Is truth good?

Here is a problem I see.If evolution (natural selection, random mutation) is true, and applicable to humans, we have this curious fact that most humans are religious and have been religious throughout history. By religious, I mean in the sense of believing in a god or gods who interfere in human fitness, and can be induced by prayers and sacrifices, to modify fitness according to their whims. In other words, most humans apparently, from the way they invest resources, believe that willfull higher beings have been artificially selecting them, are artificially selecting them, and can be induced through religious means to make them more fit than they might otherwise be.This means that, if evolution is true, most evolved humans believe a lie. How could they evolve the behavior of believing a lie?The simplest explanation that comes to my mind is that knowing too much truth is mal-adaptive. I think of flatworms, who could I suppose have eyes as good as ours. The theory says that they have been evolving for as long, and have had many more generations, and much bigger, more isolated populations. But evidently anything more than an eyespot is counter-productive. It seems that humans, too, being blind to the truth about evolution, and believing the "religion lie" get a real boost in fitness, while nations and peoples knowing the truth about evolution decline in fitness. One can imagine that the great "sapiens" evolutionary experiment created a bizarre situation where "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" was paralyzing or distracting, to good fitness choices.Meanwhile, creation has its own version of this problem. While truth is upheld as a good thing, sorta, in fact, such things as "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" are presented as fatal. Yeshua says in one breath that "the truth shall set you free" and in another, "there are many things I want to say to you, but you cannot bear to hear them." "Knowledge puffs up." but "Buy the truth and don't sell it. Also wisdom, understanding and knowledge." Definately a mixture of virtues and problems.There is a story about some late 19th century lady, who when told that humans descended from apes, commented, "Oh dear, I hope it isn't so. But, if it is, I hope that it does not become widely known."Meanwhile, denial and self-delusion are rampant in humans, as if we were evolved to avoid the truth. As if we inwardly know that we are better off not knowing certain truths. But, we regard these behaviors as pejorative, a lowering of fitness and value in humans, self-destructive, really, and we highly honor "the search for truth." There is a lust in most of us, to be convinced that we are walking in the truth, and telling someone that they are in denial is regarded as insulting.Enough said. Is believing in the truth of evolution an example of a "sapienistic" adaptation that is perverted, or going too far?Stephen

Hi Stephen,
Your question is believing in evolution perverted?
I must answer no I do not believe that believing in evolution is perverted.

I think your viewpoing is highly paranoid Some sort of naturs conspiracy to make us delusional. Hehehe.I think Gods and Godesses, Spirits etc. come from the same place pretty much everything human does. An imaginative, inquisative, and creative mind. Have you ever read any Joseph Cample or Jung?They have wonderfull theories concerning the phenomenon of religion and myth. It is not a useless adaptation at all, and infact when viewd objectively it's usefullness is very evident. It helps forge cultural identeties, bond societies together, entertain, and pass on values and ideals.Myths tell us a great deal about ourselves and our relationship to the world, and they help comunicate the wisdom of those that came beofore. They are very good things. And quite deffinetly a product of our overactive brains.As far as truth goes, I think you are struggling with the fact that "truth" is only a human concept. There is no truth outside of ourselves.

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This means that, if evolution is true, most evolved humans believe a lie. How could they evolve the behavior of believing a lie?

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What came to my mind, almost instataneously, was the fight between the church and Galileo over the position of the planets and the sun. The Church had placed faith in certain verses in the bible that seemed to indicate that the earth was the center of the universe, or that the earth "stood fast." They looked at geocentrism as God's message as to how special this planet was to him. I see the same thing happening within the anti-evolution movement. Somehow taking away special creation, or even artificial evolution, is taking away something special that God has given us.I don't think that people believed in a lie, since I don't believe that Genesis was meant to be taken literally or that God interferes with our reproductive will. Instead, people have pinned their "specialness" on things outside of theology, namely properties of the natural world. It isn't idolatry really, but perhaps misguided. As one theologian said (wish I could remember who) "The bible contains instructions on how to go to heaven, not on how the heavens go." It is when followers of a religion apply theology to non-theological properties that things tend to get sticky.This is purely my opinion, and I am not expecting anyone else to buy into it.

I believe it was Galileo

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"

1.61803Thanks for responding. What might be your collective experience, both personal and in reading, regarding the numbers of grandchildren in the lives of evolutionists or those believing in creation?Stephen

Yaro,You note, wisely, that Good point. To rephrase, to be sure I get your drift, we believe in a lie in order to believe in an elusive truth, that the lie somehow embodies better than some direct statement of same. Thus, some truths are so good that it is wise to believe in a (harmless) lie if the lie helps get to them.The overactive brain part was my point, though. It's the overactivity of the brain that gets people past the myth into the "truth" that distracts or otherwise induces adaptively unfit behavior.Stephen

Well, I don't think lie is the correct word. Lie implies falsehood, and perhapse malicious falsehood. People don't so much belive in myths as they do the meaning of them. Myths are more like stories, alegoryes, or metaphors. They teach us something by capturing our imaginations, and emotions. I don't think they are lyes anymore than Aesops fables are lies.I suggest we not use that word, as it may pretty much derail the discussion into a symantic argument. Lie is not apropriate when adressing mythology, including the judeo-christian mythos. I think I agree, but I am noty sure what you mean by "adaptively unfit behavior", could you explain?As I see it myths by and large are good things when not taken to litteral extreemes, or manipulated by others to meet their own agendas.

Loudmouth,Your comment, focuses my question. Namely, why do people pray for children or grandchildren? If natural selection is true, God intervening by giving more children to some (those who pray) than to others (those who don't pray) is tantamount to artificial selection. You don't believe this happens, nor can any evolutionist believe that such prayers are answered with more actual children. Those investing in such prayers are believing a lie. Now, it may be a sort of placebo effect, where believing this particular lie makes the prayed for event come about. Hence, my question, how would such a behavior be evolved? Some quirk of the "sapienistic" adaptation?But, the whole question brings us back to the prayer/fertility study. If someone replicates this, it would be well to have an additional control, in a prayed for group that knows that they and others are praying. Be interesting to see if this group has a higher or lower fertility than the double-blind group.Stephen

here are some deffinitions, just to make it clear what we are talking about: And: I think this clarafies the diffrence quite adequately.

Yaro,Ok, let's replace lies by untruths. Now, stories about gods are not exactly myths, in the sense you mean, because people pray to the gods that the stories are about, partly drawing on the stories to know how to pray, or sacrifice, or whatever.As to unfit behavior, my training (long ago!) in evolution, in population genetics as the basis for evolution, emphasized something called fitness, W, which was the rate at which a given gene increased or decreased in populations over time. When W was greater than one, phenotypes based on W increased, and were considered more fit. Less, than one, they were headed for extinction.When I did population studies on birds, comparing fitness between habitats, I measured life-time production of offspring, acceptably to the evolutionary community I think, as a reflection of fitness and the adaptive-ness of the habitat selection behavior. So, now, I have been considering similar sorts of data for those believing in evolution and those believing in creation. Which population is more fit, in the evolutionary sense. Has more offspring, reproducing offspring. My anectdotal experience, mostly working with home-schoolers and scientists, suggests that those believing in evolution raise fewer children. So with societies, and nations. Maybe some sociologist somewhere will put a grad student on the question.I find it philosophically interesting, because, as a part of studying applied epistemology, I am interested in the parameters of the being (us) pursuing the truth, or wallowing in self-delusion and denial, as the case may be. How are we functioning, and how did we get that way?Thanks for responding.Stephen

Ahem: Lets just call them myths Stephen, because that is what they are. Well, this does not necisseraly invalidate them as myths. You must remember that the concept of gods and worship varies greatly from culture to culture.The Japanese shinto religion for example has an understanding that nature itself is suppernatural, filled with spirits called 'Kami'. These spirits are not so much beings to be prayd to, as they are natural principals, often indiferent to humans.Australian Aborigional belifes are highly metaphorical, and rather beutifull. They see this world as a dream of sleeping gods, an ephemeral thought of eternal slumbering beings.Just because belife in these gods, or in what the gods stand for, produce certain cultural behaviors, does not invalidate their mythic value. The two examples above reaveal a very rich, prfound, and meaningfull perspective on reality resulting from belife, and meditation, on these gods.Thus, we have a myth, valuable as a myth, providing existential truths, and a cultural identety to a people. Gods do not affect their mythic validity one way or the other. Are you suggesting that myths affect W, that is, natural selection? I suppose it may have some effect on the population. Well, it is common knowledge that poorer people, with the least education are likely to have more chilldren. Creationisim is a belife that is rampant amongst the worlds poorest people and must uneducated. Could this be a coralation as well? I really have to ask for a clarification here. Pretend I'm three years old and explain what you mean in the above paragraph.Thank you.

I'm not really sure if such things affect evolution at all. We can't really see them expressed in animals, and they seems mostly affected by society. We can also see changes through history in how it's expressed.So in short, I think the question would be; how can a specie develop such a peculiar and specialized behaviour if it conveys no actual benefit in terms of natural selection.Viewed from a purely human point of view, they make a lot of sense, because of the way our societies work, but if you take a hard look at our socities from the point of view of evolution, we do a lot of things which are bloody stupid.

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Namely, why do people pray for children or grandchildren? If natural selection is true, God intervening by giving more children to some (those who pray) than to others (those who don't pray) is tantamount to artificial selection.

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What I meant was that that a diety is not selecting which genes get passed on over others. Many human populations show gene distributions that seem to indicate that gene distribution follows natural mechanisms instead of "loaded deck" distributions that you would expect from an outside force. Sorry if that wasn't clear, which it probably wasn't. Reproductive will = our genes will be passed on by natural mechanisms/normal probabilities. Rep will is probably not the best term.

Im not sure that our pension for mythology, and social practicis, is totaly human. Similar behaviors have been observed in Chimpanzees, Killer Whales, and Elephants. All of these are highly inteligent, and social animals.Scientists have observed that different clans have different customs, and/or rituals. These behaviors help sement grupe identety, and keep the social machine "well oild". I don't see why human social practices can't simply be an expression of the same thing.