Behavioral Ecology Blog

I’ve always considered DC as a prime-time example of somebody who really knows how to use his education and wit to manipulate the very large proportion of Americans that believe in the metaphysical. He is a more subtle form of Falwell, Robertson, and that psychic lady Sylvia Browne.

Well anyway, in addition to all this, I bet you didn’t know Deepak is an expert on evolutionary theory?? No, well see 2 articles he wrote. They were supposed to be published in Nature, but the eds. wouldn’t allow DC to give co-authorship to Jesus Christ.

Why Evolutionary Biology Embraces the Bogus (Part 1)
Why Evolutionary Biology Embraces the Bogus (Part 2)

As part 2 deals with “specific problems”, I’ll focus my critiques there.

As someone who cherishes that endangered worldview, but who at the same time wants to see valid scientific progress, let me take one issue, the claim of evolutionary biology to explain something as complex as generosity, altruism, or music. Such claims are thoroughly bogus. They do not invalidate the whole field of evolutionary biology. They simply step over the boundary of believable explanations.

1. This is as opposed to your believable explanation that the metaphysical giverns complex phenotypes?
2. Note that these are not nieve explanations, they are theories, based on observations, and are used to predict (sucessfully) outcomes of similar situataions.

The following should seem obvious:

– Cause and effect, being mechanical, apply to mechanical situations
– Physical explanations don’t automatically hold for all situations
– Human beings do lots of non-physical things.

1. Non-physical things, name one….
2. Name a demonstrable example of a non- or metaphysical explanation for a situation.

As devised by Darwin, evolution depended upon physical evidence in the fossil record for its proof. Being a curious person and confident in his theory, Darwin speculated that non-physical traits might be subject to evolution. This proves to be the case if it isn’t carried too far. A person who’s born with the trait of being totally solitary, unable to abide the slightest human contact, won’t breed and pass on his genes. But extending this to such behaviors as altruism, love, or music-making can border on the absurd. We have no possible way of knowing that a prehistoric person learned to whistle in tune because his genes prompted that ability, or that this ability ever developed competitively, or that it attracted more mates, or that once attracted, these mates passed on the gene to an entire society. The whole explanatory chain is pure fudging, and it goes on all the time in this science.

1. Darwin did not “devise” evolution
2. Altruism has distinct physical implications, and can be predicted using only “physical” information.
3. Again- how can DC claim that the scientific method is “pure fudging”. Remember, DC comes from a discipline for which there has never been any evidence- that is fudging.

Competing explanations will find no valid way of choosing a winner.

1. Well…. actually, if you believe in the scientific method (see this post), using alternative hypotheses is an extremely powerful way of examining a problem.

I realize that this kind of critique frustrates and even infuriates materialists. But objectively speaking, there are good reasons for being skeptical that large areas of speculation, such as evolutionary psychology, have any validity at all. Even biologists show considerable skepticism in this regard. They can see why genes explain the appearance of hemoglobin without necessarily being as successful in explaining the appearance of Bach.

1. The largest area of speculation—> RELIGION!!!
2. How can one say that a discipline (such as evol. psych) has NO validity, when TESTABLE HYPOTHESES, and successful prediction are commonplace…

Sadly, for Chopra, pure, blind faith trumps scientific reasoning and discovery. Just like many others of his faith, he turns his back on the scientific method and evidence. This alone would not be so bad, I mean, there are idiots all over the place- what’s one more.. What is bad however, it the fact that he uses his influence to spew misinformation to the masses…

You know, GOOGLE recently said that science needs an entrepreneur… but this isn’t a completely correct statement…. We don’t need one. What we need is for good scientists to engage the public- THIS IS ONE ROLE FOR SCIENCE BLOGGERS. I believe, most humans are fundamentally susceptible to facts and logic. Keep feeding people science, and they will see the difference between Deepak’s non-science, and testable, hypothesis driven scientific thought.

EDIT: View Mike’s post on our favorite guru here