Prior to Plantinga’s notorious argument C.S. Lewis, much to my astonishment, articulated the self-same idea. I say ‘much to my astonishment’ because I’ve always maintained that Lewis is way overrated. I remember during my first few years at Biola rolling my eyes in annoyance at the constant ‘Well C.S. Lewis says this’, or ‘The Abolition of Man is sooooo awessoooooooooome, dude’. Suffice to say, amongst all of this C.S. Lewis worship, I felt entirely vindicated when I read Craig (William Lane) saying that ‘Dostoevsky was a far greater writer’ than Lewis. Take that Clive Staples! But now I’m not so impressed by Craig’s comment, for Dostoevsky and Lewis are hardly comparable authors; the genres of Dostoevsky and Lewis are not comparable. Anyway, I was delighted when I came across this, and I wonder why I haven’t come across people giving credit to Lewis for this. The following excerpt is from Lewis’ The Funeral of a Great Myth. ‘The Great Myth’ is Lewis’ term for the theory of evolution:
What makes it impossible that [evolution] should be true is not so much the lack
of evidence for this or that scene in the drama or the fatal self-contradiction
which runs right through it. The Myth cannot even get going without
accepting a good deal from the real sciences. And the real sciences cannot
be accepted for a moment unless rational inferences are valid: for every science
claims to be a series of inferences from observed facts. It is only by
such inferences that can reach your nebulae and protoplasm and dinosaurs and
sub-men and cave-men at all. Unless you start by believing that reality in
the remotest space and the remotest time rigidly obeys the laws of logic, you
can have no ground for believing in any astronomy, any biology, any
paleontology, any archeology. To reach the positions held by the real
scientists- which are then taken over by the Myth- you must- in fact, treat
reason as an absolute. But at the same time the Myth asks me to believe
that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless
process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of
the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly
believe the Myth to be true. If my own mind is the product of the
irrational- if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a
creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel- how shall I trust my mind when it
tells me about Evolution? They say in effect ‘I will prove that what you
call a proof is only the result of mental habits which result from heredity
which results from bio-chemistry which results from physics.’ But this is the
same as saying: ‘I will prove that proofs are irrational’: more
succinctly, ‘I will prove that there are no proofs’: The fact that some
people of scientific education cannot by any effort be taught to see the
difficulty, confirms one’s suspicion that we here touch a radical disease in
their whole style of thought. But the man who does see it, is compelled to
reject as mythical the cosmology in which most of us were brought up. That it
has embedded in it many true particulars I do not doubt: but in its entirety, it
simply will not do. Whatever the real universe may turn out to be like, it
can’t be like that.
That’s basically Plantinga’s argument in a nut-shell; without the symbolic notation of course, but just as powerful.
On a related note: Assuming that some-ultra sophisticated evolutionist can answer this objection cogently, I have another related but distinct complaint. If evolution, broadly construed, is true, then the reason I would instinctively react in fear if a black widow spider were crawling on my foot is because, somewhere in the evolutionary story of my heredity, a freak mutation occurred in the human (whatever that is) genome that caused people to react in such a way to spiders. The ‘people’ who didn’t have such a mutation got killed by spiders, the ones who did survived and passed the instinct on. This story is dramatically opposed to how we normally consider the phenomenon. If I were to see a black widow crawl on my foot it seems to me that I would react in fear in virtue of the fact that black widow spiders look scary and are dangerous. But the evolutionary story says that they only look scary and seem dangerous because a mutation in my genome made me think that way, and it just so happened to keep my species surviving. That’s the queerest thing I’ve ever heard: that I think that spiders are dangerous because of a freak mutation, not because I see a spider that is dangerous.
The point is subtle, I suppose, but hopefully it’s starring you in the face.
Anyway, kudos to Clive, may his memory be Eternal.
1 comment:
hi derek.
in this comment i want to briefly elaborate on why i agree with you. Then I want to show you that in spite of the effectiveness of your argument against the positions of many evolutionists regarding human arachnophobia, there remains a brand of evolutionary theory that may be asserted to remain immune to this type of critique (unless modified).
I want to comment on this:
"somewhere in the evolutionary story of my heredity, a freak mutation occurred in the human... genome that caused people to react in such a way to spiders."
firstly, I would like to say that your claim is true. evolutionary scientists do claim exactly what you say they do: that fear of spiders is caused by evolutionary forces operating on many generations of our ancestors.
All four of these websites talk about it (and there are many, many more).
And I also agree with your complaint, that the intuitions of most people are that you are NOT merely reacting to the spider because your DNA has adapted to cause such a reaction. Rather you ARE making a personal judgment about the spider - that it is scary and dangerous.
The reality though, that you don't realize in your text, is that spiders are statistically NOT scary or dangerous. I have cited some facts about spiders below to prove my point. However this fact actually advances your complaint about evolutionary theory. For, if spiders are NOT in fact dangerous, then there could not have been any productive natural selection of the spider-fearing trait! And yet, we irrationally react to spiders, believing them to be scary and dangerous!
The below excerpt is from a page arguing that because flies are shown to not fear spiders by now, it can be reasonably believed that their DNA is incapable of mutating to accomplish such fear. Furthermore, because human DNA is not chemically distinct from fly DNA, human DNA is also incapable of evolving such fear. Yet humans are afraid of spiders. Therefore there are human behaviors that cannot be explained by evolutionary theory. I have cited just the part about the safety of spiders overall.
"So let's examine a few more facts surrounding the human fear of spiders (arachnophobia):
Many monkeys enjoy catching and eating spiders, such as the marmoset, squirrel monkey, and lion-tailed macaque. Therefore, human ancestors at least as far back as their parallel to monkeys presumably had no such fear of spiders.
Less than 0.1% of the many species of spider can actually kill people. Most cause no reaction or a minor irritation like a mosquito bite. In modern Australia, only around 25 people in the last 80-100 years are known to have died from spider bite (mainly the red back spider or the Sydney funnel web spider). With a population during this time increasing from around 6 to18 million, that means a death rate of less than one in a million per year. Would such a trivial selective pressure make an impact on human evolution and their genes, and maintain that effect?
There are no dangerous or life threatening spiders in northern Europe or England. If an instinctive fear of spiders had evolved in Africa, why would such an instinct not have devolved and disappeared in these regions, in the same way that high melanin content for dark skin disappeared when it became redundant in these climates of reduced UV? There is no point in wasting energy in keeping a redundant adaptation, especially one that must have been so lightly ingrained into humans, considering its absence in other ancestral species.
The strongest arachnophobia and fear began in northern Europe, where there was the least threat. Surely this suggests the cause of the fear rode on the back of urbanisation, anthroprudism (more beetle), sterility of mind, and estrangement to insects.
Most indigenous cultures had little or no fear of spiders. The fear is also less common in rural communities than for city dwellers. Some such as the Piaroa Indians of Venezuela happily catch, handle and eat tarantulas. Similarly, a number of tribes from Papua New Guinea like to eat spiders (Paul Ehrlich 2000 page 372, note 116). Similarly, tarantulas are often cooked and eaten in Cambodia. One older Hindu ritual is said to have involved throwing spiders about the bride, like confetti. Indians of Michoacan (Mexico) gathered and used the social spider Mallos gregalis around their abode as natural fly traps. An endearing term originating in Europe for the mass of spiderling threads sometimes seen floating or caught on shrubs during their dispersal, is gossamer.
Studies demonstrating fears and phobias in western students and populations are hardly going to be able to separate primal behaviour from the modern fashion of loathing spiders. The learnt fear is much more common in women than men, as it has become an encouraged method for them to differentiate their femininity (playing into the hands of those who expect them to be the weaker sex). Spiders are easily portrayed as villains in many horror films such as Arachnophobia. Most parents will teach children to fear touching all and every spider. The indigenous craft of wanting to know your animal neighbours and each species differently and in detail has no real impact on a modern families' ability to find food - you just buy it at the supermarket. I would be more impressed if the demonstration of spider fears involved experiments with indigenous peoples or the Piaroa, who are not so artificial and paranoid.
One common argument meant to prove the inheritance of a fear for spiders in humans is that mosquitoes, bees and cars cause far more deaths than spiders, yet the dominant human concern is with spiders. But I can think of a number of reasons why people - who do not wish to understand - would learn to fear spiders. Mosquitoes and bees are more visible when they strike than spiders. The surprise from spiders upsets people. They make webs at night across your well trodden pathways, which are great places for a spider to place their web - they are like insect flight tunnels. But when humans walk along their favourite paths at night, they get entangled and wrapped around the face when they least expect it. Or, a spider might suddenly appear if you lift clothing or a box on the ground, or they hide in some dark corner. This compares to the mossy or bee which makes a buzzing sound and arrives in plain view. Also, spiders, or the really scary ones, are much larger than the bee or mossy. They also tend to make a mess around permanent houses with their disgusting webs and droppings. They are predators, and wrap up their dead like mummies, rather than just leave a neat and tidy red spot and itch upon the skin. They usually live in some cryptic corner where they are difficult to remove. They also look very different, and do not demonstrate the beauty of flight seen in bees or mozzies. For minds that are willing to accept phobias rather than deal with issues, spiders would be about as creepy as they get. Humans have so many issues to deal with, that the thought of spider love will invariably be at the bottom of the list. All of these reasons may fuel the learnt fear for spiders, but they are hardly sufficient events that would call evolution into action.
Cars kill far more humans than spiders, yet humans fear spiders not cars. If fears are inherited, then the reason is that there has not been sufficient time for natural selection to put a fear of cars into the genes. But I think the difference is due to other factors. To an issue plagued species, spiders are too creepy to bother coming to terms with - a modern affliction not found in most indigenous or rural communities. Most people do not fear cars because they are completely controllable and open to study by humans. They are human inventions, and such useful and obedient tools, whereas spiders have a mind of their own. The fundamental behind fear is not of danger, pain or hurt. It is of not being a part of the system affecting you - disrelation. After all, people quite often like to bungee jump, box or hurt themselves in controlled ways. People fear threats (danger), but they will also fear public speaking (no danger) where the risk is of being uncovered as a fool and therefore not really suitable to the system or majority. So what I am getting at, is that people fear spiders not because they are dangerous (which essentially, they are not), but because they are so different to the order and system of mind that people have now gotten used to.
Any self respecting attuned person with the wit to know and understand spiders could live quite happily with their presence. Education about spiders, contact with spiders, and a bit of intestinal fortitude to overcome and master your mind clings, should sooth and release the panicked human. Modern aids that help you overcome the fear include virtual reality, or controlled introduction programs to these beautiful creatures."
-Fear of spiders not detected in flies!
so it seems that you are not fighting a straw-man, your argument is reasonable to me, and the facts seem to advance it as well.
and yet after all this, it seems to me that there remains a picture of evolution that some "ultra-sophisticated" evolutionist might assert is immune to your complaint.
Mr. USE tells a story not about the freak mutations that produce favorable traits and are therefore naturally selected. For, nearly everyone agrees that natural selection is a force in operation within the world (even and sometimes especially creationists, whose model needs to show how we got all our species from the limited number of kinds on Noah's Ark - cf "species" versus "kind").
Rather Mr. USE tells a story about layered, Turing-machine processes. He believes that while our ancestors obviously didn't have interactions with spiders in the past which caused spider-fearing humans to live while the others died, our ancestors did have interactions with other, broader-level traits. We had experiences with certain categories of animals, certain colors, certain patterns of movement, of circumstances, of contexts, and perhaps even Mr. USE has an account of how we developed the ability to MAKE judgments about whether things are dangerous and scary.
How can you modify your complaint to undercut such a position?
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