The Selfless Gene

I went to a talk today by Charles Foster, the author of The Selfsih Gene (and many other works too). It was hosted by Oxford Graduate Christian Union, and I had been invited by a friend who is a recent convert to Christianity from depression and hopes, I think, to brighten my cynical outlook in the same way.
He started, edifyingly, by explaining why it is necessary to mention young earth creationism as an important force in this country (as well as in the world, given its porevalence in the U.S.A.). Apparently 1/3 of university students believe in some version of creationism in this country, an astonishing proportion, worrying and worth a discussion all of its own.
He started by explaining that because we cannot quantify the power or effect of natural selection we cannot exclude other forces at work, a point with which Darwin would have agreed, considering natural selection far less important than we do now. This is the first step along a series of Socratic steps in which a play on words or aslightly irrelevant point is used to support the next step. In this case I would contend that until we have proof of other forces, we should assume that they do not exist, it being recognised as foolish to regard as more probable the explanation with unnecessary falsifiable parts ('Occam's Razor').
The next interesting fact was the statement that your life is worth, genetically, 2 brothers and 8 cousins, a truism that I had not yet encountered, and which he used to define the selfish gene explanation of apparent altruism.
He then pointed out that we require professional mathemeticians to calculate elaborate game-theory explanations of some examples of altruism, and that he doubts that natural selection really understands things in that much detail. This is a point that will we will retrun to: natural selection does not need to understand. The model is there already, in nature itself, and selection operates on the results, whether understood or not. The anthropomorphising of selection is not a good argument.
He dismissed memes without much attempt at a full argument, his best suggestion seeming to be that they are considered special to mankind and yet supposedly offer so much power that they should overrule any genetic effect. He thought that other animals should display something biological, and the idea that only man has them as an explanation of why they have not swamped evolution of biology is insufficient.
I disagree with both points. Memes can be found in other animals, such as ravens, which learnt to drop food on pedestrian crossings to get it cracked open by cars but be able to eat it in safety when the crossing was in use.
The reason that memes do not swamp genetics with Lamarckian inheritance is that they spread not only by inheritance but by acquisition. This ensures that they can spread rapidly through a population, with only geographical boundaries, or perhaps the ability of others to learn, preventing their spread. Thus memes operate mostly independently of genetic fitness and the supposedly spooky monstrosity of Lamarckian inheritance is avoided.
Much of the talk was focussed on the apparent altruism in nature not necessarily having a natural explanation, and on his introduction of a separate category of devilry, in the form of many parasites (for example) into nature. This categorisation of nature into altruism, which can be, but isn't necessarily, explained by natural selection, and is compatible with God, and another area which is entirely compatible and explained by natural selection, but appears incompatible with God, speaks for itself. God seems the less likely option. However, he explains that the world itself, perhaps via the devil (a point he did accept implying without objecting when I mentioned it) is disobedient to God's instruction, and therefore parts of it are predatory and not altruistic. Therefore, it seems, because parts of nature are not compatible with a Christian God, God exists!
The convoluted reasoning that allows two categories that between them contain everything (that compatible with God and that not, and therefore compatible with the devil) is no argument at all. The explanation of life that appears to disprove God as work of the devil, and not part of God's plan ( a point he emphasised when I suggested that it could be said to be part of God's plan, on the basis of another part of the talk in which he mentioned that we should celebrate the world's and Adam's disobedience because it gives us the possibility of the heavenly city found in Revelation) rather contradicts his assertion that God can be taken to be omnipotent and omniscient. If God really does want a vegetarian, altruistic world, and this devilry is not part of his overall plan, then he certainly isn't omiscient.
I contend, as Milton shows (by accident) in Paradise Lost that the devil is almost a hero. If his actions are part of God's plan, then as a major agent of God's plan he deserves as much respect as one of the (other) archangels. If he gave us free will and freedom of thought against God's will, then just as the Greek's revered Prometheus, we should respect him for the nobility of the sentiment and sacrifice that made him rule in hell rather than serve in heaven, and gave us the choice to make.
His acceptance of the 'God moves in mysterious ways' as a serious philosophical argument was also galling. Again I will return to Occam's razor to cut out the wanton acceptance of mystery when none is necessary. If we have scientific explanations that do not explain everything, we have learned not to assume supernatural agency. Little demons do not run our computers nor make lightning nor volcanic eruptions. If something has not been explained by science we rationally trust that there is a scientific explanation for two reasons: the empirical reason of science having explained satisfactorily so much already, as compared to the invocation of 'mystery' or the supernatural, which has been falsified in every case; and the principled reason of not invoking extra supernatural qualities to the mystery which are not justified when the thing is a mystery.
I shall expand apon this point. If there is a lak of understanding of what might be termed a phenomenon, we can assume that it is just a mystery, in that we do not understand it, which is in essence a tautology. Or we can assume that it is a supernatural mystery, that it is in some degree beyond our understanding and that it involves extra things in the universe (the supernatural) than we previously supposed existed. I think that Occam's razor does not allow us to make these unjustified assumptions: we should accept that the pnomenon is currently a mystery, but that it is just an example of natural laws that we have yet to fully understand or perhaps even encounter. To assume something other than natural laws is to make a giant assumption which is a far greater leap of faith than is necessary,a dn Occam's razor can be construed to insist on the samllest leaps necessary, if any at all.
FInally, I rather objected to his concentration on suffering (and by implication empathy) as the sole (or perhaps most important) factor in ethics. Suffering defined what he considered bad, and was the way in which he approached the problems of a beneficient God creating a world with badness in it.
I object to the modern preoccupation with suffering as the basis of defining evil. If we take virtue as good, and suffering as neutral, then God's lack of beneficence can be explained solely in terms of us having free will. The natural world, since it is incapable of moral decisions, and therefore of having virtue, is morally neutral. Suffering is not a moral concern except in so far as it is a concern of virtues which are held by free agents. This Stoic idea is one that I would have thought would be a lifeline to Christians wrestling with the problems caused by believing in an amnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and beneficent God. However, my suggestion was roundly refused, with the emotional and irrational point that suffering is bad.
I did point out that the refusal to consider the notion, deeply ingrained in those with extremes of empathy, that suffering might not be the cenral feature of morality, automatically caused refusal of virtue as the defining feature of Good. You can't consider that virtue might replace lack of suffering as the definition of good if you continue to consider suffering as bad!

In summary, there are a number of unnecessary introductions of new concepts to explain things that are already explained, there was a fair amount of re-interpreting the Bible when the passages in question can be more readily explained by the social concerns of the writers (or, as he described them, editors) and there was a strange focus on a belief in philosophy that is not necessarily true but makes his position untenable. Given his dedication to taking what could explain things but doesn't necessarily, I'd have thought that Stoic beliefs would be welcome, not derided.


Just as an aside, one social concern that even mentioned that the editors had was his point that most scholars nowadays believe that Genesis was a polemic against polytheism. This rather undermines his convoluted interpretation that gives it some deep revelatory meaning, again because of Occam's razor. I willa ccept that the English translation changes the meaning deeply, but when the story is already explained as a means to impress the locals with the monotheistic God, who made all that they worship, insightful interpretations, although of academic interest, are not really important.