Hello Phaedrus! Of course the operating word in the foregoing sentence is “assumed.” But what bizarre effects seem to flow from this assumption. We are asked to believe that conscience is merely a “a feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results … from any unsatisfied instinct.” Thus we have an assertion flowing from an assumption, and pointing us to yet another term that needs to be clarified, in order to make sense of the definition – that is, instinct. Which Darwin claims (another assertion floating on thin air) man possesses, right along with all the other animals. In this case, the “instinct” for life in the herd has caused man to “evolve” this thing called conscience. Instinct itself, and the moral systems that flow from it, are rooted in social experience. On Darwin’s view, a “good conscience” is merely a by-product of conforming oneself to “herd opinion,” so to speak. If the herd doesn’t think it’s wrong to kill children, then it’s perfectly o.k.
This is not a “moral theory.” It is a denial of normative standards of right and wrong – it is a theory of amorality, hitched to the star of a theory of progressive “evolutionary fitness” which itself has no ethical meaning, because no where to be found in Darwin’s system is any standard of “fitness” or “unfitness” beyond mere survival and (on Dawkins’ view) the ability to replicate our genes in our descendants. (Which I gather is Dawkins’ view of immortality.)
Truly we cannot say there is objective “good” or “bad” in the world, if morality consists merely in personal conformity to popular opinion. Conscience, in the way the Christian West has always understood it, is an “inner voice” that speaks to the need to order our personal existence in accordance with Truth, Goodness, and Justice (which are divine, not human laws). On Darwin’s take, this view of conscience is an absurd and useless vestige of a “barbaric” and superstitious part. If that were so, it ought to have fully “selected out” of the species by now. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Darwin has replaced it with “an inward monitor [that tells] the animal that it would have been better to have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other wrong.” Thus is mankind reduced to the moral status of a paramecium, and good and bad to successful or unsuccessful choices.
But then Darwin seems to involve himself in a logical difficulty: Though man has been levelled to the moral stature of the least creature, at the same time – within the species – there are various grades of men. Darwin simply asserts that some men are more fit than others. And that it’s perfectly o.k. to eliminate (extirpate, destroy) those who are less fit. Again, there is no objective standard of fitness given – other than Darwin himself: He is the measure. I honestly cannot see any difference between his view and Hitler’s. (But then Hitler got this view from Darwin.)
Darwin piles up the fallacies because, IMHO, his initial premise was false: He assumed his theory of evolution to be true. That was the initial mistake that leads to such self-contradictory, bizarre results. But the writer of the Descent and the Origin is the self-same person; so Darwin’s moral theories are condemned to the same pattern of reasoning, the same fate as his theory of Nature.
It looks to me that Darwin has done everything he possibly can to “explain Nature” without reference to God, who has been deliberately banished from his system. Indeed, Nature is the “new God”: It is wisdom, and progress, and the self-sufficient source of all life. Nature is the ultimate principle.
And while that might be good enough to account for the paramecium, it hardly seems sufficient to account for man. God is needed, in order to explain the true nature of man in the fullness of his existential experience.
It will be fairly objected at this point, that I am substituting “God” for Darwin’s “Nature,” and thus I’m doing the same thing he did: I made an assumption about a proper initial premise, and let my analysis flow from that.
The big difference, it seems to me, is this: My initial premise does not result in inconsistent and contradictory results. It actually secures a firm basis for morality, one that is not subject to the whim of popular opinion. And it recognizes the essential dignity of the human person – one who cannot be destroyed with impunity because some more powerful person or group thinks he is unfit.
Personally, I think that Darwin started out thinking about genetics; but couldn’t rest until he could push problems at this level into the comprehensive, abstract doctrine of macroevolution. Once he got there, he had to re-explain everything about natural life in terms of that doctrine. Any question that could not be resolved in those terms was presumed to be not a proper question at all. Anything that could not be explained in macroevolutionary terms – with its assertion of the sub-doctrine of Progress (without standards or morality – which to me is self-contradictory) is presumed not to exist.
All I can say is, the burning urge to “get rid of” God – to explain the universe as an automaton executing a program that Nature wrote – entails a tremendous amount of self-deception, antirationality, and illusion. But it certainly appears to be roaring along as a “going concern” in the popular mind these days. Mankind has paid a heavy price for all this; and in all probability will continue to do so just so long as social (and evolutionary) Darwinism continue to enjoy what today passes for “intellectual respectability.”
Thanks for a great post, Phaedrus. All my very best – bb.