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.
In your opinion, did God create all (and I mean ALL) animals on earth in their present form with absolutely no changes between their time of creation and now?
Being able to fly isn't pure benefit; to be a flyable bird you have to have lightweight bones, etc. There are tradeoffs.
Most of the examples of flightless birds evolving from flying birds were on isolated islands with no predators that were a threat to the birds; they could get plenty of food just walking around; slight variations among the birds meant that some could fly a bit better than others, but the ones that could fly really well on these islands had no real advantage in living and reproducing over the ones in the species that could fly a bit less well; those birds had slight advantages in other areas and over time that's how those birds lost the ability to fly.
When you look at penguins, they DO have agressive and vicious predators in seals and sea lions, and since it would be a lot better if penguins could fly AWAY from those predators their inability to fly and loss of that ability to fly in the ancestors of the penguins would seem a mystery.
The anwswer is that the ability to swim for extended periods underwater to feed outweighed the advantages of being able to fly; it's really hard to have anything that can both fly and also swim for EXTENDED periods underwater; different requirements. There are some DIVING birds that can fly, but they can't really swim underwater.
Indeed there is. No-one is denying that possibility is true. But it has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, which is how bio-diversity arose once the first life appeared. Science tends to prefer natural solutions since they are the only things that science can test, but at the moment science has no firmly evidenced natural solution that describes how abiogenesis occurred. OTOH science has clearly observed mechanisms for evolution after that point.
That's Stephen Biko's skull.
Do we agree that gliding is another form of flight?
I guess when you don't have a rational argument to make, spewing a load of insults about your opponent -- as you have done -- is always a good way to let everyone know it.
Ahhh--so evolution only makes predictions about what happened in the past, huh? You can't use it to make predictions about what will happen in the future?
OK, then biblical creationism has also made correct "predictions" about the past in terms of describing cities and peoples that (until recently) science thought were only myths.
Yes it is.
No, it's not. You've given examples of evidence, which can be interpreted in several ways. Given that you said ...it is impossible to make such a prediction., I would say that without that ability to make predictions, evolution is not science.
Science involves hypothoses, tests, and conclusions. So faar, evolution has hypothosis and conclustions, but no tests.
Exactly. No two oceanic islands share a species of flightless bird, even though flightless bird species are commonly found on such islands. That this would be so was an early successful prediction of the theory of evolution, before all bird species on oceanic islands had been catalogued.
You were supposed to have been pinged with 183; I know I had you in the header...
Just a short search showed me that Ken Miller and Joe Levine were still using it in their textbooks prior to 1998. I'd be willing to wager an adult beverage that there are kids in this country still using on of the 4 older editions.
And why the heck did it take 5 editions for Miller and Levine to recognize that Haeckel's embryos were fudged in the first place?
Explaination of what the "fairy-tale story" involved is please.
Textbook writers Miller and Levine backpedal on the famous peppered moth experiments. Apparently they've decided that the experiments were fake but mostly accurate.
okay then thirty. who knows. the point is, that evolution should not be the sole presentation.
If you study this, and other similar fossils, there are many traits that are primitive. Mrs. Ples is certainly not a true ape, but does not completely match modern humans either. Somewhere in between.
Do you think A. africanus is human? What about the next group back? And the next. Where would you draw a line?
What advantage do birds that fish for a living get from being flightless?
Your argument is with another. Re-read my posts.
I'm saying that gliding is another form of flight.
Do you disagree?
I DO really hope the above was sarcasm :-)
If it wasn't sarcasm and was meant literally it's still about the funniest thing I've ever seen on here.
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