The Science of Female Supremacy: An Interview with Steve Moxon
by Bernard Chapin | View comments |
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Steve Moxon on sex differences, the male dominance hierarchy, feminism, the pay gap, and his new book The Woman Racket.
I’ve been interviewing political authors and figures for five years. Never once have I posed more than 10 questions to a subject. In the case of Steve Moxon, who has just released The Woman Racket: The New Science Explaining How the Sexes Relate at Work, at Play and in Society, I asked 14. My enthusiasm is quite appropriate, however. The Woman Racket is a tour de force and a classic which should be read again and again. Previously, Mr. Moxon authored The Great Immigration Scandal which was a result of his time spent as a Home Office immigration caseworker. He blew the whistle on widespread abuse and the nature of the government's policy of “Managed Migration” and was then duly fired. Mr. Moxon also pens a blog which debates “political correctness fascism” and counters journalists’ misguided take on immigration and male-female issues.
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BC: Mr. Moxon, allow me to congratulate you on your new book. I know it’s only March but there’s no question it’s the best book I’ve read this year. My first question concerns its title. Your work is a thorough review of the scientific basis for sex differences, but “The Woman Racket” is a most polemical sounding phrase. Do you think this may limit your audience?
Steve Moxon: Yes, but the bigger problem is to get attention in the first place. The title succeeds in achieving that! It contrasts with the sub-title — which tells you that the book is popular science. It's somewhat cryptic. Actually it's not mine, but a phrase from Norman Mailer; one that beautifully encapsulates the recent cultural turn of perennial prejudice against men into a virulent political entrenchment of it. And it conveys something of this prejudice in a meta sense: at first glance some might think it's a book about "the white slave trade" or some other bogus supposed exploitation of the sex we spend too much time caring about.
BC: Are women privileged in America and the United Kingdom?
Steve Moxon: Women are privileged (compared to men) in every society and in every period of history. This will always be the case irrespective of whatever social systems emerge in the future. The females of all animal species constitute the "limiting factor" — the logjam — in reproduction, and given that reproduction is the fundamental biological imperative (maximizing reproduction over various timescales within the local reproducing group), then this inevitably translates in various ways to the female being prized, and correspondingly to males competing against each other to avoid reproductive oblivion.
BC: What is “the male filter?”
Steve Moxon: The "genetic filter" role of the male complements the role that the female has in taking care of most of the time-consuming business of reproduction (gestating; having, feeding and looking after the offspring). This is because there is another brake on the biological imperative of maximizing reproduction apart from all the business that females are saddled with: the build-up of transcription errors in the necessary gene replication in sex that attends reproduction. It makes sense that dealing with this is not also loaded on to females, otherwise females would become an even bigger logjam in reproduction.
The biological division of behavior that we then get is the basis of why we have males and females in the first place. Males act in effect as a "quarantine" station for deleterious genetic material, and also as laboratories for nurturing new, better gene combinations. There are various mechanisms for this, some where genetic material is actually placed exclusively in the male half of the lineage, but most where genetic material is more exposed in males than in females — so that natural selection acts much more on males than on females. Some of this differential exposure is through the mechanics of the sex chromosomes, but most is to do with males being driven to intra-sexual competition: either of their sperm or as adults.
Hence the fierce competition of males for a high place in the male dominance hierarchy. It is the rank achieved that determines female sexual interest, so that less fit males reproduce less, if at all; so that they take their relatively poor genes with them out of the gene pool. Conversely the minority of males with fewer "bad" genes do get to reproduce and the males who have no bad genes and maybe additionally some new "super" gene combinations, are reproductively successful possibly to a prodigious extent.
BC: In terms of feminism, do you think that the lesbian influence is more pronounced than we widely acknowledge? I ask you this because I have often thought that feminist attempts, at root, are an attempt to decrease the status of males while simultaneously increasing the status of women. This appears plausible in that it makes females more appealing sexually in lieu of the centrality of status in relation to their reproductive proclivities.
Steve Moxon: Feminism is just business-as-usual elitism. It is not about serving the interests of women as a whole: it is a disservice to most women. Feminism is an intensification of the natural prejudice we all share towards males — that is, towards the majority of necessarily lower status males. High status males and attractive women win out. Plus ca change.
The reason that we all have a prejudice towards males generically is because of the biologically based importance of "policing" the male hierarchy. The function of the male as the "genetic filter," and indirectly that the female is the "limiting factor" in reproduction, gives rise to the adaptation of male intra-sexual dominance-submission behavior and the epiphenomenon of male hierarchy. All males (even the lowest ranked) have a strategic interest in being members of this, but males have an interest in tactically getting round this to obtain sex, if they can. This has led to the evolution of our shared social psychological "cheater detection" mechanisms to very effectively "police" male behaviour. Consequently we tend to "do down" men, and conversely "big up" women.
BC: Is it a result of the feminist movement that the general public has been consistently misled concerning the differences between men and women in the workplace? I ask you this chiefly as a product of your contention that women have a predilection “for work that is in keeping with their natural tendency towards social networking, as opposed to the natural male inclination towards goal-directed competition.”
Steve Moxon: Yes, feminism is actively opposed to most women. The social milieu in which the various strands of feminism arose in recent decades is the relative collapse in natural female roles: home-making and motherhood. The striving for women to be given a role in the workplace is the reaction to this, and women clinging to the roles that have been relatively marginalized is seen as a great obstacle to this development, and so such women are regarded as having "false consciousness" so as to excuse the totalitarian refusal to accept that they have a valid opinion.
BC: In America the “pay gap” is thought to be even less statistically significant than it is in Britain. Could you clarify for readers the surprising argument that a low pay gap actually illustrates “sex discrimination against men?”
Steve Moxon: The "pay gap" between the sexes should be far bigger than it is. Only 10-15% of women have an attitude to work as that of men: to work full-time continuously. Of this already small proportion of women, only about a quarter are "careerists." This is a very small pool from which work organizations can recruit to produce the sex-equal staffing ratio at higher job positions that social policies are designed to produce. These are the jobs that pay much more, and with women overwhelmingly naturally absent from them, then the "pay gap" overall inevitably must be substantial. It is artificially reduced by public sector initiatives to falsely flatten differentials, to over-promote women, and to falsely equate work sectors and niches.
So it is that we have pay legislation that forces local councils to pay part-time day-care staff the same rates as to full-time, outdoor shift-working refuse collectors. That these very different jobs are naturally paid according to substantial differentials is firmly tied up with their contrasting sex-typicality. No normal women take dirty, dangerous jobs, because pay premiums to compensate for the undesirability of the work are of no use to them. This is because only men see their "mate value" rise through gaining status (the proxy for which is money).
Women's "mate value" is to do with their fertility, as signaled by indications of youth and beauty; which are "givens" that can't be changed by any sort of competition or throwing money around (despite what cosmetics firms may claim). Women instead choose jobs that are really a benign social extension of their home-making role. So they are usually part-time, people-orientated jobs with excellent working conditions. Just the sort of jobs that are easy for employers to fill. There are a number of reasons that explain the "pay gap," and all attract policies to ameliorate the impact on women's pay. These necessarily directly or indirectly discriminate against men.
BC: You posit that women showcase same-sex favoritism at a rate four times that of men. Might the inevitable outcome of such a preference result in female bosses and managers attempting to purge men from the workplace? Or, at least, be far more likely to do so to the opposite sex than males would be?
Steve Moxon: Certainly. Experimental work shows that women have a fourfold same-sex preference for members of their "in-group," and this exactly matches the preference for women over men by organizations involved even in male sex-typical work (IT and accountancy) when it comes to selecting applicants for job interviews from their applications (Riach & Rich, 2006). So there is clear evidence that work organizations as a whole are operating on female prejudicial principles. This will seriously backfire, however, because it's highly deleterious for those work organizations, for several reasons. Unlike men, women tend not to be task- or work group-orientated (the female in-group being family and friends and tenuous extensions of these; not a symbolically identified all-inclusive social group such as those within the same workplace). In almost any performance you care to measure, men polarize and women remain in the middle, so meritocracy will be sacrificed.
BC: Does the predicament in which man finds himself in our new century largely a result of chivalry? In light of sex-based quotas and other modes of state oppression, is not chivalry an act of self-destruction?
Steve Moxon: Chivalry (or "gallantry," as it used to be called), is natural male deference. This is, in biological terms, the non-engagement in dominance-submission interactions. We know from other primate species that the sexes never interact in dominance-submission terms. We also now know that there is a single gene controlling this. This ensures that default behavior between individuals of the same species is in some way sexual: it is only when a same-sex other is encountered that the gene works so that dominance-submission behavior kicks in.
BC: Are women more controlling in their interpersonal relationships than are men?
Steve Moxon: Yes. Very recent research has clearly established this in long-term sexual partnerships. This is because women have a greater need than men to "mate guard" — to keep their partner's main reproductive effort for themselves. Men certainly don't want their wives sleeping with other men, because that would risk them bringing up some other man's child. This is why men have evolved to be so jealous of their partner simply having sex with anyone else. But once a wife is pregnant and then gestating and breast feeding (which went on for four or five years in the ancestral environment), then she was not sexually available and a man could relax.
For a woman, on the other hand, there is the ever present risk that she could be deserted. This is not just a problem regarding provisioning and less concrete aspects of fathering in raising any children she has, but it means she couldn't have further children by her (first) husband. The problem is that a woman's value as a mate declines precipitously with age (and the effects of having children), so if her husband deserts her, any subsequent husband she may find will be a substantially poorer "bag of genes," as it were, than the first. For many men it works the other way: a man can often rise in status as he gets older, so far from "mate guarding" his first wife, he may well be glad to be rid of her to make way for a new and much younger and more attractive one.
It is for the reason of this sex difference re "control" that the actual social science research (as opposed to the mantra emanating from the advocacy movement) reveals that domestic violence is more prevalent female-to-male than it is male-to-female, and by wide margins at serious levels and in terms of unilateral aggression.
BC: Has the furor over domestic violence essentially been one big lie? I say this in relation to Chapter 10 “Home Lies,” and particularly the excellent analysis conducted by Professor Martin Fiebert in 2007 suggesting that not a single study (out of 200) revealed that significantly higher levels of aggression occurred in the male-to-female direction than vice-versa.
Steve Moxon: Most of these studies showed either rough equivalence, or significantly or considerably more DV female-to-male. So DV is predominantly female-on-male — especially at serious levels of violence, and where the violence is unilateral. To present DV as advocates do as essentially a male-perpetrated crime indeed is one very big lie. Not only is most DV by women, but overall most violence by women is towards men (twice as much as that towards other women), and this dramatically contrasts with male violence, which is very many times more frequently directed towards other men.
BC: You cite a Home Office rape study from 1999 indicating that the majority of rape complaints were classified by police as “no crime” or “no further action.” Why was no action taken against female false accusers? Is this an example of chivalry justice?
Steve Moxon: At root this is down to the standard "doing down" of men and "bigging up" women. Prejudice in favor of women — privileging them — means that they are given "the benefit of the doubt" regarding their motivation for fabricating a complaint; yet we know that the predominant form that female aggression takes is "relational" (indirect). Fabrication of complaints that have a devastating impact on those accused is exactly how we should expect women to behave. But apart from this — and this is the bigger picture — women make up allegations not through malice but to cover up their own misdemeanor — even when the embarrassment caused seems trivial. The underlying reason for this appears to be to do with evolved reasons why women might non-consciously try to cover up extra-pair sex. It seems that we intuit this, and somehow accept this sort of behavior by women.
BC: Is there any truth to the notion that males think more logically than do women? Conversely, are women more emotion-based in their reasoning?
Steve Moxon: There are now known to be massive sex differences in brain architecture, so that there are near order of magnitude differences between male and female brains in terms of IQ-related neural connectivity and processing tissue. Men's brains are much more about processing, whereas women's are much more about connectivity — it has long been known that the structure carrying the nerve fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres is far thicker in women. This structural difference shows up overall. So it is that Simon Baron-Cohen characterizes male brains as "systemizing" and female as "empathizing." This difference has evolved because of the very different problems that the sexes have to deal with in their lives. Women have to be "people" people, and men have to compete and be good at something.
BC: Can we conclude that males paying for sex is non-pathological? Indeed, is it merely a reflection of supply and demand?
Steve Moxon: Not only is it non-pathological, but it makes sense morally. All normal men, quite apart from a long-term loving relationship, desire an endless stream of novel sexual partners. Most men are not attractive enough to women (because they don’t have high enough status) to achieve this, and even those men who are high status don't want to risk their long-term relationships for a fling. Their one-night-stands may well be in courting mode, as it were, and actively seek to destroy the man's marriage. Unlike men, women's jealousy has evolved not to be provoked so much by a partner's extra-pair sex as by emotional infidelity, so women usually are relatively unperturbed by a partner's visits to prostitutes. A fully fledged long-term affair is an entirely different matter.
BC: I recognize that England and America have differing laws and regulations, but what universal policies could government enact — or perhaps more importantly, discontinue — to better the lot of men in our nations, and, thus, increase equality and justice for all?
Steve Moxon: The law should start with recognizing profound sex difference rather than pretending that treating the sexes exactly equally is fair. It isn't. For example, policies that seek to equalize the sexes in jobs high up work organization hierarchies necessarily very heavily directly discriminate against men, because it is natural that men hugely outnumber women here. Men are far more intra-sexually competitive than are women. Without a good job a man has no life: he can't attract or maintain a partner. This is not true for any woman. All women can have a life irrespective of the nature of their jobs, or whether they have any job at all.
BC: Thank you so much for your time and thank you for writing this book, Mr. Moxon.
The Woman Racket is available on Amazom.com.
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Read more articles by Bernard Chapin
Hmm. The case here seems to be a bit overstated, based on what I know of brain research. There are very few "massive sex differences in brain architecture" known in humans, and even there what you have is bell curves with different peaks, but a lot of overlap. Tossing out generalizations without explicitly acknowledging this is careless at best. Saying "Women are privileged (compared to men) in every society and in every period of history" is an example - I wonder what Phyllis Chesler, another contributor on this site, would think of this contention, given her analysis of the place of women in Islam.
Just as another example: when judging "mate value" pure physical attractiveness counts for a lot (in women and men), but mostly in initial impressions. Non-physical attributes that come out over time count heavily, too (see here: http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/resources/publications_resources/DSW13.pdf ) and those are things women can compete in, as well. Ignoring that distorts the picture quite a bit.
I'm not saying men and women aren't different - vive la difference, as the French say - but those differences are average differences, and ignoring the overlap doesn't help anybody. For an alternative take on male/female differences, this article is very interesting: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
Comment by Raymond Ingles | March 6, 2008
This is the biggest load of twaddle I’ve read in a while, but also amusing and I hope this book flies off the shelves whether it’s in the science or the humor section of the bookstore. Why twaddle? Well, the author makes up his science as he goes along and cleverly alludes to common evolution theory myths to add legitimacy.
We’re all familiar with the technique – you confidently assert that evolution did this or perhaps did that to explain some aspect of modern day social behavior. And, with many thanks to that ubiquitous pseudo-science explanation, we’ve been blessed with the “gay” gene, the “god” gene, the evolutionary basis for infanticide and abortion, genetic predispositions to alcoholism or child molestation and so on, ad nauseum. All you need do is dream up a theory about social behavior, throw in a few words about evolution, a few more words about genetics and ‘voila’ you sound scientific, at least to your readers. I’ve looked all over Border’s several times for books describing the “gullibility” gene to explain our society’s ready acceptance of such nonsense, but so far no luck. This author didn’t even have to use the word “evolution” in his piece since, by now, we’re all familiar with this overused intellectual template of “evolution made us do it”.
If you think I’m exaggerating, read “Anxious Days Indeed: An Interview With Patricia Pearson” – another book review featured on Intellectual Conservative and posted on February 29th. Here Pearson refers to the “flight or fight” response our remote ancestors supposedly used to deal with the “prowling leopard”. She then adroitly connects this with anxiety in modern society by referring to research findings in neuroscience, but then finishes by stating she doesn’t really understand the neuroscience anyway. And neither do the rest of us, at least in relation to her theories, but the public has been beautifully prepared to accept “junk science” as the explanation for every aspect of our modern day behavior.
Getting back to Steve Moxon, just what the heck is this “genetic filter” he’s talking about, what does it actually mean and exactly how does it work in either biochemistry or genetics? Does anyone actually understand his vague explanation? The “laugh out loud” part is where he connects social behavior as the reason for having male and female sexes. In actuality, separate sexes is one of the best reasons for throwing out evolutionary explanations.
Think about it for a moment. Plants and animals originally reproduced asexually. Was asexual reproduction ordained by evolution – well yeah, it must have been, since according to evolution theory everything biological is explained by evolution. We know that bacteria, that most ancient form of life, reproduces asexually. There are no bacteria “pick-up” bars we’re aware of where lonely male bacteria congregate to drink beer and eye the female bacteria at the end of the bar. There are no bacteria one night stands complete with hangovers and morning after regrets – and there are no cute baby bacteria arriving after a wild night of passion and booze.
Isn’t asexual reproduction the most efficient in terms of natural selection? Yeah, that too. Producing a male that can’t give birth is a waste of genetic material – as any feminist could tell you. If the ratio of male to female is 50-50, then fully half the new species births can’t reproduce, part of their genetic material is lost due to this reason and there isn’t a single logical reason why evolutionary natural selection would “favor” two sexes over one. It is neither efficient in evolutionary terms nor conserving of existing genes developed by previous efforts of natural selection.
But, let’s review the “just so” story evolutionists use to counter this obvious exception to the very theory they’re supposedly proposing. By combining male and female genes through sexual reproduction, the resulting organism is supposedly able to better cope with changes in the natural environment. Sort of a Nietzsche type evolutionary explanation – “what doesn’t kill you only makes you sexier”. Except, the plants and animals reproducing asexually must have somehow “coped” with their environments before pick-up bars and internet dating services were invented.
So what changed? No one really knows but let’s continue with our “just-so” story. As anyone familiar with internet porn or several hundred unwanted Viagra ads on your email can testify, men and women, like other species, have different sexual equipment. And it’s not just the obvious stuff you see on sexkittens dot com either. There are major internal differences as well. Now imagine those ancient shemales humming along for millions of years reproducing asexually and then Blammo, a male is produced – whoops, how did that happen? And, what is he for exactly? Well, no one knows how that happened either but, under evolutionary logic, it must have happened since we have Jennifer Lopez date movies as overwhelming confirming evidence.
According to Professor Just-so, evolution tried and tried, going through numberless iterations and experiments to produce a two sex species. Eventually, it took – thank-you evolution because there’s not much fun in reproducing asexually. But, how did evolution know to keep generating these constant experiments in sexual reproduction? Was it payola from the lingerie industry? Was it intelligent design by an unintelligent process of chance and natural law? Professor Just-so remembers he has to leave immediately for another lecture, so we’re left wondering where this evolutionary “plan-ahead” capacity came from.
But wait a minute, evolution supposedly has no ability to “plan ahead” or “design” – why couldn’t it have “just happened”? Well, maybe it could have just happened, but then why didn’t all asexual species disappear into the dustbin of rejected biological failures courtesy of natural selection? Well, no one knows that either and maybe those present species that reproduce asexually have been living on borrowed time for hundreds of millions of years and just don’t realize it.
Since there are so many things no one knows about the historic development of sexual reproduction, then one explanation is as good as another I suppose. To explain this proliferation of theories relying on evolution to explain behavior, my own theory, for whatever it’s worth, is that evolution also developed a “gullibility” gene through natural selection. This gene has become dominant within our species and, well, there you have it – another just so story that should receive widespread dissemination. Those afflicted with the gullibility gene believe without much evidence and those who actually require evidence remain doubters – the “believers” currently outnumber the “doubters”, which certainly must reflect some obscure principle of natural selection in action. I just hope I receive full credit for this latest scientific theory of social behavior.
Comment by Pat Skurka | March 6, 2008
Maybe Pat S. should write a book to receive credit for the twaddle above…
Comment by Dean | March 6, 2008
Mr. Skurka - I think much of your opposition to evolution would evaporate if you put some effort into understanding what it actually proposes. For example, the origin of sex is indeed a puzzle at present, but none of the proposed models involve a 'male' organism spontaneously appearing at the same time a 'female' also fortuitously appeared.
This is, indeed, a difficult subject that is being worked on. But just because not everything is known about it does not mean that "one explanation is as good as another" - people are working to test the various proposed explanations, and figure out which one matches the facts as we can determine them. It's thought that perhaps diploid (two copies of genes, the way we have two copies of each chromosome) organisms evolved from some combination of plasmid exchange, parasitic genes that encourage such gene spread, and and adaptation of the DNA repair machinery that allowed it to fix mistakes in one copy from another, undamaged copy, as we see today. Examples are known in the unicellular eukaryotes - these bacteria-like organisms are haploid normally, but when they reproduce, two fuse into one diploid phase that then copies and shuffles genes, and finally splits into four 'offspring'. Note that the molecular triggers that induce this fusion bear a striking similarity to the molecular triggers that induce fusion of sperm and egg…
Once diploidy arises, the differentiation between males and females is much easier to explain. 'Cheating' is a problem that all organisms face, and if two diploid organisms are cooperating in producing offspring, one can 'cut corners' in the amount of material they invest in the offspring and force the other participant to make up the slack. Once such a process starts, it quickly accelerates - the 'honest' ones have to invest more to ensure good offspring, and the 'cheaters' then can supply less, etc. Eventually we get to the point now when sperm are vastly smaller than eggs, and supply essentially nothing but the 'genetic payload'.
I'd like to suggest you read David Sloan Wilson's "Evolution For Everyone" - he writes in a clear style, and points out the difference between actual science and the pronouncements of people like Mr. Moxon - Wilson actually tests his theories (I pointed to a paper of his above where he tests a theory three different ways). You might be interested to see how such theories are actually formulated and studied.
Comment by Raymond Ingles | March 7, 2008
Mr. Ingles
The study you linked is interesting, but I'm not sure it tells us anything more than what we learn from the TV reality show "Beauty and the Geek" or getting to the end of Hemingway's "To have and have not."
Don't laugh.
Both the research to which you refer and the "geeks" show explore perceptions of beauty in close groups of people over time. The beautiful women come to see some of the geeks as more attractive after they know them for a number of weeks, while the geeks come to see some of the beautiful women as unattractive once they discover very unattractive things about them.
But closed, small groups are a thing of the past (not a bad thing, considering what comes from limited gene pools).
In fact, one might wonder if physical attraction and the shrinking of the world are not what allowed us to survive.
Choosing mates based on physical criteria might be deemed shallow, but keep in mind two things - it's often an unattractive person who does the deeming and there is such a thing as people who are very beautiful and very intelligent. And just as we can come to see an average person of good character become more attractive physically over time, so too a beautiful person can become more beautiful over time.
Beautiful (physically healthy and capable), intelligent (mentally healthy and capable) humans are the goal. It is what the as-yet unexplained forces of nature yearn for.
We know it, and we have to figure out the best way to stay out of its way - somethign difficult to do now that we think entirely too much.
Comment by nick adams | March 7, 2008
Raymond Ingles:
You take this evolution stuff very seriously, don’t you? I’ll address your comments regarding evolution’s explanation for sexual reproduction below, using a serious manner and employing evolution’s words of power. But, before I do so, allow me to point out some common observations regarding your intellectual approach to evolution theory.
Most of the comments on Intellectual Conservative are from men and there’s always that rather sophomoric desire to win the debate – we’re all equally guilty of being competitors and wanting to defeat our opponent. But, ultimately, your belief or doubt in the “truth” or rather the explanatory power of evolution theory is determined by your individual psychology. There is no objective standard of “proof” outside your own mind; all standards of evidence, of explanatory power, of the strength of the connection between a conclusion and the supporting evidence are psychologically subjective, to a greater or lesser degree.
In previous comments, I’ve cited Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper and Larry Laudan as philosophers of science who have tried to find this elusive Holy Grail, this objective standard of proof that exists outside our individual minds. They’ve failed to find it and more or less admitted that down through history our psychological ability to rationalize evidence to support whatever conclusion we desire has been as prevalent within the physical sciences as it has also been present within politics, military science, economics, etc.
I believe there is a psychological spectrum and comfort zone among individuals ranging from absolute certainty of knowledge to hopelessly contradictory. Some individuals are psychologically very comfortable with those contradictions present in the physical world; contradictions which prevent us from forming simple theories about “how things are”. Some even delight in the contradictions; the amazing novelty and diversity of nature. Others need much more certainty in their lives; the certainty we understand the world we live in and the certainty that it won’t change without our permission.
In my opinion, this need for certainty is prevalent among many of those who believe in evolution. When someone disputes evolution, it is an attack against certainty; it nudges the believer toward that dangerous precipice of contradiction and chaos. And the reactions to uncertainty are psychologically the same among the many evolution “believers”. The “doubter” is accused of being a “creationist”, having a religious agenda or being a religious fanatic. If the criticism of evolution is without religious references, then the “doubter” doesn’t “understand how science works” or just “doesn’t understand evolution”. Or, the evolutionists can do various creative combinations of religious fanatic and ignorance of science caricatures. Such responses are an attempt to restore certainty to the mind of the believer – an emotional defense mechanism rather than a logical rebuttal.
You can, of course, reject all this as psychological claptrap, although I would point out it is no less tenuous than many explanations within evolution. This psychological need for certainty has a deep-rooted emotional base. Michael Behe, the author of “Darwin’s Black Box” relates some humorous tales of the “true believers” reaction to hearing criticism of evolution from a biochemistry professor who can’t be realistically accused of misunderstanding “how science really works”. In one instance, Behe reports that a full professor at a university literally chased him from a lecture hall, holding out a common spring loaded mousetrap and repeatedly demanding he put his hand into the trap. In another lecture hall, a young woman rose and publicly stated she would dedicate the rest of her life to proving Behe wrong.
These extreme emotional reactions indicate how perilous it is to challenge an individual’s deep seated beliefs. And, we are more than capable of mixing belief, logic and facts together within our minds resulting in complex, and seemingly rational, patterns of response to contradictions. For example, have you noticed how deliberately vague most of evolution’s “just so” stories are? The “just so” story is designed to explain away the apparent contradiction between the theory and the evidence and restore certainty to the mind of the believer.
But, have you also noticed that these stories lack what defense attorneys call “smoking gun” evidence. They’re never specific to facts so they’re impossible to contradict – which is exactly the point. The “just so” stories never say exactly when something happened, where it happened, exactly how it happened or to which specific species it happened. Pick up a child’s book of fairy tales and you’ll see the similarity between these scientific “just so” stories and a fairy tale’s lack of specific details – neither form of myth can be disproved. And, parents are grateful for this deliberate lack of bedtime story specifics – kids can ask some very penetrating questions. “Once upon a time”, “in a far off land” “she fell into a mysterious death-like sleep” etc. – these phrases are replicated within the adult version of the evolution stories. And, for example, you might review the just so story cited within your previous comment - notice the lack of specifics?
Citing ongoing research is another curious defense mechanism. We don’t know the answer now but we’re almost there and we will certainly know the full answer sometime in the future, probably very soon. And this rhetorical attempt to rescue certainty with the promise of knowledge in the future has been going on for 150 years. Scientists do research - we should know since the taxpayers fund it. They need to feed their families and make the lease payment on the BMW just like others employees. But, ongoing research can’t support evolution theory today with a promise of explanations sometime in the future. No matter how many internet references you list, you can’t prove “scientifically” that, with more research, the answers will be found.
Evolution is a feeble theory compared with other scientific theories of a similar vintage. When you rush a beloved child to the hospital with a serious infection, you don’t want to hear the doctor say “germs cause infections and disease”. “Yeah, that’s nice”, you say, “but what antibiotic will clear up this infection and restore my child’s health”? You want and need specifics from the doctor, not vague generalizations like “germs cause infections”. Doctors know which pathogens cause which disease, they know how the germs spread, the life cycle, what treatments and antibiotics are recommended, etc. Fortunately for us, this tremendous degree of certainty and specificity has been proven over and over using the many accurate hypotheses within the overall germ theory of disease. This knowledge and this theory is important to us, it affects our daily lives.
Evolution isn’t important to us, it’s truth or falsity doesn’t affect our lives, it isn’t vitally necessary that we know one way or the other. For this reason, evolution has remained a feeble and vague general theory, more descriptive than explanatory in nature.
Let me get to the rebuttal of evolution’s explanation of sexual reproduction in a different response – this is getting too long. But, in line with Phil Jackson’s parallel arguments concept, here’s a story that sums up all the aforementioned. In 1981, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum, Colin Patterson, asked an audience of scientists in New York: “Can you tell me one thing about evolution, any one thing, that is true?”. He repeated this question again at a similar gathering in Chicago. In the shocked silence that followed his question, no scientist jumped up, laughing, to explain all the many things that are “absolutely true” about evolution.
Maybe Patterson was having a mid-life crisis or one of those rare epiphanies. He came in for much criticism from the science establishment and the media for this performance and, like Galileo, was later forced to partially recant. Since then, this story is labeled a creationist fantasy, although it was verified as fact. The scientific hair splitting over terms like “true” started, the obfuscation of what he really meant, not what he said, the charges that delighted “doubters” don’t really understand science emerged. Let me close by asking what do you know that is absolutely true about evolution and how do you know it?
Comment by Pat Skurka | March 8, 2008
Pat asked: "Let me close by asking what do you know that is absolutely true about evolution and how do you know it?"
Everything I just finished reading about evolution and Tiktaalik ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik ) in the recent book Your Inner Fish ( http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/book.html ) by Neil Shubin ( http://pondside.uchicago.edu/oba/faculty/shubin_n.html ) is absolutely true.
Or are you calling Dr. Shubin a liar? If so, is your doctorate also in paleontology or some other closely related biological science?
Comment by PaulBurnett | March 8, 2008
PaulBurnett,
I'm confused.
If it is necessary for Mr. Skurka to hold "…a doctorate also in palenontology or some other closely related biological science" in order to determine if Shubin is wrong, why is it not also incumbent upon you to hold identical credentials in order to determine if Shubin is right?
It seems to me that if one is going to insist upon particular expertise to render a verdict of "false," it must likewise be required to render a verdict of "true."
Just something to ponder. Particularly since - to my knowledge - none of the US Supreme Court justices sport degrees in the biological sciences, yet you appear to be perfectly willing to cite them as the final arbiters of what is, and is not, "science."
And, although I haven't read the book, I'm curious what it is that allows you to determine the veracity of anything with absolute certainty. It presumes a set of incontrovertible truths against which claims are assessed, does it not? And given this, what would those incontrovertible truths be and how would you know them to be absolute truths versus simply mutually agreed-upon conventions or even universally shared delusions?
Comment by Steve Sabin | March 9, 2008
Stave Sabin wrote: "And, although I haven’t read the book (Your Inner Fish), I’m curious what it is that allows you to determine the veracity of anything with absolute certainty."
I would urge you to read the book - it's fun and interesting and short. It's also selling very well.
Take a look at Dr. Shubin's website at http://pondside.uchicago.edu/oba/faculty/shubin_n.html - it includes a list of some of his peer-reviewed publications (many of which have been accepted into the National Institutes of Health's U.S. National Library of Medicine). Not one of these publications has been retracted because anything in it was found to be untrue.
Which of Dr. Shubin's publications listed are you saying is a lie? Are you saying all of them are lies? Or are you just saying his latest book is contains lies?
Comment by PaulBurnett | March 9, 2008
Mr. Burnett,
Mr. Sabin did not say any of the books contain lies, and suggesting he did provides you very little in the way of a smoke screen.
His question was put to you about how you can declare truth without doubt, but also without the credentials you argue are required. You managed to dodge both questions.
Comment by nick adams | March 9, 2008
Nick, "truth without doubt" (or Steve's "absolute truths") doesn't exist. (Prove I'm wrong.) I don't even have "truth without doubt" that you or Steve actually exist - you may just be another figment of Neo's Matrix.
All I said was that I have no doubt about (as an example) Dr. Shubin's book. If somebody wants to say it's not true, the burden of proof is on them to prove to my satisfaction, by (for instance) writing another best-seller showing how he's wrong. It would take some pretty impressive credentials and a lot of good research to get such a book printed then to have it get on the best-seller lists. Unless and until that happens, I'll rely on Dr. Shubin's book to be absolute truth.
Comment by PaulBurnett | March 9, 2008
Raymond Ingles:
In regard to your previous comment, we both know that diploid haploid, polyploid, euploid and aneuploid cells have nothing to do with the origin of sexual reproduction. With all due courtesy, I believe you’re just throwing around technical terms, without understanding their meaning, and hoping your explanation will impress the reader by sounding scientific. Your parasitic genes and DNA repair reference is a jumbled up mess when combined with diploidy – it means nothing, explains absolutely nothing and sounds like another “just so” story with several important pieces missing – you may wish to find a reference other than talkorigins or pandasthumb for future rebuttals.
Putting aside your attempt at an explanation, I think it’s intellectually honest to admit that the rise of sexual reproduction presents insurmountable problems for natural selection as a component of evolution theory. You’d have to drop or radically alter the present concept of natural selection to accept that sexual reproduction would develop from parthenogenetic (asexual) species. In doing so, you would drastically alter the nature of evolution theory itself in regard to the development of new species – there would be no definable process to preserve favorable gene mutations.
Two problems concerning the emergence of sexual reproduction immediately come to mind which completely contradicts evolution’s basic internal logic – like changing arithmetic to say that from now on 2 + 2 = 7 or 2 – 1 = 19. First, sexual reproduction would reduce, not increase, fitness under the standard scientific definition of natural selection. We know that the deductive (rather than inductive) definition of natural selection is arithmetic differential survival. Starting with the premise that if more members of the sub-species group with the favorable mutation survive to reproduce, then logically there is a gradual change in the relative proportion of favorable to less favorable mutation individuals within the total population. Eventually, the sub-species group lacking the favorable mutation is swamped in numbers through a slower rate of reproduction than the group with the favorable mutation. Assuming other conditions remain the same, this logical proposition can’t be refuted. Essentially, the favorable mutation group simply out-produces the parent species and eventually supplants it.
But, how could a sexual reproduction species possibly out-produce a parthenogenetic species? The asexual species produces only daughters, no males and out-produces the sexual reproduction species in a 2 to 1 ratio (assuming 50-50 male to female ratio) – the sexual species has only 50% differential survival capacity (50% fitness) compared to the asexual species. So, differential survival is on the side of the asexual species and production of males is contrary to evolution theory unless the asexual species evolved from the sexual reproduction species.
The second problem with the rise of sexual reproduction is that it overturns the entire basis of evolution through natural selection. The parthenogenetic species has a successful genotype, hard won through survival against competing species. Now the logical argument is that sexual reproduction should create a reduction in that successful genotype by providing only half of these hard won successful genes to the offspring. Essentially, sexual reproduction would reduce fitness by reducing the successful genes passed on to its offspring. This essentially refutes the entire evolutionary concept of phylogenetic fitness through the passing of successful genes to offspring and the conservation of successful genotypes.
But, the way around this argument is to claim the male somehow provides successful genes as well, combining with the female genes to create an organism more successful at differential survival than the asexual species. Quite possible on an ongoing basis, but how did it initially start?
To get a hypothetical male with successful genes to combine with a female’s gene’s, you first need to violate two basic rules of evolution as noted above. The male may provide some contribution to the overall survival of the female; protection or food gathering is one explanation of a successful contribution that could be passed on. However, there are many sexual reproduction species where the male provides only fertilization and then leaves the female to gestate and raise the offspring. And, how does this protection or food gathering behavior develop in the male if natural selection didn’t encourage it?
Without an explanation for how the first male appeared, you’re back to “the chicken or egg, which came first” dilemma. One standard argument is that nature’s move toward sexual reproduction supported the long term survival of a species by recombining genes from males and females to create superior fitness – sort of shuffling the deck between each hand before dealing a new round of cards. Your new genetic poker hand may be better at surviving harsh winters, drought, predators, etc. than your previous hand was. Long term, this is a compelling argument, a gradual increase in fitness through a fundamental change in the reproduction process would allow the organism to withstand radical changes within the external environment. The parthenogenetic species with the slower mutational rate of change in its genetic structure wouldn’t be as likely to withstand rapid environmental change – or so we’re told.
That’s good in theory, but evolution is concerned with only short term survival – the here and now, the immediate problem of getting through today. There is no “long term” from evolution’s viewpoint – remember, it’s an entirely mechanical process lacking any long term planning capability or intelligence. So, once again, we’re back to how did the first male occur and what short term and immediate survival issue caused the first male to thrive? Short term, the first male should always perish since it provides no immediate advantage, only a theoretical long term survival capacity due to favorable gene shuffling.
Lastly, it’s mathematically unlikely a single gene mutation could provide all the “male” sexual equipment needed plus alter the chromosome generation during meiosis. So, it is safe to assume the rise of a process of sexual reproduction was complex both genetically and bio-chemically. So, once again, we can assume proto-males could be produced over and over again through genetic accidents and maybe even survive through some favorable combination of chance accidents. But, how did the process of meiosis start through this favorable and single gene mutation. It had to start fully complete, not evolve through natural selection. Essentially, the individual organism couldn’t be the successful male part of a sexual reproduction species unless meiosis had already evolved and meiosis wouldn’t evolve unless a successful male already existed.
The only solution is to dream up complex mutations occurring simultaneously that affect chromosome formation through a meiotic process and achieved through chance and preserved through favorable accident. Evolution theory, however, is used to dealing with such dilemmas and simply claims it must have happened since it adequately explains the evidence we observe today. I don’t think the just-so explanation cited in your comment explains it adequately – actually, I think it’s just another rationalization where someone invents a hypothetical explanation to get around a logical contradiction that can’t be explained using the concepts of evolution theory. Conveniently, as happens so often within evolution, we can neither prove nor disprove your hypothetical explanation as to the historical origin of meiosis.
Comment by Pat Skurka | March 9, 2008
No, Paul. If you will reread my question in #8 you'll see that I have made no statement about the veracity of Shubin's book. I have merely asked you to substantiate your assessment of it as "absolutely true."
Think of it as being asked in school to prove your answer rather than simply state your answer. I'm asking you to explain your logical framework and process, not just your conclusion.
I am also asking, I think, a very fair question as to why the requirements you place upon Skurka are not reciprocally incumbant upon yourself.
You haven't addressed any of the four questions I asked.
Comment by Steve Sabin | March 9, 2008
Nick,
I think what we are dealing with here is known as "unconscious incompetence."
To whit…
PaulBurnett, post #11:
Nick, “truth without doubt” (or Steve’s “absolute truths”) doesn’t exist. (Prove I’m wrong.) I don’t even have “truth without doubt” that you or Steve actually exist - you may just be another figment of Neo’s Matrix.
PaulBurnett, post #7:
Everything I just finished reading about evolution and Tiktaalik in the recent book "Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin is absolutely true.
Q.E.D.
Comment by Steve Sabin | March 9, 2008
Mr. Skurka - Let's assume arguendo that you're right. I accept evolution because I have a deep-seated psychological need that it answers, and I only post the arguments and data that I do because I feel threatened by any attempt to discredit the theory.
Okay, fine. Now - what does any of that have to with whether or not evolution is true?
Perhaps I only post those arguments and cite that data because it's a "defense mechanism". But it doesn't follow that the arguments and data are therefore invalid. If you'll note, I don't claim that people who don't accept evolution do so from psychological causes - all I've said about you, for example, is that you don't appear to understand what the theory actually entails and proposes. Allegedly, people also have a deep-seated need for religion, but it doesn't follow from that that religion is true - or false.
Sydney Hook put it a bit more tersely, and pithily: "Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they may legitimately be impugned, answer his arguments." As you yourself noted in your post, not only did you not answer the arguments first, you never actually got around to answering them at all.
A couple minor points - I repeat my suggestion, even more forcefully now, that you read "Evolution for Everyone", since you state that "Evolution isn’t important to us". You might change your mind about that - I know it changed my mind on a couple of points. I'm now much more skeptical of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris' contentions about the absolute uselessness of religion, for example.
For a detailed explanation of why understanding evolution is vital to medicine, particularly when dealing with germs, see here or here. Assuming you feel like addressing arguments, that is. Another pithy quote: "Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house." - Henri Poincaré
As to absolute certainty - why, nothing, of course. The real world doesn't admit of absolute certainty about anything, including evolution. If you're asking about bet-your-life certainty, though, I can can name a few things. Common descent of all known life - and I've posted elsewhere why (twin nested hierarchies, endogenous retroviruses, etc.). Natural selection can produce systems of increasing complexity, even 'irreducibly complex' systems - and again I've not hidden why (the fossil record of the ossicles, my own evolution simulation experiments, etc.).
I'm not quite a bet-your-life certainty that there's no intelligent design anywhere in Earthly biology, but so far I haven't seen anything that couldn't be explained quite handily by the above two effective certainties. (I've stated elsewhere that I'm not opposed to ID research, I'm opposed to teaching it in public schools before it's done any research or gathered any evidence.)
Comment by Raymond Ingles | March 9, 2008
Mr. Skurka - Ah, your discourse on sexual reproduction was held up in the filter. Still, before you dismiss what I wrote about diploidy and gene repair, you may want to look into it a bit. Should I post references or would that be a waste of time?
Speaking of 'intellectually honest', I'm kind of surprised you would stuff the word 'insurmountable' in there when I never used it, and indeed was trying to point out that the problems were not insurmountable.
For example, 'arithmetic differential survival' can be arranged for in many different ways. Having a smaller number of offspring can be just fine if those offspring tend to survive better than the competition. Plus, there are many different ways to make a living in the world - having a smaller number of offspring, but having offspring that can survive in a new environment where there's less competition can also be just fine.
And it's interesting how you ignored my point about 'egalitarian' sex - as happens in the unicellular eukaryotes I mentioned, they're not hypothetical at all - can gradually differentiate into full-fledged 'males' and 'females'. There's no unambiguous 'first male', just as there's no unambiguous moment where 'day' becomes 'night'. This scenario also doesn't depend on a 'single mutation' to create a full-fledged male.
Anyway, it's bedtime. More tomorrow if I get around to it.
Comment by Raymond Ingles | March 9, 2008
Mr. Burnett,
Sales figures are a factor in determing absolute truth?
Also, how do you start post #11 with the statement, "Nick, “truth without doubt” (or Steve’s “absolute truths”) doesn’t exist. (Prove I’m wrong.) I don’t even have “truth without doubt” that you or Steve actually exist - you may just be another figment of Neo’s Matrix." and then close the post with, "Unless and until that happens, I’ll rely on Dr. Shubin’s book to be absolute truth."
I suspect humans will forever debate whether there can be an absolute truth, but I think you have settled the question of whether there can be absolute absurdity.
Comment by nick adams | March 9, 2008
Just for fun, a couple interesting articles with relevance to the evolution of sex, here and here.
Comment by Raymond Ingles | March 20, 2008