How can a theory built on chance be deterministic? It becomes obvious whenever an evolutionist says that some organism “evolved to” gain some benefit. Here’s a recent example:
Taking it easy as you get older? Wrong. (Harvard Gazette). Find the self-refuting fallacy in the subtitle of this press release: “Message of new Lieberman study: ‘Because we evolved to be active throughout our lives, our bodies need physical activity to age well’.”
A team of evolutionary biologists and biomedical researchers from Harvard are taking a run at it (sometimes literally) in a new study published this week in PNAS. The work lays out evolutionary and biomedical evidence showing that humans, who evolved to live many decades after they stopped reproducing, also evolved to be relatively active in their later years.
Honor Thy Grandfather and Grandmother
This is reminder of a persistent conundrum in evolutionary theory called the Grandparent Problem. If reproduction is all that matters for fitness, why should an organism pay the cost of keeping an elder around for years past reproductive age? Evolutionists try to solve this by saying the grandparents give benefits to the next generation by helping parents care for them. One can turn that argument around. Did scientists evolve for evolutionary fitness, too? Evolutionary reasoning cheapens the most precious things in life, like love and truth.
Here is the gist of the Lieberman study:
The researchers say that physical activity later in life shifts energy away from processes that can compromise health and toward mechanisms in the body that extend it. They hypothesize that humans evolved to remain physically active as they age — and in doing so to allocate energy to physiological processes that slow the body’s gradual deterioration over the years. This guards against chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and even some cancers.
The fallacy lies in assuming that we must choose to violate evolution in order to obey it. If we “evolved to” age well by staying active, then we would all naturally obey evolution’s influence without listening to an evolutionary professor tell us why we should. For Harvard physiologist Daniel Lieberman to write an article advising older adults to stay active, he must reach for something outside of evolution—some moral imperative—that cannot be explained by evolution. Otherwise, we would all automatically be doing something that we “evolved to” do in the first place.
What Is Good in Evolution?
Why not just say that humans evolved to get cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer as they age? Lieberman must reach outside of evolution to give his little sermonette:
“It’s a widespread idea in Western societies that as we get older, it’s normal to slow down, do less, and retire,” said Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel E. Lieberman, the paper’s lead author. “Our message is the reverse: As we get older, it becomes even more important to stay physically active.”
Why is it “important” to stay active? That’s a moral stance. Evolution doesn’t care. Why does he care? Maybe he would reply that ‘humans are most fulfilled when they act in ways what they evolved to act.’ But that only shifts the fallacy over a step. Why is it good to be fulfilled? Evolution doesn’t care if we are fulfilled or not. If our genes, bodies and lifestyles are products of evolution, then whatever will be will be, and we don’t need a sermon on why it is “important to stay physically active.”
Kicking Butt
The study uses humans’ ape cousins as a jumping-off point. The
Again, why is ape behavior worse, just because they don’t live as long? In an amoral universe, evolution might give them 40 years of comfort instead of 80 years of work, workouts and woe. If chimpanzees “evolved to” live that way, then it was their lot, and they’ve had millions of years’ more time to evolve a longer lifetime than humans have. Let them live the way they evolved to live. Will Lieberman now preach to the apes, telling them to get off their butts and get to the gym?
“The key take-home point is that because we evolved to be active throughout our lives, our bodies need physical activity to age well. In the past, daily physical activity was necessary in order to survive, but today we have to choose to exercise, that is to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness,” Lieberman said….
The researchers’ advice? Get out of your chair and get some exercise.
As a mental exercise, find the fallacy again. [pause to think].
Lieberman alleges that culture has violated our evolutionary condition. We have smartphones and computers to do the jobs that used to keep us active. That might make sense if we observed apes working out to the day of their deaths. But apes don’t have our conveniences, and they spend much of their day “sitting on their butts, digesting.” If human culture progressed over the last 200 years to the point where we can relax more, then so be it; evolution did that, too, so Lieberman should be saying, ‘In the last 200 years, humans evolved to be sedentary.’ He should stop preaching that we need to get out of the chair and get some exercise. Why? ‘Because evolution determined we need activity to age well.’ And who says that aging well is a moral obligation?
There is no escape from a self-refuting fallacy.
Bless
Daniel’s heart, he means well. We agree that keeping active is good and
advisable, but for different reasons: because determinism (which leads
to self-refutation) is false. Christians believe the honoring God with
the body (What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. I Corinthians 6:19-20) glorifies God, but it is a choice each
individual must make." CEH
