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.
You don't understand bees. Bees are intelligent. Not only that, bees actually create wealth. They build their hives from wax which is secreted on their thoraxes. They mix wax with pollen to form propolis, a glue which they use to seal the open spaces around the hives. They harvest nectar and turn it into honey by fanning it with their wings.
Funny thing about bees. We could talk all day about bees and there would never be one moment where I had to explain what bees do by saying "God did it."
Not to diss God or anything, it just wouldn't come up.
You have every pulpit and every parochial school in the nation to advance your "theory", you have media and even the public square to advance it.
That does not seem enough to ID proponents, they now demand that publicly funded schools be forced to promote the religious belief of their choice.
Not really. If there's a God, it might be a good idea to do what he wants in order to gain reward or avoid punishment. (Assuming it can be determined what he wants; there seems to be a bit of a global dispute over that). But doing something to get a reward or avoid punishment isn't a particularly lofty moral code. Murder and theft are wrong regardless of whether God exists and will punish me if I do them.
But the things with no legs are more llikely to do real damage, and I submit that the worst are two-legged.
I really like the analogy of biological evolution and free enterprise. The more I think about it the more striking it is.
Actually I was just being even handed. On the thread titled "What Are Evolutionists Afraid Of?" I put "High Taxes" as well.
I figure that is something every one is afraid of. :)
What a delightful worldview.
It makes SIN so much easier to ignore.
And it has so many nice names with big, important-sounding words; Objectivism, Humanism, Existentialism.
It has some not-so-nice names, too; Hedonism, Nihilism, Materialism, Atheism.
But even the not-so-nice names still sound way more important and clever than Faith.
I was once an atheist and an evolutionist.
I laughed and scoffed at the Christians and their silly superstitions.
I was so very clever.
But when all seemed meaningless, when nothing made sense anymore, when the worship of intellect and cleverness and debate at the altar of La Déité de Raison could not deliver the satisfaction it promised, Jesus SAVED me.
We talk alot about Law in this forum.
What's the point of having ANY Laws at all if they are not based on absolutes?
And how can we have an absolute if we don't have an external, transcendent TRUTH that's true whether you like it our not, whether you believe it or not, whether you even KNOW it or not?
So you do you!
No, they really don't. They may have some fuzzy "spiritual" belief that requires no commitment nor definition. Yes, there are plenty of people who hold incompatible, inconsistent beliefs, but therin lies the problem.
If you claim to believe in God, yet believe that the universe and its inhabitants, in all their complexity, came to be through the workings of chaos, time and chance, then you're simply being dishonest with yourself.
I suppose one could claim to believe in the Holy Trinity of Chaos, Chance and Time. Are those the gods to which you refer?
Our Forgotten Goddess: Isabel Paterson and the Origins of Libertarianism.
I didn't know if you had seen this ...
When you can prove that something or everything, can simply appear out of nothing, then get back to me and we can discuss "scientific". Until then, they are all theory.
The guy makes an argument in the first three sentences and then refutes his own argument in the third sentence.
No reason for anybody else to participate in the debate, he's got all sides covered.
I think I've grown to the point where there is nothing I fear. I used to be afraid of dying - but after a couple of near misses, I don't fear it any more. I HATE the idea of dying, but it no longer strikes fear when I see it.
While efficient economies do not require "socialist planners", one would be wrong to suggest that the order of a free economy is not designed. It's actually quite the opposite. There is a conscious design by the individuals who participate in it.
also, it is intellectually dishonest to compare biology and economics. They are not the same.
That's because you're not trying to describe how bees came to be the way they are. Describing how something already is doesn't require much in the way of explaining its creator.
I've always wondered why we can't fly. It would be a major benefit I think. Why haven't we been able to adapt to flight?
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