This quote has been making its way around the net this past week:
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
[Goldberg, Carey. Why are we here? International Herald Tribune (Paris edition) no. 36,125 (Monday, April 26, 1999): p. 10.]
At first I laughed and enjoyed it. But then when I thought about it a little I realized that its not quite right. In fact, its quite wrong; worse than wrong if you consider the consequences for the secular position--it requires a God! Let's assume there is no God; and let's also agree that we all know that good people do evil things, evil people do good things, good people do good things, and evil people do evil things. That about covers the reality of the human condition (they differ in percentages, of course, but that's another discussion involving social science research on what conditions produce what behaviors). For an bio-cultural model of ethics to account for good people doing bad things, we must jettison God and look to secular causes. Religion as a social institution may be one but it is clearly not the only one. And study after study show it is religion, more than any other institution, that generates the greatest amount of giving, social support for the poor, rebuilding of run down neighborhoods, etc. The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (the best one in the field) just published an article (reported in Saturday's New York Times), demonstrating that generosity is highest among the most religious. When the research shows otherwise, I think we would be wise to steer clear of such terse two-liners, no matter how appealing they may be for us non-believers who occasionally enjoy pricking the bubble of organized religion.
On a related note, one of my beefs with meme theory (remember we just had Susan Blackmore here at Caltech and she gave a wonderful and spirited defense of memes) is that they unfairly pick on religion. Artists produce memes, musicians compose memes, advertising writers create memes, even science is a meme, but religion is a VIRUS. Come now, my memeticist friends, what about the STATE?! If religion is a virus, the state is a full blown plague. A better quote might be "for good people to do evil things, that takes a state." And, of course, there are other social institutions as well, but when you wed organized religion to a state, particularly a modern state with technological methods to murder masses of people, then you've got yourself real evil.
To balance the above bad quote, here's a gem from Marvin Minsky, a friend and reader of this hotline, who wrote me with regard to the remarkable twin similarities (see his analysis below), but offered this caveat that might be applied to most extraordinary claims (i.e., this might be a good motto for skeptics):
"I doubt it very much-but I would not be surprised to be surprised."
In case you all did not see this one, the UFO/alien abduction community is about to get another boost via Steven Spielberg, the director of "ET" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," who is heading off to outer space again with "Taken," a 20-hour miniseries focusing on alien abductions. Yes, you read that correctly, 20 HOURS! To those of us who study social feedback loops that drive mass hysterias, this one should kick abductions and sightings into high gear. According to the Daily Variety:
Spielberg will serve as executive producer of the DreamWorks TV project, which will screen on cable's Sci-Fi Channel in the third quarter of 2000. It will be based on reports of UFO landings in New Mexico dating back to 1947. "Steven has always had an interest in this subject," said Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of Sci-Fi's USA Networks parent. He told Daily Variety that Spielberg's treatment starts from the premise "that there are abductions, that they're real and not made up. This will be a big story with multiple characters, protagonists and antagonists, and it'll span lots of decades." In a statement, Spielberg called himself a fan of the Sci-Fi Channel, and said "no other place" is better suited for a miniseries of the "magnitude" of "Taken." "Taken," which will cost upward of $40 million, will begin production this summer. The director and cast are still to be named. The Sci-Fi Channel plans to run it for two hours a night over 10 consecutive nights.
I received a fair amount of interesting feedback on my posting last week about Nancy Segal's twin studies that found remarkable similarities between identical twins raised apart, especially when compared to sibs raised together, and to pseudotwins (adopted kids of the same age in the same home). I refered to some of these similarities as "spooky" (e.g., the twins who used the same obscure imported toothpaste). Here are some of the responses. Nancy's rejoinder follows. She references her book ENTWINED LIVES (Dutton, 1999). For a proper analysis of the subject I recommend logging on to amazon.com and ordering it. There's nothing like going to the primary sourse. (And please remember that these are casual postings, not officially polished prose pieces ready for the printed page.)
Marvin Minsky wrote this interesting analysis:
Hi, Mike. Here's a warning. I'll show why it isn't so spooky at all. I'm not very surprised by the similar health histories, nor by the taste preferences, because there are many known genetic taste effects. For example, there's a common gene whose owners find rhubarb to be downright bitter. (I've heard that this gene is in the 10% order of likelhood, but that's heresay.) The improbable events such as names of wifes seems surprising at first. However, I'll show that it is far from miraculous, and in fact, perhaps quite likely to happen by chance. What is missing from our information is what are Nancy's DENOMINATORS. Suppose you asked two random people 1000 questions, each of which had, say 20 possible answers. Then you'd expect 50 identical answers. What's the brand of your car? Maybe 5 likely answers. What's its color. Maybe 10 answers. So the Blue Chevrolet thing is a 1 in 50. Remember, we're talking about a thousand questions, so we can expect about twenty such 'spooky' results from each candidate! What's your toothpaste? (We've used Vademecum. It's not so obscure, and has a distinctive taste.) What's you son's name? If you're Jim, then James might be as likely as 30% As for Alan, the Clearly Jim Springer's son has a middle name with 100% probability, so the question is not about the coincidence, but simply the probability that the other son is named Alan--perhaps 2 or 3 percent. Notice that it's the same for the wife's names; we're not asking the likelhood of finding two Bettys, but just one, etc.
So, the only big surprise is finding ONE sheriff, because that's an uncommon profession. And I'm sure her denominator is at least 1000.
But notice yet one more thing: what is the denominator of how many twin pairs she interviwed? Let's say, that also was 1000. Then, assuming that we're in the 'common female name' category, I think we could expect around one such dual pair of wife-names, because both Betty and Linda have probabilities of the order of perhaps 2 to 4 percent, and that, squared, is of the order of 1 in a thousand.
Questions:
Does Nancy show any sense at all about these elementary arithmetical probabilities?
Did she discover these twins herself, or did she hear about them from other sources?
In the latter case, the whole 'study' is invalid, because now her sample is much larger than 1000, if she started out by collecting "remarkable twin stories', and then asked them more questions.
Jon Hamkins, Ph.D.:
This is a classic case of "remember the hits, forget the misses." Am I supposed to be impressed that they both drive Chevies, smoke Salems, and drink Miller Lite? Pick two people at random, and you have a decent chance of them liking the most popular car, most popular cigarrette, and most popular beer. I'm not surprised, either, that they each gave their child their own name, Jim.
The point is, if we look hard enough we will find similarities. But where is the complete set of interview questions that revealed the similarities? In other words, where is the list of misses? How big is it? Was the set of questions scientifically designed, or did they just ask enough questions so that they could guarantee enough of the answers would be the same? These questions are usually conveniently ignored.
I don't doubt that twins share a lot of traits, including personality, but the report of the Jim twins is not scientific. Maybe you can ask her about that on your radio program.
Mark G:
This may be of interest to you, after reading the story of the 'Jim Twins'. My brother, Scott Graham, became very good friends at school with a Todd Graham. Todd has a sister called Tracey, my sister (same age) is Lacey; my name is Mark, Todd's brother is Matt (1 year older). Todd's parents are Robyn and Janet, mine are Robert and Janice. Coincidence? What else could it be?
Michael Masta:
From what you presented here, NOTHING shows any evidence of genetic predisposition. It reminds me of the Lincoln/Kennedy "connections" that show how the two unrelated presidents had so much in common. If you look long and hard enough, you will find all sorts of "connections" between unrelated events. I would be more surprised if the twins had nothing in common, as that would be statistically much more improbable.
Just because we like science doesn't mean we should apply it poorly.
Dennis Garwitz Sr.:
I have read of this phenomenon several times in the last 20 years. I worked at General Motors for 30 years till I retired and I knew a man that had a identical twin brother. He and his brother had similar lives down to their divorces. However one was a commercial pilot, the other was a private pilot. Since Wayne, the one I worked with had been in combat in Korea and I in Viet Nam we talked about our experiences. I remember he told me that he and his brother were both wounded in the right hand by shrapnel on the same day in Korea except wayne was an infantry man on the ground and his brother was flying ground support missions in North Korea. Weird eh?
Bruce A. Thyer, Ph.D., Research Professor of Social Work, University of Georgia:
Of course, similar anecdotes could no doubt be extracted from the lives of pseudotwins. Separating similarities occuring on the basis of CHANCE, from those attributable to heredity, will be a monumental undertaking. Given X number of strangers, and Y number of potentially shared features, there is a certain finite number of 'hits' that will emerge. What is crucial is the number of hits versus non-hits, in twins raised together, raised apart, and those occuring in the lives of complete strangers (matched for age, gender, etc.) for whom a similar analysis is performed. Selecting out and reporting only the 'amazing' hits is not good science, although it certainly makes for very interesting anecdote.
Michael: p. 119 [of ENTWINED LIVES] makes the simple, but overlooked point in all these responses that identical reared apart twin similarities of the sort I describe were not observed among the fraternal reared apart twins with the same degree of frequency. This is a better comparison group in my estimation than unrelateds since these folks do share genes in common and are the same age, and would be more likely than unrelateds to display similar behavioral patterns. I do recall 1 or 2 examples of such things in DZ [Dizygotic, or fraternal, or non-identical twins] reared aparts. There were also MZs [Monozygotic, or identical twins] who did not show unusual similarities.
Another point I think that is lost in this discussion is that it was more often the case that MZA [Monozygotic reared apart] pairs showed more than one unusual similarity such as the Jim twins. Some respondents to your piece seem to treat them as if they were independent. Sure one could get one striking similarity in a pair of DZs or unrelateds, but would you expect several? That is the interesting question.
The research team was interested in both similarities and differences and we certainly found both. As I say on p. 119, I believe a systematic study of toothpaste preference or key ring preference is less informative than the finding of more unusual similarities in MZs than DZs. I see these as extensions of the more similar IQs, personalities, etc of MZ than DZ twins which we know to have a partial genetic basis.
Note-- I try to avoid terms like spooky and eerie -they bring forth all sorts of responses and anyway I think the similarities have a partial genetic basis--
Nancy Segal, Professor of Psychology, California State University, Fullerton
nsegal@fullerton.edu