Posted on 11/06/2003 7:34:45 PM PST by Heartlander
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.
Consciousness cannot evolve? Sounds like something you'd like to prove someday.
Perhaps you recall that story a year or so ago, where a genetic study found that "Might Makes Right" practitioner Ghengis Khan's family tree extended across -- was it millions? -- of living humans. Surely that's a moral triumph, if you want to define morality in terms of scientifically-observable evolutionary behavior.I'd never heard of that! I guess for Mongolians, Ghengis Khan was truly the Father of the Country.
He was successful on his terms, that's for sure. But surely you understand that evolution only describes behavior, not prescribes behavior? You know - knowing the law of gravity doesn't mean it's immoral to try to slip the surly bonds of Earth, etc.? That's one point.
The second point is, again, that morality refers to something more than a self-serving evaluation of our actions. When we ask, "what's the best moral code?", we're asking for something that we can say is objective, or universally true in some sense. That's the nature of morality as a concept. And that's why I keep coming back to the question: "What kind of world would the proposed action produce if it were adopted as a universal code by everybody?"
If you like the kind of world that a consistent, universal application of the code would produce, then you can say it's a moral act, and you should feel good about doing it. If it leads to a vicious cycle, or if the kind of prosperous civilization that produced you could never have gotten off the ground to begin with, then it's an immoral act and you shouldn't do it even if you'll prosper from it. See? you can indeed prosper directly from acts that are nevertheless wrong.
A woman forgets to pick up a bag of money & walks away. Do I bother to ask myself if I'll profit from taking the bag of money? Of course not! That's obvious. The nagging question is, "is it moral to take the bag?" IOW, I'm asking myself, "should I feel justified or should I feel guilty if I take the bag?" That's a very different question than would I profit by taking the bag. Mere profit is not what a morality based on self-interest is all about.
Our moral sense is built largely on empathy. And I think that putting yourself in the other person's shoes to see if you feel they're getting a fair shake by your proposed action is a good real-world alternative to a drawn-out analysis of the long-term consequences as we're doing here. So if I saw the woman leave her bag, I'd never take the bag. I'd immediately feel I was stealing it, because I've forgotten things before, and it seems unreasonable that I should risk having my things swiped just because I had a momentary lapse.
But if I came across a bag of money sitting there with nobody around, then it's a bit murkier. Personally I'd still try to find its rightful owner: Nothing reinforces your view of your fellow man like coming back to the restaurant 2 days later to find that someone turned in your bag o' cash in hopes that you'd come back for it. That kind of thing happens in Seattle, though I doubt it'd ever happen in Detroit, where I grew up. But I don't think it's even always illegal to take it in that scenario, is it?
Anyway you get the idea. Moral questions are based on what the world would be like if everyone did it. IMO.
I think the trend toward democracy comes as a result of the success of it in Western culture -- it's attractive because it's successful. But it's important to note how very narrow is the margin between liberty and chaos, on one side; or between liberty and tyranny on the other. The only way that balance is kept, is if the people in the society are profoundly moral; and, what's more, moral in the Judeo-Christian sense of the term.I agree that a society's moral foundation is, well, foundational. But I think the more important foundation is a respect for rationality and the individual nature of rights & responsibilities - and the ability to think in terms of principles.Thus, we see chaos in African "democracies," because the people have no foundation. And we saw tyranny in Kaiser- and Fuhrer-led Germany, because the Germans were instilled with a love for it.
And that's really the key: we're where we are because of the supernatural (specifically, Christian beliefs), not because of some set of mysterious physical laws that are not observable anywhere in nature.
Funny you should mention the African democracies, etc. I'm currently reading the Voyage of the Beagle, and as Darwin was traipsing thru Argentina, Uruguay, & Paraguay, he described how dangerous & unstable they were. The Spaniards were in a long-term war with the natives, and I gather there were constant revolutions & coups within the Spanish colonial governments as well. At one point Darwin observed:
18th and 19th. -- We continued slowly to sail down the noble stream: the current helped us but little. We met, during our descent, very few vessels. One of the best gifts of nature, in so grand a channel of communication, seems here wilfully thrown away -- a river in which ships might navigate from a temperate country, as surprisingly abundant in certain productions as destitute of others, to another possessing a tropical climate, and a soil which, according to the best of judges, M. Bonpland, is perhaps unequalled in fertility in any part of the world. How different would have been the aspect of this river if English colonists had by good fortune first sailed up the Plata! What noble towns would now have occupied its shores! Till the death of Francia, the Dictator of Paraguay, these two countries must remain distinct, as if placed on opposite sides of the globe. And when the old bloody-minded tyrant is gone to his long account, Paraguay will be torn by revolutions, violent in proportion to the previous unnatural calm. That country will have to learn, like every other South American state, that a republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.October 20th. -- Being arrived at the mouth of the Parana, and as I was very anxious to reach Buenos Ayres, I went on shore at Las Conchas, with the intention of riding there. Upon landing, I found to my great surprise that I was to a certain degree a prisoner. A violent revolution having broken out, all the ports were laid under an embargo. I could not return to my vessel, and as for going by land to the city, it was out of the question. After a long conversation with the commandant, I obtained permission to go the next day to General Rolor, who commanded a division of the rebels on this side the capital. In the morning I rode to the encampment. The general, officers, and soldiers, all appeared, and I believe really were, great villains. ...
This revolution was supported by scarcely any pretext of grievances: but in a state which, in the course of nine months (from February to October, 1820), underwent fifteen changes in its government -- each governor, according to the constitution, being elected for three years -- it would be very unreasonable to ask for pretexts. ...
I should've kept reading, would've saved me some typing... :-)
I'm surprised I even found that word in the dictionary!
If consciousness evolved from mindlessness, it is an illusion.That's just an assertion, of course. You still haven't shown why it should be true. I think you're committing the fallacy of composition.
Oxygen is flammable. Hydrogen is explosive. Paste them together to make water. Is water flammable or is it explosive or both or neither? (How could it possibly be neither?)
The quoted statement implies that whether we're really alive or pseudo-animated slime depends entirely upon factors of whence we came and not at all upon what we are.
Suppose someone shows you a car you've never seen before. It's fast, nimble, a hoot to drive, and has great creature comforts. In fact it has everything most people like in a car. Asked what you think of it, you say, "I can't tell you if it's good or not. You haven't said if it was made in the USA."
LOL -- pretty much you say all of the characters one by one. I took my screen name from the addressing we used for computer printouts, back in the days when mainframes had a centralized printer.... Lotsa folks shorten it to "r9," which I suppose is close enough to "asinine" to make them happy. ;-)
For the record, I don't disagree with anything you've said. At issue here is the basis for the moral judgements you've been making -- are they really "true and universal," or are you merely describing one moral choice among many? So I'm going to challenge you, first to identify the assumptions you're making, and then to prove that they're valid assumptions. And, if valid, I'll ask you to demonstrate that they're universal -- which I take to be a different way of saying that no other morality is correct. You can't simply provide a definition (as you've done here, in several places), and expect me to accept it. I'm betting you can't do it without reference to some supernatural agent.
He was successful on his terms, that's for sure. But surely you understand that evolution only describes behavior, not prescribes behavior? You know - knowing the law of gravity doesn't mean it's immoral to try to slip the surly bonds of Earth, etc.? That's one point.
You're right, to a point. Yes, evolution describes behavior, and we're of course talking about how to prescribe behavior. But the question remains (and applies to the rest of your post): if Ghengis Khan acts according to the "evolutionary behavior" he sees modeled throughout nature, are his actions right or wrong -- moral or immoral?
That depends, of course, on what the goal of moral behavior is supposed to be. If one rejects the idea that moral behavior can be defined via revelation, then (as I said to general_re, above) a good materialist is going to have to define moral goals and evaluations based on what he sees. As odious as they are to us, the principles of Social Darwinism have the unfortunate advantage of being scientifically demonstrable. Specifically, I can observe that "evolutionary behavior" such as "might makes right" is quite viable in nature, and the lesson seems to extend to humans -- at least, to people like Ghengis Khan.
The second point is, again, that morality refers to something more than a self-serving evaluation of our actions. When we ask, "what's the best moral code?", we're asking for something that we can say is objective, or universally true in some sense. That's the nature of morality as a concept.
It's fine for you to state this, but if it's truly objective you should be able to produce an objective proof -- one that can somehow explain away the fact that Ghengis Khan was wrong, despite the fact that he died old, rich, happy, and with that enormous genetic legacy.
And that's why I keep coming back to the question: "What kind of world would the proposed action produce if it were adopted as a universal code by everybody?"
First off, you're assuming that that's a proper way to look at morality. Is it not just as reasonable to look at Ghengis Khan's "administration," and claim that it's just and proper for there to be different sets of rules for the different classes in society?
...You're right, to a point. Yes, evolution describes behavior, and we're of course talking about how to prescribe behavior. But the question remains (and applies to the rest of your post): if Ghengis Khan acts according to the "evolutionary behavior" he sees modeled throughout nature, are his actions right or wrong -- moral or immoral?
Yes, but we're the only species within nature that is able to see, plan, & decide beyond the moment. So questions of morality (as opposed to immediate individual profit) can not really even occur to any other species in nature. So looking to the rest of nature doesn't help us much, except we could note that the more intelligent a species is, the more (and more sophisticated) cooperation we see. (See for instance Matt Ridley's enjoyable "The Origins of Virtue")
Now for the nub of your argument:
For the record, I don't disagree with anything you've said. At issue here is the basis for the moral judgements you've been making -- are they really "true and universal," or are you merely describing one moral choice among many? So I'm going to challenge you, first to identify the assumptions you're making, and then to prove that they're valid assumptions. And, if valid, I'll ask you to demonstrate that they're universal -- which I take to be a different way of saying that no other morality is correct. You can't simply provide a definition (as you've done here, in several places), and expect me to accept it. I'm betting you can't do it without reference to some supernatural agent.
I guess I take my definition of what morality is as axiomatic. I can't conceive of someone worrying about whether they're about to do the "right" thing - i.e. something that won't make them feeling guilty even if they profit from the act - unless they're thinking about what principle the proposed act represents. IOW, the very question "would this be moral?" presupposes a concern for principles. I doubt very much that a person who never asks himself "is the is the right thing to do?" has ever considered principles as such.
As I mentioned before, I think our natural moral sense is based on empathy, which is ingrained in us because it provides a quick, rule-of-thumb snap judgement we can use in our day-to-day lives, as an alternative to a more rigorous analysis.
So I say the question of morality is necessarily a quest for a universal (or "objective" - I'm trying to say the opposite of self-serving - "consistent"?) principle, as opposed to a quest for the most immediately profitable action. They're two separate issues by their nature, even though their goals are ultimately selfish.
You're saying this is all just an assertion on my part. But can you give me an example of someone who worries whether a proposed profitable action is the right thing to do, where this "right thing to do" does not refer to a consistent principle of some kind?
As for a truly universally correct moral code, I think it's true that you can't derive objective values from facts - purely deductively.
What I see when I think of this quest is more of a hypothetico-deductive process similar to the scientific process. It's an ongoing process that uses personal experience & historical examples to generate general theories of human behavior, and deduction back to your idea of what a better morality should look like. So you can approach true objectivity the more you know about what life is truly like under many alternatives.
I believe there is one best moral code (or one family of similar codes), because humans are basically the same in our mental capacities. Now, there are many variations on a theme, for instance within the free market democracies you have America's free-wheeling culture vs. Singapore's enforced politeness.
I suspect that if you examine different cultures, you'll eventually find that there are subtle historical reasons why they do some things differently than we do. IIRC, Singapore has several ethnic groups that historically were antagonistic towards each other. Maybe Singapore's enforced politeness is the best they can do under the circumstances. Maybe not. But I doubt very much that Singaporeans (who are relatively cosmopolitan) would voluntarily vote in Communism or a hard fascism. Or if they did, they'd soon regret it.
So in one sense I have to concede that it's impossible to prove deductively that one moral code is objectively better than another. In that sense it's like a scientific theory. A moral code could only be definitively proven wrong - when it fails the societies that follow it.
On the flip side: If the material world can't give us any guidance towards the best moral code, then how is an appeal to a mythical supernatural person any different than picking a moral code at random & everybody simply deciding to stick to that one out of consistency? What makes one revelation-inspired moral code any better than the one from the next religion?
All well and good, and who knows? You may even be right. The problem is, none of that serves the creationist's purpose of invalidating the theory of evolution. Even if trying to put the theory itself into action - and it's not at all clear that that's even a meaningful statement at this point - inevitably leads to gay marriage, infanticide, communism, or whatever one's particular bugaboo happens to be, that does not mean that the theory is therefore false or incorrect.
And that's generally the object of such exercises. "Evolution, if true, would cause X, Y, and Z. Anyone with half-a-brain can see that X, Y, and Z are horrible, horrible things. Therefore, in order to avoid X, Y, and Z, evolution must be false and incorrect." This is usually classed as argument by appeal to the consequences, but it's basically not much more than falsification by fiat - we simply declare it to be non-existent because we don't like it.
It's a shame, though, that this technique isn't generally valid, when you think about it - there are a whole host of things in this world that I don't like, yet that persist in existing anyway, much to my annoyance. ;)
So are the objects "evil?" Probably not, but they act upon us as if they, and not their user, were evil.
Perhaps. But that's purely a matter of perception on the part of the viewer - show a picture of an iron maiden to an innocent child, and you'll engender no such reaction. His parents will likely react as you predict, but that's because they understand what the child does not - the context of what the thing was used for by someone. You may walk through museums of medieval torture devices from time to time, and while your fellow viewers may react with distaste, it's rather rare that any of them will run screaming for the exits - they understand what the devices were used for, but they also understand that they themselves are in no immediate danger from them, because the users of those devices are missing.
Dernavich's question is: Why does Case "B" have moral implications, whereas Case "A" does not?
Because we assign moral implications to one, but not the other. The "moral implications" are essentially meaningless, however, no matter where you think they come from, unless there is someone to put them into practice. What good does it do to say that X is immoral if nobody agrees with you and nobody abides by that?
The reason why we label Ghengis Khan as an evil man is because of empathy, None of us would want to be on the receiving end in one of the areas he conquered and we can feel for the ones who were.
When you bring the Bible into this discussion, you bring in God, and His will. God's will is, in fact, a logical necessity for the sort of moral code we espouse. Lacking God, we lack any reason to condemn Ghengis Khan; indeed, we can only admire him.
The question is wrong in fact the opposite should be asked. Using the Bible as an example how can Christians/Jews claim Ghengis Khan was evil considering that there are many "Heroes" in the Bible who in terms of evil deeds are the equal of or worse than Ghengis Khan. Moses for example fits into that category, Just read of his exploits as written down in the Bible.
The only differences between Moses and Khan was Moses was killing and raping in the name of Judeo-Christian God where as Khan wasn't.
Now if after we took over Iraq George Bush ordered our troops to kill everybody including women and children but keep alive the virgin girls to do with what you will. I would assume hopefully the vast majority of people today would be appalled at such an order. It can't be because of Biblical reasons because in the Bible that is condoned because Moses gave that very order in Numbers 31:17 with even God getting some of the "Booty".
I think the trend toward democracy comes as a result of the success of it in Western culture -- it's attractive because it's successful. But it's important to note how very narrow is the margin between liberty and chaos, on one side; or between liberty and tyranny on the other. The only way that balance is kept, is if the people in the society are profoundly moral; and, what's more, moral in the Judeo-Christian sense of the term.
Our Democracy/Republic form of government is not founded on Christianity, There are no Democracies/Republics in the bible what's so ever.
Thus, we see chaos in African "democracies," because the people have no foundation. And we saw tyranny in Kaiser- and Fuhrer-led Germany, because the Germans were instilled with a love for it. And that's really the key: we're where we are because of the supernatural (specifically, Christian beliefs), not because of some set of mysterious physical laws that are not observable anywhere in nature.
And at the same time we see relative peace and prosperity in a Democratic but non-Christian modern day Japan yet there are all kinds of atrocities in the heavily foundation Christian Latin America countries and of course medevil/dark ages Europe under the church wasn't exactly a wonderful place to live so there is no correlation between the Religiousness of a country/area and morality of such.
Same with people, If being moral requires being religious than why do Atheist make up way less than 1% of the prision population?
Jenny,
If consciousness; evolved from, or is the result of mindlessness, ‘you’ have become the fallacy of composition.
Our President is looking at everything from a relatively short timescale and has concluded that if these ‘evil’ actions are allowed to continue – it will destroy our values and moral fiber…
Values and moral fiber?
If you have concluded that Christians are evil base on ‘one’ Biblical reference, what should we do? Well, you could reference more in order to justify Christian persecution and tell the President…
If your morality comes from science ‘alone’ you might have a problem. I don’t think our President hears these same voices from science so please tell me what you think science tells you…
You do know what the fallacy of composition is, don't you?Jenny,
If consciousness; evolved from, or is the result of mindlessness, ‘you’ have become the fallacy of composition.
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