“They don’t have the right to foist those beliefs”
CommentsI found a comment at BoxTurtleBulletin I wanted to comment on. “Kristie” said, in part:
Whether “marriage” was ordained by God or not isn’t the point and that is something opponents of marriage equality don’t seem to get. They have the right to their religious beliefs but they don’t have the right to foist those beliefs on every other citizen of this country.
I bring you this comment because it represents something supporters “of marriage equality don’t seem to get.”
Nobody on my side of the debate is trying to force “opposite marriage” on gays and lesbians in a theocratic way. We’re doing it in a democratic way - using our one vote apiece and our freedoms of speech, the press, petition, and assembly to support public policies consistent with our values.
Gays and lesbians do the same.
Then, our votes get added up, mostly through our representatives, and public policies are determined. What else would gays and lesbians have us do? Vote and speak out using your values instead of ours? Not vote or use our First Amendment expression rights at all?
Or are you saying we can take any position we want as long as it’s not based on the Bible? Leaving aside that Barack Obama disagrees with you, how are we to regulate rules about where positions can come from? Right now, Americans can make political choices based on family tradition, what Jon Stewart said on TV last night, their horoscope, or flipping a coin. Why is the Bible not allowed to be part of that list?
Or, if you’re saying that we’re allowed to use the Bible to determine our political stances, but we’re wrong to want to use the Bible to do so, well, duh. I think you’re wrong for NOT using the Bible to determine your political stance. So? We determine who’s right and who’s wrong through the democratic system. Or is there some other system you’d propose?
I think you’re missing the point. (A deliberate misinterpretation?)
People have all sorts of strange beliefs. Some Catholics still feel that they should not eat meat on a Friday, Many Jews and Muslims refuse to eat pork. Some Muslims are very careful not to expose certain parts of their bodies. Many people have very many restrictions around sex. This is fine. Believe and act as you will. If you want to wear orange on every second Wednesday, declare that grapefruit is an abomination, or insist that skateboarding is evil, feel free. But you have no right to enforce those restrictions on others. Do you?
And that’s the fundamental difference between the two sides: One group of people is urging equality and greater freedoms, the other is fighting for discrimination and fewer freedoms. One side is good; the other is bad. It’s as simple as that.
When the advocates for marriage equality get their way, that’s what we’ll have: equality. Other people’s lives will not be negatively affected. As long as the shrill voices of discrimination are followed, however, we live in a world where some people are refused a chance at happiness.
And that’s why I feel so passionately about marriage equality: it’s so simple. I don’t say it’s the most egregious inequality in the world, or even in the Western world, or even among gay people in the Western world. It’s not. Other things are worse. Other things have far more terrible effects. But other things are more complicated. Marriage equality is so simple: simple to legislate, and so obviously a good thing.
So obviously, in fact, that I have yet to hear a single argument against it. A lot of noise, but no arguments. Not real ones. anyway. Wannabe arguments come down to either “Eewwwwwwwww!” or to “My imaginary friend doesn’t like it”. Neither of these are a basis for denying a group of people their civil liberties.
TRiG.
TRiG-
Welcome to the blog.
I do have the right to enforce any of the things you listed as long as I get a majority (or if it’s unconstitutional, a super-majority) of the voters to agree with me. Remember, there are some towns where dancing is illegal. In my city until about a decade ago you couldn’t buy alcohol on Sundays. And certainly, skateboarding is illegal in many places. Not to mention smoking - in Missouri, it’s become illegal to smoke *outside* on a college campus! I agree with some of that and disagree with most of it, but the point is that in a democratic system we have the *right* to do literally anything.
You say your side is promoting “greater freedoms”; it’s not so simple. It’s not greater freedom when business owners are forced to treat same-sex marriage the same as opposite marriage. Another example is education; Before any state had same-sex marriage, GLSEN supported a curriculum that taught that marriage was between any two people who loved each other. Now, many gays and lesbians say that if a teacher says marriage is between a man and a woman, she should be disciplined or fired. So which position is greater freedom?
As for “yet to hear a single argument against it,” I invite you to peruse my blog. I doubt you’ll agree with any of my arguments, but I think if you’re totally honest you’ll acknowledge that at least some of them are, indeed, arguments.
Again, thanks for stopping by.
I’ll muse on what you’ve written, and come back in the morning. I’ll just mention that if a teacher teaches anything which is demonstrably untrue, of course he or she should be disciplined.
TRiG,
David, the Supreme Court has ruled against positions that were held by the majority of the voters at the time of the decision, so there are limits on what rules the majority can impose.
That said, I would prefer to see a change like same sex marriage won at the ballots or in the legislatures.
However, the Court rules on the basis of the constitution, and the constitution is open to amendment by the people. David’s right: everything, eventually, comes back to the people.
TRiG.
They have the right to their religious beliefs but they don’t have the right to foist those beliefs on every other citizen of this country.
I think David’s answer about majority rule is true but not sufficient. The fact of the matter is that marriage quo “marriage” is already under SCOTUS precedent a fundamental right. Gay marriage advocates don’t have the right to change that law with simple majorities. They need a constitutional amendment of their own at the federal level to change such a basic right.
People need to remember that religion is not the issue. Marriage quo “marriage” is the right entwined with the natural right to procreation. It has always been understood in U.S law as being pre-political and pre-religious social institution that the law doesn’t create but merely recognizes it as a fundamental right. That cannot be changed by a mere majority but only through the amendment process.
The “Kristie” comment is about abolishing marriage and replacing it with some anemic alternative that lacks a public sexual aspect. It would be an imposition of identity politics for a nonmarriage purpose: to innoculate that kind of identity politics from opposition and dissent. Theirs is a peculair sectarianism.
Meanwhile marriage is non-sectarian. The man-woman criterion includes the marital presumption of paternity and these, combined, form the core of marriage such that it distinguishes the conjugal relationship from the nonmarital category.
SSMers do not distinguish gay union from the nonmarital category; they don’t even bother to distinguish marriage from the nonmarital category. All they offer is the arbitrary use of Government power to gut marriage of its core meaning and to impose special status on gay identity politics.
The imposition of SSM reduces freedom across society.
Chairm, I don’t understand a single sentence in your post.
TRiG.
TRiG, looking at
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/
may help you understand what Chairm is trying to say.
Fitz, I am not a legal scholar, but I’m pretty sure that there will be no need to amend the Constitution to allow states or the federal government to recognize same sex marriages.
Congress will have to overturn DOMA before they can be recognized at the federal level, unless SCOTUS overturns DOMA.
States which have constitutional amendments forbidding them to recognize SSM will have to amend their state constitutions before they can recognize SSM, unless there is a SCOTUS ruling that invalidates such amendments.
“Fitz, I am not a legal scholar, but I’m pretty sure that there will be no need to amend the Constitution to allow states or the federal government to recognize same sex marriages.”
Are you even a lawyer? Because when you say “I’m pretty sure that” your talking about what you believe will happen and not what the Constitution or precedent on marriage actually says regarding the right.
Even those few ruling that have ruled for same-sex “marriage” have almost all been split decisions. Multiple decisions have denied the “right” in very liberal districts and courts.
Even those few decisions to have ruled for same-sex “marriage” have done so on a veritable grab bag of rationales. Some on strict scrutiny (California) others on no rational baisis (Mass) some because of civil unions (Conn.) others because of NO civil unions — some because of an ERA, others denying that their ERA has such an effect, some because of sex discrimination (Hawaii) others denying sex discrimination’s valid reasoning….
So even liberal minded legal scholars are unlikely to tell you what the courts 4 (or 5) liberal justices will or won’t do…. Its a ridiculous mess of contrary and strained opinions that are out their.
That and a (presumably) strong 4 person dissent and one HELL of a political hot potato means serious court watchers are simply not willing to say what you say above.
But I, (above) was talking about the state of the law under the Constitution & what the precedent on marriage actually says regarding the right.
The above is in response to Peter Hoh, 25. April 2009, 15:16
Fitz, in your 10:11, comment, you wrote: “They (gays) need a constitutional amendment of their own at the federal level to change such a basic right.”
I take that to mean that you think a federal amendment will be needed before there can be federal recognition of SSM.
If that’s not what you meant, please clarify your remarks for me.
I am not a lawyer, but I believe that as things stand, there would be no need for a federal constitutional amendment for the federal government to recognize same sex marriages performed by those states which allow SSM.
Federal recognition would require federal legislation or a Supreme Court decision. FWIW, I would prefer a legislative solution to a judicial one.
“I take that to mean that you think a federal amendment will be needed before there can be federal recognition of SSM.”
Yes: That’s what I mean. Under current standing SCOTUS precedent marriage quo “marriage” is a fundamental right under common law. Just like pro-lifers need an amendment to overturn Roe v Wade, same-sex “marriage” advocates would need an amendment to redefine marriage and overturn the well established precedent.
This is a common judicial opinion and I believe the correct application of the precedent under the constitution. Its not written about in the advocacy literature but is widely shared by conservative jurisprudence. Most prominently the Washington State decision on marriage.
Supreme Court case law on the subject of marriage is clear: as the New York Court points out in its recent decision. Discussing the Supreme Court precedents of Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987); Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942)
Judge Graffeo noted….
“To ignore the meaning ascribed to the right to marry in these cases and substitute another meaning in its place is to redefine the right in question and to tear the resulting new right away from the very roots that caused the U.S. Supreme Court and this Court to recognize marriage as a fundamental right in the first place.”2
2 - Andersen v. King County (J. Graffeo concurring)
P.S. This reasoning could be/is applicable to individual state recognition of same-sex “marriage” as applied under the 14th amendment. A SCOTUS precedent would tump and invalidate both those court led and legislative actions.
DB: “Nobody on my side of the debate is trying to force “opposite marriage” on gays and lesbians in a theocratic way. We’re doing it in a democratic way - using our one vote apiece and our freedoms of speech, the press, petition, and assembly to support public policies consistent with our values.”
Yes and no. To a large and verging on overwhelming extent, anti-SSM sentiment isn’t just a value of random people, it’s a value of conservatively religious people who value it primarily because it’s a dictate of their religion. They may have various pseudo-secular rationalizations but (i) the justifications are lame and (ii) they’re post-facto. And, a well-known defect of democracy is that from time to time the majority goes paranoid and practices tyranny on the minority. So any workable constitution for a democracy will have some cheerfully anti-democratic provisions such as freedom of speech, i.e., the idea that no matter how many votes you may be able to rally, you may not use the government to enforce prior restraint on other people’s speech. Ditto for religion.
So, to the extent that opposition to SSM is _purely_ a dictate of your religion, no, it’s not your right. When you try to have the government enforce it, the rest of us are entitled to have it struck down.
Mark- I have quibbles with some of what you say, but for the sake of argument let’s say that 90% of the opponents of SSM are doing so out of Bible-based animus. You’re saying it’s not their (our) right to have the government enforce it, and the rest of you will strike it down.
First off, who gets to decide which of us oppose SSM _purely_ (your emphasis) on the basis of religion, and which for other reasons? Once you determine who falls in the first category, how are you going to stop us from expressing that right? Deny us the vote? Require that we vote using your values instead of ours?
If you’re saying the Constitution will strike down our position, I don’t have a problem with that. In fact, I’d like an expedited case to go to the Supreme Court to find out if there’s a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage. I’m confident they will say that there is not.
If that’s not what you’re saying, then who decides what positions are extra-constitutional? What laws and principles cannot be established by majoritarian or supermajoritarian expressions of the people’s will?
Finally, I support the seven-day week primarily because of religion, really exclusively so. Does that mean my position can (should?) be struck down by those who oppose theistic structures, even if they’re in the minority, perhaps the extreme minority?
DB: “First off, who gets to decide which of us oppose SSM _purely_ (your emphasis) on the basis of religion, and which for other reasons? ”
Err, the courts. Of course that’s not foolproof as a matter of process because courts tend to have a similar profile of biases as the public at large, but that’s how it’s supposed to work, and probably the best that can be achieved.
DB: “If you’re saying the Constitution will strike down our position, I don’t have a problem with that. In fact, I’d like an expedited case to go to the Supreme Court to find out if there’s a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage. I’m confident they will say that there is not.”
Well if I were you, I’d want it to go to the Supreme Court as soon as possible, before Obama has a chance to make any appointments. Roberts and Alito were appointed primarily because they’re doctrinaire and not particularly honest economic conservatives (e.g., Roberts denied that he had anything to do with the Federalist Society, whereas in fact he was an officeholder), but they’re still your best shot at getting some social conservative decisions.
DB: “Finally, I support the seven-day week primarily because of religion, really exclusively so. Does that mean my position can (should?) be struck down by those who oppose theistic structures, even if they’re in the minority, perhaps the extreme minority?”
If I could be bothered to come up with a reason why the eight-day week was preferable.
Mark, can you clarify which of the following statements you agree with:
1. The system, through the courts, ought to smack down any policies based solely on the religious beliefs of voters and representatives. Alas, we do not currently have that system.
2. Religious voters do have the right to vote for representatives and policies based on their religious worldviews, but they should expect those policies to be struck down as unconstitutional.
3. Religious voters can change the Constitution (or change the Supreme Court) when they see one of their cherished beliefs struck down. As long as they follow the rules, those changes (by constitutional amendment) can include strong religious powers and laws. It’s unfortunate, but religious people do have the right to do that.
DB: “Mark, can you clarify which of the following statements you agree with:
1. The system, through the courts, ought to smack down any policies based solely on the religious beliefs of voters and representatives.”
Yes to the extent that people can show that they are inconvenienced or harmed by the policies.
“Alas, we do not currently have that system.”
Actually we’ve got a fair approximation to that system, which is why your side mostly loses court battles over SSM. The argument that gets you most of your votes (and money) is the doctrine of several major religious traditions that gay relationships are intrinsically evil, but this is barely mentioned in court because it won’t fly. And while in principle there might have been good secular arguments as well, in practice there aren’t - the arguments you do get to make are just fairly desperate retrospective rationalizations of the religious doctrine and so get dismissed as irrational.
DB: “2. Religious voters do have the right to vote for representatives and policies based on their religious worldviews, but they should expect those policies to be struck down as unconstitutional.”
Ditto.
DB: “3. Religious voters can change the Constitution (or change the Supreme Court) when they see one of their cherished beliefs struck down. As long as they follow the rules, those changes (by constitutional amendment) can include strong religious powers and laws. It’s unfortunate, but religious people do have the right to do that.”
Yes and no. The free speech, equal protection and due process clauses are cheerfully anti-democratic provisions which are in the constitution in the first place to protect against the temporary insanity (and tyranny) of the mob, sort of like a shopaholic freezing their credit cards in a block of ice. On the one hand, the shopaholic should not thaw the ice and grab the cards - that would be irresponsible because they were in there for a reason involving past abuse. On the other hand, they’re the shopaholic’s credit cards, so at the end of the day, there’s nothing stopping the shopaholic from abusing them except people reminding them pointedly of why the cards were in there.
I’m afraid Mark is just plain wrong on his assertion about religion being the basis for social preference of man/woman marriage. The secular rational and preference for privileging traditional marriage goes back to the Hummarabi code an earlier to the laws of Lip-Ishtar. It is well established on a purely secular basis in multiple SCOTUS precedents and at common law throughout the western world.
Even those few decisions to have ruled for same-sex “marriage” have done so on a veritable grab bag of rationales. And all such challenges have been in cherry picked courts chosen for their liberal bent. Even those few ruling that have ruled for same-sex “marriage” have almost all been split decisions. Multiple decisions have denied the “right” in very liberal districts and courts. If these cases were brought to trial in all the fifty states they would lose overwhelmingly.
Fitz: I’m afraid Mark is just plain wrong on his assertion about religion being the basis for social preference of man/woman marriage.
Note that I only make that claim for the present day. Historically I think it was mostly about bottom-up economic forces acting on individuals that caused there to be little demand for same-sex marriage quite independently of any top-down preferences of society. After all, if I were living 3000 (or 100) years ago, I almost certainly would have gotten married to a woman for two very basic reasons: (i) housekeeping tasks such as preparing food and making clothes were much more time-consuming and complex and only women were trained in them, and (ii) children would have been my only economic security in old age. And, hey, that would have sucked, but then the good old days are wildly overrated. Neither of those factors apply with any force today.
Fitz: “Even those few decisions to have ruled for same-sex “marriage” have done so on a veritable grab bag of rationales.”
Yes and no. The important common denominator is that the reasons advanced for SSM are so stupid that they fail quite a few different tests.
Historically I think it was mostly about bottom-up economic forces acting on individuals that caused there to be little demand for same-sex marriage quite independently of any top-down preferences of society. After all, if I were living 3000 (or 100) years ago, I almost certainly would have gotten married to a woman for two very basic reasons: (i) housekeeping tasks such as preparing food and making clothes were much more time-consuming and complex and only women were trained in them, and (ii) children would have been my only economic security in old age. And, hey, that would have sucked, but then the good old days are wildly overrated. Neither of those factors apply with any force today.
Okay, that’s better than the usual: attributing it merely to top-down preferences of society without attempting to explain the reasons why those preferences developed, other than “because heterosexual men had the power”.
Still, while I could see that as a possible explanation for why a mere majority, perhaps even a very large majority, of past cultures failed to implement SSM, I’m afraid it just isn’t sufficient to explain why whe find NO societies that implement it in a form which makes no distinction at all between same-sex and opposite-sex marriage and does not even make the latter a preference. The variety in culture has been too great in other matters, including most sex roles (even if men have always been basically in power), and taking care of the elderly. How hard would it have been for cultures to decide to train some boys how to make clothes, particularly those boys that were early on determined to be fit for the berdache role in Native American societies. And remember, in the past the majority did not even live into old age.
The important common denominator is that the reasons advanced for SSM are so stupid that they fail quite a few different tests.
Hey, we all make typos, Mark. But let me ask you, are you willing to admit that, even if you don’t see a good argument for opposing SSM today, there at least were good reasons for opposing it in past societies. That is, reasons that affected the continuation of the culture? What were these reasons, and why are they no longer relevant? Or were all past societies just acting out of power and ignorance?
(Examples, that if too many became homosexual or bisexual, the culture would not produce at replacement level. Or that the very idea that any two persons could form a sexual relationship interfered with the non-sexual bondings that were essential).
What I’m getting at is a more general question: Mark, do you acknowledge the role of selection in the development of culture? And don’t answer with “it’s your side that doesn’t accept the idea of selection.”
Well, the notion of a marriage based on “true love” is probably fairly recent, culturally speaking. Previously, marriages were based on all sorts of things.
Witness the young couple executed in Afganistan for daring to elope.
TRiG.
RK: “Okay, that’s better than the usual: [...]”
Oh good, you found this - I was drafting a comment for the old thread where you asked, pointing you to it.
RK: “How hard would it have been for cultures to decide to train some boys how to make clothes, particularly those boys that were early on determined to be fit for the berdache role in Native American societies.”
Actually, moderately hard, for the reason you pooh-pooh: heterosexual men were in charge. To the extent that traditional marriage has been about procreation, it’s typically been primarily about procreation from the point of view of men, i.e., as an anti-cuckoldry device. (There are powerful reasons from evolutionary biology why that should be the case to at least a fair extent.) Women, and women’s sexuality, have typically been considered to a greater or lesser extent the property of men. But people aren’t evolutionary robots by any means, and if your comfortable position in society depends on possessing and exploiting other people, but you’re also afflicted with a basic sense of fairness, then you’re powerfully incentivized to come up with reasons for despising and/or infantilizing the group that you need to exploit. That makes it difficult for men or boys to have anything to do with activities that are considered stereotypically female, because it’s going to tend to be considered demeaning. (Conversely, for women or girls to have anything to do with stereotypically male activities is uppity.) I’d be surprised if there weren’t a patchwork of partial exceptions in various societies, but to the extent you’re asking why there doesn’t seem to have been a mirror-image SSM, I think it’s quite a strong enough argument.
RK: “But let me ask you, are you willing to admit that, even if you don’t see a good argument for opposing SSM today, there at least were good reasons for opposing it in past societies.”
Err, no. If we’re talking top-down for-the-good-of-society reasons, I’m prepared to concede that at various places and times it was withheld with less malice, and/or for understandable reasons, but not for _good_ ones.
RK: “(Examples, that if too many became homosexual or bisexual, the culture would not produce at replacement level. Or that the very idea that any two persons could form a sexual relationship interfered with the non-sexual bondings that were essential).”
No, these are the sorts of reasons I would view as really stupid.
RK: “Mark, do you acknowledge the role of selection in the development of culture? And don’t answer with “it’s your side that doesn’t accept the idea of selection.””
Do you mean Darwinian natural/sexual selection? Then, I will say it because it needs saying regularly: by and large, your side _doesn’t_accept the idea of selection, which collectively at least, is beyond stupid and into wildly dishonest - for many decades now, creationist arguments have consisted _primarily_ of misrepresented and/or fabricated facts.
But hey, I’m arguing with you and you might well not have gone down that particular drain, so yes, I accept the idea of selection. Some bits of “culture” like sexual attraction and sexual jealousy will have primarily evolutionary underpinnings, and some quite complicated behaviours with a large learned component are still probably influenced by evolutionary effects. And then there’s undoubtedly cultural selection on top of that, working on somewhat analogous principles. What of it? If you were going to argue that therefore some optimum has presumptively been achieved, then I suggest it doesn’t usefully follow, on two counts. First evolution doesn’t work all that fast, particularly on complex behavioural traits. If anything has been optimized, it’s probably been optimized for a hunter-gather environment, and could be significantly non-optimum for agricultural societies or modern capitalist ones. Second, evolution doesn’t optimize for the good of the species, it optimizes (or at least pseudo-optimizes) for the good of individual genes. Sometimes this lines up with the good of the individual, or the species, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Mark Barton wrote:
“Second, evolution doesn’t optimize for the good of the species, it optimizes (or at least pseudo-optimizes) for the good of individual genes. Sometimes this lines up with the good of the individual, or the species, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Sorry, but I had to comment when I saw this statement, because it’s not quite accurate. While genes obviously *DO* influence evolution, evolution doesn’t actually work for the “good of individual genes”. It works to increase the likelihood of reproduction (hence why it is extremely relavent to the SSM debate in my opinion), which means sometimes this is influenced by an individual gene, or collection of genes. This can even be applicable to genomes that are strongly related to an individual, even if that individual doesn’t reproduce (which helps explain some of the more interesting ‘altruistic’ behavior in some species such as worker ants who never reproduce, but work to maintain the reproductive rate of the queen who the worker ants are related to). The individual is working to increase the rate of reproduction of similar genomes (i.e. the queen of the ant colony), and hence is working to increase the reproductive rate of its own genome (even if it is in a less direct fashion), because the queen is *highly* related genome-wise to the worker ants.
I wanted to clarify what I mean by ‘increase the reproductive rate’. Unfortunately this makes it seem like evolution works to always make the next generation reproduce more, but that is not exactly what I meant. I meant to say that evolution works to maintain reproduction, i.e. that the next generation is made, which is sometimes done by increasing rates of reproduction, but could be equally accomplished by increasing the fitness of the next generation, or by reducing rates of fecundity (say in the instance of reduced resources). In essence, evolution works purely to ensure that the next generation is produced, regardless of which means is used to achieve those ends.
ah the yout’ of today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuDJmVkPYpw
and then there is wonderful Bristol Palin
Bristol Palin commented on her role with The Candie’s Foundation, “I am so happy to have this opportunity to work with The Candie’s Foundation on spreading the message of teen pregnancy prevention. I feel that I could be a living example of the consequences of teen pregnancy.” Palin added, “If I can prevent even one girl from getting pregnant, I will feel a sense of accomplishment.”
OneMillionMoms.com, an anti-gay website brought to us by the American Family Association, has issued an action alert against tween sensation Miley Cyrus because she sent out a Twitter message in support of marriage equality.
Lez Get Real continues:
Miley Cyrus responded to Hilton through her Twitter.com account with the following comments:
“Everyone deserves to love and be loved and most importantly smile.”
“Jesus loves you and your partner and wants you to know how much he cares! That’s like a daddy not loving his lil boy cuz he’s gay and that is wrong and very sad!
“Like I said everyone deserves to be happy.”
“God’s greatest commandment is to love. And judging is not loving.”
“I am a Christian and I love you - gay or not - because you are no different than anyone else! We are all God’s children.”
Such statements will send the wrong message to our children who are influenced by this teenage megastar. Parents need to realize that Cyrus is not the positive role model she was once thought to be. OMM
Rusty, I’ve already criticized Million Moms elsewhere for going after Miley Cyrus for her rather watered down Hollywood-safe statement. It’s a stupid move on their part. Of course, it would have been much lower yet if they had asked her her opinion in a forum where she had no choice but to answer, and then publicly attacked her for what she said in response to their own question.
CJ: “This can even be applicable to genomes that are strongly related to an individual, even if that individual doesn’t reproduce (which helps explain some of the more interesting ‘altruistic’ behavior in some species such as worker ants who never reproduce, but work to maintain the reproductive rate of the queen who the worker ants are related to).”
I don’t think what I said was inconsistent with that. On the contrary I was just making the very standard point that altruism tends to happen in cases like this (and rarely otherwise) because a gene “for” altruism that doesn’t manage to direct its altruism disproportionately toward “related” individuals (i.e., individuals disproportionately likely to have copies of the altruism gene) is going to be weeded out, no matter how good it is for the species.
For example and in particular, it would be almost always be good for a species for orphans to be adopted and raised, but it rarely happens except by accident because it’s not good for the genes directing the investment in child-raising. And I brought it up preemptively because for-the-good-of-the-species thinking fails for the same reason that the generic conservative argument commonly fails: there is _never_ an a priori reason to think that the traditional status quo favoured the good of society as a whole, only that it favoured the interests of the powerful within society. Of course it’s rarely good for the powerful in society to _totally_ neglect the powerless, but it’s normally good for them to neglect the powerless as much as they can get away with.
I’m going to wait to see if CJ responds to that, Mark. If not, I will respond to you tomorrow or Thursday.
Sorry for the long post, but I tried to address the points as thoroughly as possible - here goes….
If I’m understanding ‘good of the species’ specifically to refer *solely* to a continued support for either maintaining or increasing the *likelihood* that reproduction occurs (keeping in mind this is *highly* dependent on the context in which this gene or collection of genes exists), then I fail to see how you are showing that evolution works for the ‘good of individual genes’, and not for the ‘good of the species’ (using the specific definition I have given since it is the one most relevant to looking at life in an evolutionary context, and it is what I mean by ‘good of the species’).
In your first point concerning the ‘altruism’ gene I mentioned, you are making my point for me quite nicely – unless the gene or genes in question work for the ‘good of the species’ (hence directing the ‘altruistic’ behavior disproportionately towards related individuals and increasing the likelihood of reproduction of genomes that are related to it), it won’t likely stay around – it will either get weeded out, or stick around for a awhile if there are no immediate selective pressures to remove the gene or collection of genes. If it doesn’t target its own species’ rate of reproduction for the better either directly or indirectly, it isn’t ‘good for the species’.
If a gene gets weeded out, it is highly unlikely that it was ‘good for the species’ in the context in which the gene was lost, but with that said, keep this in mind - if something gets weeded out it doesn’t necessarily mean it was bad for the species. Evolutionary forces work on the basic laws of statistics – whatever increases the *likelihood* of reproduction occurring is increasingly more *likely* (not absolutely) to be good for the species and stick around, specifically because evolution can only occur if successive generations are born.
Even if a gene *is* good for the species doesn’t mean that this gene will necessarily stay around – it is up to chance (or fate or whatever you want to invoke here) to see if that gene will stay around…because it will only stay around *if* enough individuals wtih gene reproduce to a level to stabilize the genes existence in a given population, but this doesn’t mean that evolution *overall* isn’t working for the ‘good of the species’ - this only shows that this process isn’t 100 percent efficient for all species (which it can’t be…that’s the nature of competition). Evolution, when looking at its affects on individual species, uses ‘individual genes’ as a tool for its ultimate goal: ‘the good of the species’. Unfortunately a vast number of species exist, and are in direct competition with each other – the rise of one tends to occur after the fall of another.
In your following point (concerning the orphan) I’m not quite sure I follow you. Yes being adopted is good for the species that got adopted, but it doesn’t mean that it was good for the species that did the adopting (as you aptly point out). However, I think you are equating the ‘genes directing the investment in child-raising’ with the ‘species directing the investment in child-raising’ unnecessarily, and again looking at it as being solely good / bad for the genes. As I pointed out, genes only hang around if the species in which those genes reside reproduce. So again, no, evolution doesn’t work for the ‘good of individual genes’, but for the ‘good of the species’ which happen to contain ‘individual genes’.
And the last point you make –
“And I brought it up preemptively because for-the-good-of-the-species thinking fails for the same reason that the generic conservative argument commonly fails: there is _never_ an a priori reason to think that the traditional status quo favoured the good of society as a whole…”
No, I would never assume that ‘traditional status quo’ favored the good of society as a whole. But I would assume if an institution such as marriage exists in *numerous* societies, cultures, and religions of incredibly diverse backgrounds, with an opposite-sex requirement being a commonly universal trait, this should definitely give one pause (no exceptions, aside from modern considerations, come to mind, but do tell me if you know any). Don’t mistake me for equating this with being ‘obviously’ right. I think an interesting allegory I once heard reminded me of this exact situation – a man goes to the mayor in town and asks to tear down a gate in the road because it isn’t necessary. The mayor then asked the man if he knew why the gate was put there in the first place, and the man said ‘No, I just know that it really irritates the heck out of me!’. The mayor promptly replied, ‘Well then, figure out why the gate was put there in the first place, and then you can proceed to knock it down.’ The thing is, things done by humans (especially things that are done for thousand of years), don’t tend to start up for no reason (albeit some practices do start up for reasons that either become outdated, or were preposterous reasons to start with), but it would be dangerous to drastically change the definition a major institution like marriage without having an incredibly vetted out discussion in the public arena on the actual purpose, function, and utility that the institution provides on a national scale since it is an institution that is entrenched in numerous aspects of society that many people feel strongly about.
It should lead to much broader discussion in the general public arena about the purpose and importance of marriage, as opposed to the stream-lined I’m-going-do-it-my-way-because-I-know-your-wrong-and-bigoted approach that numerous judges have decided to take on in co-opting the legislative process to shove their opinions down the throats of many in the public who heatedly disagree with them.
CJ: “In your first point concerning the ‘altruism’ gene I mentioned, you are making my point for me quite nicely – unless the gene or genes in question work for the ‘good of the species’ (hence directing the ‘altruistic’ behavior disproportionately towards related individuals and increasing the likelihood of reproduction of genomes that are related to it), it won’t likely stay around – it will either get weeded out, or stick around for a awhile if there are no immediate selective pressures to remove the gene or collection of genes.”
You’re conflating two opposed ideas and thereby missing the whole point. A bunch of individuals with a disproportionate chance of having inherited an altruism gene is not the species, and the good of such a bunch is _not_ the good of the species. In particular, unless the altruism gene is successfully targeting its altruism to its bunch, the bunch can never approach being the species, because ex hypothesi the gene is incurring disproportionately large costs and equal or disproportionately small benefits and so will get weeded out.
Moreover, even if a well-targeted altruism gene does come to prevail and we observe some heartwarming altruism, you still can’t say that it presumably represents an optimum for the species, because the selfish altruism gene will have displaced a bunch of more altruistic but less selfish genes to get there.
CJ: “But I would assume if an institution such as marriage exists in *numerous* societies, cultures, and religions of incredibly diverse backgrounds, with an opposite-sex requirement being a commonly universal trait, this should definitely give one pause (no exceptions, aside from modern considerations, come to mind, but do tell me if you know any).”
Why exactly? If it’s a human universal then presumably there is a fundamental reason for it. That’s just not at all the same as a good reason, from the point of view of the good of the society or any other point of view.
CJ: “The mayor then asked the man if he knew why the gate was put there in the first place, and the man said ‘No, I just know that it really irritates the heck out of me!’. The mayor promptly replied, ‘Well then, figure out why the gate was put there in the first place, and then you can proceed to knock it down.’”
Sure, a serious suggestion is required, but in the light of modern knowledge there’s a really really obvious one which I already mentioned: marriage has traditionally been first and foremost an anti-cuckoldry system. That is, it’s presumably a systemization of a very common behaviour pattern, particularly in sexually dimorphic species, where the male spends a lot of effort trying to maintain exclusive control of the sexual activity of one or more females. (Humans are moderately dimorphic - men are on average moderately larger than women.) But from the point of view of the good of society or the like it’s exactly the sort of mixed bag of a reason that one should expect from something with strong roots in evolutionary biology: it’s great for legitimate children, because fathers are not incentivised to invest in their children unless they’re certain of paternity, but it’s lousy for women as individuals (who get treated as property) and for illegitimate children.
But to the extent that marriage has mainly been an anti-cuckoldry system, there’s an obvious argument for not bothering to extend it to SSM, but not one for actively opposing it.
Mark Barton:”You’re conflating two opposed ideas and thereby missing the whole point. A bunch of individuals with a disproportionate chance of having inherited an altruism gene is not the species, and the good of such a bunch is _not_ the good of the species. In particular, unless the altruism gene is successfully targeting its altruism to its bunch, the bunch can never approach being the species, because ex hypothesi the gene is incurring disproportionately large costs and equal or disproportionately small benefits and so will get weeded out.
Moreover, even if a well-targeted altruism gene does come to prevail and we observe some heartwarming altruism, you still can’t say that it presumably represents an optimum for the species, because the selfish altruism gene will have displaced a bunch of more altruistic but less selfish genes to get there.”
No, a group of individuals is not the ‘whole’ species, or even necessarily an entire population of the species, but those individuals *will* take part in giving rise to the next generation of the species, and hence are part *of* the species. But, if a gene gives those individuals an incredibly greater chance at reproduction, the offspring of those individuals *will* eventually become that species, and hence the gene is working for the good of that species by giving the next generation of that species a better chance at reproducing. The ‘good of the species’ does not necessarily refer to *all* individuals within that species - it refers specifically to what is more commonly referred to as the “effective” population - only those individuals that actually reproduce (hence the worker ants are working for the good of the species - the “effective” population being the queen ant herself).
I believe you are missing the point - evolution can’t work for the good of a gene, unless that gene works for the good of that species (again this is looking at reproduction so you can’t just think about the current individuals, but also must take into account the next generation of the species as well). A gene usually comes into prevalence because it gave the individuals who had that gene in the first place a selective advantage, and the stronger the advantage, the easier it is for that gene to increase its prevalence. Not too mention, if a gene ‘is’ capable of displacing other genes, it is most *likely* because it was better for that species than the gene(s) it replaced - the prevalence of a gene in a population of a species is highly proportional to how ‘good’ that gene is for the species. Hence why highly conserved genes such as ribosomal RNA, DNA polymerases, etc., which are needed for *all* basic functions of life exist in all species studied to date. So, yes, I can say that the prevalence of a gene *can* allow one to infer how ‘good’ a gene is for the species (or good for life in general) - this is precisely how scientists measure the relative strength of selective pressures on a gene.
And one more quick point before I have to go -
Mark Barton:”Why exactly? If it’s a human universal then presumably there is a fundamental reason for it. That’s just not at all the same as a good reason, from the point of view of the good of the society or any other point of view.”
This was in reference to my comment that the opposite sex requirement in marriage was fairly universal, however you seem to have missed (accidently I hope) the sentence right after the remark you commented on -
“Don’t mistake me for equating this with being ‘obviously’ right.”
I actually went to great lengths to state that this shouldn’t make us think that it is ‘obviously’ good for society - only that the incredible commonality should urge us to engage in serious public dialogue concerning the issue to make sure we have the facts straight before we change the institution.
If I have time later I might post some more, but I’m strapped as it is.
CJ: “I believe you are missing the point - evolution can’t work for the good of a gene, unless that gene works for the good of that species (again this is looking at reproduction so you can’t just think about the current individuals, but also must take into account the next generation of the species as well). ”
No. Consider a example by Dawkins: there is a mutation that arises from time to time in populations of lab mice which is carried on the Y chromosome and causes all offspring to be born male. This mutation is wildly successful by the usual measure for success in genes: it is transferred to 100% of offspring and quickly comes to be present in 100% of the population. Unfortunately that’s really unfortunate for the population (which can be considered as a species for the purposes), which promptly dies out for lack of females. This is a deliberately extreme case, but the point is quite general: all you can conclude from the fact that a trait is present in a species is that it’s good for the genes which cause it, not that it’s in any way optimum for the species as a whole.
CJ: “I actually went to great lengths to state that this shouldn’t make us think that it is ‘obviously’ good for society - only that the incredible commonality should urge us to engage in serious public dialogue concerning the issue to make sure we have the facts straight before we change the institution.”
I don’t believe I misunderstood. You weren’t claiming that a universal necessarily established the existence of a good reason, but you were very definitely insinuating that it established the _presumption_ of a good reason, and a consequent burden of proof on reformers.
Right, the gene either kills off the species, or the individuals who get that gene are seperated from the group, and hence die off with that unfortunate gene alone. That gene cannot be sustained within the population specifically because it is *not* good for the species in the long term - which again reiterates my point. I’m *not* saying a genes presence implies it is optimised for the species - only that a genes ability to be sustained at a high level in a species over successive generations is *directly* proportional to how good it is for the species. And yes, a gene can also become highly prevalent and sustained over multiple generations in a species even it if isn’t good for the species - as long as it isn’t also bad for the species like with the mice. Again, since the good of the species implies future generations, an example *must* take multi-generational sustainability into account, and that example doesn’t fly - in not but a few generations that gene will wipe out the population.
And, yes, I do believe you misunderstood me. I’m not presuming anything other than people are willing to change a core characteristic of an institution that has existed for millenia with little or *no* debate which just seems odd to me personally, hence my desire to urge discussion on the topic. And no, I don’t believe the consequent burden of proof lies solely on the reformers (I never said that, you just assumed that’s what I meant) - it lies squarely with every individual who has a stake in the institution. If no one can show a strong consensus for their particular take on the reason for establishing the institution as they wish in civil law, then people seriously need to reconsider whether the government can even be involved in the institution to begin with. In other words, lets get our facts straight before we change the institution, but obviously there *is* change that definitely needs to occur since so many people are up in arms concerning the institution.
CJ: “That gene cannot be sustained within the population specifically because it is *not* good for the species in the long term - which again reiterates my point. ”
Sure, but that’s a rather fruitless objection because all we need to do to evade it is observe that a gene with a marginally less drastic effect can pin the population at a very low level.
CJ: “I’m not presuming anything other than people are willing to change a core characteristic of an institution that has existed for millenia with little or *no* debate which just seems odd to me personally, [...]”
But unless there’s the presumption that I identified, what’s odd? If it’s universal/fundamental but not thereby likely to be particularly good, who cares if we change it? After all, it was also a universal of the human condition for thousands of years that most children died in infancy. And sure enough, there’s a fundamental reason for that, except it has everything to do with the well-being of hungry animals and disease-causing organisms, and nothing to do with the well-being of people.
CJ: “[...] hence my desire to urge discussion on the topic.”
If you want a discussion you’re wasting your time urging me, I’m only too happy to discuss the gory details of stuff. It’s the conservatives you need to badger. As far as I can tell, there are pretty much no arguments against SSM beyond variations on “God will get mad” and “If we change anything, something unspecified might go wrong.”
Mark:”Sure, but that’s a rather fruitless objection because all we need to do to evade it is observe that a gene with a marginally less drastic effect can pin the population at a very low level.”
Uhhh…you actually believe that’s going to be sustainable in the long term? Wow, that’s not slightly obtuse….
Mark:”But unless there’s the presumption that I identified, what’s odd?”
That people on both sides of the issue have *zero* willingness, notwithstanding individual exceptions, to actually publicly address the issue of marriage.
One more point - the example you give, actually *isn’t* bad for the species as long as it doesn’t keep the species from reproducing in the long term - if it does then it won’t stay around, because it can’t. A high population level *isn’t* pre-requisite for a strong species - a balanced population level that ensures reproduction is. As long as it doesn’t wipe out the species, or change the population in such a way as to make reproduction impossible or unlikely to be sustained, it is irrelevant. That gene can only stay if it doesn’t dramatically destroy the species’ chance for reproduction. The only necessary here is that the species continues to reproduce - if the gene stops that from happening, it is either weeded out or the species goes extinct. Your example can only exist if the species continues to reproduce - and this example won’t crop up generally speaking *unless* it either helps ensure that reproduction occurs or doesn’t stop reproduction from happening completely - regardless at what level the population is being sustained. In other words, the *only* thing that matters is that reproduction occurs - no gene can exist in a species unless this occurs - genes that continue to decrease the likelihood of reproduction will routinely either get weeded out, will be mutationally silenced, as is the case with numerous genes aptly dubbed pseudo genes found in numerous species, or the species will go extinct.
CJ: “Uhhh…you actually believe that’s going to be sustainable in the long term?”
Sustainable compared to what? Variations on the scenario I proposed are all you’re ever going to see. You’re never going to see the level of altruism or cooperation or even basic smooth functioning that you would if you sat an Intelligent Designer down and said “work out what’s best for the species”, because that’s simply not the criterion that evolution is working to. It’s working to an incoherent criterion of what’s best for a bunch of individual genes.
The mouse example bears more emphasis because it’s a nice case of an exception that proves the rule. Despite the fact that gaming the sex-selection mechanism is such a simple and effective scam from the point of view of a gene on one of the sex chromosomes, catastrophic meltdowns of the mouse sort are quite rare because there are multiple layers of protection built into the system. But the protections are there not because evolution ever said, “what’s good for the species?”, but because it was to the advantage of a series of genes that made incremental improvements to the anti-cheating mechanisms.
You’re never going to see the level of altruism or cooperation or even basic smooth functioning that you would if you sat an Intelligent Designer down and said “work out what’s best for the species”, because that’s simply not the criterion that evolution is working to. It’s working to an incoherent criterion of what’s best for a bunch of individual genes.
Then what does work to the advantage of the species, Mark? Because if something isn’t doing so….I don’t know how much more plain it can be, but species would never have evolved unless something was working to the advantage of the species. Your argument that “it’s working for the genes, not the species” seems to be a way of saying that the mechanism is only working for the mechanism itself and not for the greater machine. Like saying the engine only serves the engine and not the car.
Needless to point out that Darwin came before Mendel, and while Mendel’s discovery helped explain Darwin’s, Darwin’s was not dependent on Mendel’s. Genes are an important element of selection, but selection does not have to be entirely about genes. When we talk about cultural selection, we are largely talking about things that do not involve genetic change, but selection still takes place.
I will have a much longer post this weekend, covering most of your posts in this thread from 3. May 14:57 on.
CJ, thank you for your excellent insights here. Please continue if you can.
RK: “Then what does work to the advantage of the species, Mark? ”
Directly, nothing. _Nothing_ in the system is looking out for the advantage of the species as a whole.
RK: “Because if something isn’t doing so….I don’t know how much more plain it can be, but species would never have evolved unless something was working to the advantage of the species.”
Doesn’t follow. The species commonly does OK because the various advantages of the various genes in the gene pool of the species are a workable _proxy_ for the advantage of the species, but it’s a proxy, not the same thing, and not only are conflicts of interest possible, they’re fairly common - lots of small ones and the occasional catastrophic one.
RK: “Your argument that “it’s working for the genes, not the species” seems to be a way of saying that the mechanism is only working for the mechanism itself and not for the greater machine.”
Actually I’m making a stronger claim: the mechanism is only working “for” the mechanism itself and not “for” the greater machine. That is, even if I haven’t made it explicit, there are implied scare quotes on the “for” because the mechanism isn’t literally working _for_ anything, it’s just working. It couldn’t be more simplistically mechanistic: genes that produce traits that, in the environment of the moment, happen to tend to cause more copies of themselves to be made and survive tend to increase in relative frequency compared to ones that don’t. That’s it. (This by the way is standard modern evolutionary biology.)
RK: “Like saying the engine only serves the engine and not the car.”
In the same way, nothing literally serves anything. Like, it’s nice for you that your genes produced a heart that pumps oxygenated blood around your body, but nowhere in the system were you intended, and nowhere in the system was it intended that there be a heart in order that you could be there. Your heart isn’t working “for” you or “serving” you, you’re just the beneficiary of it working, and it’s working because you were the offspring of a pair of organisms with genes that produced hearts and nothing major went wrong. That’s it.
RK: “When we talk about cultural selection, we are largely talking about things that do not involve genetic change, but selection still takes place.”
Quite so. Mind you, I fancy that homophobia could be an example where cultural selection is most closely analogous to natural selection. After all, if you imagine a family that forces its gay children to breed and teaches this attitude to all its offspring, it will tend to outbreed (and out-teach) families that don’t, leading to that attitude prevailing.
Your heart isn’t working “for” you or “serving” you, you’re just the beneficiary of it working, and it’s working because you were the offspring of a pair of organisms with genes that produced hearts and nothing major went wrong. That’s it.
I’m perfectly aware of what you’re saying, Mark. When I say that genes are working “for” the survival of the species, I do not mean that they are consciously doing so, if that’s what you think you’re rebutting. Is that all that you’re disagreeing about.
genes that produce traits that, in the environment of the moment, happen to tend to cause more copies of themselves to be made and survive tend to increase in relative frequency compared to ones that don’t. That’s it.
No, it’s not “it”, Mark. If they increase in relative frequency and individuals with the traits tend to survive at a greater rate compared to those without the trait, then the species is more likely to survive.
Is the purpose of this argument over semantics to preserve the notion that because humans are intelligent and not operating blindly like the genes are, they are therefore more likely to “know” how to make man better than time and nature are? Because as much as we know, we still have a lot to learn, and we’re still operating blindly to an extent much greater than you’d like to admit.
Stay tuned.
RK: “When I say that genes are working “for” the survival of the species, I do not mean that they are consciously doing so, if that’s what you think you’re rebutting. Is that all that you’re disagreeing about.”
No, the main point I’m trying to make is that genes aren’t even metaphorically working for the survival of the species, they’re working for their own relative frequency compared to other genes at the same locus, and if they can achieve 100% frequency at the expense of the extinction or competitive disadvantage of the species, that’s what they’ll do.
It’s a bit like capitalism, where the measure being optimized is shareholder value. Fortunately for the rest of us, in _many_ but not all circumstances, the best way to maximize shareholder value is to serve the customer better than competing firms. But it’s vital to keep in mind that the purpose of capitalism _isn’t_ to optimize customer service, and if in some situation asymmetrical access to information means it’s easy to screw the customer over, firms will compete to screw the customer over. The US medical insurance industry is a case in point. (I’m not making a joke here - it’s pathological because the incentive structure is unsalvageably screwed up. About a third of the 15% of GDP you spend on health care is wasted on people in cubicle farms looking for excuses to deny you coverage after you or your employer has paid your premiums, and to deny it more ruthlessly than the guys at the competing firms. You will overcome your ideological pride and socialize that part of medical care like every other industrial country has done or it will eat you alive.)
RK: “Is the purpose of this argument over semantics to preserve the notion that because humans are intelligent and not operating blindly like the genes are, they are therefore more likely to “know” how to make man better than time and nature are?”
Sort of. I don’t suggest that people are necessarily more clever optimizers than nature, which has had the advantages of enormous parallelism and time. But their intelligence does give them the ability to optimize to different criteria, including ones more morally or otherwise salient than what nature is condemned to use.
Alright, so let me take another stab at this. Sorry for the long delay, but like I said I don’t have a lot of time and these posts can take quite a bit of time. Also, thank you for the kind words RK – hopefully you can find the information in this next post of use. This post is fairly long (I apologize in advance) so please, bear with me.
First and foremost – the examples you show Mark (i.e. the ‘exceptions’ to the rule), do prove the rule quite nicely, if and only if that 1) an alternative hypothesis doesn’t also adequately explain these exceptions, 2) if this alternative model doesn’t explain the phenomenon as equally well or better than the proposed hypothesis, and 3) if there is no empirical evidence which can lend credence to the alternative model. But, believe or not, there is an alternative hypothesis which does exactly that.
Before I address those points though, it will help to explain the specific case of the persistence of individual species if I broaden this definition to more explicitly refer to a ‘genetic system’ and add in some basic background information concerning the basic properties of organic macromolecules that comprise genetic systems (current organic macromolecules probably didn’t necessarily exist in their current form in the first genetic systems which arose, but the components that did exist at the time would had to have had properties analogous to current day systems, since all genetic-systems-macromolecues in existence have the properties I will describe later, and would have given rise to later macromolecules, which I will explain later in this post). This will take a while to explain, so again please bear with me. And yes, before you jump on this Mark, an individual gene or collection of genes could in some sense be considered a ‘genetic system’, but the term ‘gene’, at least in the modern sense of the word since the first ‘genes’ to arise probably looked nothing like current genes, would not necessarily comprise a ‘genetic system’ all by itself. It would probably be more accurate to describe it as a component or component system, more commonly referred to as a biological pathway – and I’ll get to that point later in this post, since its crucial in understanding why I think that the ‘individual gene’ hypothesis is wrong.
A ‘genetic system’ is in essence a system that has all of the necessary components to replicate more genetic systems. In the beginning of life this process of replication would have necessarily been crude and almost certainly wouldn’t have created more genetic systems which looked like the original from which it came – and in fact these systems probably wouldn’t have lasted very long; they would spontaneously form and then die out. However, the system that would have been most likely to persist and give rise to all later existing systems would necessarily have been the one in which the new genetic system that was replicated was most similar to itself – because this would also be the most likely system that could give rise to more genetic systems.
This statement in essence states that the defining properties of genetic systems is that they inherently make more of ‘themselves’ – again ‘themselves’ is being used loosely because the only real requirement for the next ‘genetic system’ to arise would be that it also could replicate, but it would make sense that the next genetic system would look a lot like the original system since this would be more likely to contain the necessary components to keep on replicating (modifications on this theme is possible however, hence the rise of ‘the species’). This inherent property is attested to in literally millions of different examples – these examples being the various species that exist (and, could easily be argued, is also evident in viruses).
So, does this mean that these genetic systems must have a will of their own, or that some Intelligent Designer sat them down and told them what they must do? Uh, no this is not the case (despite Mark’s thinly veiled attempt to equate my hypothesis with the nutball Intelligent Design ‘scientists’ who grind the nerves of just about every other existing scientist out there, including myself). This interesting property exists because of two requisite properties of the various organic macromolecules that make up genetic systems. I apologize for the technical details below, but I must necessarily go into some of the biochemical properties of organic macromolecules to help explain my point – I will try to keep this to a minimum, but I make no promises.
The first property is that the structural organic molecules which comprise genetic systems must be capable of spontaneous self-assembly, because this is the only way the very first systems could spontaneously arise.
For instance, the membranes of cells of every existing species (although not all genetic systems, which I will get to in a second) are comprised, at least partially, of lipids which are amphipathic – which means that they have both a hydrophobic portion (the ‘head’ of fatty acids) and a hydrophilic portion (the tail of fatty acids). This causes neighboring lipids to have their hydrophibic heads point towards each other, and their tails to point towards water (hence hydro*phil*ic). In the case of lipids with only 1 fatty acid, this causes micelles to form (which look like spheres), and in the case of 2 or more fatty acids, this causes bubbles to arise due to the steric hindrance of multiple fatty acids. The bubbles, i.e. membranes, form when two layers of lipids stack on top of each other – this is the basic bi-lipid layer model that is explained to every freshman in cell-bio courses across the country. There have been numerous experiments to show that this can happen invitro (or more colloquially, in a test tube), even in the absence of nucleic acids and amino acids, and if you would like links to experiments showing this I wouldn’t mind to hunt them down for you.
Another good instance of this is proteins. The properties of amino acids are such that once formed into peptides they spontaneously fold into their proper secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structures which allow proteins to do what they do. Some proteins require chaperones to help this process along, but this process can generally happen independently and spontaneously, and in some cases this process is ridiculously robust – such as with RNAses, which are proteins which degrade RNA. It is for this reason that RNAses are such a pain for most scientists who work with RNA (like I was doing this week), since they are present everywhere, especially on our skin, and they don’t easily lose their enzymatic activities which means scientists have to be *extremely* careful when working with RNA (not using gloves is a *major* no no). In fact, it is this property of viral capsid proteins that allow them to spontaneously self-assemble – this is absolutely necessary since viruses don’t have membranes in the same sense that cells do. (The same prompt for references for lipids above equally applies here to proteins.)
The second property is that the core components of a genetic system must lend itself to being replicated. This is exquisitely prevalent in nucleic acids (the current forms of which were probably fairly similar, but wouldn’t have been the same as the first nucleic acids). Nucleic acids have a very simple structure consisting of a phosphate group, a sugar, and 1 of 4 different bases which naturally associate with their individual complementary bases. What this means is that if two random nucleic sequences spontaneously arise, the sequences that are most similar to each other will naturally associate with each other. This has been shown in *numerous* experiments concerning renaturation of nucleic acids, and is the very reason that double stranded nucleic acids are so stable.
It is these two properties that allow a genetic system to naturally and spontaneously replicate itself (again, taking into consideration that only the necessary properties of replication need to be maintained in order for the next genetic system to persist). Which gives a nice hypothesis for how current systems could arise – RNAs are capable of catalyzing the polymerization of proteins (again, if you want references just ask), and proteins are capable of polymerizing nucleic acids (albeit through the mechanism which directs the synthesis of the new RNA strand based off the sequence of the existing RNA strand). This would probably explain why RNA polymerases can initiate RNA synthesis de novo (i.e. they don’t need an existing polymer chain to add on to), primarily because this would have been a necessary property of the first protein that synthesized RNA genomes. These genomes then would later evolve to the more stable DNA genomes of current organisms.
And so this brings me to the first part of my post – the alternative hypothesis. Since the nature of genetic systems, (the most ubiquitous form being the genomes of species), is to naturally and spontaneously produce more of themselves, new components (i.e. genes), that are not only integrated, but which also persist in a genome will likely be components which further stabilized the reproductive process (although this isn’t required, and I will explain that in the proposed hypothesis here in just a second). This can account for genes that arise and seriously disrupt this process – these genes will kill the species in which they reside, so if a species is still around it is because it obviously couldn’t have acquired genes which were fatal – natural selection quite nicely eliminates these poor species. However this still doesn’t account for how genes that are a drag to a system can persist – especially since any new gene acquired will most likely be a drag on the system, and this brings me to the ‘flexible genome’ hypothesis (although it could be equally called the ‘flexible system’ hypothesis). This hypothesis, in essence, states that the likelihood of new genes being acquired by a species depends on constraints of the environment a species exists in (e.g. are resources abundant or limited, is the species free living, or is it a pathogen, etc.). The more stringent the criteria, the less likely new genes will be acquired – specifically because any new burden to the system will be more likely to cause its collapse in this highly dynamic environment. To illustrate my point, I will take an example straight from the literature - the paper ‘Toxin-antitoxin loci are highly abundant in free-living but lost from host associated prokaryotes’ by Deo Prakash Pandey and Kenn Gerdes published in Nucleic Acids Research in February of 2005. Toxin-antitoxin(TA) systems consist of two genes – one which encodes a toxin that can kill the cell it resides in, and another which encodes an antitoxin which stops this, and these systems are quite ubiquitous in bacteria. If the above hypothesis was correct, you would expect free-living bacteria (especially those in environments with abundant resources) to be more likely to have these gene systems, and those who live in more competitive environments (such as obligate pathogenic bacteria), will be far less likely to tolerate such genes. If, however, evolution is working on an ‘individual gene’ basis, and various species are just useful ‘meat bags’ which carry these genes, their shouldn’t be much difference in the likelihood of these genes to persist in just about any type of bacteria (unless you actually suppose that the dynamics of the systems in which genes arise actually *does* affect the likelihood of such genes persisting, which is basically what the ‘inidividual gene’ hypothesis is saying is not the case, or, at least, that it isn’t all that important). But this is not the case – functional TA loci are extremely abundant in free-living bacteria, and are conspicuously absent from host-associated bacteria (such as pathogens) as is shown in the Pandey and Gerdes paper. In their paper, this was even true for obligate pathogens, and their closely related free-living relatives. The obligate pathogen actually still had the TA system, which were present in their closely related free living cousins, but the genes had mutated into what are known as ‘pseudogenes’ – i.e. genes that have lost the ability to be transcribed, translated, etc., and are in essence non-functional, however in their free-living cousins, these systems are still functional. The environmental conditions made it such that these TA systems, which weren’t playing any major role in continuing reproduction but were just wasting cellular resources, could no longer be tolerated, and so, genomes that randomly mutated these genes were selected for precisely because they were more successful in the newly acquired life-style.
And this is my main beef with the ‘individual gene’ hypothesis – it inherently and utterly disregards the dynamics of the systems in which genes arise, preposterously assuming that these genes are independent of the system. At a molecular level, such a hypothesis doesn’t quite add up – a ‘gene’ (at least in the modern sense of a gene) can only be called a gene because it has characteristics which are completely and utterly defined and recognized by the genome in which it resides. For instance, the promoter region of a gene (which is needed to initiate the transcription of a gene), can only be called a promoter region because the genome in which it resides has other genes that encode transcription factors that bind to these promoter regions, but different species have completely different types of transcription factors. A gene that can be transcribed in one species, may not even be capable of doing so in another (and hence why it can be a pain to express eukaryotic genes in prokaryotes – you need to recombine that gene with a promoter region that is endogenous to the prokaryote being worked with, and even that isn’t any guarantee). This is also why I wouldn’t necessarily refer to ‘individual genes’, at least in the modern sense of the word, as a ‘genetic system’. These ‘genes’ are dependent on the rest of the existing system in order to do ‘anything’, and hence why I would refer to them as components of genetic systems. Although these components can spontaneously arise (both through endogenous means such as gene duplication events, or exogenous means such as horizontal gene transfer) and interact with other proteins, and build biological pathways (what I referred to earlier as component systems), but these pathways are very unlikely to persist unless they either stabilize the reproductive process of genomes in which they arise, because this increases the likelihood that the system in which they reside continues to persist, or because the cost to system isn’t so great that it causes the system to collapse.
A systems approach is necessary in evaluating evolutionary forces on shaping genomes (which this hypothesis inherently disregards to varying degrees), and a systems approach can also explain some properties of different genomes. For instance, the *largest* prokaryotic genomes are free-living bacteria. These organisms live in more permissive environments – the dynamics requisite for reproduction are a lot more relaxed. However, pathogenic bacterial genomes are much smaller – specifically because the dynamics of this lifestyle is less tolerant to the acquisition of new genes, but can still grow slightly because they are still capable in some cases of living independently of their host. Obligate pathogen genomes, however, are even smaller. They are completely reliant on a host to continue to exist, and so the acquisition of new genes is even less tolerated. Obligate symbionts also have fairly small genomes – they have become reliant on their host to live as well, and the increase of their genomes isn’t selected for – the only way they exist is if their host continues to exist, so their genomes tend to retain a) the genes necessary for their own reproduction, and b) the genes that are beneficial to their host (since this stabilizes the reproductive process of their host and, by extension, themselves). And now I will take this to the extreme. If the host that a symbiont lived in randomly acquired the genes to direct the replication of the symbiont, this would now make it so that the continued existence of these genes in the symbiont would gradually disappear – they would be redundant and unnecessary. Not to mention, if one system is directing the replication of all the genes in that system, this would lend itself to increased stabilization of the reproductive process since more of the efforts of the existing genetic systems would be coordinated. Afterwards, the only genes that would continue to exist in these symbionts would be those that benefitted the larger system, i.e. the host. And guess what, this is precisely the case for mitochondria and chloroplasts. These little organelles have the smallest genomes in existence. Again reiterating my point – a hypothesis which *does not* adequately take into account the dynamics of the systems in which these genes arise doesn’t work – which is why I would argue that the ‘individual gene’ hypothesis just does not measure up. This principal can also be extended to a more practical example – cows. I was talking to a friend, and he told me that the continued breeding facilitated by farmers has inherently made it more difficult for cows to breed on their own – in fact they seem to be quite bad at it, precisely because the genes that improved independent reproduction were no longer as beneficial; the cows had the farmers to assist them.
Sorry for such a long post, but this was going to take a lot of explaining to thoroughly address.
CJ: “And this is my main beef with the ‘individual gene’ hypothesis – it inherently and utterly disregards the dynamics of the systems in which genes arise, preposterously assuming that these genes are independent of the system. At a molecular level, such a hypothesis doesn’t quite add up – a ‘gene’ (at least in the modern sense of a gene) can only be called a gene because it has characteristics which are completely and utterly defined and recognized by the genome in which it resides.”
I’m perfectly well aware that genes are arbitrary codes which acquire meaning only in the context of a transcription mechanism and the biochemistry of a particular organism, and that this context is a dynamic thing determined by many other genes and the environment. However I don’t believe this affects the point I was making in the slightest. A gene is “for” a trait to the extent that introducing the gene (or replacing a different allele of the gene) produces the trait on average over a representative ensemble of different biochemistries produceable from the genepool of a species, and in the environment(s) in which the species is living. A gene could easily be for different things (including nothing) depending on what other genes are in the gene pool, and what the environment is doing. But so what? There is still a fact of the matter about what the gene is for in any given circumstance and if in that circumstance that trait is not conducive to the reproduction of the gene that causes it then it and the gene are doomed no matter how good that trait might be for other genes or the species as a whole. And this is unfortunate because it rules out quite a variety of behaviours that are cooperative or altruistic. As a general rule, altruism by individual organisms is only possible when the benefits of the altruism flow primarily to other organisms that are rather more closely related than average - siblings or offspring.
Mark:”There is still a fact of the matter about what the gene is for in any given circumstance and if in that circumstance that trait is not conducive to the reproduction of the gene that causes it then it and the gene are doomed no matter how good that trait might be for other genes or the species as a whole”
And therein lies the problem - the only way the gene persists, is if the system persists. If a system can’t tolerate the behavior of the gene, the gene either vanishes, or the system in which it resides dies, this is a phenomenon that is *heavily* attested to in *all* aspects of evolutionary biology (this is, in essence, the very foundation upon which the ’survival of the fittest’ hypothesis exists). And this is why your individual gene hypothesis ‘can’t’ be supported - it doesn’t explain how certain traits, and even more importantly, entire networks can not only crop up, but persist (and as time goes on, they become more and more integrated into the system they reside, as is the example with mitochondria and chloroplasts). Species, as a genetic system, can persist for *millions* of years, because the genes they have acquired have stabilized the reproductive process for the environmental parameters in which they exist. A process that is possible because of the self-assembling nature of proteins that they consist of - proteins can quite easily and spontaneously take an either useful or harmful functions. They don’t need to actively *search* for things that can be beneficial to the genetic system - these things consistently and naturally pop up, and tend to persist because they stabilize the system in which they crop up. If they *don’t* stabilize the system, they are either lost (as in the paper I quoted ealier) or the cost to the system isn’t great enough to cause them to die out, and hence they can persist. How you can actually say that the biochemistry of the system doesn’t affect your hypothesis is, quite honestly, astonishing. You are, in essence, ignoring and completing disregarding the general direction that modern evolutionary biology is heading believe it or not.
CJ: “And therein lies the problem - the only way the gene persists, is if the system persists. If a system can’t tolerate the behavior of the gene, the gene either vanishes, or the system in which it resides dies, this is a phenomenon that is *heavily* attested to in *all* aspects of evolutionary biology (this is, in essence, the very foundation upon which the ’survival of the fittest’ hypothesis exists).”
Which system, the organism or the species? Either way it doesn’t affect my claim, which is that first and foremost evolution will select genes that cause traits that increase the relative frequency of the genes that cause them, and if this is fatal or merely suboptimal for the species, too bad, so sad - that’s as good as it gets.
Rather than waste my time, I decided to stop talking. If you don’t believe that the “selfish” gene theorem is on its way it on the biology world then you might want to take a look at this -
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2005/05/10/no_more_selfish_gene_biology
Systems biology is reasserting its primacy in understanding the evolution of species, and even entire ecosystems…whether you or Dawkin’s would like to admit it, his theories are just that - theories. They may have been understandable, and even allowable in a naive sort of way, but it fails on all accounts to actual provide testable hypothesis to further our understanding of biology and its underlying natural selective forces. Now that it is possible to sample entire transcriptomes, and look at how whole systems react to small perturbations, such a simplistic viewpoint is simply naive. I only post this here because I ran across while look at more systems biology stuff - which is the main field of focus in my graduate degree. Hopefully it will be of use to someone else out there looking into the fascinating field of systems biology - and is tired of Dawkin’s myopic view of the wonder that is life.
Peace
Sorry for the poor grammar and spelling mistakes above - am a little tired since I have been up trying to get work done. Hit ‘enter’ a little too fast, and have no way to edit after post - at least I can’t find any editing functions on this blog.
BLEHHH, ignore the ID blog. Worthless. Here is the actual useful article that this blog linked to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/may/06/science.highereducation
Again, to tired to read through the whole post - plus this goes more into the cool aspects of systems biology than the blog, and shows how this view of the biology is literally remapping the course of evolution in a whole new way.
WOOT! Another cool systems biology stuff. Hope someone here might find it intersting;) Ok, I promise this is the last post I’m making on this thread;)
http://www.greythumb.org/blog/index.php?/archives/17-Evolvability-Suppression-to-Stabilize-Far-Sighted-Adaptations.html
CJ: “Here is the actual useful article that this blog linked to.”
I read the article and I’m not seeing an argument. It’s completely irrelevant how complex and multivalent a gene is, or how many other genes it has to interact with to be expressed. At any particular time for any particular species there is some fact of the matter about the average effect of a gene, which is a function of the environment and the other genes in the genepool. If the average effect of a gene does not have the result of causing a break-even or better number of copies of that gene in the next generation, then it simply cannot persist, no matter how good those same effects may be for the species as a whole.
Thank you for atleast admitting that :
“At any particular time for any particular species there is some fact of the matter about the average effect of a gene, which is a function of the environment and the other genes in the genepool.”
But what you don’t realize is that individual genes do *not* get selected for…systems do. Systems, simply put, are components that are integrated in some manner to have specific properties - this is really important since individual genes *don’t* do anything…systems do. So this could be a biological pathway in which the gene is the component, or a regulatory network in which biological pathways are the component, or one individual of a species and all its regulatory networks are one component, etc., etc., etc. For instance, take System A that provides some function (doesn’t matter good, bad, whatever, it just does *something*). Add gene x to System A, and it becomes System B (not System A + gene x): this is important because by adding something to the system, you actually modify the entire system to some degree, literally making it a different system, albeit with similar properties. If system B is selected for, it’s because of the properties of the new system…*not* because of the new gene introduced. You could potentially make modifications to the old System ‘A’ that would give it the same properties as System ‘B’, without introducing any new genes, and you could get the same effect. To make this metaphor even more poignant take two points about biology:
1. Not all information that spells out what an organism will do is inherited in its genes. The epigenome (methylation patterns across the genome), also encode a tremendous amount of information that determine how the system will work.
2. At some point, genes didn’t exist. What then was the fundamental unit of selection?
Your dogged insistence that selection only exists (or is only relevant) at the gene level is moot, and such a dogmatic view isn’t considered to being close to *fact* in the realm of biology (at least as far as *facts* are determined as such in the realm of science). So, to state that such is the case, and use that as a jumping point to show why, as you stated earlier:
“…evolution doesn’t optimize for the good of the species, it optimizes (or at least pseudo-optimizes) for the good of individual genes. Sometimes this lines up with the good of the individual, or the species, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
as a way to argue against how ideas of selection could even be applicable outside the realm of DNA (such as cultural ideas and institutions) is absurd.
A highly suggested read to show you how evolution can work on *many* levels (outside of the genes), I would highly reccomend “Evolution in Four Dimensions” Jablonka and Lamb. A link to a synopsis and review can be found here -
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10470
Whether you like it or not Mark, such a narrow, reductionist view of biology, such as the one you would like to espouse and champion (along with Dawkins), is dieing out and being replaced by a much more comprehensive and understandable approach.
CK: “But what you don’t realize is that individual genes do *not* get selected for…systems do.”
Nonsense. Systems get _tested_, but they don’t get _selected_, they get torn down for scrap and (in the common case of sexually reproducing organisms) are never replicated exactly again except by wildly improbable and unimportant accident. It’s the genes that built the systems that get selected - they pass on as exact copies into the next generation.
CK: “Systems, simply put, are components that are integrated in some manner to have specific properties - this is really important since individual genes *don’t* do anything…systems do. ”
Again, nonsense. No biological system is ever literally integrated. Biological systems are thrown together literally at random from genes that have produced complex systems with useful properties in the past (plus a few mutations) and the result is either a complex system with a useful property or it isn’t.
CK: “[...] If system B is selected for, it’s because of the properties of the new system…*not* because of the new gene introduced.”
These are not contradictory. Indeed since, ex hypothesi, system B is produced by introducing gene x, they’re exactly the same thing. But gene x is the more helpful thing to focus on, because it’s the thing that endures and is causal with respect to the next generation.
Ok…none of what you said actually makes any sense. Not to mention, you still didn’t even come *close* to addressing the fact that not all information that is heritable (even at a molecular level), is found in genes (think epigenome). Your explanation:
“But gene x is the more helpful thing to focus on, because it’s the thing that endures and is causal with respect to the next generation.”
Is *not* more helpful…..because you don’t understand what gene x will do unless you understand the system it is being introduced in. The system determines what gene x will do, not gene x. And no, gene’s aren’t persistent (they die quite easily and rapidly, sometimes within one generation span), but system properties *are* persistent. Genes last for as long as the systems can tolerate them. Then either they or the system they exist in vanishes as well.
You still continue to pick and choose what you will address, ignore that which contradicts what you say, and continue to talk in vague terms about a subject in which it increasingly appears that you are fairly unfamiliar. I’m leaving off here because I really think it is useless to argue the point. Actually get in a lab and do some genetics work.
CJ: “Ok…none of what you said actually makes any sense.”
Are you familiar with the facts of sexual reproduction (the sort that has evolved the most complex systems)? Take a wonderfully fit organism, whose systems are wonderfully integrated, and who will go on to reproduce with wonderfully fecundity. It will do so by means of gametes (sperm or ova). To produce a gamete, chromosomes that came from the organisms father are paired up with the ones of corresponding structure. Each pair of chromosomes is lined up, sliced at many random locations into pairs of strips, and a a new chromosome is assembled by taking a paternal strip or a maternal strip at random. That will then be combined with a similarly produced gamete from a mate.
Therefore you can rave all you like about the integration of biological systems and the wonderfully holistic way they function and it’s all perfectly irrelevant. The integration is rudely thrown away and all that’s used of a fit organism is half its genes.
CK: “Not to mention, you still didn’t even come *close* to addressing the fact that not all information that is heritable (even at a molecular level), is found in genes (think epigenome).”
I’m remiss for not addressing that, but the answer is simple: it doesn’t change anything. DNA genes will have to be “selfish” on average against the pseudo-random background of non-DNA inheritance, the same way they already have to be “selfish” against the pseudo-random background of other DNA genes. Moreover to the extent the non-DNA mechanism has atoms of inheritance analogous to DNA genes, they will have to be “selfish” as well.