Darwin on the Right: Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution

Scientific American ^ | October 2006 issue | Michael Shermer

[PatrickHenry]

According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics. Politically, 60 percent of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11 percent accept evolution, compared with 29 percent of Democrats who are creationists and 44 percent who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63 percent of liberals but only 37 percent of conservatives believe that humans and apes have a common ancestry. What these figures confirm for us is that there are religious and political reasons for rejecting evolution. Can one be a conservative Christian and a Darwinian? Yes. Here's how.

1. Evolution fits well with good theology. Christians believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God. What difference does it make when God created the universe--10,000 years ago or 10,000,000,000 years ago? The glory of the creation commands reverence regardless of how many zeroes in the date. And what difference does it make how God created life--spoken word or natural forces? The grandeur of life's complexity elicits awe regardless of what creative processes were employed. Christians (indeed, all faiths) should embrace modern science for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divine in a depth and detail unmatched by ancient texts.

2. Creationism is bad theology. The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts. This God is just a genetic engineer slightly more advanced than we are. An omniscient and omnipotent God must be above such humanlike constraints. As Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote, "The Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." Calling God a watchmaker is belittling.

3. Evolution explains original sin and the Christian model of human nature. As a social primate, we evolved within-group amity and between-group enmity. By nature, then, we are cooperative and competitive, altruistic and selfish, greedy and generous, peaceful and bellicose; in short, good and evil. Moral codes and a society based on the rule of law are necessary to accentuate the positive and attenuate the negative sides of our evolved nature.

4. Evolution explains family values. The following characteristics are the foundation of families and societies and are shared by humans and other social mammals: attachment and bonding, cooperation and reciprocity, sympathy and empathy, conflict resolution, community concern and reputation anxiety, and response to group social norms. As a social primate species, we evolved morality to enhance the survival of both family and community. Subsequently, religions designed moral codes based on our evolved moral natures.

5. Evolution accounts for specific Christian moral precepts. Much of Christian morality has to do with human relationships, most notably truth telling and marital fidelity, because the violation of these principles causes a severe breakdown in trust, which is the foundation of family and community. Evolution describes how we developed into pair-bonded primates and how adultery violates trust. Likewise, truth telling is vital for trust in our society, so lying is a sin.

6. Evolution explains conservative free-market economics. Charles Darwin's "natural selection" is precisely parallel to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Darwin showed how complex design and ecological balance were unintended consequences of competition among individual organisms. Smith showed how national wealth and social harmony were unintended consequences of competition among individual people. Nature's economy mirrors society's economy. Both are designed from the bottom up, not the top down.

Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced. The senseless conflict between science and religion must end now, or else, as the Book of Proverbs (11:29) warned: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

[js1138]

Yockey must have had an epiphany between 1996 and 2000, because he has clearly come down on the side of life's origin being natural.

I find that most people who doubt evolution and naturalism do not understand feedback. they cannot understand a system that is controlled by consequences rather than by antecedents.

While participating in a conservative forum I see various manifestations of this. Many people do not understand capitalism and the marketplace. They do not understand that the flow of goods and services, and even the invention and production of new products is managed by the invisible hand of results. If it were otherwise -- if correct market behavior could be anticipated by logical analysis -- then we should all be socialists, and we should all bow to five year plans.

Science is also a marketplace. The progress and management of science is controlled by results, not by the steady application of rational propositions.

And life is also a marketplace. This is the one truly great insight of Darwin's. And he borrowed it from Adam Smith. The reason you can't figure out the source of life's information is that the coding is done by the marketplace, the result of countless feints and maneuvers, and their consequences.

Your statement that God is alive by any rational definition of life leads to an interesting problem, since you also appear to believe that life only comes from life. Clearly not all life comes from life. The obvious solution to this conundrum -- God is outside time and without a beginning -- is just a loophole manufactured to escape from logic. It is no more compelling than the assumption that physical existence is outside of time, or that God and physical reality are coextensive.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Okay, so just so I'm clear, as long as I'm less accusatory in tone, it should be more acceptable?

[js1138]

I'd only add that the phrase omne vivum ex vivo is perfectly consistent with Darwin's position...

Except for the minor detail that this isn't true. Nor is it true that Yockey's 1996 statement means what you think it means. Otherwise he would not have clarified his position in 2000, saying the opposite of what you are saying.

But for the record, I am going to attempt to get a response from Yockey regarding his position on abiogenesis. This will take some time, because I will have to go through a website that he corresponds with.

[Religion Moderator]

Yes, that is what seems to work best around here.

[Senator Bedfellow]

OK, thanks.

[Liberal Classic]

I don't have a problem with the guidelines on this Religion Forum. It takes a lot of effort to get used to them, carefully reviewing each post - but there are fewer flame wars around here than there used to be.

This kind of implies A-G is reviewing posts.

Then there are the RM posts that sound *just* like her:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1703762/posts?page=1341#1341

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1703762/posts?page=576#576

And then there are the two of you even using similar emoticons:

LOLOL!

A-G:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1703762/posts?page=1589#1589

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1707667/posts?page=155#155

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1703762/posts?page=1420#1420

RM

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1697688/posts?page=374#374

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1667204/posts?page=1189#1189

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1642417/posts?page=674#674

LOLOLOL!

A-G:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1677590/posts?page=361#361

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1673402/posts?page=1542#1542

RM:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1634169/posts?page=210#210

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1642941/posts?page=23#23

I never have a problem with Alamo-Girl - that's probably why our posts are similar.

Is this just random chance, or is it by (intelligent) design?

Whatever it is, it's just uncanny! :)

[VadeRetro]

Then there's the guy who talks like medved and has an attachment to cities on Mars, Gunnar Heinsohn (a bizarre squished history in which the Middle Ages never happened and the Earth is about 100 million years old), Ralph Sansbury (light is instantaneous, despite it repeatedly being measured as having a finite speed), Splifford the Bat, various fables of goats and tigers, assertions that the sky should be full of feral chickens if evolution were correct...

And the management here just can't spot the fellow.

[betty boop]

Otherwise he would not have clarified his position in 2000, saying the opposite of what you are saying.

js1138, I was relying on a later source: Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, which Yockey published in 2005 (Cambridge University Press, IIRC).

[Religion Moderator]

Got a recent thread with a Saturn-involved creation myth?

[betty boop]

Fascinating. What is medved's new handle - and what is your evidence that he is back?

I'd love to see the guy again! He used to crack me up....

[js1138]

My understanding is that in his latest book he is silent on the posibility of abiogenesis, saying simply there may be things we cannot know. Hardly the same thing as saying it is impossible.

More interesting, until I hear from him directly, is his conclusion on evolution:

"Regarding ID he comments that, according to information theory, 'Once life has appeared,... genetic messages will not fade away and can indeed survive for 3.85 billion years without assistance from an Intelligent Designer'"
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Evolution-Origin-Life/dp/0521802938

You will note that he restates the proposition that the origin of life is not relevant to the way it behaves once it exists.

[betty boop]

You will note that he restates the proposition that the origin of life is not relevant to the way it behaves once it exists.

That's a point I've been making on this thread, js1138. Why do you expect I would find it controversial?

You quote Yockey:

'Once life has appeared,... genetic messages will not fade away and can indeed survive for 3.85 billion years without assistance from an Intelligent Designer'"

I don't find that statement controversial either, js1138. As I pointed out earlier, Yockey does not regard himself as an IDer, and I explained why I thought that was the case: he seems to connect ID with special creation, or a God constantly interacting with the physical universe. I disagree with this definition, but he's entitled to his own view here, and it doesn't bother me at all.

To the extent that Yockey's science is built on information theory and cryptology, these being "noncorporeals," I'd classify him as someone working within the domain of intelligence and "design."

FWIW.

[Virginia-American]

... However, I doubt we'll ever be cooking up new life forms based upon different chemical systems in the lab just because the number of possible routes that need to be sampled are so humongous that this could not be done in a reasonable time span ...

I disagree, my guess is that someday this will be a high school science fair project. IMO, the fact that the number of routes is so huge means that once a certain chemical complexity is reached, life of a sort will "condense out". This is very roughly Kauffman's scenario.

... I can definitely imagine that we will eventually be inventing new genes to produce new enzymes with novel functions, although I doubt we'll ever have any "from scratch" custom organisms larger than unicellular. ...

Developing new genes ought to be possible when the protein folding problem is solved. I too doubt that anything other than unicellular will be developed from scratch in a lab.

This depends to some extent on what is found under the ice of the moons of Jupiter.

[jennyp]

And the management here just can't spot the fellow.

Indeed, it's like the management is zzz at the switch.

[PatrickHenry]

Indeed, it's like the management is zzz at the switch.

Management had no problem spotting, and banning, medved's last 15 reincarnations.

[ml1954]

Evidently, this is only circumstantial.

[balrog666]

Indeed, it's like the management is zzz at the switch.

Or they look the other way, for whatever reason.

[VadeRetro]

Indeed, it's like the management is zzz at the switch.

Lots of tomfoolery, any way you look at it.

[PatrickHenry]

Maybe he's a mod now.

[VadeRetro]

Or a member of the board of directors.