Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

I find this series of posts fascinating, partly because new science about the natural world is inherently interesting, but mostly because it raises profound questions about the relationship between the natural and the moral.  Too often the evolutionary psychology crowd leaps straight from one to the other (which even the title of the posts does), whereas I see morality, in many of its dimensions, as the attempt to constrain what is natural.  This is because I am a Christian and believe in the doctrine of original sin – not the shallow and narrowly sexual form that talk of original sin often takes, but the deeper sense that our human essence, including our biological essence or DNA – is corrupt as well as beautiful.  We simply cannot look to animal behavior, or our own genes, as guides for living and expect to remain civilized.

Surely murder is natural, and we may well find genes for violence; chimps are well-known killers.  This influences my thinking on the morality of murder not one bit.  Likewise, I have no reason to doubt the latest findings on the infidelity of monogamous birds or the health benefits of a mid-life testosterone boost, but I can’t help thinking that the research is fueled in part by horny middle-aged nerds looking to justify their wandering ways.  I am not a sexual puritan by any means. I simply find these genetic and evolutionary arguments utterly irrelevant when the conversation turns to morality.

Somehow, we have to find a balance between what is natural and what is moral. This isn’t easy. I find the attempt to separate them completely unpersuasive – but I agree with my reader that there’s a lot of cherry-picking going on in the conflation of the two as well.

For me, original sin becomes much more comprehensible through a Darwinian prism. Our DNA is full of things – violence, selfishness, abuse, hatred – that are perfectly “natural” from an evolutionary point of view, but desperately in need of restraint when combined with humankind’s formidable pre-frontal cortex and its increasing capacity to inflict damage of planet-wounding proportions. We are neither beasts nor angels, but as time goes on and our capacity for damage increases, we’d better try reaching for the angels more persistently.

Our task is not to deny our nature, but to channel it, with God’s help, and through practice, to better ends.

Julian Sanchez defends atheism in a hard to excerpt post on metaphysics. He's arguing against Ron Rosenbaum's plea for a "New Agnosticism." Here's Ron's central dilemma:

Faced with the fundamental question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing. But the question presents a fundamental mystery that has bedeviled (so to speak) philosophers and theologians from Aristotle to Aquinas. Recently scientists have tried to answer it with theories of "multiverses" and "vacuums filled with quantum potentialities," none of which strikes me as persuasive.

Christopher Ryan finds it amazing how the media spins reports of chimp warfare:

From a psychological perspective, it's tempting to conclude that the media frenzy that predictably breaks out every time scientists report evidence of chimpanzee warfare is due to an unconscious desire to deflect shame felt over human warfare. "It's not our fault," the thinking seems to go, "It's human nature. Look at chimps! They're our closest primate cousins!"

…First off, chimps aren't "our closest primate cousin," though you'll need a sharp eye to find any mention of our other, equally intimately related cousin, the bonobo in most of these "news" stories. Like a crazy relative who lives in a shed out back, bonobos tend to get mentioned in passing-if at all-in these sweeping declarations about the ancient primate roots of war. There are plenty of reasons self-respecting journalists might want to avoid talking about bonobos (their penchant for mutual masturbation, their unapologetic homosexuality and incest, a general sense of hippie-like shamelessness pervading bonobo social life), but the biggest inconvenience is the utter absence of any Viking-like behavior ever observed among bonobos. Bonobos never rape or pillage. No war. No murder. No infanticide.

(Image: Three-months old baby bonobo Nakarla is held by its mother Ukela on March 19, 2008 at the zoo in Frankfurt. By Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

A random thought, but your View From Your Window series honors what is arguably the first photograph ever taken: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s "View from the Window at Le Gras," in 1826.

Eben Harrell rounds up recent research on unconscious thought:

Custers and Bargh acknowledge that their research undermines a fundamental principle used to promote human exceptionalism — indeed, Bargh has in the past argued that his work undermines the existence of free will. But Custers also points out that his conclusions are not new: people have long sensed that they are influenced by forces beyond their immediate recognition — be it Greek gods or Freud's unruly id. What's more, the unconscious will is vital for daily functioning and probably evolved before consciousness as a handy survival mechanism — Bargh calls it "the evolutionary foundation upon which the scaffolding of consciousness is built." Life requires so many decisions, Bargh says, "that we would be swiftly overwhelmed if we did not have the automatic processes to deal with them."

This prompts Helen Smith to throw such scientific research into the rubbish bin:

Beware of studies that show free will to be more and more of an illusion, for as Glenn says, "This kind of thing is often pitched as a reason for regulation, since your free will is portrayed as illusory."

We've been over this territory before. Julian Sanchez ably explained awhile back why no amount of scientific research can prove that free will is an "illusion."

(Hat tip: Ash Garcia)

Andy Grove prescribes a manufacturing revival. Tyler Cowen has a lot of questions, Adam Ozimek is damning, and Reihan piles on:

Governments have historically done a very poor job of anticipating future job growth. Just as manufacturing employment has decreased, one can easily imagine the number of lawyers decreasing as new technologies emerge. At the same time, plumbers and nurses and other workers with skills that machines can't easily replicate might find their wages, and their public esteem, on the upswing, as Paul Krugman anticipated in an ingenious essay first published in 1996.

The U.S. badly needs job and income growth. But it won't come from the manufacturing sector. Rather, it will come from a wrenching series of labor market and entitlement and tax reforms designed to improve work incentives, most of which will prove far less popular than simply bashing China

A reader writes:

Steinglass does make a shrewd point, but it's not entirely new, and there are some interesting nuances to consider. The first is that the Western European countries with higher proportions of working women (Finland, Norway, Denmark) also tend to have higher birthrates. Although the high-birthrate countries may be less repressive and more egalitarian, another more basic consideration is that they provide much better services to parents, thus reducing the cost – emotional, economic, and otherwise – of parenthood. The second is that the seemingly high birthrate in the U.S. is probably due to our large population of new immigrants, not to any special pleasure of being an American mom.

Another writes:

I'm pretty sure Steinglass' observations are correct, but his cause and effect is off. The US birthrate is higher than most/all of Europe and other industrialized countries because of higher immigration and the fact that immigrants have more children. The same goes for minorities, (though I can't tell you how much overlap there is between the two groups). I couldn't find a nice study in the five minutes I looked, but I did come across this article:

"Latinos have saved our country," [Ken Gronbach, author of "The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Growing Demographic Trend"] said. "They represent 14% of the population but 25% of the live births. The United States is the only western industrialized nation with a fertility rate above the 2.2% replacement rate." Growth of other minority groups is also outpacing that of the majority population. Asians, the second-fastest growing group, increased 2.7% year-over-year to 15.5 million. The African-American population rose 1.3% to 41.1 million.

A newly published piece by Mark Twain:

No one likes to be interviewed, and yet no one likes to say no; for interviewers are courteous and gentle-mannered, even when they come to destroy.

I must not be understood to mean that they ever come consciously to destroy or are aware afterward that they have destroyed; no, I think their attitude is more that of the cyclone, which comes with the gracious purpose of cooling off a sweltering village, and is not aware, afterward, that it has done that village anything but a favor.