Science and religion share more than you think

Recently, I've been reading a fascinating little book, namely Bernardo Kastrup's Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism, and Culture (iff Books, 2015). I know, some of you have already jumped ships and the rest are looking for any remaining lifeboats, but it's not what you think. Yes, the Enlightenment proclivity for book titles as long as the texts seems to be returning, but Kastrup's "essays" are reworked blogs and interviews for the most part, and are written in an engaging and easy-to-read way; that is, for the rest of us, not the professional philosopher or neuroscientist. Anyone with a little openness and willingness would find them both understandable and thought-provoking.

While reading, one of the essays on the theory of evolution and what Neo-Darwinists have unfortunately done with it, I was struck by an idea. Part of the striking goes back to a post I made not long ago on how so many classic authors are seriously, if not maliciously, misquoted, as the victim this time is not Adam Smith but Charles Darwin. Now there's a really nice guy that got a bum deal.

To almost everyone, Mr. Darwin is known for his evolutionary principle of the "survival of the fittest". As you might have guessed, though, Charles never said, nor wrote that. Truth be told, he adamantly opposed the notion which was actually put forth and promoted by Herbert Spencer, not unsurprisingly an economist (because we saw in that other post what happens apparently when economists read, or something like that). Of course, these days, economists are quick to quote this non-Darwinian "truth". No, Darwin himself promoted the idea of "cooperation" as the most favorable factor in evolutionary survival and benefit. He spent years hoping to find a genetic link to it, of course, without success.

This blarney about the fittest (meaning in most instances the so-called strongest) surviving is a one of those ideas that appear intuitively obvious and brilliant, until you think about them. The strongest is the one that has to constantly prove his strength, so he's the one that fights the most and has, as a matter of simple consequence, the greatest chance of gettting killed. While all the tough guys were out and about getting their genes eliminated from the gene pool, the more reflective (and I'll readily admit, cowardly), but certainly more cooperative types were adapting our plans to get through this life and our genes into succeeding generations. And what the overwhelming evidence that we have for the notion of evolution is that we cooperative types were simply more successful, as is the case in every other species on earth.

Put another way, those who are willing to share -- quite simply, adjust their behavior positively toward others -- be it food, shelter, knowledge, comfort, and love, live longer in this life and through the lives of their offspring.

Similarly, Stan Tenen at the Meru Foundation has pointed out that not only is the so-called Golden Rule the most widely spread principle common to all the world's religions, he reminds us that the science writer Michael Shermer has argued that the Golden Rule "does not rest on any underlying religious belief, but rather is simply the most logical and reasonable way for a human to behave". That is, doing to others as you'd like them to do unto you is, well, the essence of sharing, isn't it?

Those who think the world is too huge and complex for us to understand are simply avoiding the obvious. In the end, at bottom, life is really rather simple. For as complex as evolution may seem to be, it works best for those who share. For as much as we like to insist on how different the different religions are, they share the most fundamental tenent in common. And for those who think that science and religion are incompatible, well, apparently you never really stopped to look at or think about either.

Quite often, life is only as tough as we make it.

Time to talk

Violence is a sign of total frustration. When someone is backed into a corner and escape seems impossible, a common response is simply violence.

It is particularly sad, however, when it is the government – be it municipal, state, or federal – which feels compelled to act this way, for they are, at least in theory, servants of the public. I know it doesn't seem like it. Politics and governance have appeared to take on a lives of their own, or at least they appear to be living in their own little world. That's another sign of being overwhelmed by reality: retreating into one's own world.

For a good number of people, this is the time to find the guilty and ensure they are punished, but that's a really bad idea. Not only is there no one single entity, institution, group or person who can be blamed. We're all to blame. As George Carlin once quipped, "You're here, you're guilty, end of story." Well, almost. This is not the time to fix the blame, it's time to start fixing the problem.

Why? Because we're so good at it? Hardly. Because we know what needs to be done? Not in the least? Because we have a good chance of coming to a consensus on the way forward? Absolutely not. No, we have to start working on the fix simply because we have no choice. We've ranted and raved, thrown things, broken lots of stuff, almost burned the place to the ground, but, as expected, none of that has helped. No, now we have to take a deep breath, get calm, look each other in the eye, and do what we've practically forgotten how to do: we've got to start talking with one another.

You'll notice I said "with" ... not "to" or "at", not "out", "down" or "up". No, with. We've got to re-learn the lost arts of listening, reflecting, considering, questioning, and discussing. None of these need to be done with complete objective coolness. Passion is allowed, but not obsession. Assertiveness is allowed, but not abuse. Vigor is allowed, but not violence. But we have to start talking again.

Discussion is not a financial or economic method, so the moment we exchanged our society for a mere economy, we took away from ourselves perhaps our most powerful human problem-solving tool. We exchanged cleverness for clubs, reason for rubber bullets, and common sense for sonic cannons.

A recent article in New Scientist [online] by David Sloan Wilson, entitled "Selfless evolution: An idea rejected" shows how even Darwin acknowledged the necessity for a group selection function in evolution, that the Spencerian notion of "the survival of the fittest" has only short-term, but never long-term benefits. And the recent financial crisis has shown -- once again -- what happens when you think short-term for too long a time. Cooperation, not competition, is the strategic approach, and societies are (or at least should be) based on cooperation. So, it's time to put the economy in its place, take back our society and start talking again. My grandkids will thank you all for it, believe me.

The myth of the individual

Human beings are odd creatures. We have the longest post-natal dependency of any primate, maybe of any mammal. After all, we are carried internally by our mothers for nine months; it's nine more months till we can even walk (if we're doing well), and if things are going according to plan, we can eat most of what the adults are eating, if it is prepared properly. Some of us never learn to obtain and make food for ourselves (fast food doesn't count ... it may not even be "food"). We can't construct our own dwellings ... well, we really have to ask ourselves what we are capable of doing on our own at all.

On the other hand, we were given supposedly large brains. That is, we ended up with brains that are allegedly capable of more intellectual processing power than any of our mammalian relatives, that provide us with some sort of evolutionary advantage, that make us just "smarter". Anyone who stops to look out into the world quickly realizes that this must be a generalized statement, for there are just too many individual instances in which this apparently does not apply. Nevertheless, some maintain that we compensate for physical and hence environmental disadvantages by compensating with intelligence.

Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that this is the case. What does it mean in the grand scheme of things? Why is it that we human beings have been able to subjugate nature, as we have (whether the way in which we have done it was good or not is a different issue altogether), and rise to the top of the "food chain" when we are really so apparently unsuited for life in the natural world?

If we stop and reflect for a moment instead of just repeating the platitudes we're so often fed, it slowly becomes apparent that humans have been evolutionarily so successful because they don't have to rely on themselves in any way. Let's go back. We aren't mobile on our own for nine months, we can still easily get lost in strange surroundings at nine years. We can't do anything really and don't know anything till we are taught -- by others, either in the family, community, or, in the West, in school. We can't fend for ourselves, we don't grow our own food, we can't build our own dwellings, we don't make our own clothes. We just buy it, if possible, whenever we need it.

We can do this, of course, because we, as a species, are smart enough to utilize the division of labor relatively effectively and because we have the ability to cooperate with others. There is a growing body of evidence (see David Sloan Wilson, My New Scientist [online], Magazine Issue 2824, August 3, 2011) that group selection, for example, predominates over individual selection in evolution. In other words, the very idea that cooperation is in all probability a more powerful evolutionary factor than competition should give us pause to think about the role we ascribe to the individual in our modern society.

Modern western society, in particular industrialized society, places an inordinate amount of emphasis on the individual. Capitalism itself is the new religion of the individual. It is the CEO who makes or breaks the company, hence the need to reward him or her appropriately. It is the individual investor who makes or breaks his own success. It is the quarterback (alone) who leads the team to victory; it is the coach (alone) who causes the team to fail. It is the individual gold medalist who receives more praise at the championships than the relay team. It is the individual who makes or breaks himself in the competition of life. I grew up having this pounded into my own head, from John Wayne to Ronald Reagan, but it never quite made sense to me.

No, the idea of the lone individual meeting and overcoming the odds is as illusory as the ancient myths in which gods on Olympus (or wherever) intervened in the affairs of humans. The individual is just him or herself. No more, no less. This individual is worth respect and admiration as long as whatever s/he does benefits the group that allows that person to stand forth and shine, but no more. The individual who aggrandizes him or herself at the expense of others, though, deserves simply to be ostracized. If you really believe you can do it all on your own, then go out on your own and show us you can do it. If we want to stop a good portion of the insanity that we seem to be overwhelmed with these days, then maybe we only need to put things back into their proper perspective: WE is and always will be more important than ME.