Posted on 01/26/2006 1:47:10 PM PST by jennyp
...
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.
...
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.
Bad analogy.
In economics, intelligent people are influencing the money trails and situations in organized manners, not just letting the money sit in a bank until some outside force makes more money or less money or different money.
. What a horrible analogy, not even related.
Baloney. The site says:
As it turns out, Haeckel's contemporaries had spotted the fraud during his lifetime, and got him to admit it. However, his drawings nonetheless became the source material for diagrams of comparative embryology in nearly every biology textbook, including ours!
Not only that, but according to this news story, it took a 2003 court case here in Texas to remove drawings based on Haeckel's drawings from 2 textbooks and to remove from one book the claim that animal embryos have gill slits. It's worth noting that a group promoting the teaching of evolution in schools agreed with the creationist group on these items. Are you proud that it's creationists who are having to correct textbooks?
And, despite what creationists claim, Darwin NEVER used Haeckel's drawings, nor his arguments, to bolster evolution.
Really? Perhaps one reason for that was that "Origin of the Species" was published in 1859 and Haeckel's theories weren't published until 1866 and his his drawings weren't published until 1874.
Those who came after Darwin used both Haeckel's drawings and his arguments. The drawings in the book I linked to were based on Haeckel's drawings, for goodness' sake!
It was Haeckel who was a big promoter of Darwin, not the other way around. Check your history.
Check my original post. It was about Haeckel's drawings, which were bogus. Not only that, but when you tried to switch topics you got yourself into more of a mess because then you have to try to ignore the fact that the whole gill slit idea was popularized by Haeckel and was in a Texas textbook until at least 2003.They DO have gill slits (not gills, but the slits). It appears the court is as ignorant as you are. One of their other examples, the peppered moth studies, had an equally wrong conclusion.
Your temper is getting the best of you. Of course animal embryos don't have gill slits, but why did creationists have to go to court in 2003 to have these statements removed from a textbook? That's the point. I agree with you on evolution more than you probably believe but it's an embarassment that people who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old are having to correct textbooks preaching long-debunked theories.They DID rest on the exposed places of tree trunks. This proves if you have a stupid enough judge/jury, you can get any sort of silly verdict.
If you're actually interested in the peppered moth controversy, read this from Jonathan Wells of Berkeley. It's from the May 24, 1999 version of The Scientist (a very credible publication and one that I had the pleasure of reading for years) and the the title byline says "this classical story of evolution by natural selection needs revising.""And not for about 100 years. Again, using the drawings is NOT the same as promoting the biogenic law, which has been known to be false for some time now and is NOT taught. That there are stages that vertebrates go through in the early stages of embryological development that support evolution is true. That is why when I went to school we had actual photos.
Again, if biogenics is not taught, then why did a group have to go to court in 2003 to get the gill slits nonsense removed from a textbook? That's not exactly 100 years ago.Time to give this topic a rest.
Creationists are afraid of Alexander the coppesramith placemarker.
It may be a statement of poetry, a model, about the Tree of Life--but that's all it is.
I wish you all the luck in the world, and hope it is successful for you. Please don't post to me again.
Sometimes freepers reply to the text, and care little for the moniker, only to find out that one is posting to the Must Not Be Spoken To. It would be a consideration to identify yourselves in advance.
...Recently, some researchers ... have speculated that well-known figures of the past, such as Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, had Asperger syndrome ... a detailed case study of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein...
You may be onto something
.... sun is shrinking .....
Another creationist-contrary-to-reality claim!
(Hint for they unenlightened: as the fusion reactions take place in the sun, mass is being converted to energy, and that energy eventualy works it's way to the surface where it is radiated away as light. That means the sun is losing mass slightly over time, which decreases its gravity slightly. The slight decrease in gravity over time leads to an expansion (not contraction) of the size of the sun, as there is less gravity to counteract the thermodynamic pressure of the matter comprising the sun; hence the sun expands slight as it ages, which means it is larger now than it was several billions of years ago. Additionally, the sun's energy output increases with time; this also requires the solar radius to increase, as the increased energy output in the core further offsets the tendency of the gravity of the sun to compress its contents.
IOW, for the vast majority of the lifetime of the sun, its size increases with age. Hence, a billion years ago, it was smaller, not larger, than it is now.
IOW, your interlocutor couldn't have been more wrong if he tried.
Yes I do. Your abilities shine through in your posting history. Your knowledge of science struggles to reach the level "rudimentary" yet you have neither the humility nor the wisdom to accept that.
It is you and others who think evolution is a science like biology, chemistry, physics, building, mechanics, learning etc.
Professing themselves wise they became fools. Romans 1:22
Irrelevant scripture.
.Post 968 fossils do not prove evolution
Science does not deal in proof. Science deals in evidence. The evidence of the fossil record overwhelmingly supports evolution, along with many other forms of cross-correlating evidence.
, stalactites do not take thousands of years, moon receding away from the planet would have the land flooded twice a day millions of years ago, magnetic field loosing strength the earth would have to strong a field to support life, sun is shrinking would have been to hot to support life millions of years ago. Now I know all of you freolvutionist [sic] believe that these phenomena all fluctuate so that the decay rates of these are not a constant yet you foolishly believe that atomic decay has been constant.
Oh dear, a set of arguments so woefully ignorant and wrong-headed that even websites like the arch-YEC site "Answers in Genesis" say that they are fallacies and should not be used. Buy a clue. We have evidence for the fluctuating phenomena (that the fluctuations are real). In many cases we understand the physical mechanisms that cause fluctuation. For example the ocean floor near the transoceanic ridges is magnetically striped; this allows us to see past magnetic reversals in the new ocean floor created in the last few million years. Astronomical observations that give us consistent results tell us that atomic decay rates are constant. For example we can see the rate of decay of isotopes in close supernovae such as SN1987A, whose distance has been calculated using simple trigonometry at 170,000 light years. That indicates that decay rates 170,000 years ago were the same as they are now. Other much more distant supernovae show the same rates. Recent decay rates of Carbon 14 have been calibrated using tree-rings, varves, and archaeological inferences. In every case the assumption that decay-rates are constant is borne out by consistent results, even when different methods are used. If decay rates had been varying these methods would not even seem to work. Others have posted several articles (including articles from Christian websites) explaining radiometric decay in this thread, and debunking the oft-repeated creationist lies about it.
Incidentally you are being inconsistent. In your first paragraph you acknowledged that biology, chemistry, physics are sciences. Yet then you proceed to present a set of ignorant young-earth arguments which if true would invalidate the whole of atomic physics, astronomy, zoology, genetics, cosmology, astronomy, archeology etc. There would essentially be no science left if YEC were true. Yet, without a single successful prediction to YECs name, somehow we are expected to junk the whole of science in order to fit in with the expected results of a myth written by nomadic goatherds.
Science is not about acquiring knowledge about the world science is the state or fact of knowing knowledge whether you want to except [sic] it or not look it up in a dictionary. Not the Internet, try one that is older also with the original meaning, not the new and improved meaning.
You want to use archaic word meanings (and good luck in finding one that matches your contention) that's fine by me. I'll use the modern meaning, that is actually used by real, practicing scientists, not an ignoramus who shares his ignorance of science with us all.
Out of Town Until Saturday Night Placemarker
Oh dear, a set of arguments so woefully ignorant and wrong-headed that even websites like the arch-YEC site "Answers in Genesis" say that they are fallacies and should not be used.
And if AiG says it's a bad argument, then it must really be a bad argument.
Then again, I don't know if anyone actually reads AiG all the way through....
But I don't know any working scientist with his kind of leisure and attitude, nor single-purpose devotion not to science but to finding evo-doubters on a conservative forum--rather a reliably fruitful hunting expidition.
And the scientists of my acquaintance (and who they are might surprise you, however, this is just an anonymous forum...) are not rhetorical bullies and sneaky little cowardly, childish backstabbers who get quislings to do his arguing for him.
According to some odd and unnamed custom, he can talk and sneak around on FR posters, but can never be confronted directly, or he'll run squawking and sniveling to the mods. I know some mods on other political and gaming fora--and they hate being bothered with that kind of infantile behavior.
But YOU can call it debate. And I'll be around for your bullying sessions to warn the freepers who think that the conversation is in good faith, when it's not--
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.