When you start talking about cultural evolution, also, more specifics are needed. Cultural evolution is a real thing, but it isn’t the frame we come to the table with as scientists.
I’m wondering if some of your statements make more sense in that frame. If that’s the case there is a lot translation required here.
You misunderstand me. Of course evolution can’t tell us what’s right and wrong! Which raises the interesting question how do we know the difference between right and wrong? Marx provided a good answer in his statement “the oppressed have a clearer view of reality than their oppressors”. Echoing Jesus’s statement “It’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle…”. Why do you think feminism emerged? What do you think is meant by the book title “The Genetics of Original Sin”? And evolution by natural selection explains the evolution of the patriarchy. The basic oppression is the oppression of women, which is made clear in Genesis. Evolution just elaborates on how it happened. Another good book on the relationship between natural selection and Christianity is Evolution, Games and God by Nowak and Coakley, Nowak a prof of Biology and Maths at Harvard, Coakley a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Explains the evolution of cooperation and evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) that restrict our cooperative abilities. Highly informative and stimulating.
As I said, the evolutionary component of this argument is weak. It neglects negative controls and examples that don’t fit the pattern, and plasticity.
For example, I don’t see how natural selection explains the patriarchy. Nothing in biology makes that cultural trait inevitable. We certainly see matriarchy (and egalitarian) in nature too, so it is not as if evolutionary forces make patriarchy inevitable.
I’d agree that the patriarchy is a part of the fall, the curse, but that isn’t evolutions fault. And because it is part of the fall, is isn’t immutable. Our true nature is for something better.
Well no, I’m pretty sure what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. In order for your argument to work, which I take to rely essentially on mutation accumulation to yield mostly adaptive change (the ultimate source of new alleles is of course mutations), the net total selection coefficient of new mutations would have to come out as beneficial. In that case you’d see sustained fitness gains (adaptive evolution) even without requiring seleciton to fix mutations, as you’d just need to accumulate whatever mutations occur.
But I’m quite certain the net fitness effect of all mutations is not beneficial. At best it would have to be equal, which would yield neutral evolution under accumulation of mutations. So to get adaptive evolution, selection has to weed out deleterious and fix beneficial mutations. Thus adaptive evolution can only occur when selection overwhelms the net fitness of all new mutations.
Could you name the genes and genetic loci that were selected for?
Course the patriarchy wasn’t inevitable, a Christian can’t think that cos it would imply that God is the author of evil. Choices were made that impacted on our moral evolution. But understanding the evolution of evil can help to overcome it. Politics important too. Do you mean matriarchy in other species? Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that were or are unambiguously matriarchal. They may be matrilineal, but the males still hold political power. Seems like the more ‘civilised’ a society, the more patriarchal. The ape species to which we are closest, bonobos, is matriarchal, coalitions of females in control. And it’s peaceful and egalitarian. Primatologists argue we should be like that, could have been, and a combo of culture and politics can reverse the patriarchy. As a Christian theologian I would agree, but would add that grace will be necessary too.
Sexism a more universal trait. Misogyny only applies to some men. Misogynists tend to go into religion so they can control women! Religion has always been a force for the social control of women, always have to distinguish between religion as a phenomenon and their unique individual character while still under the control of their prophets/ gurus. Once the state gets involved, game over! Re. gene loci, clearly patriarchy evolved due to male competitive aggression over women,. The greater a man’s wealth and power the more women he can get. So whatever the genes are that determine the male sex drive (far more powerful than the female) that’s a big contribution. Evolutionary psychologists say the male sex drive evolved in tandem with male aggression
I’m not seeing the names of any genes or sequence data.
If you can’t demonstrate a specific genetic link then it severely weakens the claim that these behaviors are due to natural selection.
Nothing friendly about you 
I am not a geneticist. If you are you should know the genes that relate to the male sex drive, and male aggression, if they’ve been identified. Darwin was able to explain evolutionary processes even though he didn’t know about genes as the means of heredity. Are you saying that only geneticists can have evolutionary insights or are allowed to discuss it? Ooooh scientism.
Yes, I do. Variation and drift are random processes. Selection alone has bias.
I’m not entirely sure how much I would agree with that. What needs to be shown, at the very least, is that the behaviors are adaptive and universal in humans compared to the inferred ancestral state, which does not strictly require showing which genetic loci are responsible. You could establish that by comparative behavior with other primates.
I couldn’t tell you the specific genetic components that cause sugary bananas (entirely plausible that this has nevertheless been worked out), yet even in the absense of this genetic knowledge I think we can known simply from reason that becoming more sweet in taste and having fewer large seeds has been adaptive to banana plants in the context human selective breeding.
Now it might be that this example is a lot more obvious than the specific human behaviors @Niamh_Middleton are referencing, and so the adaptive values of the behaviors she mentions could be dubious, but it’s not strictly required to have elucidated the genetic causes of a trait, in order to have a compelling case for adaptive benefit.
I am saying that if there isn’t a genetic component then it isn’t heritable. If it isn’t heritable then it can’t be a product of natural selection. Even if there is a genetic component you would still need evidence of sequence conservation to conclude that there has been positive selection for a specific genotype.
The danger is coming up with a story about how a characteristic could be adaptive and then concluding that the characteristic is adaptive. For example, the human nose supports eye glasses quite well so the human nose must be an adaptation for eye glasses.
The link between genetics and human behavior is not nearly as direct as mendelian traits for fructose production and seed size. That is a big part of the problem.
There is inheritance outside of genetics though…such as language. We inherit language from our parents. Quite a bit of culture is inherited, as a rule, from our parents. Yes, there are exceptions, but that’s the point, they are exceptions, and this type of inheritance is not encoded in DNA.
Well then they must have a genetic component. Expert evolutionary psychologists know what they are talking about. Are you saying men aren’t competitively aggressive as a sex? Not all men of course, men suffer from male aggression more than women do. According to neo-Darwinists such as Dawkins population genetics shows how aggression is balanced with cooperation and other dove like traits in populations. So how do you explain that they have characterised our history? Please give an alternative explanation
Sure, but that is something quite different from biological evolution. Cultural evolution is certainly something that could be productively discussed, but I think @Niamh_Middleton is making a direct causal link between biology and culture, not a metaphorical one.
Yes I understand the problem with adaptive storytelling, which is that you can always in principle concoct some hypothetical circumstance that would favor a trait.
But this is exactly why I said you need to involve a historical context, using comparative behavior among primates. You need to bring in phylogeny.
Even in the absence of genetic data, an adaptive hypothesis has the potential to stand or fall in the context of historical considerations of what the ancestor used to be like. If the trait evolved in the context of the ancestral behavior (inferred using comparative methods), would it then have been adaptive? You could perhaps establish that with computer models by the marriage of population genetics and game theory. If you can show that the behavior really is adaptive in the historical context, that raises the plausibility of an adaptive explanation. That is not to say your job would then be done, and genetic components of adaptation are still much preferable.
Totally agree, but I still think a response like that is a bit too vague. It is not nearly as direct. Well okay, but how direct is it? Are we denying that adaptive behaviors exist? I don’t take you to be saying that much.
That would seem absurd, and I some times get the impression that people have an irrational level of hostility to the idea of historical evolutionary influences on human behavior because they’re in a sense afraid of giving ammunition to people who are all too keen to commit the naturalistic fallacy. As if the historical, biological origin of a trait would justify invoking it as a basis for sexual, racial, or whatever other discrimination.
If I recall correctly, believe it was you who put it best in a thread not too long ago, when you said something like: We don’t award people some fraction of their fundamental human rights on the basis of how well they score on IQ tests.
You will have to learn how to reply. At the moment, nobody can tell what you’re replying to because there is no indication. You can quote by highlighting a section and clicking on the quote button that appears. Or you can hit the little gray “Reply” to the bottom right of the post you want to reply to. (Don’t confuse it with the green “Repy” at the bottom of the page.) Either will produce a reference back to the original post.
If you were replying to me, the idea of cultural evolution being non-genetic is hardly Lamarckian, and it has nothing to do with anyone’s views of biological evolution. I don’t see the point of bringing it up in a thread on the subject in the title.
I certainly agree men have more testosterone, but I don’t think it is well explained as “aggressive competitive” nature. That seems to impute too much of a value judgement and also plasticity of culture onto the biological reality. That is an example of where I think the story telling is not well constrained by good controls, and makes out the story in an incorrect way.