Who says we didn't?
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.
//If I were an atheist, I would still be dubious BECAUSE of my scientific training, not in spite of any lack of knowledge of science. It has nothing to do with God. Call us skeptics, not scared.//
I hear you bump.
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
Also brought up something I forgot; Creationists are the all time, never-will-be-challenged, give them the trophy permanently, CHAMPIONS of out-of-context quotations.
I believe there's an entire page devoted to the subject, let me look around and find it.
jennyp, who endows you with your inalienable rights?
???
It's always there isn't it? Beware of the time when they can present one of these arguments and can actually hide their anger and agenda.
Muleteam1
"Liberals and advocates of Bill Clinton come to their beliefs in part through honest errors and in part from evasions of facts and close-minded dogmatism."
"If there really is a God, then there are all kinds of uncomfortable moral implications which follow."
Along with eternal implications...
There is a view of the Bible that holds it is an "inspired" book and that not every word in it is literally true. If you hold to the inspired viewpoint, then the bible is not perfect, and you have to judgment calls and interpret various passages. This is intellectually more challenging, so the fundies opt for the lazier viewpoint.
For example, thou shalt not commit adultery. Forty two year old Bob is married to Betty. Betty is a 40 year old shrew who denies him much of everything fun. Bob can truly say that he is not in love with Betty, yet they have two teenage sons in the house.
Buffy is 25 and was run off the set of "Cancun Girls Run Amok" for too much sex.
Bob decides that he is in love with Buffy who fills his nights with love and pleasure, while he in turn fills a certain void in her life.
Does Bob commit adultery with Buffy, and thus pass the lonely hours married and providing a home to his sons and Betty or does Bob adhere to the Commandment and eschew Buffy?
You are Bob's pastor and he cometh to you for advice. If he stays away from Buffy, he's going to have to divorce Betty or he will die from a buildup of certain natural energies that must be periodically released.
However, upon divorce, Betty suffers. She no longer has her own special victim to torure. The two sons suffer. They will spend the majority of their time with Shrewwife, who will not provide them with nurturing either. Shrewwife will holler at them, attempt to discipline them with tales of how their own screwups cause her distress (as opposed to the typical expediant male solution of simply clobbering them!) Betty, meanwhile, being 40, a shrew, and with two pieces of baggage, will begin sleeping with Mike, the local meth distributor.
As a unit, Bob, Betty, and Sons will have fewer financial resources and Sons may not make college. Betty will be as happy as a pig in slop being mistreated by Mike, but he will abandon her quickly for a younger dupe. Buffy will no doubt required certain bodily enhancements of the siliconic variety and much new clothing, or she will degenerate into Betty.
In short, divorce makes the family suffer. Adultery, however, permits the natural order of things to continue. Everybody is happier.
Now if you believe Noah took two elephants aboard the yacht, you advise suffering. If however, you believe that dinosaurs bones are really, really old, you advise Bob to simply have his affair.
Does it make sense now?
parsy, the sage.
Randomness and uncertainty is built into the very fabric of the entire Universe at a basic level; quantum mechanics. And it can even be experimentally demonstrated.
I'm actually considering writing some sort of an article or book on the subject, but I've noticed how many people have this unbelievably deep seated terror and horror of the very idea of "randomness" or "chaos"....I'd suspect for a lot of people words like that would set off a more negative psychological reaction than words like "evil" or "Satan."
Who says we didn't?
On the topic of the 'basis for ethics' depending on your beliefs; yes, we all have a conscience whether or not you believe in God, but without the belief in a higher deity you are merely dealing with earthly cause-and-effect consequenses for your actions and your own feelings. Looking back on history, you cannont deny that this has a bad effect on behavior.
I believe God set up a universe, where chaos, time, and chance allowed complexity to occur. I suspect there are some ID-generated nudges in evolution, here and there, by God or some other intelligence, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. It's in the creation of the universe as a place capable of generating and supporting intelligence that I see God's hand, more than in the evolution of specifically human intelligence.
That's the interpretation of some, not all. I'm still waiting for them to find the famous "ape-like creature".
No, it's not. It also isn't all that God requires of us. What if God will reward or punish you according to your humility and submission to His will? What if he requires that you learn of Him, confess His divine supremacy and commit to following Him forever? What if He expects you to follow all of His commandments to the very best of your ability?
What if the reward for that commitment, faith and devotion is far, far beyond the ability of human kind to even comprehend?
That is the God which a very large portion of the human population declares. It doesn't sit well with some.
Perhaps you would care to debunk some of those wild claims, using your scientific training.
The article uses an arguement from economics for a leap of faith into the arenas of chemistry and physics. How about starting with the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
a God? Which God? They apparently don't believe in the God of the bible.
More like, what are evolutionists afraid of? Creationists are afraid that atheists want to outlaw religion, as they have been doing for years.
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