Darwinian Dissonance?

Internet Infidels ^ | Timeless | Paul A. Dernavich

[Heartlander]

---

Darwinian Dissonance?

Paul A. Dernavich

It is safe to say that the creation/evolution debate will not be resolved anytime soon, and why should it?  With the recent squabbles in states throughout America, and the Dawkinses and Dembskis trading haymakers with each other, things are only getting interesting.  Although I am merely a ringside observer, I am here to blow the whistle on some apparent foul play which I have observed. It is up to you to determine whether any of the participants should be disqualified. 

Let's go to the videotape...

Simply put, the language used by many of today's prominent Darwin defenders, at least as it appears in the popular press, is inherently self-defeating, as if they had a collective case of cognitive dissonance.  They routinely describe non-human processes as if they were actual people. No sooner do they finish arguing that the universe could not possibly have an Intelligent Designer, that they proceed to comment on how the universe is so seemingly intelligently designed. No sooner do they discredit evidence for a grand, cosmic plan, that they reveal their anticipation towards what the next phase of it will be. Let me give you examples.

Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, in his Secular Web critique of Intelligent Design theory ( "Design Yes, Intelligent No" ), utilizes several phrases whose "scientific" definitions, I assume, are sufficiently esoteric enough to obscure the fact that, as concepts, they defy common sense.  He describes the natural world as being a result of "non-conscious" creativity, "non-intelligent design," and "chaotic self-organizing phenomena."  If these terms mean something very specific to evolutionary biologists, it cannot be anything that is inferred by the actual words themselves.  For the very notion of design cannot be thought of in any other terms than that of a conscious being with an intent, a scheme, a protocol, a plan, or an intellect.  Each of the 21 definitions  of "design" in Webster's pertain to a living subject, human by implication.   This is not to say that random arrangements of things cannot be fantastically complex; but if they are not purposefully complex then the word "design" is incorrect.   And "chaotic self-organizing" is a cluster of words similar to "triangular circles": an excessively clever term to describe something that can't possibly exist.

Other examples abound.  A 1999 Time magazine cover story described human evolution like it was General Motors, replacing the "clunkers" with "new and improved" models: but doing it, of course, "blindly and randomly." [1] Spare me, please, from blind and random "improvements."  In the most recent Free Inquiry (the magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism), a scholar writes that both "Christians and humanists agree on one thing: that humans are the most valuable form of life on the planet," and that we are "the crown of earthly creation." [2] That is precisely the one thing that a secular humanist cannot call us: the crown of earthly creation. And valuable? Valuable to whom, and on what basis?  Another term which receives heavy usage is "success," as in a "successful" species of lizard.  But in order for anything to be a success, it must have had some prior goal or standard to fulfill.  If we cannot confirm a purpose for which life is supposed to have originated, how can we say anything is a success?  What if chickens were supposed to fly?  What if beavers were supposed to build A-frames?  Naturalistically speaking, anything is successful if it exists.  Even a pebble is successful at being a pebble.

Finally, Robert Wright, in a New Yorker piece which dope-slaps Stephen Jay Gould for being an unwitting ally to creationists, proves himself to be a pretty solid creationist in his own right, as he goes on to refer to natural selection as a "tireless engineer" with a "remarkable knack for invention," even comparing it to a brain, indicative of a higher purpose, which stacks the evolutionary deck and responds to positive feedback.[3]  Maybe evolution is a focus group!?  Whether it is by ignorance, defiance or the limits of our language, these Darwin defenders liberally use terms which are not available to them, given their presuppositions.  One cannot deny the cake, and then proceed to eat from it!

It brings up the problem I have always had with the term "natural selection."  We all know what it means, and I can't dispute it's validity as a model for the differentiation of species.  As a word couplet, though, it is a grammatical gargoyle, like the term "cybersex."  If you were asked to describe what sex is, it probably wouldn't sound like what happens when a lonely data-entry intern in Baltimore starts typing his fantasies on a flat screen which, thanks to thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable, is then read by someone in Spokane. That situation has nothing to with the purposes or processes of sex, as either God or nature intended it. The modifier is not true to its object.  Although the word "cyber-" is intended as a kind of adjective, it comes dangerously close to totally redefining the word which it is only supposed to modify.  Contrarily, one could have a blue book or a brown book, but in either case it is still a book.  One could make a hasty selection or a careful selection; it is still a selection. But natural?  A selection is a choice, and only a conscious being that can process information can really make a choice, or even input information into a system which will later result in a choice.  However, when the drying of a swamp puts a salamander out of existence, that is an occurrence.  We are comfortable with "natural selection" as a phrase, because it conjures up images of Mother Nature, or some cosmic Gepetto tinkering with his toys.  As a technical term, it is a misleading oxymoron.

I know what this proves.  It proves absolutely nothing.  This is innocent embellishment, lazy usage, or a validation of Chomskyesque theories about the inadequacy of language. One could say that a critique based on language is aimed at the most inconsequential part of any argument, like saying that Kierkegaard would have been more compelling if he had typed in New Times Roman.  However, a more careful consideration will reveal that exactly the opposite is true, at least in this case. The words used by modern-day Darwinists are not a sidelight, they are symptomatic of a fissure in the structure of their thought.  I believe that when someone wrongly calls the evolutionary process a purposeful "design," it is not because of sloppy writing, but because of intentional and thoughtful writing.  It is because that is the only idea that will work.  It is the only word that will work.  It is because there is something brilliant, something awesome, and something significant about our world, and our instinct is to want to know who gets credit for it.  The impulse is innate and proper.  It is  the decision to give credit to an abstract and unauthored "process" which is out of sync.

Let me make the point in a more obvious way.  Here are two written accounts:

A. Two similar clusters of matter came into physical contact with each other at a single point in space and time.  One cluster dominated, remaining intact; while the other began to break down into its component elements.

B. A 26-year old man lost his life today in a violent and racially motivated attack, according to Thompson County police.  Reginald K. Carter was at his desk when, according to eyewitness reports, Zachariah Jones, a new employee at the Clark Center, entered the building apparently carrying an illegally-obtained handgun.  According to several eyewitnesses, Jones immediately walked into Carter's cubicle and shouted that "his kind should be eliminated from the earth," before shooting him several times at point-blank range.

If asked where these two fictitious excerpts came from, most would say that A was from a textbook or scientific journal, and probably describes events observed under a microscope or in a laboratory.  B would be a typical example of newspaper journalism.  Most people would say that, of course, they are not talking about the same thing. But could they be?  Well, to the materialist, the answer is certainly negative. To those who don't take their Darwinism decaffeinated, who embrace it as a philosophy which excludes any non-natural explanations for life's origins, the answer is absolutely.  B perhaps wins on style points, but the content is the same.  Any outrage or emotion felt upon reading the second excerpt would be a culturally conditioned response, but not a proof that there had been anything "wrong" that had happened.  In this view, A is probably the most responsible account.  Nature, with its fittest members leading the way, marches on. I think I would be correct in stating that many would disagree with, or be offended by, that analysis.  What I am not really sure of, and would like explained to me, is why?  What is in view is not so much of a Missing Link, as much as a Missing Leap: the leap from the physical to the metaphysical.  Taken as a starting point, I have no problem with quantitative assessments.  They establish a baseline of knowledge for us. 

But what about life?   Life is an elusive concept that cannot be quantitatively assessed.  As Stanley Jaki writes in his most recent book. [4] Moreover, long before one takes up the evolution of life, one is faced with a question of metaphysics whenever one registers life.  Life is not seen with physical eyes alone unless those eyes are supplemented with the vision of the mind.  No biologist contemptuous of metaphysics can claim, if he is consistent, that he has observed life, let alone its evolution. We then start to have an aesthetic appreciation for the beauty and ingenuity of these life forms, and it is not long before we get around to talking about abstract concepts such as rights, justice, and equality, and assigning some species - namely, us - some kind of moral responsibilities for them, none of which can be measured according to scientific methods.

I think it is safely assumed by all parties that, although we have some physical and behavioral characteristics in common, humans are significantly more intelligent and sophisticated than our mammal friends, and possessed of a vastly different consciousness. For whatever reason, we are unique enough to make us "special." The problem is that the physical sciences cannot explain how, much less why, this consciousness emerged. And a bigger problem is the strangeness of our consciousness: abstract self-doubt, philosophical curiosity, existential despair. How does an intense awareness of my accidental existence better equip me for battle?  Why do we consider compassion for the sick to be a good thing when it can only give us a disadvantage in our vicious eat-or-be-eaten world?  Why would these traits emerge so late in the game, when one would think evolution would be turning us into refined, high-tech battle machines? We cannot acquire a transcendent or "higher" purpose through evolution, any more than a sine wave can develop separation anxiety. And yet many who swear by the powers of Darwin and empiricism also cling, hypocritically, to a quite unproven assumption that the human race is somehow set apart, created for a glorious destiny. Just as determinists argue undeterministically, scientists believe unscientifically. The most serious offenders in this category have to be the various minds behind the Humanist Manifesto, who roundly reject the metaphysical even as they affirm it, by assumption, in their grand prescriptions for humanity.  This is called talking out of two sides of the mouth.  Now, biologically speaking, developing this trait would be a great way for an organism to gain a tactical advantage in the struggle for survival.  Unfortunately, it also opens the creature up for easy attack in life's intellectual jungles. These contradictory assumptions met each other vividly in the theater of mainstream culture last year, during the pop radio reign of "Bad Touch," the Bloodhound Gang song. You know the song: it was the one with the refrain of "You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals / So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel."  It was pure Darwinism for the dance floor and became an instant dorm room classic, despite (or most likely, because of) the fact that it was too explicit for the kitsch it aspired to.  The party music stopped, however, upon arrival of Thornhill and Palmer's  The Natural History of Rape, the book that investigated whether rape was a genetically determined trait that enabled humans to climb the evolutionary ladder. The book's research was as swiftly refuted as The Bell Curve's.  However, the white-hot center of controversy surrounding this book was not the research, but the inferences that might have been made from it: the fear that rape could be rationalized, or even accepted, on a biological basis.  The science may have been bad, but the logic is faultless.  Why can't a chameleon's color change, a bat's sonar, and a man's sexual coercion all be examples of successful evolutionary "design"?  Given the absence of any empirical alternative to social Darwinism, the nonconsensual Discovery Channel bump-and-grind is a pretty educated approach to sexual ethics.  I repeat: one cannot deny the cake, and then proceed to eat from it.

That, then, is why the language is confused: because the ideas are confused, because the mind is confused.  To the extent that our Darwinians and humanists seek answers to humanity's dilemmas using the natural sciences, they are absolutely on the right track.  To the extent that they reject the idea of a divine or supernatural creator using the natural sciences, they are not only overstepping the boundaries of their field, but they are plainly contradicted by their language, their goals, and their lives.  G.K. Chesterton, writing a century ago, astutely observed this dichotomy in the modern mind when he said that "the man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts." [5] It is precisely this incongruity which remains unaccounted for today.  This incongruity was raised to heights both humorous and sublime by noted Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, writing an essay for the Atlantic Monthly called "The Biological Basis of Morality."  In it, Wilson outlines the argument for his suspicion that morals, ethics, and belief in the supernatural can all be written off to purely materially-originating, evolutionary-guided brain circuitry, and that's that.   In the light of this, he suggests in his conclusion that evolutionary history be "retold as poetry, " because it is more intrinsically grand than any religious epic.[6]  But if moral reasoning is just a lot of brain matter in motion, where does that leave appreciation for poetry? And seeing that poetry has a definite beginning and an end, as well as an author and a purpose, isn't the evolutionary epic the very last thing that could be told as poetry? Besides, who could possibly come up with a rhyme for lepidoptera?  If life is a drama, then it needs a Bard; and we need to learn to acknowledge our cosmic Bard, just like Alonso in the final act of The Tempest:

This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod,
And there is in this business more than nature
Was ever conduct of.  Some oracle
Must rectify our knowledge.

1. Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, "Up From the Apes," Time Magazine 154 no. 8, August 13, 1999.

2. Theodore Schick, Jr., "When Humanists Meet E.T.," Free Inquiry 20 no.3, Summer 2000, pp. 36-7.

3. Robert Wright, "The Accidental Creationist," The New Yorker, Dec. 30,
1999, pp. 56-65.

4. Stanley Jaki, The Limits of a Limitless Science, (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2000, p. 97).

5. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (NY: Image Books, 1990, pp 41-2).

6. E.O. Wilson, "The Biological Basis of Morality," The Atlantic Monthly 281 no. 4, April 1998, pp. 53-70.

 

[Markofhumanfeet]

one last thought before I head up the mountains to the snow: I think you might be surprised to learn, that for a mature Christian, the cause of all motivation, is love of Christ. There is no fear, nor doing "good" in hopes of reward. The new life, is just that-- a new way of living. It's the way it is, a new reality. I think it's something that an unregenerated man cannot understand and so you get all hung up on the idea that you too can be a good and moral person, but you can't. Sorry, thanks, Mark

[Fifth Business]

bump

[bondserv]

Josh 1:8
8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Jesus did this for us, and in this age of Grace that we now live we can only rejoice with love in what He accomplished in His sinless, resurrected life. We are justified not in our ability to live according to the law, but in accepting Jesus' life as our own. We live in Him.

Mark, thank you for the continued stand for the truth that you take.

Jer 1:8
8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.

[ConservativeMan55]

Source- Internet Infidels? LOL!

Just Damn!

[PDerna]

Thanks for the welcome!

"I argued reasonably well for the naturalistic basis for objective morality in 83 & 90."

I have read your arguments, and they are thoughtful, understandable, reasonable, and practically unassailable, but the one thing they cannot be is objective.

Moral laws are like gravity - they exist whether we decide we like them or not. If 51% of us decided that we would rather not obey it, it wouldn't matter. If 100% of planet Earth voted to make a law out of the so-called Golden Rule then it would be wonderful, practical, historic, and it would prove that the state of Florida didn't handle the voting process, but it wouldn't be transcendent, because it would still be a popular vote from a group of self-serving points of view. If a man, let's call him Steinbrenner...no, wait, let's just call him Joe... if Joe decided that murder and pillage was the best way for both he and all of humanity to survive, then on what basis could you object? Birds fly, ice melts, stars burn, and humans steal. We are not in the business of making ethical demands of other "collections of atoms," so what would make Joe any different?

Try to think about that question. I think you'll find that you have to go outside of naturalism to find an answer for that one. I know you are wary of picking from the world's various faiths for guidance, but that is the only logical alternative.

[PDerna]

'You don't dismiss the possibility by lawyering on what "design" means to you.'

It's not semantics. Let me explain...

I have no problem with chaos theory. It is great stuff. It is just descriptive of a physical process, is it not? For me, saying "God spoke the stars into existence" is just a more concise way of saying "God took some matter and, by subjecting it to a fantastically complex scheme of rules, created a galaxy full of celestial bodies." No problem.

When you remove the idea of God from the scheme, though, is when you begin to have some difficulty. If "chaotic self-organizing phenomena" and "natural selection," among others, are the terms by which you determine that a mindless and meaningless void arrived at planets and then human life, then so be it. But did the meaningless void intend on producing humanity? Did it set the properties governing the universe? Did it say,"I love it when a plan comes together like this?" If not, then it cannot truly be called design. It is just what happened to occur. It cannot really be called intelligent, either, unless by "intelligence" one means a benevolent sort of illusion. Because a mindless and empty void cannot produce intelligence, no matter how many years and how many monosyllabic terms you try and shovel into it.

So it's not about semantics. It's about intellectual honesty. When Dr. Pigliucci says that humans are intelligent, I believe that he really does mean that humans are, in fact, intelligent, and he does not mean that we must perpetuate an illusion that we are intelligent because it makes us feel good. I share that view. But materialism does not give you that view. You must hijack it from a theologian.

[general_re]

Well, welcome aboard, anyway - with a few exceptions, we rarely get the author himself popping up to defend his own work ;)

In my experience, atheism and evolutionary theory are two sides of the same coin, at least in the mind of the average Joe.

Pauline Kael didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon, either. Given that the most recent Gallup polls on the subject suggest that a large swath of the general population finds the theory of evolution to be compatible with a belief in God, perhaps you simply need to get out more often. And even for those who do find atheism and evolution inseparable, they will hardly be helped by articles that effectively serve to gloss over that very issue by essentially affirming that atheism and evolution are one and the same. I don't believe that, and neither do millions more, your experience notwithstanding.

Although evolutionary theory is, as you rightly point out, a descriptive and not prescriptive theory, “Darwinism” has been embraced as an entire worldview by those whose prior philosophic assumptions exclude any idea of a God (see Robert Wright).

The same Robert Wright who wrote "Indeed, the Darwinian account of our creation...is not only compatible with a higher purpose but vaguely suggestive of one"?

Nevertheless, there are those who do as you say - Richard Dawkins is one. He would have you believe that evolution and God are incompatible, so God has to go. And here in this article I am apparently presented with the same claim - evolution and God are incompatible, but this time, evolution has to go. The assessments of Richard Dawkins and Paul Dernavich are, as nearly as I can tell, identical, differing only insofar as the proposed remedies to the dichotomy are concerned - entertaining the idea that it may be a false dichotomy is apparently not on either menu today...

[Dataman]

And that's all it was, a story, a manmade fairytale. Something man can imagine. There was absolutely nothing in the story to prove it was true.

And there we have the essence of darwinism.

[Dales]

How about avoiding spinning the thread down with such comments? Things were going fine up to here. Same with the comment about him being communist. Your earlier point regarding unrealistic idealism was (without me agreeing or disagreeing with it) basically the same point without being needlessly antagonistic. Let's try to keep things from degenerating into an insult war. We spent a few months cleaning these threads up, and we'd like to keep them that way.

[balrog666]

Because a mindless and empty void cannot produce intelligence, no matter how many years and how many monosyllabic terms you try and shovel into it.

I'm afraid your "conclusion" does not follow from your argument. Feel free to try again.

[VadeRetro]

If "chaotic self-organizing phenomena" and "natural selection," among others, are the terms by which you determine that a mindless and meaningless void arrived at planets and then human life, then so be it.

There is a lawfulness in nature which is the rightful subject of scientific scrutiny. You can account for an awful lot of what we see when you know the rules.

But did the meaningless void intend on producing humanity?

I doubt it. Efficiency was pretty low, if we were the point. There's a pretty high overhead not only in space useage but in time useage. Here's a timeline of just Earth history, never mind the 10 billion or so years of the history of the universe before that.

Vertebrate history is crowded down near the end, there. Human history is a blip just before the closing credits.

Did it set the properties governing the universe?

We only have one example of a universe. Whether another universe would have the laws of physics observed in ours is not clear to me.

Did it say,"I love it when a plan comes together like this?"

No, and there's a relentless anthropomorphizing strawman quality to your arguments. You criticize science and scientists for lapsing into such relic language to explain themselves even when they actually reason along different lines. But animism seems to be all you do. You utterly miss the gather-facts/form-hypotheses/gather-more-facts elements of what science is doing.

You say it's not about semantics, but when you take the semantics away there's nothing left.

... Because a mindless and empty void cannot produce intelligence, no matter how many years and how many monosyllabic terms you try and shovel into it.

Problem One, False Premise: It was essentially never empty or a void, although it was certifiably mindless when the flash of what we now call the cosmic microwave background was emitted about 300K years after the big band. It was a not-quite-perfectly uniform hot gas of hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium, cooling as it expanded.

Problem Two, Begging the Question: When did you show that non-intelligent life cannot produce intelligence under natural selection?

[VadeRetro]

... after the big band.

Which is why we still refer to "the Big Band era." (Editor needed, must work for peanuts.)

"... After the Big Bang" was meant.

[js1138]

Same with the comment about him being communist.

Thank you. I thought it best to ignore the insult, but I appreciate the support.

Back on point, there is nothing idealistic, romantic, or communistic about packs of preditors. There are, however, rules followed by individuals that support the survival of all, and which are necessary for the survival of the species.

[js1138]

Mind your Ds and Qs.

[VadeRetro]

True, I should have written "the big banq."

[longshadow]

...when the flash of what we now call the cosmic microwave background was emitted about 300K years after the big band.

Holy Cow! Glenn Miller did Cosmology?

[VadeRetro]

No, but whoever wrote "Moonlight Becomes You" was obviously some sort of atheistic materialist.

[PDerna]

Fundamental laws of cause and effect. Shall I explain them or do I trust that you will accept it as a homework assignment?

[PDerna]

I have to humbly accept my spanking, as you have corrected me on both counts. I need to go sit in the corner, but not the same corner that contains my computer - obviously the oxygen was getting thin over there.

So on point #1, you are right - the process of evolution is not at all incompatible with the idea of God or creationism. I was never intentionally trying to say that they were mutually exclusive.

And on #2, of course it is Richard Dawkins and not Robert Wright. Dawkins was the one who claimed that he was an atheist from Day 1, and that the Darwinian theory of evolution merely gave him "intellectual fulfillment." And that is the thread which connects both points - Darwinism as an observable process of differentiation is perfectly valid, but as the intellectual Holy Grail which explains away the need for a Creator, it is incredibly insufficient.

[PDerna]

I think we have to agree that we don't really know what was in the "void" or how it got there, because the sudden appearance of anything - electrically charged particles or God - must be taken on faith. The cosmic radiation does not show up in any family genealogy that I have seen.

But there is no Problem Two. When did anyone show that a "certifiably mindless" group of matter CAN produce intelligence under natural selection? Never mind the science - it defies the most fundamental laws of cause and effect. All we agree on is that intelligent life exists. Your timeline explains complexity, but it cannot show where human consciousness arrived, never mind Glenn Miller.