Comment on A big reason why so many people are leaving the church by Professor Kent.
THE EVILS OF SOCIOBIOLOGY?
Brother David,
After my angry kneejerk response to your post last night, I spent some time in prayerful contemplation of how best to respond to you. I don’t know whether I am capable of eliciting from you a more conciliatory tone.
I believe that your attitude toward Sociobiology stems from a complete lack of understanding of what sociobiology is all about. Sociobiology is a very simple, straightforward discipline: the study of the biological basis of social behavior. To take the position that such study is illegimate or anti-Adventist presupposes that there is something wrong for us to study social behavior. Is this the position you really want to take?
There have been many stereotypes about sociobiology, and I suspect you have fallen into accepting these without taking the time to learn what the discipline actually examines. Sociobiology, through the testing of alternative hypotheses, offers very elegant explanations for the following:
– When and why male primates, lions, and mice kill the infants of others and not their own
– Why vampire bats share blood meals with cooperating individuals, but not those who defect (take from others and never give)
– Why the haplo-diploid genetic system and high levels of inbreeding predispose the worker caste of eusocial insects to give up their own personal reproduction
– Why tit-for-tat is a superior strategy for iteractive interactions that involve a decision to either cooperate or defect
– Why some reef fishes change sex from female to male as they grow, and others change from male to female (the reverse sequence), and how local population density of fishes can influence the production of “supermales”
– Why the live-and-let-live system of World War I trench warfar emerged in some situations and not others
– Why females of many animal species enter “false” estrous to protect their existing offspring
– Why some sea lions on a beach acquire virtually all of the matings and others are left with essentially none
– Why children are at statistically far greater risk of suffering violence from step-parents compared to biological parents
– Why female toads prefer to mate with the largest males, who give the lowest-pitched calls
– Why male peacocks and widowbirds have exceptionally lengthy tails despite the fact such tails predispose them to higher rates of predation
– Why expropriative crime can increase the number of offspring an animal (non-human or human) leaves in the next generation
– Why forced copulation is directed primarily toward the most fertile females
– Why some bird flock sizes are more stable and optimal than other bird flock sizes
– Why your Uncle Ted should be willing to give his life for a minimum of 2 brothers or 8 cousins
– Why a small “runt” deer is more likely to produce a female fawn, whereas a female deer in good condition is more likely to produce a male fawn
– Why male dolphins and male primates form coalitions to accompany, defend, and allow just one individual to mate with a selected female
To state the obvious, David, you simply cannot produce a single statement from the Bible, from Ellen White, or from official Church writings that informs us that any such explanations are incorrect, or that God or the SDA Church disapproves of studying social behavior in animals and humans. I suspect that you object to some of the evolutionary explanations that have been reached regarding human behavior (a narrower discipline within Sociobiology known as Evolutionary Psychology). I personally do not accept all of those explanations as well, because, like you, I think many attributes of human behavior are created rather than evolved (an exception being why someone would repeatedly make a spectacle of himself by declaring that I am lying about my beliefs). Nevertheless, to concede that human skin color has changed in different populations over time (surely you accept this), while denying that human behavior has similarly changed over time (is this really what you think?), reflects nothing but uninformed prejudice against the straightforward attempt of sociobiology to understand why animals, including humans, behave as they do.
Please do not make prejudicial accusations toward others based on an inadequate understanding of what sociobiology is all about. It’s a BIG discipline with PLENTY of legitimate questions that can be answered using elegant experimental and comparative studies. If you don’t believe I am characterizing sociobiology fairly, then you need to pick up a few books on the discipline and get yourself informed. I just happen to teach a class on the topic at a private Christian institution that condones and appreciates my approach to the discipline. Through the course, I am able to point out to students how we have inherent sinful tendencies that starkly reveal our utter dependence on Jesus–because in and of ourselves, we cannot escape the downfall of human nature since Adam and the disease of sin. Is it inconceivable, David, that I could be a brother in Christ who provides a credible Christian witness to the younger generation?
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.” – Job 12:7-8
Professor Kent Also Commented
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Sean Pitman:
Amen here, too!
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Sean Pitman:
Ummm…where’s the sarcasm?
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
Ellen White on the heredity of human behavior
As Pastor Kevin Paulson, an ardent Educate Truth supporter, described eloquently (http://bit.ly/lGXi22):
We see this same principle further illustrated in the more than 200 statements where Ellen White speaks of hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil (23). These are Ellen White’s terms for what we hear today regarding the difference between nature and nurture in human development. Ellen White is clear that Jesus took our fallen hereditary tendencies, since she writes that “He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life” (24). In other words, His heredity would be a source of temptation to Himself, as it is to us. But very clearly, Jesus didn’t take our fallen cultivated tendencies to evil, since to do this would have required Him to sin.
Indeed, Ellen White assures us:
“Those who put their trust in Christ are not to be enslaved by any hereditary or cultivated habit or tendency. Instead of being held in bondage to the lower nature, they are to rule every appetite and passion. God has not left us to battle with evil in our own finite strength. Whatever may be our inherited or cultivated tendencies to wrong, we can overcome through the power that He is ready to impart.” (Amazing Grace, p. 246)
Let there be no mistake about it: Ellen White acknowledged the genetic basis of our tendencies toward sinful behavior.
Recent Comments by Professor Kent
Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Nic Samojluk: No wonder most creationist writers do not even try to submit their papers to such organizations.
Who wants to waste his/her time trying to enter through a door that is closed to him/her a priori?
You have no idea what you’re writing about, Nic. As it turns out, there are in fact many of us Adventists who “waste” our time publishing articles through doors that open to us a priori. Even Leonard Brand at Loma Linda, a widely recognized creationist, has published in the top geology journals. I mean the top journals in the discipline.
The myth that creationists cannot publish in mainstream science is perpetuated by people who simply do not understand the culture of science–and will remain clueless that they do not understand it even when confronted with their misunderstandings. Such is human nature.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Pauluc,
Your questions about conservation genetics are very insightful. I don’t understand how all these life forms were able to greatly increase in genetic diversity while simultaneously winding down and losing genetic information to mutations. Sean seems to insist that both processes happen simultaneously. I had the impression he has insisted all along that the former cannot overcome the latter. But I think you must be right: God had to intervene to alter the course of nature. However, we can probably test this empirically because there must be a signature of evidence available in the DNA. I’ll bet Sean can find the evidence for this.
I’m also glad the predators (just 2 of most such species) in the ark had enough clean animals (14 of each such species) to eat during the deluge and in the months and years after they emerged from the ark that they didn’t wipe out the vast majority of animal species through predation. Maybe they all consumed manna while in the ark and during the first few months or years afterward. Perhaps Sean can find in the literature a gene for a single digestive enzyme that is common to all predatory animals, from the lowest invertebrate to the highest vertebrate. Now that would be amazing.
Wait a minute–I remember once being told that SDA biologists like Art Chadwick believe that some animals survived on floating vegetation outside the ark. Now that would solve some of these very real problems! I wonder whether readers here would allow for this possibility. Multiple arks without walls, roof, and human caretakers.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Ellen White said, “In the days of Noah, men…many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians [presumably referring to humans] perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history…”
Sean Pitman said, “All human fossils discovered so far are Tertiary or post-Flood fossils. There are no known antediluvian human fossils.”
Ellen White tells us that humans and dinosaurs (presumably referred to in the statement, “a class of very large animals which perished at the flood… mammoth animals”) lived together before the flood. Evolutionary biologists tell us that dinosaurs and humans never lived together. You’re telling us, Sean, that the fossil record supports the conclusion of evolutionists rather than that of Ellen White and the SDA Church. Many of the “very large animals which perished at the flood” are found only in fossil deposits prior to or attributed to the flood, whereas hunans occur in fossil deposits only after the flood (when their numbers were most scarce).
Should the SDA biologists, who are supposed to teach “creation science,” be fired if they teach what you have just conceded?
La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
For those aghast about the LSU situation and wondering what other SDA institutions have taken out bonds, hold on to your britches. You’ll be stunned when you learn (soon) how many of our other schools, and which ones in particular, have taken out these bonds. You will be amazed to learn just how many other administrators have deliberately secularized their institutions besides Randal Wisbey, presumably because they too hate the SDA Church (as David Read has put it so tactfully).
Be sure to protest equally loudly.
Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Sean Pitman:
So clearly you believe that science can explain supernatural events. Congratulations on that.
