Darwin’s Practical Joke: The Adaptive Origins of Creationist Mythology

1. Darwin’s Practical Joke:The Adaptive Origins of Creationist Mythology Jim Chen University of Minnesota Law School Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research Law, Behavior & the Brain Olympic Valley, California May 22, 2006

2. Teaching evolution enables sound environmental policy • Legal Mythmaking in a Time of Mass Extinctions, 29 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 279 (2005), http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract =770976 • What is the most significant problem facing the world? • Teaching evolution is vital to biodiversity conservation • The anthropogenic nature of the sixth mass extinction demands a coordinated human response • Without an appreciation of evolution and natural history, that response won’t be effective enough • Natural history is a story of origins for all of us • Nicea revisited: everyone is begotten, not made

3. Vast segments of American society reject evolution • Two-thirds of the public and one-third of public school biology teachers express some sympathy for teaching “alternatives” to evolution • Evolution has few adherents (Kristof, NYT 2003) • Virgin birth of Jesus: 83% • Satan: 68% • Evolution: 28% • G.W. Bush: “the jury is still out” (March 2005) • Apocalypse now? 40% of Americans believe that the world will end supernaturally • The smell of napalm: a nation truly “Left Behind”

4. Public rejection of evolution cripples environmental law • Efforts to ban the teaching of evolution and/or to inculcate “intelligent design” are escalating • State v. Scopes (1925) • Epperson v, Arkansas (1968) • McLean v. Arkansas Bd. of Educ. (1982) • Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) • Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish (2000) (Scalia dissent) • Kitzmiller v. Dover School Bd. (2005) • Shame on Scalia: “much beloved secular legend of the Monkey Trial” gave aid and comfort to creationists (sadly, a major GOP constituency) • In fairness, some evangelical groups have used the Noah story to advocate conservation (Nagle 1998)

5. A prescriptive solution in search of a descriptive explanation? • Resistance to the teaching of evolution has bad consequences within law’s domain • Uninformed environmental decisionmaking • Competitive disadvantage for certain states and for the United States overall • Regardless of consequences, falsehood is evil • Might resistance to the teaching of evolution, perversely enough, be a product of adaptive responses to natural selection?

6. Does natural selection predispose humans against evolutionary explanations? • Religion is human behavior. Accordingly, its origins and significance can be illuminated by evolutionary analysis • Dennett, Breaking the Spell (2006) • Justin Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004) • Boyer, Religion Explained (2001) • Anderson, Ecologies of the Heart (1996) • Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds (1993) • “[R]eligion … is continuous with other systems of thought and action such as science, art, and common sense” (Guthrie) • “Religion is a secretion of the brain” (Tiger & McGuire 2006) • Religious belief is adaptive • A creationist account of origins (such as the Abrahamic narrative) seems singularly appealing to the adapted mind • Dichtung und Wahrheit: we must separate myth and history

7. Religion as the product of an agency detection device • Humans systematically interpret ambiguous evidence as being caused by a living agent • Not what went bump in the night, but who • This cognitive bias prompts proactive responses to threats to survival and to opportunities to reproduce • Agency detection is a variant of Pascal’s wager • Responding as if an agent existed may ensure survival or secure a reproductive opportunity • The only downside is the cost of the response • Religion condenses a wide range of unseen agents into an anthropomorphic deity • Um shih ah pien, ma huang da dyo: religion is not the opiate of the masses, but rather the ephedrine

8. Indirect evidence of religion as adaptive behavior • Religion appears to be a human universal • Humans are religious across time and space • Efforts to crush religion fail, often spectacularly • Active atheism demands extraordinary effort • Components of agency detection emerge very early in childhood • Face, animal, and artifact identification • Piety follows muliebrity • Women are systematically more involved in and committed to religion than are men • Very stable sexual asymmetry (Paloutzian 1996)

9. Nature and mind: the foundations of a universal naturalist grammar • Evidence of biophilia and biophobia (Wilson) • Tree-studded promontories overlooking water • Infants and infant-like artifacts are cute • Insects aren’t the only ones who coevolved with flowering plants (“Pollan on pollen”: The Botany of Desire) • Spiders and leopards and snakes, oh my • “Naturalist” intelligence flourishes within a system of multiple intelligences (Gardner) • Folk classifications converge at the genus level of Linnaean classification (Atran) • Children devote extraordinary effort to mastering information about animals (H. Clark Barrett 2004)

10. More evidence of the adaptive nature of biological intelligence • Not all manifestations of intelligence reflect adaptation (Pinker 1994; cf. Arnold & Zuberbühler 2006) • Speech is universal and adaptive; writing is not • “A dreadful language? Sakes alive – I mastered it when I was five” • Phonetic writing is a powerful meme, but it is not a universal, adaptive behavior • Biological intelligence is adaptive • Is evolutionary reasoning part of that adaptive toolkit?

11. Biology inspires emotions, perhaps even religious belief • Humans code ecological knowledge in religious terms (Anderson 1996; see also Rappaport 1971; Slovic 2000) • Natural history is the real story of origins (Ursula Goodenough 2001, Wilson 2002, Takacs 1996, Dobzhansky 1973) • East of Eden: “There is one story in the world, and only one” • Environmental policy is driven by emotion • E.g., differences between folk and expert assessments of environmental priorities

12. I spoke as a child, I knew as a child, I thought as a child • Children intuitively embrace many Abrahamic theological tenets, almost favoring these faiths (Barrett & Richert 2003) • Omniscient, superperceptive, immortal, superpowerful creator • Children distinguish between natural and human-made things (Petrovich 1997) • Children ascribe natural origins to theistic rather than human agency (Petrovich 1999) • Creationism trounces evolution, human invention, and mere emergence in polls of children (Evans 2001) • Children see living and nonliving things as purposeful, and religion may merely confirm this instinct (Keleman 1999) • But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 1 Cor. 13:11

13. Why target evolution? We can’t let the mystery be • Textbook labeling, “intelligent design” courses, etc., all target evolution • But biology denies with equal vehemence other religious tenets • E.g., virgin birth, resurrection • These are the defining tenets of Christianity • Why sweat the mote in creation’s eye when there’s a beam in the eye of the resurrection? Cf. Matt. 7:3

14. Against all odds: the unavoidable offensiveness of randomness • Evolution reflects Ecclesiastes, not Genesis: “time and chance happen to them all” • Humans expect virtue to be rewarded and vice to be punished (Lerner & Miller 1978) • Right-and-wrong narratives dominate popular views of science, religion, and art • Spencer coopted Darwin into “survival of the fittest” and made nonextinction normative • Amoral denouements are deeply dissatisfying

15. Chance and choice, wisdom and responsibility • W.J. Bryan: “Destiny is not a matter of chance. Destiny is a matter of choice.” • Resistance to evolution transcends ideology • Enemies left • Defenders of the tabula rasa approach to social science • Fear of racial, sexual determinism • Enemies right • Enough to turn fundamentalists into postmodernists?! • Achilles : Odysseus :: Calvinism : Catechism • You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free

16. Thank you Jim Chen University of Minnesota Law School chenx064@maroon.tc.umn.edu 612-625-4839 http://www.law.umn.edu/FacultyProfiles/ChenJ.htm http://ssrn.com/author=68651