The grand plan

When I'm teaching the unit on evolution in my biology classes, one of the hardest ideas to expunge from my students' brains is that evolution is goal-oriented.

Take, for example, the worn-out example, used in every seventh-grade life science textbook, about giraffes' long necks.  Why do they have these outlandish proportions?

So they can reach food higher up in trees, of course.

The subtle error here is that it implies that a bunch of short-necked giraffes were standing around on the African savanna, looking longingly up at the tempting foliage higher up, and one said, "Dude.  It'd be nice if we could reach higher, don't you think?"  And another said, "Well, we're kinda screwed, because we're short.  But if we had longer-necked kids, that'd be cool, yeah?"

The other giraffes agreed, and lo, they had long-necked kids.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Universalwin1222, Lamarckian inheritance- Giraffes, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Okay, I'm oversimplifying, here, but the gist is correct.  The assumption of goal-orientation puts the cart before the horse; that there was some sort of end product evolution had in mind, so organisms headed that way.  Of course, the truth is both simpler and more complex.  What Darwin actually said was that organisms vary from some other cause (being pre-Mendel, he didn't know about genes and mutations), and the environment selects the ones that work the best.  The others die off, taking their deleterious genes with them.

No goal necessary.

The ultimate in goal-orientation, of course, is strict creationism, which posits a designer who created everything as it currently is.  The immediate problem with this -- besides the fact that there's no evidence for it whatsoever -- is that there are a lot of things that seem, well, poorly designed.  The creationists are fond of trotting out some examples of complex structures that work pretty well (such as the eye) and conveniently ignore some examples of seriously poor design (such as the male urinary/reproductive system, which routes the urethra through the prostate gland, making a lot of older guys seriously unhappy).

All of this goal-orientation is known to philosophers as "teleological thinking" -- the attribution of a final cause or goal in natural processes.  And just last week, a paper came out of some research in France that suggests teleological thinking as a commonality between creationism... and conspiracy theories.

The study, done by Pascal Wagner-Egger, Sylvain Delouvée, Nicolas Gauvrit, and Sebastian Dieguez, found an interesting set of correspondences:

Although teleological thinking has long been banned from scientific reasoning, it persists in childhood cognition, as well as in adult intuitions and beliefs.  Noting similarities between creationism (the belief that life on Earth was purposefully created by a supernatural agent) and conspiracism, we sought to investigate whether teleological thinking could underlie and associate both types of beliefs. First, we sought to establish whether teleological thinking, classically associated with creationism, was also related to conspiracist beliefs. College students filled a questionnaire including teleological claims and conspiracist statements, as well as measures of analytical thinking, esoteric and magical beliefs, and a randomness perception task.  Promiscuous teleology — the tendency to ascribe function and a final cause to nonintentional natural facts and events — was significantly... correlated with conspiracist beliefs scales.  In addition, teleological thinking was negatively related to analytical thinking, and positively to esoteric beliefs, which in turn were both related to acceptance of conspiracist beliefs.

The results are perhaps not terribly surprising, although I don't know if anyone previously has linked them this way.  Both creationism and conspiracy theories imply a belief in a Grand Plan -- benevolent in the case of creationism, malevolent in the case of conspiracy theories.  Adherents to either tend to be repelled by the idea of chaos, that things just happen because they happen.  (Thus "even when bad things happen, God has a plan" from the former, and the steadfast refusal by the latter to believe that any unpleasant event might just be random bad luck.)

I'd add one more piece to this, however, and that's the determination by both to avoid or explain away facts that contradict their favorite model of how the universe works.  Of course, that unites them with some other groups that aren't necessarily thinking teleologically, such as the anti-vaxxers.

Although the anti-vaxxers tend to believe that there's a huge coverup by "Big Pharma" of the horrific side effects of vaccination, so maybe there's some overlap there, too.

Anyhow, I thought the whole thing was interesting.  And it does bear mention that the students who are the most repelled by evolution for non-religious reasons tend to be the ones who hate the idea that so much of the world could be the result of randomness.  How can the biodiversity on the Earth, with all of its "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful" (to quote Darwin), be produced by chance mutations?

Of course, the universe is not compelled to be organized in such a way that it makes you comfortable.  The evidence is very much in favor of the idea that mutations plus selection have generated all of the life forms you see around you.  And since selection is a "whatever works" sort of process, it's unsurprising that sometimes it creates designs of dubious logic -- such as the urethra/prostate situation I mentioned above, which a friend of mine calls "routing a sewer pipe through a playground."

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic, and especially for you pet owners: Konrad Lorenz's Man Meets Dog.  In this short book, the famous Austrian behavioral scientist looks at how domestic dogs interact, both with each other and with their human owners.  Some of his conjectures about dog ancestry have been superseded by recent DNA studies, but his behavioral analyses are spot-on -- and will leaving you thinking more than once, "Wow.  I've seen Rex do that, and always wondered why."

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Searching for the ultimate

Okay, folks, I understand that the world is a Big Scary Place where Big Scary Things sometimes happen.  It's an inherently chaotic system (at least in my opinion) where there are proximal causes for almost everything that happens and ultimate causes for very little.  Looking for the overarching pattern, the big reasons, is an exercise in futility.

The view of the universe as a giant pinball game doesn't bother me, or at least not very much.  My general attitude is that I don't have to understand everything; understanding the bits of it I can parse through science is enough.  It is, though, what makes religion appealing to a lot of folks, and I can certainly empathize with the draw.  It provides meaning, gives an ultimate context, reassures you that even when things seem awful and random and incomprehensible, there's a pattern there that you're not seeing, that makes it all make sense.

There's a toxic side of all of this, though, and it manifests in the desperation of a lot of people to discern a Big Reason for large-scale devastating events.  It's what drives some of the religious to postulate a devil-figure that does bad things to humans, or (even worse) a retributive god who smites whole cities for the perceived sinful actions of a few.  It's the basis of what creates a lot of conspiracy theories, because better that there be some pattern, even a dreadful one, than no pattern at all.

Take, for example, the current nonsense circulating the internet about Ebola.  On the one hand, I get why people feel like they have to look for a reason; the Ebola virus is one scary mofo, causing horrific symptoms that result in a 60-70% mortality rate.  And honestly, we don't know how fast it's going to spread in the United States.  The epidemic in West Africa is certainly far from over, with one estimate suggesting that the infection rate there could increase by a factor of ten by December.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But the crazy End Times shit and conspiracy theories now popping up on a daily basis are not helping the situation.  We have Ron Baity, a Baptist preacher in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who said that not only is Ebola a punishment from god for the recent push for gay marriage, if we don't reverse course quickly, god has something even worse up his sleeve:

If you think for one skinny minute, God is going to stand idly by and allow this to go forward without repercussions, you better back up and rethink this situation.  I want you to understand, that is raw, pure blasphemy...  My friend, we are meriting, we are bringing the judgment of God on this nation as sure as Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, don’t be surprised at the plagues.  Don’t be surprised at the judgment of God.  You think Ebola is bad now, just wait.  If it’s not that, it’s going to be something else.  My friends, I want you to understand, you can’t thumb your nose at God, and God turn his head away without God getting your attention.

So yeah.  But that wasn't all.  We have an uncredited article over at UFO Blogger (a site that has become increasingly about conspiracy theories and less and less about extraterrestrials), in which we're told that singer Avicii's recently-released song "The Days" confirms that the Ebola virus is a government-created bioweapon that they're turning against their own people:

Illuminati owned singer and performer Avicii's predict a future event in his latest music video "The Days" which was released on Youtube on 3 October, 2014. 

Which confirms Ebola is Illuminati bio weapon and they don't care if you find out. They have become that bold. 

"Avīci" (from Buddhist origin) means "the lowest from the hell"... As we have seen before the satanic cabal The Illuminati hide their plans in plain sight as a way to brainwash and program the masses!

As evidence, we're presented with the lyrics, which seem to be no more Dark and Evil and Predictive than your average alt-rock.  And given that I regularly listen to Nine Inch Nails, any contention that this represents the most twisted, Satan-inspired message the music industry is capable of makes me laugh.  (You can watch the video here; it's kind of a catchy song, really.)

But then we had the other end of the spectrum; it's neither a case of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God nor the Illuminati Trying To Murder Us All.  A dude named Nana Kwame over in Ghana is claiming to have "rocked the internet" by the revelation that the Ebola epidemic is a big fat hoax.

The revelation appeared on the site Spirit Science and Metaphysics, which is evidently competing with Natural News for first place in the Purveyor of Bullshit Contest.  Kwame, whose ideas are as contemptible and dangerous as they are ludicrous, says that the CDC and WHO have made the whole alleged epidemic up:

People in the Western World need to know what’s happening here in West Africa.  THEY ARE LYING!!!  “Ebola” as a virus does NOT Exist and is NOT “Spread”.  The Red Cross has brought a disease to 4 specific countries for 4 specific reasons and it is only contracted by those who receive treatments and injections from the Red Cross.  That is why Liberians and Nigerians have begun kicking the Red Cross out of their countries and reporting in the news the truth.

Marvelous.  Just what we need.  Some nutjob scaring sick people into avoiding treatment.  It's what we saw when Pakistanis started shooting Red Cross volunteers because they thought the polio vaccine was going to sterilize and/or kill Muslim children.

Kwame goes on to explain that the WHO and associated groups are doing this so as to have an excuse to bring in troops to get a hold of West Africa's mineral wealth and simultaneously reduce the native population.  Because evidently in spite of the fact that Ebola doesn't exist, it can still kill people.  Or something like that.

I dunno.  It's kind of impossible to combat such desperate lunacy.  As I said before, I think it does come out of an understandable human need; the need for meaning.  I do get that.  And Ebola is freakin' scary; I'll admit to a serious sinking feeling when I found out about first one, then two, confirmed cases in the United States.  (I think my exact words were, "Yikes.  Here we go.")  Now, mind you, I still think the likelihood of a major epidemic in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe is slim; but even that slim possibility is terrifying.

But it doesn't push me to need an ultimate explanation for it, nor (worse) to make up one should no convenient explanation be at hand.  I'm okay with living inside a pinball machine, even if it does make life seem rather absurd sometimes.  And as far as the tragedy of the Ebola epidemic; let's concentrate on containing its spread, work on cures, and deal with the proximal causes.

Let the ultimate causes look after themselves.

The different flavors of "why"

In my last few posts, we've been looking at some of the various reasons that people believe odd, counterfactual things.  We've looked at fear, wishful thinking, lack of knowledge, and being hoodwinked by fast-talking, plausible charlatans, each of which plays its role in drawing people into the ethereal realms of pseudoscience.

There's one more, though, that we haven't looked at; and that is the desperation people have to know why things happen.

Most folks are uncomfortable with the idea of chaos -- the thought that there are random forces at work in the world, that some things are simply the result of chaotic processes that we couldn't predict if we tried.  This idea was brilliantly investigated in Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which I can truly say is one of the few books that changed my life.  When I read it, in my Modern American Literature class when I was in 11th grade, I felt like my outlook on life would never be the same.

In it, Wilder's main character, Brother Juniper, an 18th century Franciscan monk, witnesses the collapse of a rope bridge in Peru.  Five people are on the bridge at the time, and all die.  He sets out to trace the history of the five victims, to see if there was some underlying reason why those five people, and no others, were killed.  And in the end, he realizes that if there was an explanation -- if god really did have a plan in engineering this situation -- it is so subtle that we could never know what it is.  And for this heresy, Brother Juniper and his book are both burned at the stake in the public square.

We always, somehow, want to know why.  And when science came along, there was a lot of hope that it would supplant religion in answering that question.  In some ways, it succeeded; but it didn't give people the answers to the "whys" that most were looking for, because there are different flavors of "why" -- and science is exceptionally good at answering one of them, and not so good at the other.

There are proximal "whys" and ultimate "whys," and the first is easy, and the second spectacularly difficult.  I saw a good example of the difference when, in an AP Biology class a few years ago, I asked, "Why are virtually all marsupials found in Australia?"

A student responded, in complete seriousness, "Because that's where they live."

Well, yes, but that's not what I was looking for.  I was looking for a deeper why -- an answer to the question of why marsupials had survived in Australia, but very few other places (the North American opossum being the sole counterexample).  And that's a difficult question, one that requires speculation.  Frequently questions of "ultimate why" either lead to unprovable guesses, or else are outside of the provenance of science to answer.

Which is why people have been turning to woo-woo craziness to explain the devastation that Typhoon Haiyan has wreaked upon the Philippines this past weekend.

Why did the typhoon form?  Why did it become so powerful?  Why did it take the path it did?  Science can explain how it formed, and give some answers to the proximal "whys," answers that involve steering currents and sea-surface temperatures.  But as far as the ultimate "why" -- why Haiyan devastated the city of Tacloban, why it struck where it did and not somewhere else -- science is silent.

So we're already seeing the nonsense rearing its ugly head.  Haiyan was created as part of a super-secret experiment by the US military, using a microwave burst.  It was sent on the path it took because the US was trying to divert radioactive water coming our way from Fukushima.  Even further out, we have loony evangelicals claiming that god sent Haiyan to devastate the mostly-Catholic Philippines in order to punish them for "worshiping idols."

It's not hard to see how some people see science as offering incomplete answers.  Because it does, honestly.  Whenever we're in the realm of "why" we have to be careful, as scientists, because the ultimate "whys" often don't admit easy explanation.  Even such simple "whys," often taught in elementary school science classes, as "why do giraffes have long necks?" are almost certainly oversimplified answers to questions that are much more difficult to answer than they would have appeared at first glance.

So no wonder some turn to other realms, where the answers to "whys" come hard and fast -- conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and (okay, I know I'm gonna get flak for this) religion.  Those models for understanding the world give the comfort of explaining why things happen -- sometimes, even the horrid things like illnesses, accidental deaths, personal losses... and typhoons.  Science is silent on the ultimate "whys," most of the time, and if you are uncomfortable with that, you either have to do what I do -- remain uncomfortable -- or leap outside of science.

Because, as Brother Juniper learned, if you don't make that leap, you just have to accept that sometimes the events in the world are subtle and unexplainable.