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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for January 24, 2001, #84
Our 4th quarter financials for 2000 were announced. Donations
were low relative to expenses. As a reminder- a donation box is
available at each meeting with freewill contributions appreciated.
We had a record number for any regular meeting once again. We
welcome the first timers and hope to see you again. It is good
to see the more familiar faces again as well.
Professor Bajema will have an editorial to appear soon in the
Grand Rapids Press, dealing with the seemingly perpetual creation/evolution
debate.
The cable public access television program called “The Humanist
Perspective” will be available in some of the surrounding
areas of Grand Rapids soon. Tim VanHaitsma has gotten the ball
rolling on this. Interested people should contact him on how to
get this in the city of Grand Rapids viewing area. tkvanh@iserv.net.
A program change for upcoming presentations is for March 28, where
Marshall Grate will moderate a discussion on the book by Jared
Diamond called “Guns, Germs and Steel” regarding history,
conquest, resources and culture.
Our next meeting topics and program notes for February are as
follows:
- FEBRUARY 14: “The Ethics and Effects of Plant Biotechnology”
Moderated by Dr. Fred Deneke.
- FEBRUARY 21: “Ethics.” A panel discussion hosted by
the Atheist Society of West Michigan and Intervarsity on the WMU
Campus in Kalamazoo. Contact Matt at hoagy@yakko.cs.wmich.edu
for details. This will be at 7PM.
- FEBRUARY 28: “ADHD: Disease or Deception?” Moderated
by Robert W. Collins. PhD, PC. All regular meetings are held at
the Calkins Science Center of the Grand Rapids Community College,
downtown Grand Rapids campus, at 7PM. For more information, questions,
suggestions or to get to other pertinent links, visit us on the
web at: www.freethoughtassociation.org or go to
info@freethoughtassociation.com
.
Our topic for this meeting was “Surely We’re Different!
What Makes Us Human?” This was moderated by Professor Gregory
Forbes of the GRCC Biological Sciences dept. He works in zoology,
physiology and anatomy and is director of the Michigan Science
Education Initiative, which trains Michigan biology teachers in
teaching evolution. Challenges have arisen in this due to factors
such as teachers teaching outside of their discipline and the
controversial nature of teaching the theory of evolution, where
the teacher, not properly prepared, is likely to water down or
avoid altogether much of this central aspect of biology.
The central question Dr. Forbes posed to us was the same as he
asked his science students: “Is there anything that separates
us from the other members of the Kingdom Animalia?” In both
cases he collected the responses, and later in the presentation,
he compared/contrasted these responses. There was some overlap,
some areas where the concepts were similar in nature but expressed
differently and other responses from the student group that diverged
from ours. We, for instance, didn’t broach the theistic notion
of human ensoulment, nor did we, thankfully, suggest that we drive
cars and play C.D’s, as apparently were included along with
other, more insightful, offerings in his class.
Greg suggested three areas of significance for this question to
be asked, including the Evolutionary, The Theistic, and the Philosophical
reasons, and the impact on each of these domains from the answers
that emerge. He spoke of the distinction made, especially by creationists,
between micro- and macro-evolution. The entire theory of evolutionary
dissent with modification from a SINGLE ancestral organism is
still anathema to most, though some grudgingly accept “microevolution”,
or as they see it, variety within specially created “kinds.”
They do not extend this to transmutation from one “kind”
into another, or “macroevolution.” It is believed that
this would not be resisted so strongly were it not to include
humankind as a group connected by ancestral dissent to all the
other beings. This opposition to us being another species in the
Kingdom Animalia, arising from other hominid and primate stock,
itself reaching back through billions of years and through countless
species in the arborescent tree of life, instead of an unconnected
Special Creation, (somewhere between animal and angel) backwashes
into the rest of the scheme of evolution for many, tainting the
entirety of this view for them.
A couple of the concepts we covered were the ascribing of human
characteristics to non-human animals, or anthropomorphism, and
the dichotomy of innate and learned behavior, commonly framed
as Nature vs. Nurture, regarding what aspects of behavior can
be regarded as stemming from experience or from genetic coding.
We also discussed the forms of learned behavior, such as Trial
& Error, Insight Learning, Habituation, Imprinting and the
Conditioned responses. With each of these, Professor Forbes gave
us examples in the Animal Kingdom and we reflected on human examples
of these same learning forms; some people citing experiments they
were aware of, in testing these in both human and non-human animals.
A concept we returned to several times during the presentation
was: Are we interpreting the basis of behavior from the Ultimate
Causation or from the Proximate behavior? And example given was
that of the canary. Why does the male canary sing? The proximate,
or perceived purpose, for this is to attract mates. Looking deeper
for causation in the physiological realm, we see that increases
in testosterone levels promote song in these birds. What causes
this increase? Looking still further into the environmental cues,
we note that an increased photoperiod will stimulate this. Female
canaries have been passed off as male songbirds by dying their
feathers and injecting them with testosterone, artificially inducing
song, as strident as any males, in them. After a while the hormonal
levels fall back and the dye etiolates, leaving a duped purchaser.
Just as we tend to anthropomorphize, we also tend to look too
quickly in many cases to the proximate reason for a given behavior.
Some principles of behavior that we focused on were Fixed Action
Patterns (FAP), or a mostly invariable (stereotypical) behavior,
the Releaser: a stimulus that initiates a FAP, and the Sign Stimulus:
the portion of the releaser that triggers the FAP. An example
utilizing these principles involved seagulls. The parent gull
has a red dot on its throat, stimulating the chick to peck at
it, resulting in food regurgitation for the chick. When a red
spot was placed on a stick or other non-gull-like item, the chick
still pecked at it. Greg mentioned that we too are not immune
to response due to coloration, citing the plethora of advertisements
for cars containing ones that are shiny and red.
Dr. Forbes did what he called the “Speedy Hammer/ Quick $1000”
demonstration. Beginning with the virus, he asked if we would
smash it with a hammer for a grand. The complexity of the organism
increased as he continued to pose the question…on up through
goldfish, frogs, canaries, hamsters, dogs (with various animals
in between these) and ending with monkeys. It was interesting
to see the fall off in where people would agree to smash the organism.
For those who would entertain the taking of any life to begin
with (no matter how simple the organism), the 1st drop off was
with “face animals,” or something that had discernable
sensory organs- eyes, mouth, etc. on the head. The next was with
mammals, and finally a cut off for most was the primate. It was
said that bashing this animal into oblivion was like “smashing
the mirror.”
Some of the ideas for what might separate us from the other animals
that emerged were that we were educated, self-aware, our language,
with particular emphasis on manipulation of symbols, the storage
and communication of these leading to a sense of history and learning
through artifacts such as books and other media from remote in
time and place sources, the ability to reason, greater ability
to adapt to changing environments and control (for better or worse)
over our environment, imagination and anticipation, non-defensive
killing, awareness of mortality (a possible precursor for religious
belief), religion, art & culture, introspection, and many
others. While there were a couple of possibilities for humankind
as the sole possessor of a characteristic, nearly all seemed to
fall into a difference of degree, rather than kind along the continuum.
Examples were given in other beings for nearly all examples of
putative uniqueness in humans, many from species generally considered
quite “low” in the hierarchy of life. The questioning
of our own existence was deemed as possibly the best candidate
for our uniqueness. Not being able to get “inside the heads”
of other creatures precluded a real certainty for where they fell
in the continuum, their level of consciousness and to what degree
they might share what we would consider essentially human traits.
As we closed, Jeff mentioned a book by Peter Singer, well-known
to animal rights proponents for more thoughts in this vein. Singer
has gone so far as to promote the idea of adding the apes to the
genus Homo.
As is our tradition, those so inclined adjourned to the One Trick
Pony restaurant and bar after the meeting.
Recorder for these minutes: Charles LaRue.
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