The “Fearing Evolution” Trope

Writing at National Review, Razib Khan explains why “evolutionary biology is nothing for conservatives to fear,” since “it is one of the crowning achievements of modern Western civilization.” He takes aim at our colleague Michael Behe and urges against “rehashing the same old debates.” But as I’ve watched it over the past couple of decades, the evolution debate has itself rapidly evolved in interesting directions.

Khan links to criticisms of Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves, from snarling atheist Jerry Coyne. However, he doesn’t mention Professor Behe’s own extensive replies to his critics, collected on the book’s website. Readers will find those stimulating, as they will the confession of the latest scientist to abandon belief in Darwinism — Yale polymath David Gelernter, well known to conservatives, writing in the current Claremont Review of Books. For an additional helpful perspective, see Ben Shapiro’s recent interview with Stephen Meyer.

More Daring than That

Despite the familiar trope, I don’t doubt evolution out of “fear.” Admittedly, I wouldn’t relish trying to explain how my own Jewish tradition can be reconciled with the idea that life’s origins give no indication of purpose or intention. But untangling theological puzzles is not something most of us regard with primal terror. On the other hand, one of evolutionary psychology’s best points is that humans share with apes, dogs, and other animals a distinct anxiety about status. As Tom Wolfe (another conservative Darwin doubter) pointed out in his final book, accepting evolution has always been interlaced with concerns about personal prestige. To doubt Darwin threatens to shame you as what Khan calls an “evolution denier,” aka, a rube. By far the less anxious option is to affirm evolution without thinking about it. But conservatives, necessarily independents in our current culture, should be more daring than that.

Darwinism’s Legacy

There are other good reasons to consider the evidence for yourself. Darwinism’s legacy to civilization, for one thing, is no crown I’d want to wear. Evolutionary theory has been offered as justification for ranking the human races from top to bottom, for exhibiting Africans in zoos, for compelling sterilization of those deemed evolutionarily unfit, and for gassing them in death camps. As I pointed out here already today, a more clear-sighted Darwinist, Yuval Noah Harari, concedes that as a matter of objective reality, Darwinism would shred the idea of equal rights, rewriting the Declaration of Independence. What follows the Preamble would be rendered a giant non sequitur. So long, American civilization.

None of that per se weighs against the truth of Darwinism. Khan rightly praises “Western modernity’s commitment to truth as a fundamental value.” But as Charles Darwin himself understood, getting at what’s true requires “fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides.” The thoughtful Darwin skeptics I’m familiar with, including the 1,000+ PhD scientists willing to go on the record about it, have done that.

I agree with Klinghoffer, evolution is not a crowning achievement for western civilization. I think everyone agrees genetic changes occur in nature – but in his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Darwin put forth the idea that all life came from a single common ancestor and changed without design, goal, or purpose - and humans are merely another animal – and our brain and morality developed as such - as he put forth in Descent of Man::

…Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means. There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring."
"We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”
-Charles Darwin, Descent of Man

In the Darwinian view of humans as animals, what would cause us to stop practicing animal husbandry within our own species? Reduce the meaning of "human" to "just another animal", and eugenics is fair game. Scientific data is well supported in animal husbandry. Eugenics is only abhorrent to those who recognize that there is something transcendently special about humans.

In the early decades of the 20th century, Human Zoos were created where thousands of indigenous peoples were put on public display and touted as “missing links” between man and apes. Their public display was arranged with the enthusiastic support of the most elite members of the scientific community, and it was promoted uncritically by America’s leading newspapers.

With Darwinism, there is always an inferior race and a superior race – there must be an intermediate bridging the gap – or as Darwin states:

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized 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.”
- Charles Darwin, Descent of Man

If Darwin allowed Dawkins to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist then he also allowed scientists to be an intellectually fulfilled racist.

Racism and eugenics were the hallmarks of the theory of human evolution in the early 20th century, representing a clear consensus of evolutionary biologists as well as other scientists and leaders in higher education and government (endorsed by the Supreme Court in 1926). Eugenics is an ugly part of American history that was taught to our children (See: Hunter’s Civic Biology ) – a movement that caused the compulsory sterilization laws in 30 U.S. states that resulted in more than 60,000 sterilizations of disabled.

Even today we have not rid society of eugenics as we see in; high rates of abortion among the poor, the killing of female infants in China and India, and the selection of desired traits from sperm banks and frozen eggs.

So no, evolution is a not a crowning achievement for western civilization – in fact it is the opposite. As a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge puts it:

"For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. From Plato to Aquinas to Newton, maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe reflected the purpose or design of a preexistent mind, a Creator, served to guarantee humanity's own sense of purpose and meaning. Yet today in nearly every academic discipline from law to literary theory, from behavioral science to biology, a thoroughly materialistic understanding of humanity and its place in the universe has come to dominate. Free will, meaning, purpose, and God have become pejorative terms in the academy. Matter has subsumed mind; cosmos replaced Creator."
- Stephen C. Meyer

Now compare this quote above to the one below from a college textbook:

"Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism --- of much of science, in short --- that has since been the stage of most Western thought."
Futuyma, D. J., Evolutionary Biology, p. 2

I will say this, I do agree with Razib Khan that ”evolutionary biology is nothing for conservatives to fear” - it is not something to fear – it’s something to learn what lies at its core. So to reiterate at evolutions core is; no design, no goal, and no purpose.

So for a theist/deist to say the ‘creator’ used evolution to create mankind – is to say evolution was goal directed – and this is not the current theory of evolution.

Further to the point, for a theist/deist to say the ‘creator’ used evolution for mankind to adapt morality would also be incorrect according to the current theory of evolution. As Darwin himself stated:

If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.
- Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, and Selection in Regard to Sex

At the core of the current theory of evolution is materialism/naturalism and this is a worldview with consequences. For example, -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.

These are not Conservative principles.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.