Evo-Giants Battle Over Evo-Love
Richard Dawkins and E. O. Wilson, both atheistic evolutionists, are at odds over the evolution of unselfish love (altruism). Wilson attributes it to a revised form of group selection; Dawkins to individual selection (the basis of his “selfish gene” theory).
Evolutionists see no difference between the “eusociality” in insect colonies, in which individuals sacrifice themselves for the good of the colony, and human patriotism. Wilson wrote up a survey in the journal Bioscience that questioned the traditional kin selection theory, according to EurekAlert. Many considered group selection a dead issue. Wilson himself admitted that “If you look at the literature of the theory, there are a lot of impressive-looking mathematical models but they scarcely ever come up with a real measure of anything that can be applied to nature.” In his article, he came up with a revised model of kin selection to explain altruism.
This has not pleased Richard Dawkins, according to an article in the UK Independent. Dawkins thinks Wilson’s new approach is misleading and vacuous. To Dawkins, kin selection is just an artifact of individual selection. Wilson has fallen into a trap of misunderstanding natural selection at the gene level. The rhetoric between these two giants among evolutionary theorists got heated when Dawkins said, “Evidently Wilson’s weird infatuation with ‘group selection’ goes way back; unfortunate in a biologist who is so justly influential.”
Wilson stood his ground in the battle royale: “I am used to taking the heat, and in the past I turned out to be right,” he said. Evolutionary theory has had particular trouble with explaining why humans will sacrifice for other people they don’t even know, or for animals.
Maybe they would learn more about altruism by practicing it. It might dawn on them that it could not have evolved. Give up the weird infatuation with evolutionary theory, gentlemen; you both know that your impressive-looking mathematical models scarcely ever come up with a real measure of anything that can be applied to nature. Who said that?