What Are Creationists Afraid Of?

The New Individualist ^ | 1/2006 | Ed Hudgins

[jennyp]

...

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.

...

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.

[Virginia-American]

P-Marlowe said: I thought I left this thread. Please don't ping me back here.

So I won't.

In response to the primate family tree, he said:

DNA is a programming language for biological structures. Similar creatures with similar structures would be expected to have have similar DNA whether they are of common descent or common design.

This really doesn't say anything. For example, one would think that Asian apes would have more in common with each other than they have in common with African ones. After all, they share the same environment, predators, food plants, diseases.

So you'd think they would have similar DNA. But the chart shows that every ERV that the orangutans and gibbons have in common is also present in every African ape, including us.

Since P-Marlowe has decreed his participation in this thread is over, he'll never have to deal with this fact. How convenient.

[RightWingNilla]

To the lurkers: Anyone who wants a good, well-document analysis of the creationist argument should take a look

Thats just a bunch of fancy pictures! Where's the missing link?

[RightWingNilla]

The creationist trump card for everything is "common design".

Given all of this evidence, we are forced to comclude the designer is either an idiot or insane.

[Coyoteman]

Thats just a bunch of fancy pictures! Where's the missing link?

In post #816.

[Virginia-American]

...Gulf Coast Section of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists. ...

Agreed, it's an excellent site. These are the guys who make $$ from knowing where to drill and excavate.

I want to know how an ID teacher is supposed to answer the question "can I make money with ID?" (I mean honestly, of course)

The SEPM people sure make money using evolution as part of their knowledge base.

Think what happened to Mt. Morton of demon fame.

[Virginia-American]

oops, Mr. not Mt.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"I think the Designer is most likely the being we call God for a couple of reasons:'

Most likely?

Your faith is in doubt.

[PatrickHenry]

If the designer thought the flagellum was so important that he had to descend to earth and fiddle around with some bacteria in order to introduce it, then why don't we have at least one flagellum? I mean, they're really really important, so we should have dozens of the things. Big ones. There should be at least one whirling out of each ear, maybe more in the nostrils ... perhaps other places ...

[DallasMike]

How do you know they were based on his drawings and not on actual photos? I have yet to see a creationists who could tell the difference.

Sorry that those of who exercise some healthy skepticism aren't as brilliant as you but I reached my conclusion because the website says:

Page 223 of the Lion Book (BIOLOGY - The Living Science) and page 283 of the Elephant Book (BIOLOGY by Miller and Levine) each contain drawings of the early stages of embryonic development in several vertebrates. Although neither of these drawings are identical to his, they are based on the work of Ernst Haeckel (portrait at left), a 19th century German Biologist who was a pioneer in the study of embryonic development.

[Physicist]

If the designer thought the flagellum was so important that he had to descend to earth and fiddle around with some bacteria in order to introduce it, then why don't we have at least one flagellum?

Sperm cells.

(Are you a creationist, yet?)

[PatrickHenry]

Darn! I forgot all about the little fellas.

[jennyp]

That's a very interesting footnote you found there:

³ This proposition, that it was his reading of Adam Smith which led to Darwin's theories in evolutionary biology, has provoked more than one of my readers to write and question me. First, one has to understand the theories of Smith; they are evolutionary. (That Darwin read Adam Smith, there can be little doubt.) "The study of spontaneous orders has long been the peculiar task of economic theory, although, of course, biology has from its beginning been concerned with that special kind of spontaneous order which we call an organism. Only recently [1973] has there arisen within the physical sciences under the name of cybernetics a special discipline which is also concerned with what are called self-organizing or self-generating systems." [Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 36-7. Hayek (a Nobel Prize winner) cites, in a footnote, work done by H. von Foerster & Zopf and more particularly, in regards to the anticipation of the main conceptions of cybernetics by Adam Smith.] Further, at p. 23, ibid., Hayek wrote: "It was in the discussion of such social formations as language and morals, law and money, that in the eighteenth century the twin conceptions of evolution and the spontaneous formation of an order were at last clearly formulated, and provided the intellectual tools which Darwin and his eighteenth-century moral philosophers and the historical schools of law and language might well be described, as some of the theorists of language of the nineteenth century indeed described themselves, as Darwinians before Darwin." In support, Hayek cites, in his footnote, numerous studies, and interestingly, for me as a lawyer, the eminent jurist, Sir Frederick Pollock who in turn makes reference to Edmund Burke and Montesquieu as being 'Darwinians before Darwin'."

(Pinging you creationists who argued against applying the theories of spontaneous order to biology. If you argue with me, you argue with Friedrich Hayek! :-) Also pinging some of those who argued in favor of Hayek.

[PatrickHenry]

Some very general (and sometimes overlapping) Wikipedia articles that touch on the same subject -- the unguided organization and growth of systems in physics, chemistry, biology, economics, and even law:

Self-organization.
Self-assembly.
Emergent properties.
Spontaneous order.
Law Merchant.

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

giving room for the possibility that the yamim ("days") are not 24-hour periods

Genesis uses yom preceded by a numerical value to indicate the intent that a literal day was meant. There are no places in the bible where yom preceded by a numerical value was used to mean "ages." Also, it opens up a whole can of worms, such as if plants and vegitation were made on the third "age" and sunlight wasn't made until the fourth "age" how did they survive millions of years without photosynthesis etc., etc.? The vein you are going in with your last post was also a direction I have been researching lately. I was pleased to read your post and wanted to share the little bit of info with you. If you would like me to expand further on it, I'd love to, I just finished a book on this topic and am always looking for references if you have read any good ones lately.

Regards,

K4

[Ichneumon]

All natural macro processes (those happening at less than .3 times the speed of light) result in matter moving to ever greater levels of disorder.

Uh huh. Sure. You betcha. Then please explain how this order arose from disordered water vapor by macro processes at less than .3 times the speed of light:

More ordered forms of matter are only possible with large energy inputs, because so much is lost as entropy.

Actually, snowflakes (which are "more ordered forms of matter" than the water vapor from which they form) are easily formed when the vapor *LOSES* energy and cools; the process in no way requires "large energy inputs" as you assert.

I regret to inform you that you haven't a clue what in the hell you're talking about.

[ThinkDifferent]

If you argue with me, you argue with Friedrich Hayek! :-)

Well, we do have quite a few economic creationists here. Remember how gas prices after Katrina couldn't possibly be the result of market forces; they had to be "designed"?

[Fester Chugabrew]

Then please explain how this order arose from disordered water vapor by macro processes at less than .3 times the speed of light . . .

Better yet, please explain how such a formation can take place apart from intelligence or design. Rates, temperatures - all physical considerations - taken into account. The only reason anyone is able to apprehend and quantify this phenomenon is because it is intelligible. How can something even be intelligible if intelligent design has little or nothing to do with what is observed?

We call a snowflake "natural," but I hardly think it is because empirical science has "determined" it as such. Empirical science may assume it as such, but there are still mysteries involved in this familiar scenario.

The short answer may very well be that "God did it." The long answer is the one science is supposed to tell us all, namely, how. When it gets down to the quantum level it could very well be holy cats.

[Giant Conservative]

Interesting article. One point it makes is that complex ordered systems can arise from the bottom up, from the interactions of people on the ground as it were. However, the principle that guides their interaction, such as embrace of free market enterprise, is still top-down vis-a-vis being an overarcing guiding principle which is "divine" in the sense of being system-permeating.

[Coyoteman]

holy cats?

[Giant Conservative]

Do you believe that this world was fashioned in seven solar days, and that all humankind is descended from a couple who lived in a land named Eden less than 12,000 years ago?