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.
Some of us conservatives don't care for darwinists. It's like having nazis or commies in the big tent.
Well said.
"fear"? I know of not a single Creationist who is motivated by fear. Another "straw man" argument.
Some of us don't care for racists, either. Gonna explain your Steve Biko crack, or just hope nobody noticed it?
That's exaclty what Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman thinks:
In his television program, Free to Choose, with "The Pencil Story." Friedman held a common yellow #2 pencil in his hand and said:
"Nobody knows how to make a pencil. There's not a single person in the world who actually knows how to make a pencil.
"In order to make a pencil, you have to get wood for the barrel. In order to get wood, you have to have logging. You have to have somebody who can manufacture saws. No single person knows how to do all that.
"What's called lead isn't lead. It's graphite. It comes from some mines in South America. In order to make pencils, you'd have to be able to get the lead.
"The rubber at the tip isn't really rubber, but it used to be. It comes from Malaysia, although the rubber tree is not native to Malaysia. It was imported into Malaysia by some English botanists.
"So, in order to make a pencil, you would have to be able to do all of these things. There are probably thousands of people who have cooperated together to make this pencil. Somehow or other, the people in South America who dug out the graphite cooperated with the people in Malaysia who tapped the rubber trees, cooperated with, maybe, people in Oregon who cut down the trees.
"These thousands of people don't know one another. They speak different languages. They come from different religions. They might hate one another if they met. What is it that enabled them to cooperate together?
"The answer is the existence of a market.
"The simple answer is the people in South America were led to dig out the graphite because somebody was willing to pay them. They didn't have to know who was paying them; they didn't have to know what it was going to be used for. All they had to know was somebody was going to pay them.
"What brought all these people together was an enormously complex structure of prices - the price of graphite, the price of lumber, the price of rubber, the wages paid to the laborer, and so on. It's a marvelous example of how you can get a complex structure of cooperation and coordination which no individual planned.
"There was nobody who sat in a central office and sent an order out to Malaysia: 'Produce more rubber.' It was the market that coordinated all of this without anybody having to know all of the people involved."
If individuals are permitted to direct their productive energies based only on their own individual economic self-interest, markets will spontaneously emerge, leading to accomplishments that no single individual evens knows how to, or could accomplish, even if he had the power of a Czar.
Similarly, other dynamical systems exhibit self-organizing properties; this was explored in detail by Illya Prigogine and his fellow Nobel-prize winners in their research on the thermodynamics of Non-Equilibrium systems. Basically, under the right conditions, if there's a sufficient energy gradient available to the system, self-organization of parts of the system is not only possible, it's unavoidable.
No I hadn't read that. It was very interesting, thanks!
Much of our ethics stem from the genetic link to others of our species, our 'family' groups. If there is any difference between ourselves and Chimps it is our ability to include those outside of our immediate family in socially defined 'family' groups such as the evo group, the creo/ID group, the watering hole group, or any other group where the members are considered part of the 'family'. Once you get outside that family, our moral behaviour towards others resembles quite closely those of the Chimps.
The Chimp grouping is generally around 40 - 100 members where each member is part of the immediate or extended family grouping. Within that group children are taken care of by adults, arguments are mediated, and violence although frequent is generally non-life threatening. Chimps outside that group are treated quite differently. They are attacked, sometimes killed, even at times females are stolen. They may be taunted and if encountered alone tortured.
This behaviour is reflected in human grouping behaviour almost exactly. Our groups can encompass much larger numbers than those of chimps, such as Education level, City, State/Province, Country, Religion, Race, or even entire cultures such as our western culture which encompasses North America and Europe. We generally treat those of our group with respect while those belonging to outside groups can be treated quite differently. This occurs most noticeably during wars.
An interesting aspect of human ethical behaviour is our ability to create not just one group but multiple groups within groups, our interaction with the members dependent on the context, what is important to us in relation to the group identity. We expand or condense our ethical interaction, even our moral identity, with the members of each group contingent on how the actions of members in the larger group affect the members of the inner group.
For example, if you, the other Freepers, were to threaten my family I would react violently. My internal image of you would be as outsiders that I would have no compunction against putting out of my misery. I suspect each and every one of us would react the same. However, if you did not threaten my immediate family I would, as I do, accept you as part of my group, - as belonging in my inner sanctum - so to speak. If we as freepers were threatened by outsiders, such as those nasty little Democrats, I would immediately include all freepers as family and react against the outsiders by pummeling their pointy little heads. Again I suspect the rest of you would do the same. This expansion of group member inclusion, depending on the threat context, could eventually encompass all of humanity and beyond.
Even though chimps do not do this to the extent we upper apes do they do have the initial base of ethical treatment down pat. Family group not only matters to a great extent, but indeed determines the interaction between any number of individuals.
I guess what I'm trying to say in this mind addled mess is that we ain't so different from the other apes in our development of ethics.
It also means that our ethics will not be different whether we believe in a God or not. The religious absolute morals contained in so many religious texts are morals that were condensed from our natural behaviour and our cultural needs. The basic human ethic will always be part of our psyche with only slight culturally driven modifications.
By the by, the only reason culture influences our basic human ethic is population size. The larger and more anonymous the culture the more the society needs to modify and control the moral behaviour of its residents. Laws, laws, laws....
I now have a throbbing headache.
You're not being really objective about this are you?
jennyp, who endows you with your inalienable rights?Reality. The fact that I cannot function as a human being without them. And the fact that the type of society that supports life as a human cannot exist without them. Every historical example of societies working or not to sustain the flourishing of their inhabitants as humans has pointed to individual rights being essential for our survival.
???
You are confusing the process with the agent. The whole point of the comment is that the number of agents, as the number increases, impart cumulatively less and less individual influence on the process. It eventually gets to the point where the agent is irrelevant to the process aside from being just one of the undirected parts of the whole.
O horrible man! By linking together the concepts inherent in both free market capitalism and undirected evolution, you are forcing the creationists to face some very uncomfortable thoughts about what it means to be a conservative.
"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die."
Uh-oh, another your-brain-on-creationism candidate! :-)
Methinks thou doest presume too much.
Science is not afraid of ID or creationism. Scientists spend a great deal of time trying to eliminate extraneous effects from corrupting the outcomes of experiments. ID and creationism are simply some of those possible extraneous effects. Should they get special dispensation and be allowed to colour not only the results but the process of science?
Methinks not young buddy.
So much for Freedom, eh mullah conspiritor?
But not in groups?
I hope no one else said this, it wouldn't be as funny as mine.
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