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.
I'll bet there are few women who may not agree with that.
Anyone who says I am immoral is no different than any preacher or rabbi saying I am a sinner.
The mythical rights of women or men are also meaningless. The very concept of rights is also founded in religion. Since the enlightened person is freed from any primitive superstitions about some ‘God’ they are free from having to worry about rights. Only raw power counts, and humans are just meat puppets for the powerful.
That would violate the Second Law of Thermopylae.
Bats DO fly, though. No feathers :)
The concept was formulated by men.
"the enlightened person is freed from any primitive superstitions about some ‘God’ they are free from having to worry about rights."
Wrong. That's simply an empty claim. You are free to engage in defining rights and the morality to protect them, but you will not be excused from violating those rights. They are protected, or ivolated, not by God, but by men.
"Only raw power counts, and humans are just meat puppets for the powerful."
You mean like the devine right of kings placed here by God? Or, the right of any group whatsoever to dictate with authoritarian power? Romans 13 says to obey them, because God put them here. I say that's bogus. We have rights and a moral code which are designed to protect the life and inherent sovereignty of will we were born with. Other men agree. I suppose you will have to resort to raw power to attempt to force our submission.
If “morality” is defined by men, as you say, what has the Bible got to do with it? Why even bring it up? Because you are just one of those pathetic anti-Christians?
Morality is entirely rooted in a presupposition that some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior. It is based on a false premise, esoteric hobgoblins that have no substance.
Anyone who says I am immoral is no different than a preacher or rabbi saying I am a sinner.
You are not going to slap a new label on it hoping (and praying) I will not notice.
You are a blithering moron.
A possible re-construction of history by comparative morphology of the genome or the fossil record requires inferential leaps of faith that may be reasonable, but they are not empirical. Possibilities and probabilities of intelligent design also require inferential leaps of faith when organized matter that performs specific functions is recognized. Neither common descent nor intelligent design are, in the strict sense, empirical science. They only make use of empirical science, from which they make reasonable conjecture.
The good ole days really did have text books that "conflated" abiogenesis and evolution. I used those text books. I remember.
That's the impression I get, too.
"So, were/are airplanes created, or are they the result of random chance?"
They were imperfectly designed by human beings.
"Can't you evolutionists come up with a united front. The problem with evolutionists is that they can't agree on hardly anything about how evolution actually works, if it works at all."
Yes, they can. Creationists just can't stop lying about what scientists says.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
Jeremiah 2:27 Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us.
The theory of evolution is thousands of years old. And it's always been a religion.
You can continue to insist that purpose is absent from the evolution of an eye. But your basis for insisting cannot be a scientific one.
That includes biochem and in particular, the biochemical foundation for evolution. That includes the mechanisms of Genetics.
"science deals only with the natural and not the supernatural because the supernatural is outside the realm of science"
That's right, because the supernatural is not subject to the scientific method. That's a fact, not a presumption.
Creationists are the one group on FR that can be counted on to flat-out lie on a routine basis. It's an accurate observation.
Sad but true.
You brought it up.
"I will not notice."
Obviously.
ROFL!
Your conclusion is that all devout, faithful Christians (and Jews too, as far as I understand) are really Muslim? Any religion which expects submission to God is really Islam? That's a laugh!
Except that evolution overextends itself beyond the evidence, reaching from observable, minor change within a species to explaining the very existence of all species. It's not that evolution doesn't take place at all, it's that evolution simply isn't as powerful as so many scientists seem to faithfully believe.
The Creator made the species, not evolution. Man has always been man; apes have always been apes. Differences in each are easily observed as genetic changes over successive generations. No geneticist has ever been able to even guide the process to result in a new species. Nature certainly never has alone.
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