Don’t you think God’s Agape love is different than what is meant by creaturely “self-interest” though? As creatures we need things and compete with others–for our own survival. God needs nothing. He is love.
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I’ll see your confusion and raise you flat out incredulous. Too much Hollywood (avatar)?
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Can we call it personal enlightened self-interest though, instead instead of ‘creaturely’? The verse speaks directly to motivation – it’s certainly not a selfish motivation, solely ‘me’ directed. It’s relational.
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Yes, I’d say God gets personal joy from relationship, as do we. Maybe its just my vernacular, but I wouldn’t call this “in his self-interest” --that term implies to me that God needs to compete for a limited quantity of a resource “love” for his survival or fulfillment, which I don’t think is the case.
Joy can be increased though. That should be part of our motivation as well – to gain more joyful siblings for eternity. ; - )
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I guess for me when I was listening to it I was not thinking about intelligent design. I am presuming that what’s being referred to is that evolution through natural selection is not enough to really explain all the differences. That it alone does not explain behaviors and morphology. That random mutations alone is not the story. There is more to it and that more is not supernatural. It’s things like epigenetic.
A good example on this to me is homosexuality. Homosexuality and heterosexuality is not the byproduct solely of some genetic mutations. We see nature and nurture contributing to it, not just the the kid who may be gay, but potentially the way stress and other things in the mothers life could possible result in transferable elements and rna rewriting things as it’s happening.
Or you could look at things like island evolution is not merely mutations and natural selection. It’s not my something I have really dived into yet but it’s about things like how horizontal gene transfer , cell fusion , epigenetic and rna rewriting and so on also all drive life. I’ll link a few other podcast episodes that go into it .
Your question I think will primarily be answered by episodes 66 and 70-73.
There is evidence of reciprocity right down to single cells, and if we accept that our environment is a complex bundle of purposeful roles, even if we can’t see it from our perspective, it isn’t a question of “being nice” but fulfilling a role. That we have disrupted nature in many ways has become quite obvious.
This depends on how you interpret love. Brutality is an interpretation of a behaviour from our perspective. Love might incorporate the acceptance of each natural role of animals, and learning to “dance” with it.
Perhaps that is how it looks, but isn’t?
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I haven’t read Foster’s “The Selfless Gene” but I love the idea of it because I detested Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene.” Foster says, “I think a lot has changed.” I certainly agree. Our understanding of evolution has improved since the early days of Darwin.
How can love be at the heart of the universe if there is no freedom?
But if there is freedom then how can you expect there to be no examples of classic brutality?
My point is if love is at the heart of the universe then it has to start with freedom otherwise any love in it is not love but a superficial imitation.
Well that much is true. The most we can say is that this aspect of evolution wasn’t as fully explored. It is pretty clear that the primary emphasis for a long time was this competition driven individualistic aspect of evolution. So it was typically characterized as “survival of the fittest” and people thought the protection of the weak in human society was thwarting evolution. It has taken some time to see how one-sided this is.
To counter this notion that the protection of the weak opposes evolution, I have made the argument (which I haven’t seen made by others) that the protection of the weak is actually a stimulus for evolution enabling specialized roles in a communal organism.
Now we are back to this tactic of making unsupported claims like “evolution cannot create beauty.” I think evolution can explain altruism because altruism makes communal organisms stronger. We see it quite clearly in multicellular organisms, where individual cells can and do sacrifice themselves for the survival of the whole.
WRONG! Evolution does NOT require a payback or survival of the individual! It requires the survival of the SPECIES!!!
It doesn’t take humans to do that. We see this in other organisms. What we don’t see in other organisms is the sacrifice of ones life for the sake of abstractions like love, justice, and freedom… or… God.
Me neither. This attempt to see self interest in everything looks too forced to me.
This is a classic misunderstanding. What sort of biology textbooks have you been reading? Natural selection operates at the level of the individual, not the species. Traits evolve not “because they are good for the species” but because they benefit the fitness (i.e. reproductive success) of individuals.
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Hi Rob,
You realize I’m unpacking Foster’s views here which are not my own. I agree with you and personally do not see animal behavior as either “brutal” a or “loving”, but animals simply doing what they do…
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Yes, we agree in this! I think freedom is key
The majority of bees in a hive have no reproductive success. So if evolution is as you say then why do they exist?
They exist because they enhance the survival of the species, because for evolution it is ONLY the survival of the species which matters.
Yours is the misunderstanding and a big one. What sort of biology textbooks have YOU been reading.
Wrong again. Traits evolve first because of genetic variation. Then natural selection operates as a filter because those variations which do not reproduce are eliminated. Variations which do nothing to enhance this are still reproduced and other variations have both positive and negative impacts which are also reproduced. But more importantly reproduction is rarely an individual activity. And thus enhancing the reproduction of a genetic variation is not the same as enhancing the reproductive success of individuals.
You haven’t ever heard of Kin Selection?
This is an example of copies of genes in one individual being passed to the next generation as a result of helping kin. i.e., just an example of propagating one’s own genes indirectly. Biologists call it “inclusive fitness” (you can look up the term) and it has nothing to do with selection operating “for the good of the species”.
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Those are your words not mine.
I said “survival of the species.” And then to clarify I refined this to survival of a genetic variation to be more accurate.
Now you are likewise clarifying by refining your claim of advantages to the individual to talk about “Kin Selection.” I suppose you can say we are converging on a more accurate description. Regardless “Kin selection” is not advantage to the individual anymore as you originally claimed.
Yes, I agree its important to define terms so they aren’t confusing. But calling it “survival of the species” or “for the good of the species” doesn’t change my point. Because natural selection doesn’t have “the survival of the species” in mind when it operates. The only thing required is differential reproduction at the level of individuals within a population (the evolution of traits can always be explained at more parsimonious/basic level than at the species level).
And for biologists, it is just semantics…if an individual propagates more of its own gene copies by helping kin and not reproducing itself (as is the case in bees), this is just an indirect way for an individual to maximize its own genetic contribution to the next generation, i.e., not just “to help the species survive”.
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To expand on this beyond the example of bees. There is the evolution of mating rituals which select for the strongest individuals to be the ones which reproduce. Again this is not about enhancing the survival of individuals but enhancing the survival of the species.
LOL And I very much doubt that any individual has maximizing its own genetic contribution “in mind” when it helps a kin.
I still think these variations survive because they enhance the survival of the species… and this projection of motivations on genes or individuals is nonsense.
There has to be genetic variation for different traits to appear, but they don’t evolve unless they are selected for, unless they work.
She used scare quotes and was projecting nothing about ‘motivations’.
Nope. The only requirement is that they survive. They can survive for many reasons. Certainly those which “work” (i.e. give some advantage for survival) will be favored by selection. But if a random disaster wipes out the variation giving such an advantage then the inferior variation can be the one which actually survives. Most of the time variations don’t give any advantage or disadvantage so they are no more or less likely to survive than any other variation. This usually just means a more varied population, but not always. Sometimes a variation just gets lucky. You might call it divine providence.
Huh?
I was referring to klw’s claim that the individual helps a kin as an indirect way of maximizing its own genetic contribution. Sorry but I really don’t think individuals have any such motivation. I still think such behaviors are selected because they enhance the survival of the species.
Nope. The only requirement is that they have progeny.
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No, I was not implying that individuals need any conscious “motivation” for natural selection to work, as @Dale explained. Scientists studying animal behaviour don’t imply any conscious “thinking” necessarily goes on when animals behave–its simply that animals that behave in a certain way and succeed in reproducing will have that behaviour passed on (presuming it is heritable). And as he also explained, the only thing that selection operates on is the success at leaving progeny (or copies of one’s genes if we’re talking about kin selection), relative to others in the population. Survival is only relevant in so far as it allows an individual to leave more progeny. And any biology textbook will explain that this operates at the level of the individual, not so “the species” survives.
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