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. MeyerNow 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.”
“to justify functional, if not explicit, atheism.” Bingo. Darwinism is simply an attempt to obviate the need for a Creator. If everything is related and evolved one from the other, God is not necessary. Nice try but no cigar. Where did matter come from?
Darwinism needs to join national and international socialism on the ash heap of history.
I think you forgot one of the things the Constitution assumes:
That people are basically evil. That’s why they built into it an elaborate system of checks and balances to keep evil at bay. Enlightened self interest of the offended branch of government would assert itself to stop the offending branch. Tyranny would then be impossible if the branches just asserted their constitutional powers.
That worked until the legislative branch caved completely to the judicial branch. The judicial branch now has far more power than the constitution envisioned, and the legislative branch, the only branch that could constitutionally stop them, is nowhere to be found.
I'm not saying there IS no evidence... I'm saying the author does not present it, even in outline form.
Does he assume we know all about it, and he is just preaching to the choir?
I'm just now reading The Edge of Evolution by Michael Behe. I like it, but it's a little steep for me. I wish someone out there would produce about 750-1000 words boiling it all down for us non-STEM majors.
Please forgive my grumpiness. I need caffeine.