The Determinism of Evolutionary Psychology

My recent post  has received a great deal more attention than any of my previous posts, to date. (Thank you, and welcome to all of the new readers from around the globe.) Discussion of the article has not been confined to the comments section here. There was a comment about the post by "Ben" on the Naturist-Christians-org Yahoo! Group. Since it occasioned some clarification of my position in my response, I'm re-posting both here:

In Naturist-Christians-org@yahoogroups.com, "Ben" wrote:


...I also think that evolutionary psychologists are getting a bad rap in the original post. I try to keep up with scientific literature, and I see no studies indicating simple nudity as a source of sexual stimulation in cultures where nudity is normal behavior. There is certainly a lively debate in the scientific community about why human females, unlike other genetically similar species, hide their time of fertility. That debate has led to several hypotheses being advanced including some involving humans wearing various ornamentation including jewelry and/or articles of clothing. In fact, one theory asserts that women in American culture are more likely to elicit a sexual response from men when wearing specific items of clothing than when totally naked.

 
 
My response:
 
 
Re: New Naked Truth Blog Post



Ben,


From the context of your comment, I take it that what you mean by "evolutionary psychologists are getting a bad rap " in my post, is that these scientists sometimes say things that could be considered favorable to our perspective as naturists. While that may be the case (evolutionary psychologists say all sorts of things, some of them truly bizarre, but they are certainly not monolithic in their pronouncements), this may be missing the real point of what I was saying.


Despite the fact that evolutionary psychologists sometimes say things that sound like we make "choices" or have "preferences", it is their basic perspective that all of human behavior is determined--a mechanistic system of "stimulus and response" without any real freedom of choice in a true libertarian sense. Just as many evolutionists will occasionally slip into speaking in terms of "design" when they expound upon "adaptation", evolutionary psychologists often speak in terms of "choice" (ie: using words like "preference") when what they are really doing is describing "behavior." (Sometimes they can't help themselves since, as Francis Schaeffer noted, they are constrained by having to "live in the world as God has created it." Things appear the way they are because that is the way He has made them.) If pressed though, most will admit that "free will" has nothing to do with the human interactions they are studying. Those who actually believe that some sort of free choice exists, have no evolutionary justification for that belief, and do so by borrowing from a theistic worldview. Theistic evolutionists, overlay ideas which only fit within a theistic worldview upon the scientistic view that allows for nothing but deterministic event causation of matter and energy interacting over time. Evolution + Theism = Square Peg + Round Hole. This determinism is an unavoidable corollary of the scientism that is the reining paridigm underlying all of contemporary scientific thought (at least among the scientific elites), and has recently been forcefully reiterated in Stephen Hawing's latest book. (see http://bit.ly/bnAf9g)


My larger point then, is that it is Christians, not evolutionists, who hold a worldview which has the justification to refute the idea that "seeing someone nude automatically elicits a sexual response." That idea is deterministic, and therefore fits very well within the evolutionary worldview of scientism. Scientism allows for nothing supernatural (beyond or above nature) like the soul--it denies the existence of the soul. The existence of the soul only makes sense in a theistic worldview, and it is the soul that is the source of our ability to interact freely with the world around us. Because our souls are spiritual (supernatural) rather that physical, they are not constrained by the deterministic laws of the physical world (event causation), and we can choose (our soul directing our bodies) to initiate actions in the physical realm (agent causation). Scientism denies the existence of agent causation, and reduces all human behavior to event causation--all events, including the actions of our bodies, are said to be determined by pre-existing conditions and the laws of physics and chemistry acting upon our purely material (soulless) bodies.


We as Christians and naturists know better than this by our experience (and by our intuition!) We know that the choices we make are our own. But scientistic evolutionists deny that there is any such thing as a spiritual "self" directing the actions of our bodies. This is why I give very little credence to the pontifications of evolutionary psychologists. Why should I believe the random scratchings upon paper caused by the pen held in the hand of the evolutionary psychologist which is jerking in response to the pre-existing and purposeless biochemistry of his physical body? How could they contain veridical information having anything to do with the world as it really is? I would rather stand upon what I know to be true--nudity (and by extension, naturism) does not cause an automatic sexual response!


Sorry for the length of my response, but I hope this makes my position more clear.


Blessings, Gregg Gatewood