I suppose the so what is that the problem is not unique to evolution (as I also keep saying). At a blog full of believing Mormons I think that is a useful point to make. We should be careful not to become pots calling a kettle black is all.

How about asserting that the reason women protect their young is that they are conditioned their whole lives to accept the idea that mothers protect their young at all cost.

Really? You find that be an equally compelling argument for why there is no record of any human society where it was considered acceptable for mothers to cannibalize their children?

Thomas,

Another way of saying this, minus the idea of the beauty of it, is that the whole thing is a massive tautology

I think I am agreeing with your main point, but I have a couple of reservations. First, I do think there is a beauty to the idea of evolution. It does a tremendously important job explaining how things came to be the way that they are (just compare our current understanding to the prevailing wisdom before Darwin). The danger is when we go overboard thinking we can explain stuff with evolution that we can’t really explain. I think this is what you were getting at in your comment and I agree.

As to it being a tautology, I don’t agree. You may or may not be aware, but there is a crowd of people who seriously level the charge that the theory of evolution is fundamentally circular and tautological. Ann Coulter made such and argument in her book Godless, which led to lots and lots of websites explaining in detail why “survival of the fittest” is not a tautology. You probably don’t mean what she did, but since it could be misconstrued, I wanted to be on the record that I think her argument is just wrong.

Geoff,

The fact that religious people sometimes make bad arguments is not a good defense of someone else making a bad argument. You keep saying Alma did it too, but so what?

They say it virtually never happens because humans are hard wired to protect their young and cases where it does happen would be extreme outliers likely caused by severe mental illness. I can’t think of how the nurture crowd could come up with an equally compelling argument.

It seems like the nurture crowd would not be hard pressed on this front. How about asserting that the reason women protect their young is that they are conditioned their whole lives to accept the idea that mothers protect their young at all cost. In their culture, there is almost nothing more reviled than a mother who abuses her own child. They are surrounded by people who exert huge societal pressure on them to care for their children. Etc, etc. This is not a hard one, it seems like you didn’t think long enough about what a nurture advocate would argue.

If you mean realizing how much we are like our parents I agree. This proves true even for adopted children who have virtually no contact with their birth parents.

I don’t think anyone denies both nature and nurture influence us psychologically. I just get the impression that some EP folks see nature as being the weightier influence of the two.

Exactly right regarding theologists. Nietzsche called God an “obtuse answer” for just that reason. I would hope that we don’t fall into that category, theologically, though I’m sure at times we do.

I don’t think I’m failing to give nature room for consideration in the second paragraph, since our nature comes through our parents. In fact, the most powerful examples of seeing nature in us can come by observing our own parents. I think nature has given us important commonalities – in the structure of our brains, for just one instance – but I do not think that understanding commonalities in our nature as a species goes very far in helping us with what we face individually, moment to moment.

*snipped a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really seem apt.* ~

I emailed your daughter but haven’t heard back yet. With any luck she will be able/willing to contribute to this series of discussions about EP.

In your second paragraph you run into the problem of attributing most everything to nurture instead of nature. But that theory is rife with problems as well. For instance, a mother eating a child virtually never happens among humans. Evolutionists have better explanations for that than the “nurture” crowd does. They say it virtually never happens because humans are hard wired to protect their young and cases where it does happen would be extreme outliers likely caused by severe mental illness. I can’t think of how the nurture crowd could come up with an equally compelling argument.

Also, I think you are painting EP with far too broad of a brush. See the post I linked to in this post. Kanazawa says that that while humans cultures show a broad diversity they are not infinitely diverse. It is the underlying sameness among all cultures he is pointing to as evidence. So he does allow for “subtlety”.