 1998, 150, 168; Miele 1998, 82). On evolutionary psychology, see Wright 1994; Buller 2005; Pinker 2002; Buss 1998; Plotkin 1998; Miele 1996; Leda Cosmides and John Tooby's Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer; William A. Spriggs's What Is Evolutionary Psychology?; and this author's essays "The Call of the Gray Tree Frog" and "Even Cowbirds Make the News." On selfish genes in conflict with other parts of the genome, see Burt and Trivers 2006. For critical views of evolutionary psychology and the selfish-gene concept, see Roughgarden 2004, Eldredge 2004, Ehrlich 2000, and Rose and Rose 2000. On alternative approaches stressing the importance of individual biological development in evolution, see Scher and Rauscher 2002 and Bower 2002b. On religion and evolutionary psychology, see Boyer 2002 and Giovannoli 2000.
In current research efforts to identify the specific genes that contribute to individual behavioral differences, researcher Dean Hamer cautions that it is important not to ignore "the critical importance of the brain, the environment, and gene expression networks," as "human behaviors, and the brain circuits that cause them, are undoubtedly the product of intricate networks involving hundreds of thousands of genes working in concert with multiple developmental and environmental events" (Hamer 2002; see also Hamer and Copeland 1998). On epigenetics, the study of how environmental factors can modify chromosomes, thus changing how genes are expressed, see Brownlee 2006. On genes and the mind, see Pennisi 2006 and Marcus 2003. For more on genes, environment, and behavior, see Harmon 2006; G. Robinson 2004; Pennisi 2005a; Blumberg 2005; Ridley 2003, Konner 2001; and D. Moore 2002. On brain evolution, see Linden 2007.
12 Chaplin 1985, 125; Reber 1985, 193; Skinner 1981.
13 See Taylor 1967, 368.
14 On determinism, see Kane 2001 and Ted Honderich's website. See also this author's "Free Will and Determinism." For a deterministic view of cosmic and biological evolution, see de Duve 2003. Roman Catholic biologist Kenneth R. Miller justifies theistic evolution on the basis of God�s "gifts of freedom": "A biologically static world would leave a Creator's creatures with neither freedom nor the independence required to exercise that freedom. In biological terms, evolution is the only way a Creator could have made us the creatures we are--free beings in a world of authentic and meaningful moral and spiritual choices" (Miller 1999a).
15 See "The Biologist's Tale," lines 63-69.
16 On humanism, see Edwords 2008, Lamont 1997 (downloadable at the Corliss Lamont Website), and Kurtz 1980; for creationist attacks on humanism, see H. Morris 2003b, LaHaye 1980, and Webber 1982.
17 In 1987 there were two highly publicized court cases involving the express antihumanism of the Christian Right. A federal judge in Alabama found for 600 fundamentalist plaintiffs by banning from Alabama's public schools 44 textbooks that promoted "the religion of secular humanism." And a federal judge in Tennessee found for seven fundamentalist families seeking to protect their schoolchildren from such "humanistic" reading matter as The Diary of Anne Frank and The Wizard of Oz. (Objectionable was Anne Frank's opinion that everyone should have "some religion," it "doesn't matter what" [Pugh 1987]. Such thought apparently contributes to what fundamentalists call "creeping universalism," the idea that "somehow, someday everyone is going to be saved" [Newton 1986]. The Wizard of Oz was objectionable for suggesting that not all witches are bad.) Both decisions were overturned on appeal.
18 Protagoras, a Greek philosopher of the fifth century B.C., is also credited with saying, "There are two sides to every question."
19 Terence (185-159 B.C.) was a Roman playwright and former slave.
20 Scott 1996, 25. See "The Biochemist's Tale," note 23.
21 Ferre 1973, 674-676. See Hume 1779, 149-151. Hume actually preceded Paley (1802); Paley's popular book rehashed the classical argument from design that Hume had already debunked.
22 Jacob 1977. See "The Biologist's Tale," lines 214-314.
23 On Noah's flood, see "The Biochemist's Tale," lines 172-204; "The Geologist's Tale," lines 87-153; and "The Scholar's Tale," lines 176-232.
24 On the intelligent design (ID) movement, see "General Prologue," note 15; "The Astronomer's Tale," note 31; and "The Biologist's Tale" 211-305, notes 27-28. For a special Science magazine section ("Networks in Biology") on how biological systems viewed as networks "have much in common with good engineering design" (Alon 2003), see Science 301:1863-1877. On gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and the evolution of animal body plans, see Davidson and Erwin 2006 and Imai et al. 2006.
25 For the argument against "progress" in evolution, see Gould 1996 and Ruse 1996. For an argument for, based partly on game theory (or "non-zero-sumness"), see Wright 2000. (For more on game theory, see Klarreich 2004 and Maynard Smith 1982.) On the question "Does evolution have a purpose?", see Ruse 2003a. See also Denton 1998.
26 Russell 1995, 222. "The secret of happiness," Russell once stated, "is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible" (quoted in the Bertrand Russell Archives).
27 The process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) saw God as bipolar, with a "primordial nature" that is complete and unchanging, and a limited, evolving, "consequent nature" in which he is "the great companion, the fellow-sufferer who understands" (MacQuarrie 1981, 264-265). See A.D. Irvine's article on Whitehead. On process theology, see Cobb and Griffin 1977; Barbour 1990, 218-242, 260-270; 1966, 365-463; MacQuarrie 1981, 258-277; McGrath 1997. On pantheism as belief that "the universe and nature are divine," in a nontheistic sense of inspiring awe and reverence, see Paul Harrison's Scientific Pantheism website.
28 Dawkins 1986.
29 "The Cosmologist's Tale," lines 373-395.
30 See "The Cosmologist's Tale," lines 314-318.
31 Any attempt to derive ought from is, that is, to identify goodness with that which is natural, was criticized by Hume and is what philosopher G. E. Moore called the "naturalistic fallacy" (see Rachels 1990, 66-70; Ruse 1986, 86-90).
32 See "The Biologist's Tale," lines 291-300.
33 Futuyma 1979, 10.
34 Darwin 1859, 489.
35 Ibid., 128-130. See The Tree of Life, and "The Biochemist's Tale," note 39.
36 Darwin closed the Origin with this oft-quoted passage: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
37 In Created From Animals, philosopher James Rachels argues that Darwinism calls for the abandonment of the traditional idea of "human dignity," according to which human life, created "in the image of God," is sacred while other creatures may be used as we see fit. He argues for what he calls moral individualism, "an equal concern for the welfare of all beings, with distinctions made among them only when there are relevant differences that justify differences in treatment." The book makes a powerful statement for the animal-rights movement. See also Sunstein and Nussbaum 2004 and Fouts 1997.
On evolution and morality, see also notes 6 and 11 above, and "The Paleoanthropologist's Tale," note 36.
38 For a definitive but demanding work on the anthropic principle, see Barrow and Tipler 1986. (For critical reviews, see Ruse 1987 and Crease and Mann 1986.) For a more accessible work, see Barrow 2003. For good summaries on the principle, see Trefil 1997; Lightman and Brawer 1990, 46-49; Rothman 1987; Leslie 1989, 127-149; Davies 1980, 142-161; and Barrow 1988, 352-373. The weak anthropic principle (WAP) says the universe must be as it is in order for us to be here to observe it. The strong anthropic principle (SAP) says the universe exists because we're here to observe it. The final anthropic principle (FAP) says that once life exists in the universe, it will never die out. Martin Gardner thinks the FAP should be called the CRAP (the completely ridiculous anthropic principle) (Rothman 1987, 96). On "anthropic reasoning" in cosmology, see Livio and Rees 2005.
39 Barrow and Tipler 1986, 5; Leslie 1989, 4. Carbon is produced by stellar nucleosynthesis (see "The Astronomer's Tale," lines 55-68).
40 Barrow and Tipler 1986, 318.
41 See Seife 2004b; Barrow 2003; Ferris 1997, 278-280; Herbert 1985, 19; Barrow and Tipler 1986, 458-496; Leslie 1989, 6-8, 66-103; Rothman 1987, 95; Davies 1980, 135-141. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in 1957 by Princeton graduate student Hugh Everett III, is only one version of multiverse theory. If space is infinite, then parallel universes, far from our own, must exist: "somewhere out there, everything that is possible becomes real, no matter how improbable it is" (Tegmark 2003; see also Max Tegmark's website). The creation of an infinite number of universes is a prediction of inflationary theory, now widely accepted by cosmologists in its various versions (Vilenkin 2006; Guth 1997, 245-248; Linde 1995). See "The Cosmologist's Tale," notes 3 and 35.
On the "six numbers" that represent the fine-tuning of the universe (for example, .007, a function of the strength of the force that holds together the parts of an atomic nucleus), see Rees 1999 and Lemley 2000. Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal of England, notes how imperfections or "ugliness" in the universe (such as the elliptical, rather than circular, orbit of the Earth) suggest that the universe is "a subset of a larger series" (the multiverse) rather than a singular product of design; in this subset the numbers or conditions are "no more special than our presence requires" (quoted in Lemley 2000).
42 See note 43.
43 The German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1971) established the uncertainty principle, according to which we cannot know both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle. This is viewed as more than a limitation imposed by our measuring devices: it is due to a basic indeterminism in subatomic events. See also "The Physicist's Tale," note 31.