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.
But the point being made was that "submission" is not "morality", it's "Islam"
Ooooh---then maybe in some flashy colors!
As xzins has already pointed out, that's a statement of pure metaphysical (religious) faith, without a hint of science in it. It's on par with saying, "When each atom in evolution's system acts according to it's rules, computers assemble themselves spontaneously."
I admire a faith which depends on a 1 in 10^300 chance (or whatever you want to calculate the odds of random abiogenesis at). I just wish you guys were honest enough to admit your faith for what it is, and cease teaching such religious ideals in our science classes.
Prove a designer did it.
Prove that an intellegence produced your post, which has far less information in it than a "simple" cell.
And I suppose you've never thrown around the term "Darwinist".
I've usually said "evolutionist" or "evo" for short. Why? Is Darwinist a purjorative?
The equivalent would be for me to refer to you guys as "godless" on a continual basis. Which I can start doing if you want, but I'll wager that you'll start calling me down on using prejudicial language to color the debate. And you'd be right to do so--just as I'm right to call you down for the equivalent.
Then you admit that Genesis is not literal.
Not at all. I think Genesis is entirely literal. However, I also know enough Hebrew, its original language, to point out that yom ("day") may speak of a period of time longer than 24-hours, an age, as it does in the common Biblical phrase "the Day of the Lord." Ergo, I can conceed the issue of the age of the universe for the sake of discussion without having to agree to the absurd evolutionary paradigm that matter + energy + time = complex information. Setting my room on fire does not result in it becoming more organized, nor does randomly splattering paint on a canvas produce a work on par with The Last Supper or the Mona Lisa.
As for the "development of man," when you guys manage to produce some missing links that aren't either chimpanzees, arthritic men, pigs' teeth, or outright frauds that are actually distinguishable enough from modern man to be an issue, I'll worry about it. Until then, I owe you no apology for my belief that Man is a special creation of God. I wouldn't argue that that belief should be taught in a biology class, of course. I just want you guys to stop padding the evidence presented to the kids with unsupported leaps of logic and known frauds. I also want you to knock off the hypocrisy of pretending that IDers could get a fair hearing in peer reviewed journals when we all already know what happens to those who dare to let them be heard.
You wouldn't think that'd be too much to ask, but apparently it is.
Funny position for a professed atheist to take. Is it your position that this presupposition is a "useful lie" then?
Thanks, you always make me laugh!
"If you think this outcome requires no intelligence, why don't growing, wealthy economies spring up from schools of fish, or swarms of bees?"But neither swarms nor schools are led by an all-knowing leader who decides what the swarm will do or what shape it will take. And I doubt that the individual bees or fish have any concept that they are even part of a swarm, much less understand where the swarm is going or what the swarm is "deciding" to go after.This is a good point. Hayek stated that the "extended order" arose without the need for one person to know everything, and argued [convincingly, IMO] that no one person COULD know everything, and any system based on central "rational planning" was therefore doomed to fail. However, he did not argue that the "extended order" arose out of circumstances where no one knew anything.
Oh no... not out of hat. I picked Stephen Biko specifically because his is one of many animal skulls one might find in South Africa. Lovely to see an evolutionist use the term "ape-like nonhuman" as if "human", "ape" or "animal" meant anything to them. What's it mean to you?
If you think this is a scholarly essay, you should start listening to Air America political commentary. I don't think the creationists are afraid of anything; it's the evolutionists who sould about as rabid as the Democratic Party.
Yes, yes - I get the picture. You're going to continue in your quixotic defense of an idiotically racist statement, rather than simply own up to it. We all get it, I'm sure.
Splashing paint on canvas a billion times might be the sort of "art" only an evolutionist could appreciate.
Then your side is lying to children in school by pretending that it is and pretending further that you have a valid theory of abiogenesis, the "primordial soup" nonsense. Your side is also being awfully persnickidy about ID, given that you're admitting that you have no alternative to explain away the need for intellegent design for the first cells to form, let alone to explain the evolutionary leaps (i.e. the Cambrian explosion) since then.
If the Evos were honest and simply broadcast to everyone, "Sorry, but at the present time we have no valid theory of abiogenesis," the issue of teaching ID in school wouldn't even be on the table.
This thread is an advertisement for "Anti-Evos Gone Wild".....
One thing Cs are not afraid of is Bird Flu.
No, it is not my position, it is logic. Test it. Aristotle gave us the tools...
Thank you. Now crawl back to evolution central where you can all commiserate about how playing the race card failed to work because the Christian thing just doesn't give a crap about what you call it. It's a lesser animal that can't be reasoned with and not quite evolved enough yet to understand evolution. ;-)
Are those crickets I hear?
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