A Darwinian Pilgrimage

Several years ago I attended a Christian biology conference in Poland. The participants, all devout Christians of various stripes, were very sympathetic to ID. I met a young biology graduate student, a very bright young lady, and we discussed Darwin’s theory. She expressed much admiration for his work; she disbelieved macroevolution, of course, but she insisted that Darwin’s contribution to understanding microevolution and his concept of natural selection were brilliant and were the cornerstone of modern biology.

A Low Bar

I despise Darwinism. It is, in my view, an utterly worthless scientific concept promulgated by a third-rate barnacle collector and hypochondriac to justify functional, if not explicit, atheism. Richard Dawkins got it right: Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. A low bar, admittedly, but “natural selection” satisfied, and still satisfies, many. Even bright Christians, regrettably.

Darwin still has some cache among design advocates — the usual trope is that he provided evidence for common descent and explained microevolution. In this I differ from some of my friends and colleagues sympathetic to ID/Thomism. Darwin’s “theory” is completely worthless to science, a degradation of philosophy, and lethal to culture.

As Jerry Fodor (an atheist philosopher) has pointed out, natural selection is an utterly empty concept. It does no work; it explains nothing. Evolution is driven by natural history and genetic and phenotypic constraint. “Natural selection” adds nothing to our understanding of the process. Of course things change and survivors survive. Any real understanding of change in populations entails understanding the natural history of the changes and the biological constraints imposed by nature. Some of this evolutionary change is best explained as accidental. Some is best explained as design, and the conjunction of accident and design is where evolutionary change takes place. “Natural selection” is meaningless junk science — dismal logic put to the service of atheism. Darwinism is the most effective engine of atheism in modern times, except perhaps for consumer culture, for which Darwin bears some responsibility. “Survival of the fittest” casts a scientific imprimatur on acquisition as a life-goal.

The Survival of Survivors

Darwinism is frequently cited as necessary to understand biological relatedness and taxonomy. Nonsense. Comparative biology dates to Aristotle and Galen. Taxonomy reached its pinnacle with Linnaeus, who worked decades before Darwin was born. Darwinism is frequently cited as necessary for medical science. Yet it plays no role in medical education, and never has, except for eugenics, which is merely applied Darwinism and is the darkest corner of medical science. And Darwinism tells us nothing of value about microevolution; the survival of survivors is tautological.

The genuine study of evolutionary change (e.g.. in populations of bacteria exposed to antibiotics) entails genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, etc. “Natural selection” adds nothing to our understanding of bacterial resistance, and in fact is a prime impediment to biology and medicine over the past century and a half. Darwinian enthusiasm eclipsed Mendel’s discovery of genetics for a half-century, and the myth of “junk DNA” has set molecular genetics back decades. Darwinism is a mere “narrative gloss,” as Philip Skell said, and a crippling impediment to science.

So why does this idiot “science” gain such respect? Jerry Coyne sheds some light on the only really important question about Darwinian evolution: why on earth would anyone not laugh at it?

The Darwinian Holy Land

Coyne recounts a pilgrimage to Darwinian Holy Land. In “A field-trip course in England on Darwin and evolution,” Coyne tells of a summer course at Oxford for Harvard undergrads. The young pilgrims tour “Darwinland” (Coyne’s word). They visit the messiah’s birthplace, his hometown (Shrewsbury/Nazareth), the sites of his revelations, and walk in the footsteps of his prophets and apostles. Pilgrims can finger his artifacts and gaze on his holy books. It’s quite a spectacle. It is clearly a religious journey, with the reverence and fervor of a cult.

And that is the meaning of Darwinism. This worthless science, idiot philosophy, and cultural rot is the creation myth of atheists, and homage is paid, as a duty, to the prophet and to his priests. Darwinian idolatry would be funny, if not for the trail of misery and horror Darwin left in his wake.

The salient influence of Darwinian worship is not on science, but on ethics. With the Origin of Species and Descent of Man, vindication of the strong and eradication of the weak was, for the first time in history, given a scientific imprimatur. The ugliest impact of the Darwinian understanding of man is this lie: man is an evolved animal, nothing more, and all of man’s highest qualities evolved from the victory of the strong over the weak.

The only thing left out of the Darwinian pilgrimage to Oxford is Golgotha. That requires a separate trip to southern Poland, to understand the sacrifice Darwinism demanded, and still demands, of us.

The Constitution assumes:

Free will, hence the capacity for self-governance.
Moral responsibility hence accountability under the law.
Intrinsic dignity of the human being, hence inalienable human rights.
Unchanging moral principles and a stable human nature, making possible a stable system of Constitutional law.

In contrast, under the materialistic picture of reality pervasive in our culture, you get this:

Not free will, but determinism.
Since moral ideas evolve and are instinctive rather than a matter of choice, moral responsibility and accountability are undermined.
No conception of a design or purpose behind life, therefore the erosion of the concepts of human dignity and inalienable rights.
Since human nature evolves and moral law evolves, the supreme law governing our political system is also infinitely malleable.

The clash of these conceptions of man and morality raises the question of whether the American system can survive the triumphant dissemination of Darwinian materialism — that is, if the way of thinking about human nature that gave rise to that system in the first place has been widely rejected.
- Stephen C. Meyer
Now compare to leading thinkers of neo-darwinism:

Dawkins - we are merely lumbering robots doing the bidding of selfish genes created by a blind watchmaker in a universe of blind pitiless indifference without good or evil.

Rosenberg – we have an illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world - we live with the myths that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning - and that there is a person “in there” steering our body.

Provine - no ultimate foundation for ethics exists - no ultimate meaning in life exists – and human free will is nonexistent.

Pinker - brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth

Ruse - ethics is an illusion created by our genes to deceive us – morality is an adaptation.

Harris - Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making…. You will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise.

Coyne - You are robots made out of meat - behavior is absolutely determined by the laws of physics… That is the infinite regress and the sort of annoying thing about determinism. It’s turtles all the way down.

Dennett - Nobody is conscious - we are all zombies - Darwinism is like “a universal acid; it eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view.

No one can claim that neo-darwinism, which is ultimately a mindless process, made our brains but yet has no relevance on the brain's contents - our thoughts and behavior (see Darwin’s, Descent of Man or Evolutionary Ethics ). This underlying fundamental idea that deals with mankind’s very essence is what separates neo-darwinism from other scientific theories.

For example, if you reduce the meaning of "human" to "just another animal" - eugenics is fair game. The scientific data is well supported in animal husbandry. Eugenics is only abhorrent to those who recognize that there is something transcendently special about humans. Let’s not forget the ‘progressive’ eugenics movement that caused the compulsory sterilization laws in 30 U.S. states that resulted in more than 60,000 sterilizations of disabled.

It was even taught in our schools. See below from Hunter’s Civic Biology (the textbook at the centre of the Scopes Trial):

Evolution of Man. - Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill his prey, first using rough stone implements for this purpose. As man became more civilized, implements of bronze and of iron were used. About this time the subjugation and domestication of animals began to take place. Man then began to cultivate the fields, and to have a fixed place of abode other than a cave. The beginnings of civilization were long ago, but even to-day the earth is not entirely civilized.
The Races of Man. - At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest race type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America?.
Charles Darwin and Natural Selection. - The great Englishman Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to realize how this great force of heredity applied to the development or evolution of plants and animals. He knew that although animals and plants were like their ancestors, they also tended to vary. In nature, the variations which best fitted a plant or animal for life in its own environment were the ones which were handed down because those having variations which were not fitted for life in that particular environment would die. Thus nature seized upon favorable variations and after a time, as the descendants of each of these individuals also tended to vary, a new species of plant or animal, fitted for the place it had to live in, would be gradually evolved?.
Artificial Selection. - Darwin reasoned that if nature seized upon favorable variants, then man by selecting the variants he wanted could form new varieties of plants or animals much more quickly than nature. And so to-day plant or animal breeders select the forms having the characters they wish to perpetuate and breed them together. This method used by plant and animal breeders is known as selection?.
Improvement of Man. - If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment?.
Eugenics. - When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.
The Jukes. - Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as "Margaret, the mother of criminals." In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the "Kallikak" family. This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves!
Parasitism and its Cost to Society. - Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.
The Remedy. - If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Also keep in mind, with neo-Darwinism, there is always an inferior race and a superior race – there must be an intermeadiate bridging the gap – or as Darwin states:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

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