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.
Of course I did!
How else would I find such a wonderful diagram of how "Evolution" flows so smoothly down thru time!
Anyone could right-click the picture and get where it came from: http://www.gcssepm.org/images/fossil_a.gif
"Who you gonna believe? Me; or your lyin' eyes???"
Carbon 14 dating is calibrated by dating objects of known age, such as Egyptian artifacts and tree-rings.
In the White Mountains of California there are standing dead trees (bristlecone pines). They each rings. Those rings form sequences. The sequences can be overlapped, to give a continuous tree-ring sequence back some 11,600 years.
By dating individual tree-rings, a calibration curve can be established which corrects for the amounts of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere, which vary slightly.
Using other techniques, such as glacial varves this calibration curve can be extended past 20,000 years.
Now you may not choose to believe in it, but tens of thousands of scientists find it an accurate method of dating.
So please do not tell me that Young Earth Creations is not a science.
Creationism in all of its forms are not science, they are religious beliefs.
It did in Darwin's case!!
"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proven to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many fake religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."
( Charles Darwin in his Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Dover Publications, 1992, p. 62. )
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
"I think that generally (& more & more as I grow older), but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."
( Quoted from Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 636. )
Of course I did!
How else would I find such a wonderful diagram of how "Evolution" flows so smoothly down thru time!
Anyone could right-click the picture and get where it came from: http://www.gcssepm.org/images/fossil_a.gif
Elsie, you are a classic.
It takes a rare individual to cut-and-paste a picture from an article that demolishes creation "science" and to then claim it is evidence for creation, or at least against evolution.
[By the way, what is this right-click stuff? My mouse has only one button.]
Well, from just a handful of folks 1492, we now got almost 300,000,000 in this country in ~500 years!
There were some Native Americans here also, back around 1492. Lets not forget them!
[Actually, they probably got here some 25,000 years ago. More evidence against a global flood and a young earth.]
All this in only ONE article!
Nobel time!!!!
What a hoot. A one button mouse. Probably a few missing cards from the deck too and a few spots missing from the dice.
No wonder you're an evilutionist, you can't count past 1.
My Logitech has 5, but at least 2 have no known function. Perhaps the function just hasn't evolved yet.
Not to mention Elsie implies we are all related to Columbus, too.
As you guys have been told before; you can have your own INTERPRETATION of the data, but NOT your OWN data!
[By the way, what is this right-click stuff? My mouse has only one button.]
Not even a vestigal one?
Wow! It devolved FAST! ;^)
My apologies for challenging you off the bat. However, your name is "creationist" and your tagline is more or less a weird defense of the 14th century concept of geology, so my preconceived notion of you is pretty fair.
You see, these threads can be harsh and while I certainly should have been more civil to you at the outset, you must understand this unique FR environment. We can be pretty honest and helpful here - like, for instance your homepage contains at least 7 grammatical/spelling errors in just a few scant sentences. As a FRiendly service to you, I'd suggest you clean them up lest some evil scientist who thinks the earth is maybe a tad more than 6006 years old sees that and thinks you to be a little less than "scholarly."
As for your tired contention that I and others here are somehow liberals, I'll let that slide. I have no idea why you'd say such nonsense, as eductation is certainly the trait of a good conservative.
Do have a good evening.
And would it for you too?
But seriously, when do you believe humankind first walked the Earth, and does such a date co-incide with the Genesis stories?
When do you believe humankind first walked the Earth? How many thousands of years ago?
Would you be willing to entertain the possibility that all of science is of divine design?
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