Why We Are Still Arguing About Darwin

TCS Daily ^ | 10 Jan 2008 | Lee Harris

[neverdem]

Today, almost one hundred and fifty years after the publication of The Origin of Species, we are still arguing about Darwin. How is this possible? If Darwin's theory of natural selection is a scientific theory, as its defenders claim, then why hasn't it been able to establish itself securely in the public mind? Why, in short, is Darwin still the subject of continuing controversy and acrimonious debate?

Contrast this on-going battle over Darwin with the fate of the other great scientific revolutions. The same Christian fundamentalists who argue that public school should teach creationism have no quarrel with the Copernican revolution. No one argues that public schools should be forced to teach the Ptolemaic system because it permits Joshua to make the sun stand still. Yet polls in the USA show that a large segment of American society continues to reject Darwin's scientific revolution.

Modern proponents of Darwin, like Richard Dawkins, have an elegant explanation for this puzzling phenomenon. Those who reject Darwin are ignorant boobs who take the Bible literally. The Bible says God created man in his own image, and so that is what they believe, despite the evidence that shows that human beings share more than 98% of their genes with chimpanzees. Therefore, in order to get people to accept Darwin, you must first destroy their adherence to Biblical fundamentalism. Once people see that the story of Adam and Eve is simply a fairy tale, they will be in a position to embrace the idea that we all descended from lower primates. But is this interpretation really psychologically plausible? Is it only the second chapter of Genesis that stands in the way of a universal acceptance of Darwin's theory that we descended from creatures far more monkey-like than us-like?

The stumbling block to an acceptance of Darwin, I would like to submit, has little to do with Christian fundamentalism, but a whole lot to do with our intense visceral revulsion at monkeys and apes. This revulsion, while certainly not universal, is widely shared, and it is a psychological phenomenon that is completely independent of our ideas about the literal truth of the Bible.

Our visceral revulsion at the mere sight of lower primates has been noted by the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal. Observing the visitors to the chimpanzee colony at the Arnhem Zoo, de Waal noticed a frequent pattern among them. Many people would stare at the chimps for a few minutes, then, after saying, "Oh I could watch them all day," they would swiftly make their way to the nearest exit. They had had enough monkey business. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, another great naturalist, was equally aware of this deep-seated revulsion against monkeys. In his novel Elective Affinities, a character declares her feelings about monkeys in no uncertain terms: "How can anyone bring himself to expend such care on depicting horrid monkeys! It is debasing simply to regard them as animal [!], but it is really more malicious to succumb to the temptation of seeking in them the likeness of people you know."

This visceral revulsion against monkeys explains why so many people prefer to hold on to the far more flattering mythology of man's creation as it was presented in Genesis. It is not Genesis that turns them against Darwin; it is Darwin that makes them turn to Genesis.

Now the proponents of Darwin will argue that a visceral revulsion is not a logical argument, and the proponents of Darwin will of course be right. From the fact that most people are horrified to think of themselves as descending from the lower primates, it does not follow that they must have arisen from a more respectable ancestry.

At the same time, those who accept Darwin (as I do) need to understand the true origin of the revulsion so many people feel against his theory. For the basis of this revulsion is none other than "the civilizing process" that has been instilled into us from infancy. The civilizing process has taught us never to throw our feces at other people, not even in jest. It has taught us not to snatch food from other people, not even when they are much weaker than we. It has taught us not to play with our genitals in front of other people, not even when we are very bored. It has taught us not to mount the posterior of other people, not even when they have cute butts.

Those who are horrified by our resemblance to the lower primates are not wrong, because it is by means of this very horror of the primate-within that men have been able to transcend our original primate state of nature. It is by refusing to accept our embarrassing kinship with primates that men have been able to create societies that prohibit precisely the kind of monkey business that civilized men and women invariably find so revolting and disgusting. Thou shalt not act like a monkey - this is the essence of all the higher religions, and the summation of all ethical systems.

Those who continue to resist Darwin are not standing up for science, but they may well be standing up for something even more important - a Dawkinsian meme, if you will, that has been instrumental in permitting mankind to transcend the brutal level of our primate origins. Our lofty humanitarian ethical standards have been derived not by observing our primate kin, but by imagining that we were made in the image of God. It was only by assuming that we were expected to come up to heavenly standards that we did not lower our standards to those of our biological next of kin. The meme that asserts that we are the children of God, and not merely a bunch of wild monkeys may be an illusion; but it is the illusion upon which all humane civilizations have been constructed. Those who wish to eliminate this illusionary meme from our general meme pool may be acting in the name of science; but it is by no means obvious that they are acting in the name of civilization and humanity.

[GodGunsGuts]

Haven’t you heard, Capernicus agrees with us:

“We therefore assert that the center of the Earth, carrying the Moon’s path, passes in a great circuit among the other planets in an annual revolution around the Sun; that near the Sun is the center of the Universe; and that whereas the Sun is at rest, any apparent motion of the Sun can be better explained by motion of the Earth.”

—Copernicus, N., De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, Johannes Petreius, Nuremberg, Book I, Chapter 10, 1543

[metmom]

That’s more than a little bit weird.

[ChessExpert]

From the link you provided:

“The groups of redshifts would be distinct from each other only if our viewing location is less than a million light years from the center.”

That is an interesting claim. My recollection of the explanation Hubble’s work and the big bang is that distant galaxies in all directions had a red shift consistent with an explosion (implicitly) as seen from the center. What would it look like if seen from another location? Say halfway from the center to an edge. From that location, there would be a redshift if you looked in a direction that was further out from the explosion. Looking back toward the center, what shift would one expect?

[ChessExpert]

A question to all is:

If we are not at the center of the universe (origin of the big bang), where is the center? In what direction from our solar system? Just curious. :)

[GodGunsGuts]

==The more that you conflate Creationism with Geocentricism the better as far as I am concerned.

Not geocentrism, but heliocentrism. And it would appear he is in full agreement with Copurnicus on this matter:

"We therefore assert that the center of the Earth, carrying the Moon's path, passes in a great circuit among the other planets in an annual revolution around the Sun; that near the Sun is the center of the Universe; and that whereas the Sun is at rest, any apparent motion of the Sun can be better explained by motion of the Earth."

--Copernicus, N., De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, Johannes Petreius, Nuremberg, Book I, Chapter 10, 1543.

Thus, the name of Copernicus has been disengenously coopted by Darwinian Big Bangers, when in reality his work most closely resembles that of Creation cosmologists.

==while believing the earth is the center of the universe is harmless and amuses me to no end.

Humphrey’s biblically-based starting assumptions are no more ideological than the starting assumptions of the “Big Bang” model. You do know that the Big Bang model is based on Darwinist ideology, don’t you?

[Omedalus]

Yes, I was being sarcastic. :) Thank you for the concern, though. I hear ya.

[allmendream]

Please tell me how Astronomers based their model of Cosmology on the theory of natural selection of Biology. It should be educational as well as entertaining.

Some Creationists argue that the Big Bang model was initially opposed by ‘eeeevil Scientists’ because it posited a beginning to the Universe as the Bible says. But as I pointed out before, no two Creationist sources agree; which is the price you pay when you turn your back on the empirical method.

[hinckley buzzard]

a whole lot to do with our intense visceral revulsion at monkeys and apes. This revulsion, while certainly not universal, is widely shared, and it is a psychological phenomenon that is completely independent of our ideas about the literal truth of the Bible.

An attempt to make a gallon of lemonade with one lemon. I know more people who think monkeys are amusing pseudohumans than people who have a "visceral revulsion" to them. They have them for pets, dress them up in little suits, make movies with them. Comparative psychologists are fascinated by them.

[hinckley buzzard]

It took until the 1700s for science to accept that hand washing would stop the spread of infection. People of faith aren't the only stubborn ones. ;)

Not to mention the canard of anthrogenic global warming, and the discredited "connection" between dietary fat and heart disease.

[editor-surveyor]

You have to be the most mendacious, deceptive, and hateful fool that has ever posted on FR.

Wear it with pride.

[editor-surveyor]

"Why are you so obsessed with bringing that particular topic up, along with coffee enemas, on totally unrelated threads?"

You should have figured it out by now mom; he's one of them. That's how he gets off; it's the most important thing in his miserable life, and he doesn't want to admit that his enabling drugs are what's killing him.

[BlueDragon]

Now, wait a minute,

"You do know that the Big Bang model is based on Darwinist ideology, don’t you?".

Was that supposed to be a trick question? Darwin? Uh, we read that Erasmus Darwin proposed a fluctuating, cyclic model of expansion and contraction...

But wasn't it that monk Georges Lemaître that gets credit for proposing the one expansion/explosion, from one prime, small, even *tiny* spot?

[m8n8]

Two words:

Peppered Moth.

Still defended by some of the most ardent evolutionist zealots. All the while claiming that they know the whole entire “experiment” was staged.....

Let’s see, I graduated in 1987 from H.S. and the peppered moth was still in my biology textbook... So if you’re claiming that evolution zealots don’t use debunked evolution theories to try and still prove evolution, then I don’t think “you” know how wrong you are.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for sharing your views!

[RobbyS]

You don’t know the real reason for the acceptance of Ptolemy’s astronomy? It fit the available data, data that began to be collected thousands of years before Christ by men trained to read the movements of the lights in the night sky and to trace their patterns they saw forming. Ptolemy simply appled geometry to describe these movements. Only because it increasingly required more and more elaborate devises to save the theory. Once Copernicus repopularized the rival view and astronomers began to fit the data, and to modify the Copernican model in accordance, it began to supercede the old model. The new physics and a new mathematics supportd the new model, but it was not until the 18th Century that Ptolomey was finally relegated to the attic, along with the ancient physiology and in the 19th Century much of the old biology. To contend that religious obscurantism adamantly opposed the advance of science is refuted by the fact that Galileo himself was a strongly religious man who, ironically, pointed the way to reconcile Christianity with the new sciences in the very book that brought him condemnation.

[pay dirt]

The argument is over, Darwinism has been falsified. Now it’s just a matter of dismantling the Darwin machine, which seems to have developed a momentum that is quite independent of the fact that it has been thoroughly discredited.

Don't you think your comment should be in "Breaking New"? When someone called, "GodGunsGuts", says the argument is over then that surely is breaking news....or breaking wind....hmmmm....what's that smell

[allmendream]

the experiment was not staged. the picture had a white one pinned up next to a dark one against part of the tree. Some say this picture set up to display the contrast was ‘staged’ or somehow academic fraud. It is neither.

It shows the level of knowledge of the subject that you come in claiming that present day Biologists defend Piltdown when the hoax got scant support contemporaneously and none among the present day community; then claim an entire experiment was staged because it had a picture of a white moth pinned next to a dark moth.

And nothing is ever going to ‘prove’ a theory.

[dread78645]

... You do know that the Big Bang model is based on Darwinist ideology, don’t you?

Which will come as a great surprise to Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Roman Catholic priest who proposed it.

[Iris7]

No, am not. For Darwin’s “random variation” to be taken seriously nowadays it has to be defined on the biochemical - physical chemistry level. Darwin thought cells would prove to be in essence what he thought he saw when looking at thin slices of cork bark.

[Iris7]

Firstly, the “Darwinists” advance a “theory”, actually an hypothesis, so the burden of proof is not upon me to disprove thier hypothesis but rather the burden of proof lies with the “Darwinist” who must convince me. (Just like the anthropogenic global warming guys must.)

Secondly see my post #179.