Posted on 01/26/2006 1:47:10 PM PST by jennyp
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Third, complexity does not imply “design.” One of Adam Smith’s most powerful insights, developed further by Friedrich Hayek, is that incredible complexity can emerge in society without a designer or planner, through “spontaneous order.” Hayek showed how in a free market the complex processes of producing and distributing goods and services to millions of individuals do not require socialist planners. Rather, individuals pursuing their own self-interest in a system governed by a few basic rules—property rights, voluntary exchange by contract—have produced all the vast riches of the Western world.
Many creationists who are on the political Right understand the logic of this insight with respect to economic complexity. Why, then, is it such a stretch for them to appreciate that the complexity we find in the physical world—the optic nerve, for example—can emerge over millions of years under the rule of natural laws that govern genetic mutations and the adaptability of life forms to changing environments? It is certainly curious that many conservative creationists do not appreciate that the same insights that show the futility of a state-designed economy also show the irrelevance of an “intelligently designed” universe.
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Evolution: A Communist Plot?
Yet another fear causes creationists to reject the findings of science.
Many early proponents of science and evolution were on the political Left. For example, the Humanist Manifesto of 1933 affirmed support for evolution and the scientific approach. But its article fourteen stated: “The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible.”
Subsequent humanist manifestos in 1973 and 2000 went lighter on the explicit socialism but still endorsed, along with a critical approach to knowledge, the kind of welfare-state democracy and internationalism rejected by conservatives. The unfortunate historical association of science and socialism is based in part on the erroneous conviction that if humans can use scientific knowledge to design machines and technology, why not an entire economy?
Further, many supporters of evolution were or appeared to be value-relativists or subjectivists. For example, Clarence Darrow, who defended Scopes in the “monkey trial” eight decades ago, also defended Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. These two young amoralists pictured themselves as supermen above conventional morality; they decided to commit the perfect crime and killed a fourteen-year-old boy. Darrow offered the jury the standard liberal excuses for the atrocity. He argued that the killers were under the influence of Nietzschean philosophy, and that to give them the death penalty would hurt their surviving families. “I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all,” he said. “I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love.” This is the sort of abrogation of personal responsibility, denial of moral culpability, and rejection of the principle of justice that offends religious conservatives—in fact, every moral individual, religious or atheist.
In addition, nearly all agnostics and atheists accept the validity of evolution. Creationists, as religious fundamentalists, therefore see evolution and atheism tied together to destroy the basis of morality. For one thing, evolution seems to erase the distinction between humans and animals. Animals are driven by instincts; they are not responsible for their actions. So we don’t blame cats for killing mice, lions for killing antelope, or orca whales for killing seals. It’s what they do. They follow instincts to satisfy urges to eat and procreate. But if human beings evolved from lower animals, then we might be merely animals—and so there would be no basis for morality. In which case, anything goes.
To religious fundamentalists, then, agnostics and atheists must be value-relativists and subjectivists. Whether they accept evolution because they reject a belief in God, or reject a belief in God because they accept evolution, is immaterial: the two beliefs are associated, just as are creationism and theism. By this view, the only firm basis for morality is the divine edicts of a god.
This reflects the creationists’ fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of morality.
Morality from Man’s Nature
We humans are what we are today regardless of whether we evolved, were created, or were intelligently designed. We have certain characteristics that define our nature.
We are Homo sapiens. Unlike lower animals, we have a rational capacity, an ability to fully, conceptually understand the world around us. We are self-conscious. We are the animal that knows—and knows that he knows. We do not survive automatically, by instinct, but must exercise the virtue of rationality. We must think. We must discover how to acquire food—through hunting or planting—how to make shelters, how to invent medicines. And to acquire such knowledge, we must adopt a rational methodology: science.
Furthermore, our thinking does not occur automatically. We have free will and must choose to think, to focus our minds, to be honest rather than to evade facts that make us uncomfortable—evolution, for example—because reality is what it is, whether we like it or acknowledge it or not.
But we humans do not exercise our minds and our wills for mere physical survival. We have a capacity for a joy and flourishing far beyond the mere sensual pleasures experienced by lower animals. Such happiness comes from planning our long-term goals, challenging ourselves, calling on the best within us, and achieving those goals—whether we seek to nurture a business to profitability or a child to adulthood, whether we seek to create a poem or a business plan, whether we seek to design a building or to lay the bricks for its foundation.
But our most important creation is our moral character, the habits and attitudes that govern our actions. A good character helps us to be happy, a bad one guarantees us misery. And what guides us in creating such a character? What tells us how we should deal with our fellow humans?
A code of values, derived from our nature and requirements as rational, responsible creatures possessing free will.
We need not fear that with evolution, or without a god, there is no basis for ethics. There is an objective basis for ethics, but it does not reside in the heavens. It arises from our own human nature and its objective requirements.
Creationists and advocates of intelligent design come to their beliefs in part through honest errors and in part from evasions of facts and close-minded dogmatism. But we should appreciate that one of their motivations might be a proper rejection of value-relativism, and a mistaken belief that acceptance of divine revelation is the only moral alternative.
If we can demonstrate to them that the basis for ethics lies in our nature as rational, volitional creatures, then perhaps we can also reassure them that men can indeed have morality—yet never fear to use that wondrous capacity which allows us to understand our own origins, the world around us, and the moral nature within us.
Edward Hudgins is the Executive Director of The Objectivist Center.
Jenny, just admit it. It is a pitifully poor analogy. If that is the best you can do to explain away the creator, then you've got no ammunition. Surrender.
I think this may be friendly fire. From what I can tell from your posting history, you are pro-evolution, as I am. Did I miss something?
And witty, too!
They distanced themselves from that when they started getting killed in the debates. Since then, they've tried to avoid the issue of abiogenesis while putting up every article they could find "proving" this or that other aspect of evolution is true--the vast majority of these articles dealing with "evolution" of already complex lifeforms.
I find it amusing, personally--and I also see it as evidence that they've lost the debate on origins, even if they won't admit it.
LOL. If you really didn't care about being outed, you wouldn't be putting quite so much effort into spinning your way out of it. Spin away, my man, spin away...
Certainly. And all the intelligences regularly get together and agree on what to do to improve the world economy. Bill buys a car, June buys a mink, Ted sells his radio....
The intelligences that participate in the world economy individually have very little impact if any at all on the economy. Unless you are going to postulate that all the intelligences at work in the economy make up a single 'hive' intelligence, the pseudo-random operation of monetary interaction is not intelligently directed. There are no decisions made by an individual that can make or break an economy. If this were true then all economists would, to a lessor or greater extent, agree with each other on how to proceed to maximize the worlds wealth. This does not happen. In fact all that can be affected is the general trend of an economy. Even when an economic power such as the US makes a decision, that decision seldom has much impact. If anything can be said to impact the economy it would be the emotions of the people buying and selling. Unfortunately when the number of emotion 'particles' increases so does the uncertainty of the outcome.
"Now if you could show a free market arising spontaneously amongst the rocks in the middle of the Gobi desert you might have an argument.
The placement of the economy is irrelevant. It is a fact that the world economy is an artifact of humanity, however that humanity, the agent you are so concerned with becomes a simple cog in the machine with no 'intelligent' input. The direction, the wavelike undulations of the economy, is not directed by that agent but by a random collection of cogs making up a economic homunculus with no intelligence whatsoever. It is a complex system. Humans can not predict or direct any complex system let alone one that we are a part of.
Damn, we can't even envision all of the feedback systems yet.
Bingo Dude.
It's easy to pretend that you have an unanswered challenge when you dishonestly ignore responses.
That happens a *lot* in these threads, doesn't it?
Yes, but in terms of the age of the earth, abiogenesis showing up takes a lot of time, given that the earth is only 4.5 billion years old.
Takes a while for that abiogenesis friendly environment to develop, and then there are all the misses and near misses, and then there's the zot but the zot goes noplace because the zotee doesn't quite cut it in terms of survival.
And on and on.....
In a nutshell they got from A is A to A ought to be A. ;-) Unable to bridge the "ought" gap they come with an A.. existence and assign to it an positive truth value. I'd really like to "exist" therefore I "ought" to exist. Ironicly Objectivism is at it's root founded on pure unadulterated emotionalism.
"The doors to Hell are locked from the Inside.." -- C.S. Lewis
No that's a lie created by the Darwinists who made the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons
Hey, quantum physics has particles and antiparticles appearing and disappearing out of nothing all the time. Is quantum physics scientific?
We've got the same thing happening with angels.
Mixed race fertility rates are not uniform. Feel free to look it up before you post next time.
The Marxists-Freudian-Darwinists only respond to old arguments, and, as we have seen, are quick to call others "racists", where it is Darwinists of the past century who defined racism as a science, and Marxists who cleverly expanded the term to include ethnocentrism and just about anything, but to associate the "racist" (that's the cleverness of it) with Dr Mengele. (Look up the term in a dictionary from the 1940s, before you use it next time.)
(Sorry for this interruption. The question above stands.)
Using economics as an analogy is intellectually dishonest? How so?
The point was that examples of complexity arising out of chaotic systems has been evidenced.
ID dudes have yet to show that complexity is limited to intelligent actions.
Got any evidence other than 'it looks like it'?
(out to dinner, still reading 230. Stop posting so much, everyone! :)
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