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.
I'd argue precisely the opposite.
First, let's dispense with the OFFICIAL theological beliefs of most Christian denominations in the US regarding salvation through faith rather than good works and whatnot; the reality at a gut level of most rank-and-file believers in this country regardless of the "official" theology of their particular denomination is a belief that they will be rewarded for doing good works by reaching heaven and punished by bad deeds with hell, which are cause-and-effect consequences, albeit entirely unprovable post-death ones.
If anything I'd argue an atheist or agnostic who is a deeply moral and ethical person in his actions is more impressive than a religious person who is equally deeply moral and ethical person in their actions but is doing so because they're expecting a post-death reward or avoiding a post-death punishment.
Of course this will be dodged by people living in a fantasyland, to make themselves comfortable, that atheists and agnostics are incapable of being moral and ethical people.
"I just thought that some things in the Bible are stories, parables, etc. Thus, the world being created in seven days being not literal. The 10 Commandments are literal in their meaning. "
Verily I say unto you conservativebabe that thou are wise.
Some folks,however, think the world is but 6,000 years old.
parsy, who is a dinosaur.
But you just don't buy that God actually created human beings, right? You believe in God but not the Bible? How do you decide what you are going to believe?
Some people have an all or none view of things. Either the bible is the infallible word of god or it ain't.
As it says in Hezikiah 4:20:
"Throweth not out the mustard seed in the rinse."
parsy, the inspired.
OK, you're partly right here. I'm blending the Big Bang stuff into it, since those two theories are such frequent partners.
Evolution does, however, ask true believers to take things on faith until the future day arrives which will finally prove it true. Evolutionists keep hoping all those missing "in between" fossils will show up eventually. ;-)
1. I believe that dinosaur bones are truly as ancient as advertised but that doesn't justify Bob's affair. That's morality at the level of Bill Clinton.
2. Ancient flood stories seem to be part of pretty much every culture in the Middle East and Mediterranean area. That's probably a clue that something happened. If those two areas flooded and all the elephants were in Africa or India, then Noah didn't need them on the ark.
"The theory of evolution has nothing to do with "something or everything" appearing out of nothing."
It proposes that animals and plants have their origin in preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.
What is the origin of those preexisting types? That's what we are getting at! If they always were, then, you propose that all things generated from either something or nothing. I want to know, how you can prove one or the other? And, the answer, of course, is you can't. Which leaves you unable to disqualify my "opinion" or theory (the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another) that it must be possible that the original thing from which others evolved could have been created to have existed in the first place. You can't prove the generation therefore you cannot prove the final outcome.
The second law of thermodynamics ACTUALLY declares "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body."
You might want to actually read about the REAL Second Law of Thermodynamics sometime, rather than the fictional, and rather hilarious, Second Law of Thermodynamics that has been fabricated by a comical assortment of rather dim-witted creationist writers.
Anti-Evo "misspeaking"?
;-)
You have the public schools, MSM, Colleges, both public and private and an overwhelming world stage. You have succesfully had your theory published in almost every single educational text dealing with history. I think you have had plenty of time and opportunity to present a one sided set.
It is relevant because the God which is the target of evolution is the Creator. If there was no creation, there is no Creator.
What does evolution predict? What will we look like in 10,000 years? How do you test it?
Evolution Theory is not science.
Its no coincidence that oceanic islands often have flightless bird species living on them. These arrived there originally as a single normal flying bird pregnant female (perhaps in a storm), millions of years ago, and over time the descendants lost the ability to fly because in the ecological niche they find themselves flight isn't that big an advantage. Usually such islands won't have predators, and the newly arrived bird finds itself at the top of the food chain. The ability to fly is no longer important and the high cost of maintaining it is greater than the reproductive benefit. Through the generations the ability is lost as less good fliers that are born outbreed better flier siblings because the less good fliers are better adapted to the island environment in other ways. That is why oceanic islands often have a unique species of flightless bird, and of course no two such islands share the same species, because the flightlessness evolved after the first pregnant female flew there.
Evolution is an explanation of the origin of species and their changes over time.
It has nothing to do with the explanation of the origin of life, or of matter, or of the universe.
You can believe life spontaneously arose out of organic chemicals, that the Christian God created the first life, that Aliens from the planet Xenu brought the first life to earth, or that a 5,000 headed Giraffe-God created the universe and also the first life, and be a full-blooded card-carrying Darwinian evolutionist.
(Note: there are no actual cards we get issued :-)
It is. Now kindly explain your slippery slope/adultery conundrum.
jla, the inquisitive
The existence of God is neither necessary nor sufficient for a moral code. Or is the only reason you haven't gone on a killing spree because God says not to?
Then you are wise and unafraid. You can separate out the stuff in the bible with reason. Kudos. As it says somewhere in there, "Timothy was not afraid to work" or something like that.
parsy, who likes the quiet in the Valley of the Shadow.
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