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.
Lots of howling going on tonight. Is there a full moon?
They always out themselves, sooner or later....
Keep it up! Show us all just what you are really made of.
Nurse Rached has taken over the night shift at the hospice, I see.
Posting rules? Bah!
Souls are at stake here!
Since you profess to be an atheist, you're talking about you, right? Nevermind this "enlightened person" gloss - you mean yourself, if I'm not mistaken. Is that how you personally feel, that you don't have to worry about rights? Raw power is all that matters to you?
I'm a Smith-Darwin-Jefferson conservative!
Is that sorta like, "I'm my own grandpa?"
"He took himself on a date to see a movie."
It must be slap-happy time. Got any applicable StevenWrights?
How many of these "Christian Evolutionists" believe the words that God forged with his own finger on the tablets of stone.
Behold! The Fourth Commandment:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11 KJV)
I think you are misunderstanding the author. He was referring to the world economy as a whole not to a tiny process in one factory.
Now back to the birds, the flightless cormorant in the Galapagos specifically. Specialization can be a detriment to survival (general_re taught me that g). It's why I'm a self made "renaiassance guy" (wink,wink). A bird that can fly and swim while looking for lunch and and dumping eggs hither and yond would seem to have an advantage.
I have no a priori conivctions one way or the other. I'm just looking for a sound hypothesis. I'm considering yours.
Check with bro, see what he thinks. I can be convinced!
Yeah, yeah, you go on telling yourself that. It's a very comfortable dodge, I'm sure. It has the unfortunate disadvantage of being demonstrably false, but I'm sure that's no bother to you.
Abiogenesis is a theory that deals with the origins of life. Right now it is at a very early stage.
Various theories of abiogenesis have been around as long as evolution. The fact that modern molecular biology has destroyed them all and left you with absolutely nothing to fall back on is well known (hence the distancing of evolution from abiogenesis), but is ignored in the popular media and biology textbooks.
And that's what ID seeks to deal with. The question on the table is: Could life as we know it have arisen by pure chance? If not, then there must be a Designer by default. ID does not at this time deal with the nature of the Designer--it could be God, or an alien intellegence, or something else entirely.
ID is a gutless claim for people who don't want to actually DO science.
Another demonstrably false statement, but hey, that's becoming your M.O.
It's an argument from ignorance that explains absolutely NOTHING.
Hmm . . . Say we found a slab on the moon with Egyptian-style hieroglyphics on it. Would the hypothesis that it was intentionally carved by an intellegence be a "gutless claim," an "argument from ignorance that explains absolutely NOTHING"? Or would it be the first necessary step to bothing to attempt to decipher the slab and understand what it means?
Ditto ID. If it were proven mathematically and beyond a reasonable doubt (and I think it already has been, but that's one man's opinion) that life as we know it could not have arisen by accident, but was designed intellegently, changing the paradigm that it is accidental would be the first necessary step to truly understanding it.
That there are unanswered questions in abiogenesis and evolutionary theory does not mean that *God did it* is a valid answer to those questions.
Why not? If God did in fact do it, it's an entirely valid answer. The question then becomes, "How did He do it?" If I'm learning about computers, the fact that my computer was intellegently designed does not end my inquiry--it merely lends direction to my study of how and why it works the way it does.
Isaac Newton was an ardent Christian, who wrote more commentary on the Bible than he did scientific papers. I've read some of them--he's quite good as a theologian. His belief in a God who made a logical universe drove his scientific inquiry rather than stifled it.
Of course, evolution is it's own "god of the gaps." Consider narby's post #266, in which he states, "Untold billions of particles, all acting according to a set of rules. . . When each atom in evolution's system acts according to it's rules, life evolves." It's a clear and unadulterated statement of religious faith, neither more nor less a block to scientific inquiry than "God did it."
Therefore, the argument that if we somehow admit to an Intellegent Designer all scientific progress will stop is a sheer appeal to consequences--one which by no means works if one thinks about it for more than five seconds.
IDers do have evidence. For example, the evidence that cells are far to complex to simply occur by accident, but that every part is necessary for the cell to continue to metabolize and reproduce. We have research backing this up.
Evolutionists are the ones on the ropes here, and that is why you're having to use political power to sue ID out of the arena of discussion and ruin the careers of those who allow it a voice. You'd like to pretend that you're offering a level playing field but that the IDers just can't compete, but come now, we both know that isn't true.
Which brings me back to my original question: What are evolutionists so afraid of that they have to stack the deck and openly commit fraud?
balrog666, nice handle kid. Jesus loves you too.
You WASP.
The author's analogy is pitiful. If anything he makes the case for a purpose driven creation and then attempts to ridicule creationists for believing in it.
Evolutionist theory rests entirely upon a presupposition that life is an Immaculate Conception. Think about that one for a minute...
The "origin of species" is rooted in the idea of a singularity: the mechanics of the DNA molecule. All species of Terran life has it. Like the singularity of the "Big Bang" theory, the two are categorically inseparable as immaculate conceptions. It only takes a mere application of logic.
The perplexing question of human origin from a common ancestor to apes is even more problematic. According to evolutionary theory, humans (Homo sapiens) did not descend from apes, but from some "missing link."
Although Dr. Louis Leaky spent decades searching and found Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis, Olduvai Gorge gave no answers. Logic also suggests in order to "descend," there has to be something you descend "from" and something you ascend "to."
Evolutionary theory rooted in the universal human dissatisfaction for mortality is a vain search for human origin(s), an attempt to rationalize a yearning for connection to something eternal.
Now, since nobody knows the answers, it is only scientific method to consider all points of view on the issue in education. To do otherwise would be like students dancing around totems, with professors as witch doctors proclaiming intellectual taboos and making sacrifices.
This is far worse than what the ersatz secularists accuse the creationists of doing!
Good post.
Bummer, I thought everyone was being relatively courteous. Oh well.
It was nice while it lasted. I think I'll bail out of here now.
I think you misunderstand markets. Markets are simply the sum total of individual initiative, profit motive, direction and planning (preferably not the central kind). Take away those and there is no market.
Now what happens if you remove individual initiative, profit motive, direction and planning from evolution?
I'm picking up pattern. Where's the whoreofbabylon... she off tonight.
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