DOCTRINES

Until recently, I have been so naive as to believe that a scientist would publish all proven facts. No one could get me to believe that a scientist would not only ignore certain facts, but even would suppress them. However, on my return to graduate school, I was shocked. Information was not only suppressed but was sometimes absent from the campus. The reasons for this suppression are several:

The first reason for suppression of facts lies in the existence of the doctrines. No one dares to question any part of a doctrine. In colleges across the world, graduate students are watched with critical eyes. Any students who dare to question a doctrine are squeezed out of their program.
The second reason for the suppression of facts is that some scientists have based their life's work on a doctrine. At no time would they care to see the doctrine abolished and see their life's work recognized as nonsense. There is a self-centered grandiose mystique involved.
The third reason for the suppression of facts is that rewriting "fundamental' concepts would simply undermine scientific encyclopedias. Scientists would not be able to understand each other. They have spent years referring to certain unsubstantiated facts. It is a matter of having invested a lot of time and energy into a concept, and not wanting to lose the investment if it is wrong.

The doctrine of enculturation
The primary and most unrealistic doctrine to dramatically influence our century began in the early 1900's but did not get a firm hold until the 1960's. This is the doctrine of enculturation. Franz Boas (1858-1942) and his students in anthropology, such as Margaret Mead, decided that no matter what the evidence, only certain conclusions about humanity would be allowed. Their doctrine stated that all behavior is learned and all people are created equal. There is no allowance for talents. It is the purpose of the perpetrators of this doctrine that: If people are taught only certain conclusions, the world would be a better place!

The doctrine of enculturation (from the text book)
I. That contemporary human populations adapt to heir environment principally through socio-cultural rather than biological means.
II. That differences in contemporary human groups are produced by differences in enculturation and learning rather than by differences in genes and chromosomes.
III. That genetically determined capabilities for cultural advancement are equivalent in all human populations.
IV. That differences within a single stratified society, differences in performance among economic, social, racial, and ethnic groups reflect unequal opportunities rather than genetic make-up.

Biological evolution requires biological variation in capabilities between individuals. There is no evidence, other than wishful thinking, that humanity has reached a condition of absolute equality in capability as this doctrine demands. In the years following its acceptance, readers and students were treated to semi-factual descriptions of individuals, tribes, populations, and societies. In my time, some of this was required reading for all college students. Some of that nonsense has influenced the thinking of three generations and caused untold fortunes to be misspent on social and educational programs that were not to the real point.

The reason for the general acceptance of this doctrine is very possibly a backlash to the genetic components of the holocaust (the genocide of the Jews and disabled in Germany), as well as many other examples of genocide, and the genetic components of the civil rights struggle in the United States and South Africa, for example. Rather than suppressing evidence of inherent characteristics, we should be alerting students to the dangers of generalizing characteristics to an entire population. Every measurable population has a wide range and variety of any characteristic. This is basic to biological evolution. It is unscientific to attribute the average measure of a characteristic to the entire population.

The doctrine of education
This doctrine is based on the doctrine of enculturation. It takes the position that intelligence is a meaningless word and that any difference in educational development between students is due to disproportionate educational opportunities. Usually there is an allowance for "exceptional" students and "challenged" students; however, everyone in between is considered equal in capability. To any long experienced teacher, or parent, the absurdity of this concept is obvious. Yet, teachers are financially punished for any inequality in the performance of their students. This doctrine is so strong among politicians and some parents, even people who know better dares question it. "Stigma" has become another doctrine in education. For numerous reasons, student achievement has become even more important than the learning process. Every student is supposed to succeed for fear that "failure" will be an insufferable stigma. On the other hand, "dumbing" down the curriculum fails to challenge the student, while "challenging" the student promotes feelings of failure. It's a dialectic conundrum. This doctrine will be addressed in the chapter on Learning.

The doctrine of family
It has really only been since the industrial revolution that the family roles have begun to change. We have come from a world where the man was required to leave the home to hunt and gather (work) while the woman stayed at home to raise children and prepared food to a world where two wage earners are required to support a family and same-sex couples have the opportunity to raise children.

This change of roles isn't a bad thing, per se; however, the millions of years of "traditional" roles and the resulting evolutionary influence on the condition of men and women have to be considered. The doctrine of the family takes the position that all one needs is love to be a family. This relieves the stigma of being a member of an alternative family or the product of a divorce.

The doctrine of creation
This doctrine is so embodied in the "Word of God", that many people find it impossible to relinquish, as if doing so would cause one's entire faith to disintegrate. The Biblical account has spawned all sorts of metaphorical extrapolations in an attempt to justify it with science. As well, there has arisen "Intelligent Design" and other permutations of imagination to modernize the original story. We will examine what the evidence points to in the chapters on Creation and Ontogeny.

The doctrine of criminology
When I was taking a post-graduate course in anthropology, and we were studying crime, I took an article to the professor by Dr. Crowe about babies born to mothers in jail and adopted their first year of life. He showed that, compared to babies born to mothers not in jail, many more went to jail themselves. His justified conclusion is that children born of convict mothers inherit criminal traits that later get them in jail. As soon as the professor understood what the paper was about, he looked shocked and held it over a waist paper basket and said: "We don't even think of things like this!"

Later I was giving a talk to a seminar on the same subject, and, when I mentioned the possible heritability of criminality, a professor jumped up and rudely shouted that no such connection had been shown. We are thus in the ludicrous cul de sac that not only are such studies never done but such conclusions are precluded because we cannot think of them!