Creation-Evolution Headlines asks: What’s with these game theory explanations of how evolution is somehow moral?

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 2, 2013

Darwinism, News}

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Here’s a good chance to plug Creation-Evolution Headlines, a take on the recent nonsense around how “evolution” (like God?) Supposedly punishes selfish and mean entities:

Cooperation evolves: Another paper typical of the “evolution of cooperation by game theory” genre appeared in PNAS recently. Revealing the Darwinian assumptions, the abstract states, ” In evolutionary models of indirect reciprocity, natural selection favors cooperation when observability is sufficiently high.” Working with 2413 human participants as their lab rats, the authors implied their evolutionary model applies to all human behavior – including altruism and some of the most noble human ideals. It’s all evolutionary selection. It works the same way in yeast, except that humans have an inexplicable habit of helping people they don’t know, even when observability is zero. “In sum,” they confidently assert nonetheless, “we show how indirect reciprocity can be harnessed to increase cooperation in a relevant, real-world public goods game.” But is increased cooperation good? Who judges what is public good? And who harnesses the harnessers?

My, such a moral universe. Then who should have posted the warning signs about drowning in nonsense?

Comments

'“ah well it was designed that way”. And it is too easy. It would cause us to give up trying to find another explanation.' But why would you want to even TRY to find another explanation, when you have all been so signally unsuccessful in supplanting the divine Designer, with your interminable just-so stories, Forrest Gump chocolate-boxes, and promissory notes? You must know the definition of 'insanity' as repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome. No doubt, it was coined jocularly, but surely wilfully burying your heads in the sand is more deranged than a medical psychosis.Axel_{August 3, 2013
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Evolutionist Richard Lewontin admitted that organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." Yet, when anthropologists dig in the earth and find a triangular piece of sharp flint, they conclude that it must have been designed by someone to be the tip of an arrow. Such things designed for a purpose, scientists agree, could not be products of chance. When it comes to living things, however, the same logic is often abandoned. A designer is not considered necessary. But the simplest single-celled organism, or just the DNA of its genetic code, is far more complex than a shaped piece of flint. Yet evolutionists insist that these had no designer but were shaped by a series of chance events. Nobel-prize-winning physicist Robert A. Millikan, although a believer in evolution, did say at a meeting of the American Physical Society: “There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends . . . A purely materialistic philosophy is to me the height of unintelligence. Wise men in all the ages have always seen enough to at least make them reverent.”Barb_{August 3, 2013
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#3 Barb
Could it be that they were designed that way? Nah. Too easy.
Actually what you say mockingly is an important point. We can point to any phenomenon that is currently inexplicable and say "ah well it was designed that way". And it is too easy. It would cause us to give up trying to find another explanation.Mark Frank_{August 2, 2013
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"An inexplicable habit" of helping others? Could it be that they were designed that way? Nah. Too easy. This looks like an interesting read, "Indirect reciprocity and the evolution of moral signals" (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-009-9175-9)Barb_{August 2, 2013
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There is simply no coherent materialistic/atheistic answer as to why any morally troubling situations might be detected prior to our becoming fully conscious of them. Whereas as a Theist, especially as a Christian Theist, I would expect morality to be deeply embedded within reality itself as well as within us, since I hold that God sustains the universe, and I also hold that we are made in the image of God. This following study goes even further and shows that objective morality is even built into the way our bodies respond to different kinds of 'moral' happiness:
Human Cells Respond in Healthy, Unhealthy Ways to Different Kinds of Happiness - July 29, 2013 Excerpt: Human bodies recognize at the molecular level that not all happiness is created equal, responding in ways that can help or hinder physical health,,, The sense of well-being derived from "a noble purpose" may provide cellular health benefits, whereas "simple self-gratification" may have negative effects, despite an overall perceived sense of happiness, researchers found.,,, "Philosophers have long distinguished two basic forms of well-being: a 'hedonic' [hee-DON-ic] form representing an individual's pleasurable experiences, and a deeper 'eudaimonic,' [u-DY-moh-nick] form that results from striving toward meaning and a noble purpose beyond simple self-gratification," wrote Fredrickson and her colleagues. It's the difference, for example, between enjoying a good meal and feeling connected to a larger community through a service project, she said. Both give us a sense of happiness, but each is experienced very differently in the body's cells.,,, But if all happiness is created equal, and equally opposite to ill-being, then patterns of gene expression should be the same regardless of hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. Not so, found the researchers. Eudaimonic well-being was, indeed, associated with a significant decrease in the stress-related CTRA gene expression profile. In contrast, hedonic well-being was associated with a significant increase in the CTRA profile. Their genomics-based analyses, the authors reported, reveal the hidden costs of purely hedonic well-being.,, Fredrickson found the results initially surprising, because study participants themselves reported overall feelings of well-being. One possibility, she suggested, is that people who experience more hedonic than eudaimonic well-being consume the emotional equivalent of empty calories. "Their daily activities provide short-term happiness yet result in negative physical consequences long-term," she said. "We can make ourselves happy through simple pleasures, but those 'empty calories' don't help us broaden our awareness or build our capacity in ways that benefit us physically," she said. "At the cellular level, our bodies appear to respond better to a different kind of well-being, one based on a sense of connectedness and purpose." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729161952.htm
To believe that Darwinian evolution could produce such a 'morally nuanced' genetic mechanism, a mechanism which discerns between morally noble causes and morally self gratifying causes, moral causes which are below our immediate feelings of satisfaction, is not a parsimonious belief to believe in to put it mildly. Especially given the fact that Darwinian evolution has yet to demonstrate the origination of a single gene and/or protein, much less a neuron, in the first place! Verse and Music:
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Chris Tomlin - The Way I Was Made http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF5SZWox_JE
bornagain77_{August 2, 2013
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of related note, since Theists hold that morals arise from the nature of who God is (perfectly good),,
God Is Not Dead Yet – William Lane Craig – Page 4 The ontological argument. Anselm’s famous argument has been reformulated and defended by Alvin Plantinga, Robert Maydole, Brian Leftow, and others. God, Anselm observes, is by definition the greatest being conceivable. If you could conceive of anything greater than God, then that would be God. Thus, God is the greatest conceivable being, a maximally great being. So what would such a being be like? He would be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, and he would exist in every logically possible world.,,, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html?start=4 What is The Euthyphro Dilemma? With William Lane Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGB4Oxs5VU
and since theists also hold that God, in His infinite power, sustains the universe in every instance of its being,,
Hebrews 1:3 ,,and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.,,, Quantum Entanglement – The Failure Of Local Realism - Materialism - Alain Aspect - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/4744145 Closing the last Bell-test loophole for photons - (Zeilinger) Jun 11, 2013 http://phys.org/news/2013-06-bell-test-loophole-photons.html ‘Quantum Magic’ Without Any ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ – June 2011 Excerpt: A team of researchers led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a system which does not allow for entanglement, and still found results which cannot be interpreted classically. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624111942.htm
and since theists also hold that God has made us in His image and has 'knit together our inmost being,,
Genesis 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.… Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind",,, - Marc Hauser - Origin of the Mind: Scientific American - April 2009 Non-local Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA - Elisabeth Rieper - short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/
,,Then it should be found that morality would be a deeply intimate part of how we are made and also should be found to be deeply entrenched in how we interact with reality itself. And this is indeed what is found:
Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows – November 29, 2012 Excerpt: People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-moral-instant-emotional-brain.html
Of course atheists will claim that this instantaneous moral compass which humans have, contra the ‘survival of the fittest’ mantra, 'just so happened' to evolve to be an instant and emotional reaction (despite the fact that Darwinists cannot even explain how a single neuron of the brain arose). But the following study, contrary to what atheists would prefer to believe beforehand, goes even deeper and shows that hurtful, violent, actions are embedded on a ‘non-local’ basis, i.e. embedded on a 'spiritual' level.
Quantum Consciousness – Time Flies Backwards? – Stuart Hameroff MD Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual….). In Radin and Bierman’s early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html
bornagain77_{August 2, 2013
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