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What’s So Scary About Evolution?--For Both Left and Right, a Lot
Around June 17 or June 18, 1858 — which is to say, a hundred and fifty years ago, less a few days — the mail delivery at Charles Darwin’s house south of London included a package from Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist doing field work in Indonesia. In the package was Wallace’s paper On The Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, spelling out in brief but clear terms a theory of the origin of species, a theory congruent with the one that Darwin himself had been assembling for 20 years out of his own observations.
Darwin, distracted by the grave illness of his youngest son, asked friends to arrange for joint publication, Wallace’s work and his own to be presented together as short abstracts to a learned society. This was done on July 1 with neither author present, Darwin being grief-stricken — his son had died on June 28 — and Wallace being still in Indonesia. A year and a half later, Darwin published his great book On the Origin of Species. Our view of the world of living organisms changed radically and for ever.
We shall therefore be in Darwin commemorative territory this next year or so. To the scientifically literate portion of humanity this will be an occasion to acknowledge with gratitude and respect one of the giants of our understanding, a figure to rank with Newton, Gauss, and Einstein. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection supplied an elegant explanation for the great variety of living things on Earth. No alternative explanation (other than the miraculous) has ever been offered, and a century and a half of inquiry has produced not a single observation that contradicts Darwin’s basic principles. Those principles form the foundation of the life sciences. As the great biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky framed it: ”Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
So much for the clear breezy uplands of history and science. Down in the rain forest of actual human society, Darwin has had a more mixed reception. Strict fundamentalists in all three of the big Abrahamic religions regard his theories with loathing. The degree of loathing is different among the three faiths, being highest among Muslims, lowest among Jews, and intermediate among Christians. The loathing is real, though, and among some groups of believers, it is very intense.
There are two reasons for this. In the first place, Darwin’s theories contradict the holy books, if those books are read with a close and literal meaning. In the second, the broad outlook on human nature implied by Darwinian ideas contradicts the notion of human exceptionalism, without which the Abrahamic religions lose their point. To put it crudely, those big old Western faiths see humanity as a Chosen Species, uniquely gifted by God with powers of moral discrimination and (though there are sectarian differences here) with the prospect of an afterlife. To modern biologists, informed by Darwin, we are merely another branch on Nature’s tree, our particular mental and social gifts in plain line of descent from homologues among the higher animals.
The social phenomena engendered by these stresses are well known. The Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925 is part of collective memory in the U.S.A., though of course interpreted variously according to inclination. Probably because of that trial, and a popular movie about it released in 1960, at the height of our country’s post-Sputnik science anxiety, hostility to Darwin’s ideas was for a long time associated with hillbilly fundamentalism in the imaginations of educated Americans.
That association is now out of date. In the soft languor of post-industrial society, with its vast cohorts of articulate and leisured drones half-educated in the swollen Humanities departments of over-endowed colleges, science is taken blithely for granted and nature is far away. When did you last meet a person who declared botany to be his hobby? Any provincial English town in Darwin’s time could have produced hundreds. I spent many hours of my youth in second-hand bookstores in England. Pulling down from the shelves any book bearing a publication date before 1900, you could be pretty sure to find a pressed flower or leaf in its pages.
Nature’s blind uncaring ruthlessness is even further from our sensibilities than its merely structural aspects. In the middle of writing this essay I paused to dispose of a large rat who had shown up in one of my garden traps, which are of the cage type. The disposal was by my customary brisk method: I drop the unopened cage, frantic rat inside, into an old driveway-sealant bucket filled with water. This operation aroused hysterical objections from my 15-year-old daughter. ”Please, Daddy. Can’t you drive out with it somewhere and let it go?” Me: “It’s a rat, honey. Read up the Black Death.” What do we know of reality any more? Of Darwin’s 10 children, three died from disease—a modest degree of loss for those times.
And so, as physical and biological reality recedes from our senses, replaced by flickering images and airy verbal constructions wafted to us across air-conditioned college classrooms, science ceases to be seen as an edifice of useful intellection, arduously assembled by observation, experiment, and discussion, and repeatedly tested against reality. It becomes instead just one more thing to have an opinion about, a lifestyle choice. There are of course prudent limits to our insouciance. Nobody who flies at all will strike a critical pose towards aerodynamics, nor will recreational rock climbers indulge themselves in skeptical thoughts about gravitation. Where the connections between reality and ideas are less plain, though, all theories are equal, Evolution by Natural Selection as much a Po-Mo lifestyle-menu item as Post-Colonial studies or Queer Legal Theory.
Hence the resurgence of anti-Darwin sentiment, marked most recently by Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled.” “Anti-Darwin,” note, not merely “anti-Darwinian.” The animosity is just as personal as that. In this age of celebrity culture, it’s not just the theories, it’s the old boy himself. Anyone who writes about these topics can tell you — I certainly can — that large numbers of Americans regard Charles Darwin as a very wicked man. In fact the biographies show him as a kindly and honorable Victorian gent, who nursed the common prejudices of his time in their mildest forms. No matter: biography is tossed into the postmodernist blender along with history and science, rendered down to make another draught of lifestyle latte.
(This is not the least of the indignities the old naturalist has had to endure. In Robert Ferrigno’s recent novels about a part-Islamicized future U.S.A., Darwin is the name of an exceptionally ferocious assassin. From the general tenor of the novels, however, I should guess the author’s intent to be ironical, not antiscientific. Ego te absolvo>, Bob.)
As I said, American anti-Darwinism has drifted far from its original home in back-country Christianity. Ben Stein’s Jewishness is a leading indicator here. When intelligent Jews sign on to a lifestyle-statement pseudoscience, you know the thing has legs. Stein’s movie was favorably reviewed by David Klinghoffer, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and author of a shelf of books justifying the ways of God to men. David Berlinski, another Jewish author, has recently joined the ranks of Darwin-slayers. I don’t know what William Jennings Bryan would have had to say about this development, though I think I can imagine what the older Great Generation of American-Jewish scientists and mathematicians would have said. (A yet older generation, the supersitious shtetl peasants portrayed by Isaac Bashevis Singer, might have been more sympathetic.)
The placing of anti-Darwinism on a political scale is usually considered a no-brainer. The phenomenon belongs, of course, on the political Right, along with most forms of anti-modernism and religious enthusiasm. On closer inspection, matters are by no means so simple. The aforementioned Bryan, who argued the anti-Darwin side in the Scopes trial, would certainly not have thanked you for calling him a conservative. Bryan was a populist Progressive, given to thundering against “the idle holders of idle capital.”
Contrariwise, when celebrity atheists—Darwin enthusiasts all—sit around chatting, the occasion will not pass without one or other of them slipping in a firm denunciation of the proposition that human races differ in any way other than the merely visible. That proposition is, however, exceedingly probable on Darwinian principles, and it is likely Darwin himself believed it. Recall the full title of his book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
The race issue in fact presents a conundrum for Darwinists of the political left, a conundrum eagerly exploited by religious anti-Darwinists keen to don the mantle of Political Correctness. Evolution is racist! Darwin was a racist! Darwinism inspired the Holocaust! In reply to these gleeful denunciations, the poor Darwinist can only mumble, with perfect truth but rhetorical feebleness, that as a scientific theory, Darwin’s is as ethically neutral as Newton’s or Faraday’s. It prescribes no human action or attitude, neither “racism” nor “anti-racism” nor any other.
It cannot be denied, though, that Darwinism’s metaphysical implications are hard to square with any view of human nature not flatly biological; and this applies as much to the “blank slate” egalitarianism of the irreligious Left as to the soul-based universalism of the religious Right. This is inevitable. As an empirical view of living matter, chasing down its truths one by one through thickets of patient observation, Darwinism is bound to offend systems derived from introspection, revelation, or social approval.
Here are the three prevalent views of human nature, in chronological order by origin. The
“Abrahamic” view is the one promoted by the big old Western faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Darwinian view is the one implied (though not dispositively proved) by Darwinism. The third view I have labeled “Boasian” after anthropologist Franz Boas, who was the first to use it as basis for a comprehensive modern account of human nature.
Abrahamic: Our species homo sapiens is the special creation of God, either as a one-off miracle or by God-guided evolution. Human nature is a mix of attributes, some biological, some inserted by God. The God-given attributes are unique to our species. They are the same in all human populations, forming the foundation of our essential equality. Their existence is independent of our biological nature, even to the degree that they can continue to exist after our deaths. Being non-biological, they certainly do not evolve, even if other features of the living world do, so that our evolution, if it ever took place, ended (except perhaps for some incidental biological features) when God decreed we have these attributes. God rules!
Darwinian: Our species homo sapiens arose, like all other species, from the ordinary processes of evolution, which have continued to the present day. Human nature is a collection of characteristics all susceptible to biological explanation. These characteristics show variation in any one population. A human population that breeds mostly within itself for many generations will develop distinctive profiles of variation, as a result of ordinary biological laws, causing it to diverge from other such populations. Neither individual human beings nor human populations are equal. Some human-nature characteristics can be shaped to some degree by “cultural” (i.e. social or environmental) forces; some cannot. Biology rules!
Boasian: Our species homo sapiens arose, like all other species, from the ordinary processes of evolution. However, these processes ceased in the very early history of the species, leaving us with a human nature uniform across all populations and unchanging over time, forming the foundation of our essential equality. This human nature is infinitely resilient, like a water-filled balloon. Any of its characteristics can be pushed into almost any shape by “cultural” forces (see above), but will submit to radical re-shaping if different forces are applied. Observed variations in human-nature characteristics have probably (in the case of individuals) and certainly (in the case of populations) no biological foundation. Culture rules!
A thing you notice when these three views of human nature are lined up is how far the Darwinian explanation stands from the other two. I have worked my phrasing somewhat to bring this out, but it wasn’t difficult to do so. A Darwinian view of human nature really is quite sensationally revolutionary. In particular, it makes a hash of intrinsic human equality. We may of course—and we should, and I hope we ever shall! — hold equal treatment under the law to be an organizing principle of our civilization; but that is a social agreement, like driving on the right, not a pre-existing fact in the world.
We might even speculate that the Abrahamic and the Boasian views are really the same, or that the second is a scientistic nineteenth-century derivative of the first, as Marxism was of traditional religious millenarianism. As the authors of math textbooks say: I leave this as an exercise for the reader.
The Boasian view of human nature is still the consensus one in Humanities and the social sciences. This is so much the case that it has been completely internalized by pretty much everyone, even children. Here is a story from last week’s news.
10-YEAR-OLD SCHOLAR TAKES CALIF. COLLEGE BY STORM
Sophomore holds an A-plus average in subjects like algebra, astronomy
With the end of another school year approaching, college sophomore Moshe Kai Cavalin is cramming for final exams in classes such as advanced mathematics, foreign languages and music.
But Cavalin is only 10 years old…
Our little prodigy is particularly interested in spacetime wormholes, a speculative area in General Relativity Theory. But:
First, he has statistics homework to finish. Later, he’ll work with his mother, Shu Chen Chien, to brush up on his Mandarin for his Chinese class. Then it’s over to the piano to prepare for his recital in music class.
In matters educational, little Moshe is a Boasian blank-slater:
He says other students can achieve his success if they study hard and stay focused on their work.
One of his teachers inclines the same way:
‘He sees things very simply,’ says Judge, his statistics teacher. ‘Most students think that things should be harder than they are and they put these mental blocks in front of them and they make things harder than they should be …’
You see, it is wrong, wrong, wrong to think that anyone—even Moshe Kai Cavalin—is smarter than anyone else. That would be educational nihilism, a denial of human equality. We are all equally smart. Some people just take the wrong approach to learning, that’s all.
You may have noticed there that little Moshe’s Mom is Chinese. From his forename you may further have deduced, what is in fact the case, that his Dad is Jewish. Chinese … Jewish … super-smart … What is at work here: God, biology, or culture? CULTURE! screams back the entire world of right-thinking people, and who dares deny it? Well, a legendary geneticist might, but what does he know?
Only one view of human nature can be correct. Either we are the ensouled favorites of an omniscient deity; or we are biology and nothing else; or we are biological vehicles for a perfectly plastic uniform essence whose every trait is a consequence of the world immediately around us. The first option, in current American society, is largely the property of the political Right; the third, of the political Left. The middle option has no true political home, any more than Pythagoras’ Theorem has. Like Pythagoras’ Theorem, it is much the most useful of the three, and very likely true. Unlike the theorem, though, it tells us things about ourselves we cannot bear to hear. For that reason, it will probably never have wide acceptance.
John Derbyshire is a contributing editor of National Review and the author of, most recently, Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra.
Comments
Unlike the theorem, though, it tells us things about ourselves we cannot bear to hear. For that reason, it will probably never have wide acceptance.
Why does this have to be the case? If you remember, eugenics was once American government policy and everybody assumed white superiority, and somehow people survived. Hell, race relations were better and we didn’t have a lot of the pathologies we do today.
Today’s enviornmentalism is the current fad; there’s nothing about it that is inherently more comforting than genetic determinism. Either way you’re being deterministic, once the soul is gone.
The true threat to a true understanding of human nature is living in a multi-cultural society and mass democracy. Every group gets their own version of reality and I don’t see blacks or Mexicans ever just accepting their lot. That’s America though, and maybe policy based on sanity and logic will occur in the European countries which remain overwhelmingly white.
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“The middle option has no true political home, any more than Pythagoras’ Theorem has. Like Pythagoras’ Theorem, it is much the most useful of the three, and very likely true.”
I’d say the first option (Christianity) has proven pretty useful, what with it producing Western civilization and all.
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David:
“I’d say the first option (Christianity) has proven pretty useful, what with it producing Western civilization and all. “
Yes - my own feeling is that the second is true, but the first may be the only viable organising principle for society; that people can’t live by Darwinism, which has no moral content, and in the absence of God they turn to true evil like Marxism (here, Boasism).
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Dear Mr. Derbyshire,
Your article offers a lot of food for thought.
Regarding your classification I do wonder about the following: the Christian fundamentalist (Creationist) view essentially rejects anything biological that contradicts a strict literal interpretation of the Bible. As far as I understand, some proponents of ID (one can also call them theistic evolutionists) accept (at least in principle) empirical data provided by science but draw a conclusion that is different from the available information as do scientific materialists (or deistic evolutionists) regarding the “big picture”, or regarding the why, instead of the how.
Would not that actually mean that Christian fundamentalists (or Creationists) are in many ways further from Darwinists than ID proponents (at least in agreeing, more or less, on the how, but disagreeing on the why, which at least in my view is outside the scope of science)?
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“Only one view of human nature can be correct. Either we are the ensouled favorites of an omniscient deity; or we are biology and nothing else; or we are biological vehicles for a perfectly plastic uniform essence whose every trait is a consequence of the world immediately around us. The first option, in current American society, is largely the property of the political Right; the third, of the political Left. The middle option has no true political home, any more than Pythagoras’ Theorem has. Like Pythagoras’ Theorem, it is much the most useful of the three, and very likely true. Unlike the theorem, though, it tells us things about ourselves we cannot bear to hear. For that reason, it will probably never have wide acceptance.”
This is a brilliant point, that man can take only so much reality.
However, while I believe in the existence of genetics and in the usefulness of tradition-bound, mild eugenics, I cannot embrace the “and nothing else” part.
It’s perplexing to me why parts one and two cannot coexist. Why can we not be both biological beings influenced by DNA and with soul?
Yet, most who embrace eugenics are atheists. And most who embrace Christianity are terrified of the concept of genetics, and seem ready to remove it from their sight as some demonic lie created to test their faith.
A true believer, it would seem, would embrace both the reality of Creation and its origin and purpose.
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Ah, note there’s a profound difference between eugenics that directs small natural changes and eugenics that genetically engineers.
I don’t expect most to take the time to realise this truth though…
Complex genes cannot evolve, hence eugenics cannot create new genes or lead to evolution past a naturally existing poing.
The purpose of eugenics is but to preserve those genes that might otherwise be corrupted and lost forever within our soft, man made environments. Its purpose is to preserve Creation, not to alter it.
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Darwin becomes a cause for concern only when his views are taken to imply atheism. The loss of belief in human exceptionalism is of concern primarily because of what it implies for morality. If man is merely an animal, nothing more, why shouldn’t we kill people whose lives are inconvenient or require people to breed for eugenic purposes? After all, we do both to animals. Those whose acceptance of Darwin causes them to lose faith in God have answers to these questions, but not good ones. As Dostoevsky noted, and as such philosophers as Leszek Kolakowski have agreed, morality without divine sanction is ultimately meaningless.
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Ignoring truth because others have gotten into trouble from it or misapplied makes no sense. This is where liberals go wrong on genes and eugenics.
That genes and ethnicity matter are both true. The Cambrian explosion was 530 million years ago. We need to wake up to that instead of ignoring it. We are in the midst of destroying this great line of development out of ignorance and fear. This is a great waste. We need to stop immigration and we also need to filter genes at the bottom at a minimum.
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I enjoyed reading John Derbyshire’s excellent and provocative essay. However, I differ with him on one minor point. The neoconservative Jewish embrace of anti-Darwinism has to be viewed in a political context. I suspect that Ben Stein’s agenda on behalf of Christian fundamentalism is a way for the Likudniks to please the Christian Zionists for their unconditional support for Israel. I understand Norman Podhoretz prohibited any criticism of the religious right to appear in Commentary many years ago for this reason.
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Darwin’s contemporary, the Rev Charles Kingsley had no problem with Darwin’s basic thought. I think he knew more about theology than the Derb does. Theodosius Dobzhansky, whom Derbyshire quotes, was an Eastern Orthodox who believed in theistic evolution. He knew more about evolutionary biology than the Derb.
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Sebastian has said what needs to be said about the direction of Takimag. Takimag is beginning to resemble NR with leftists posing as conservatives. Posting the rants of members of the Darwin cult leads one to wonder if Takimag is serious about being the voice of true conservative.
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On the subject of uncomfortable truths, recent European demographics indicate that those who embrace the Darwinian weltanschauung are dying off. Interesting paradox, surely, that by Darwinism’s own theses, its believers render them unfit to survive.
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Mr. Derbyshire may know some math and a little biology, but I wonder how much does he know about philosophy and theology? Maybe he should read the work of Stanley Jaki.
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Western civilization began to thrive only when it shrugged off the silly Middle Eastern superstition that had so burdened it so long and rediscovered its Greco-Roman roots. In the millinenum from Constantine to Michelangelo, the West bumbled along at near-subsistence level from one crisis to another.
Greece and Rome had given the world representative politics, philosophy and literature, architecture and artistic aesthetics. And Ancient Greece gave humanity science; all cultures have intiated scientific breakthroughs, but only one created the discipline for investigating the cosmos and ourselves in it.
Nothing symbolizes the West’s rediscovery of its heritage better that the replacement of countless representations of the Virgin by the voluptuous Venus of Botticelli rising from the tide. After it regained it soul with the Renaissance, the West never looked back. And never again would it be backed to the wall by the acquisitive followers of yet another Levantine/Arabian fever dream. (What makes the place such a brewer’s vat for religious fervor, anyway?)
Fairy tales about chariots of fire and resurrections may inspire industry and creativity. But they are not its mortar. After all, the beauty and grace of Chartres owe more to the load-bearing arch of the “pagan” Romans than to the frenzied Saul of Tarsus.
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Curt,
An extremely ignorant and ahistorical Whig screed.
Please read the following, then reply, please provide specific historical citations to support your argument, not “everybody knows that”.
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/renaissance.html
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Magnopere !
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Your “Abrahamic” classification does not agree with late medieval and early modern Christianity. The common view then was that humans were created good, but the fall drastically changed human nature. The essense of this change (original sin) was that the “beast in man”, i.e., animal-like part of human nature, broke out from under reason and took control of behavior. Christianity’s task was to repair the damage of original sin by returning the rational, virtuous part of the mind back to its original, “created” dominant position. When successful, this repair ("touch of grace") manifested itself as an easily observable, thorough change in personality.
Using your scale, the Christian position can be seen as a combination of Darwinian and Boasian views: there was an animal-like part to fallen human nature, but with sufficiently effective methods that animal could be overcome. I.e., human nature was thought to be totally malleable. Indeed, changing human nature used to be Christianity’s central task.
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Sid, I do not defend Derbshire, and I wish this article had not appeared on this website.
BUT, I must object to your objection here: “10. Finally, Derbyshire doesn’t tell us of his degrees in organic chemistry (blot 13), cell biology (blot 14), or genetics (blot 15), or what institutions granted these degrees (blot 16), and when (blot 17). Don’t hold your breath for him to do so.”
I have seen other people use this objection before: “unless you have a degree in X, you shouldn’t speak
about X.” Allow me, Sid, to show you what’s wrong with this type of objection: what is to prevent me
from asking you to speak ONLY on those topics YOU have a degree in? Do YOU have an advanced degree in
Hebrew? If not, then don’t write about the Old Testament at Chronicles. Do YOU have an advanced degree in
chemistry? If not, then don’t even bother writing on this thread. Do YOU have an advanced degree in history
or theology or politics? Then don’t talk on those topics you don’t have a degree in. Do you see the
problem? Plus, what if Derbyshire had a degree in all those things and still said the things he wrote
here? If he found people with degrees in those disciplines who happened to agree with him, what could
you say? There are plenty of people with history degrees who probably disagree with you on your
interpretations of history. The appeal to a college degree doesn’t do much.
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“And because the “races” are NOT different species, and because Darwinism only deals with speciation, then Darwinism really has nothing to say about “race”.”
Secondly, Sid, in the Darwinian scheme, different species start out as different races and
subspecies within a single species. Different breeds of dog potentially can become different
species if given millions of years. So yes, of course Darwinism has everything to do with
races that exist below the level of the species, for the populations that eventually become
new species first start out as discrete populations within a single species.
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---------I enjoyed reading John Derbyshire’s excellent and provocative essay. However, I differ with him on one minor point. The neoconservative Jewish embrace of anti-Darwinism has to be viewed in a political context. I suspect that Ben Stein’s agenda on behalf of Christian fundamentalism is a way for the Likudniks to please the Christian Zionists for their unconditional support for Israel. -----------
Ding ding ding!
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Caper:
“Different breeds of dog potentially can become different
species if given millions of
years”
The time taken to speciate will depend on the length of generations. I doubt it would take geographically separated groups of dogs millions of years to speciate. Humans and chimps split somewhere ca 3.5 to 6 million years ago (higher or lower estimate depending on whether you go by paleontology or by DNA) and we’re quite different, even with our long generation length.
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Kari Konkola:
“Your “Abrahamic” classification does not agree with late medieval and early modern Christianity. The common view then was that humans were created good, but the fall drastically changed human nature. The essense of this change (original sin) was that the “beast in man”, i.e., animal-like part of human nature, broke out from under reason and took control of behavior.”
That’s how an evangelical Christian friend explained the Fall to me, but it seems the opposite of what the Book of Genesis actually says. In Genesis humans are innocent and animal-like until they acquire the Knowledge of Good and Evil, becoming more like God in so doing. The first Sin was not animal passions, it was disobedience. The story resembles other early myths of human origin, eg Prometheus and the knowledge of fire.
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rcg:
“On the subject of uncomfortable truths, recent European demographics indicate that those who embrace the Darwinian weltanschauung are dying off. Interesting paradox, surely, that by Darwinism’s own theses, its believers render them unfit to survive.”
To me that’s the crux of the matter. Most Darwinists seem unable to contemplate the possibility that religious belief evolved for very good reasons.
What value the truth, if the truth gives you no reason either to live with dignity or to procreate?
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“Darwinian scheme, different species start out as different races and
subspecies within a single species”
Nope. Random variation in genes (something that D. knew nothing about) produces a new species, not over a thousand years but at once, in a new generation. Most such new species die because they cannot adapt. Caper needs a degree in genetics or read books by those who have such a degree and are subject to peer review, and then Caper needs to know the consensus of degreed geneticists. I am more willing to lend an ear to someone who’s devoted his life to a field, and a field that requires advanced knowledge of Math and organic chemistry acquired over years, than to someone who’s thought about this for 5 min, or who is pursuing a fascist or Marxist or Whig political agenda and is thus biased.
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Furthermore, I am not the one writing an article for Takimag on Darwinism. Derbyshire is. To ask for his credentials on the matter is the very least one should expect. Even if Derbyshire has such credentials, his case is weak, full of logical errors and cultural ignorance, and the writebacker should say so. Caper knows nothing about debate. The burden of proof is upon those writing the article, and until they prove their point, their claims are mere assertions, and the writebacker should say the claim is not warranted by facts or logic.
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Finally, Tu Quoque is a logical fallacy. Were I unqualified to talk about a subject doesn’t change the fact of Derbyshire’s qualifications, or lack thereof.
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“Different breeds of dog potentially can become different
species if given millions of years”
How exactly do you know that? With all the breeding and cross-breeding of dogs, they are still dogs and a new species has not been created.
After all the genetic experiments with fruit flies, scientists have merely created variations of fruit flies, not new species.
I suppose these observations prove nothing, but they don’t prove neo-Darwinism, either.
And, I don’t understand how neo-Darwinism can be put to service in policy matters. Perhaps there can be a race to create a new post-human species that possesses all the proper liberal or conservative qualities.
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Simon Newman,
I could not agree more with your observation that one can question how Biblical the “original sin corrupted” view of human nature is. Early modern answer to your objection would have been to say that being innocent and animal-like are mutually exclusive, because the animal-like part of human nature (in theological terms, the “flesh"), is the ultimate source of all sin. In this reasoning, the animal passions produced the disobedience that caused Adam and Eve to fall to the temptation and commit original sin. (Note the discrepancy in timing.)
The animal vs. rational dualism, has, however, been immensely influential in modern Western history. Catholics and Protestants shared this view, and they also acted on it. The result was a massive, centuries-long, religion-based effort to enable the rational part of the human mind to control the animal passions. The historical significance was the reason why it seemed necessary to point out this serious factual error in Derbyshire’s categorization.
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Sirius,
Did you read my caveat, “According to the Darwinist schema”? I didn’t say I believed in it,
I simply pointed out that Sid was not correct in saying, “Darwinism speaks of speciation and
hence says nothing of population groupings below the level of species.” Sid’s claim is false
whether Darwinism is true or not. Whether Darwinism speaks of such groupings correctly or
not, yes, it certainly takes them into account.
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Re Organic Chemistry Degree issue
“The family of carboxylic acids contains a carboxyl (-COOH) functional group. Acetic acid is an example.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry
Now why is it someone needs a degree in organic chemistry for the theory of evolution? Did Darwin have a degree in organic chemistry? Mendel? Watson? Crick?
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There are some great video lectures on-line .
Human Anatomy
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/wp/wp/2007/12/18/flash-test/
Diamond at Berkeley. She is extremely good. Even if you think you don’t want to hear anatomy, she is so good that you will be glad you watched. You will get better medical care too from 3rd world doctors in America.
MIT
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/index.htm#Biology
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Old Atlantic (Brown) steps in it! Francis Crick’s degrees were in chemistry, physics, and molecular biology. James Watson’s in zoology and genetics, both areas requiring tons of organic chemistry. Their mutual research on DNA was work in organic chemistry. Mendel’s academic training was in physics, Darwin’s in medicine and physics. Both came before Mendeleev set up the foundation of modern chemistry, and thus well before modern organic chemistry and molecular genetics. And I myself said that Darwin was innocent of Mendelian genetics, and that is exactly for what Berlinski faults him: A theory innocent of any genetics might in fact be quite wanting.
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Mr. Cundiff is quite correct.Darwinism is a pre-modern scientific theory advanced in a state of fundamental ignorance. For instance, the staggering complexity of the cell was completely unknown to Darwin. Furthermore, Darwinism is irrelevant to most sciences - the empirical work of science would continue regadless of the philosophical assumptions of its practitioners.
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For once I agree with Sid; Darwinism is more ideology than science. Mr Derbyshire may be right too about Darwinism changing morality forevermore, although that doesn’t mean it is scientifically true. I recommend “Created From Animals” by James Rachels, for a jaw-dropping set of admissions by a Darwinist that quaint little notions like “human dignity” and “human rights” may have to end up in the dustbin of history if we embrace evolutionism. It’s a short march from Darwin to Herbert Spencer’s brutal treatment of the poor.
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Why must you end this very informed piece with a false choice?
“Only one view of human nature can be correct. Either we are the ensouled favorites of an omniscient deity; or we are biology and nothing else; or we are biological vehicles for a perfectly plastic uniform essence whose every trait is a consequence of the world immediately around us.”
My own view is that both biology and culture shape us; it’s not just one or the other, and we are a long way from knowing and understanding the proportional role of each and their myriad mechanisms of influence.
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@Derb
Good stuff, don’t mind the fascists and the theocons in the comments. You didn’t write for them anyway.
Sid is wrong, and so is Theodore van Osbree
“Mr. Cundiff is quite correct.Darwinism is a pre-modern scientific theory advanced in a state of fundamental ignorance. For instance, the staggering complexity of the cell was completely unknown to Darwin.
Yeah, but without Darwin, I doubt Watson & Crick would have come very far. Actually, watch EO Wilson & Watson discuss this very issue at Charley Rose here.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6927851714963534233
“Furthermore, Darwinism is irrelevant to most sciences - the empirical work of science would continue regadless of the philosophical assumptions of its practitioners.”
Completely false. Darwin’s notion ‘survival of the fittest’ even left a mark on economics.
Sid, I like your passion, but there are times when you sound like one of the least enlightened people on the planet—and no, that’s not a complement. Your sense of selfrighteousness is completely over-the-top.
My mother always told me this: don’t talk too much about stuff you feel too strongly about, it makes you say stupid things. Wise woman.
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No, Mr. Derbyshire is just an anti-Christian bigot who thinks anything but bio-reductionism is risible.
There’s nothing conceptually wrong with Theistic Evolution or the BioLogos, the Bios AND the Zoe. C.S. Lewis addressed this before Mr. Derbyshire was born. Mr. Derbyshire presents a false choice when he presents “only” alternatives. Darwin just confirms that God worked through the laws of physics that He established at creation rather than folding his arms and blinking his eyes ala Barbara Eden a million separate times in a million different acts of special creation. If you accept the religion of God incarnate, shouldn’t you expect to see physical/biological correlates to the Zoe.
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Oh, boy, Mr. Derbyshire talking about race again. I’ve asked him a few questions that he NEVER had the answers for. Questions like: How many, scientifically delineated races are there? He couldn’t answer this simple question, and ended the discussion with the idiotic notion that since West Africans can win 100-meter dashes over other people, they must be different race. When I asked why can’t the stringy East Africans win at 100-meter dashes and if they constitute separate race from West Africans, he never replied back. Mr. Derbyshire, like all these “race realists,” are just using crack-pot, non-scientifically based notions of “race” to reinforce mid-20th century prejudices. Don’t let his erudite references fool you--he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
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Derb complains about intellectuals with too much free time, then proves his point with a stem-winding essay whose point is not quite clear.
First he worries about evolution being attacked from the religious right, but seems more concerned by attacks from a splinter group of the irreligious left. Did he step on it?
In the real world, 100 nutty professors in Cultural Studies cannot outweigh the religious right. It was not leftist presidential candidates who held up their hands to deny evolution—it was Huckabee and McCain.
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As Tom Fleming writes, “race is partly rooted in genetics and part social construction.” The “part social construction” part means that the boundaries can be and are defined by social processes. Population geneticist LL Cavalli Sforza’s work shows that the Victorian scientist’s basic parsing of people into continental races was pretty accurate with the exception that American Indians are distinct enough to constitute a race. This shouldn’t surprise. They were smart men and worked with lots of data and the phenotypes they used as data are ultimately manifestations of genotype.
There can be and is perfectly valid and logical reasons for defining the boundaries here or there. Most of the boundaries were placed where they were for good reason.
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A rat is a rat is a rat. There are populations around the globe, but the differences among rats in Endgland and rats in China is not worth talking about. Perhaps a tiny, isolated rat population on some Pacific atoll will evolve into a new species, but not the rats of the five continents.
Why should it be any different for humans? Or at least for humans within any time frame we care to discuss?
Maybe a population of pygmies isolated in African jungles for 120,000 years is a little different, but it’s unlikely that any other human populations have evolved markedly since the end of the last ice age. They are as equally adapted to their environment as the brown rat. So Boasian theory is not that different from Darwinism.
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Tom Piatak:
No, it is NOT the case that “Darwinists have answers to ‘why be moral without God’, but not good ones.”
We have perfectly fine answers for that nonsensical question.
Asking how atheists can value human life without Osiris is like asking how they can enjoy chocolate cake without Osiris. Humans are social animals. We naturally sympathize with each other; we are so inclined towards sympathizing with each other that we can sympathize with non-human animals and even inanimate objects, look up “anthropomorphism” in any dictionary or witness a young child talking to its pets and toys. We depend on the cohesion of the social group and most healthy people try to keep the group together; the sort of defective sociopathic murderer-types would occur with equal frequency regardless of whether Osiris is in their hearts, just as surely as would albinism and conjoined twins.
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TTT:
Is that sufficient to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide? Even if one has an affinity to one’s group, why should that group refrain from destroy or displacing a competitor?
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Wow, post an article that might even implicitly pee on someone’s favorite Magical Invisible Being and look at the reaction you get. “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”--Swift
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PB:
Genocide and ethnic cleansing of outsiders and competitors has routinely been done in the name of divine authority, and it was probably routinely done by early human ancestors even before the first god was invented. It’s just part of primate behavior. There is no reason to be uniquely afraid of atheist societies’ supposed lack of morality, any more than of atheist societies’ supposed extra-smelly bowel movements. They’re just human like everyone else.
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So ethnic cleansing or genocide is permissible then?
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“Permissable”? When did this discussion ever become about permission?
Some guy said if you don’t worship Thor you’ll turn into an immoral murderer. I pointed out how that ain’t so.
Worshipping or not-worshipping Thor will do nothing to prevent genocide. If enough cruel and unsympathetic and fearful people get enough power, they will commit genocide. If they believe in Thor, they will invoke him to justify it; if not, they will invoke something else.
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It’s an inference from what you’ve written in response. Can you give a reason why genocide or ethnic cleansing is wrong? Because this:
Humans are social animals. We naturally sympathize with each other; we are so inclined towards sympathizing with each other that we can sympathize with non-human animals and even inanimate objects, look up “anthropomorphism” in any dictionary or witness a young child talking to its pets and toys. We depend on the cohesion of the social group and most healthy people try to keep the group together; the sort of defective sociopathic murderer-types would occur with equal frequency regardless of whether Osiris is in their hearts, just as surely as would albinism and conjoined twins.
Is insufficient.
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Rats!, Ken
Derb seems to have frends in high places at _Nature_,witness its blog :
Super-evolved mega-mice threaten island birds
- May 20, 2008
Birds on Gough Island in the South Atlantic are being threatened by an invasive population of mice. Not just any mice though, as the Guardian reports…
What is horrifying ornithgologists [sic] is that the humble house mouse which landed on Gough has somehow evolved to two or even three times the size of an ordinary British house mice [sic2], and instead of being a vegetarian, eating insects and seeds, has adapted itself to become a carnivore, eating albatross, petrel and shearwater chicks alive in their nests. They are now believed to be the largest mice found anywhere in the world.
The mice, which sometimes attack bird nests in groups, are completely out of control, the paper warns. This story first surfaced in 2005 but it has been given added legs now that two birds from the island, the Tristan albatross and the Gough Bunting, have been listed as critically endangered on the IUCN’s Red List
Continue reading “Super-evolved mega-mice threaten island birds” »
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Are you seriously asking me why genocide is wrong? Up to now, this thread has been about the supposed power of religion to PREVENT genocide after it was implicitly granted as wrong--not whether in fact it was wrong at all.
I repeat: to atheists, chocolate cake still tastes good. Healthy people feel sympathy for other people. The idea that “other people feel much like I feel, I shouldn’t harm them” is no more necessarily a gift from the Rainbow Serpent than the notion that since knives are sharp you shouldn’t stab them into yourself.
If you want to talk about what inspires genocide, well, the implication that people who don’t believe in the right god have no morality and are less than fully-functioning people has done the trick in the past.
For those who seriously think human life only gains value from God, it logically follows that it has no actual value of its own, and is disposable: nothing more than the presumed will of a god, the lack of the proper omen, etc., is required to justify taking those inherently-worthless lives away. If one thinks life is only special because God says so, it follows that life isn’t special at all.
I am the one who recognizes the value of life--something far more important than the invisible authority of supernatural phantoms, who so conveniently seem only to express themselves through very mortal authority figures who already hold the power of life and death over their subjects.
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Are you seriously asking me why genocide is wrong? Up to now, this thread has been about the supposed power of religion to PREVENT genocide after it was implicitly granted as wrong--not whether in fact it was wrong at all.
Yes, I am. What is your rationale, as an atheist, for saying genocide is wrong? Some extreme version of sociobiology could maintain that genocide is “ok,” since competition for limited resources justifies it. After all, you are the one who is making the claim:
We have perfectly fine answers for that nonsensical question.
So if you don’t mind, indulge us with those perfectly fine answers.
I am the one who recognizes the value of life--something far more important than the invisible authority of supernatural phantoms, who so conveniently seem only to express themselves through very mortal authority figures who already hold the power of life and death over their subjects.
The value of human life? Why is human life valuable, more so than the life of the animals that are killed and eaten every day? Some would argue that human beings are no different in value or worth from other animals, since human beings are animals too.
For those who seriously think human life only gains value from God, it logically follows that it has no actual value of its own, and is disposable: nothing more than the presumed will of a god, the lack of the proper omen, etc., is required to justify taking those inherently-worthless lives away. If one thinks life is only special because God says so, it follows that life isn’t special at all.
You are failing to make the necessary distinctions here to fully flesh out the Christian defense of life. Perhaps there are still a few divine command theorists who would want to say that human lives are valuable only because “God says so.” But I do not think Mr. Piatak or more mainstream Christian understandings would agree with this. You are ascribing a voluntaristic understanding of morality to Christians who do not hold it.
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pb:
Nicely done.
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Re Sid Cundiff and degrees.
Organic chemistry only reinforces evolution. Derbyshire was taking evolution as true in his article. The science specialties listed don’t advocate against evolution as groups and likely only rare exceptions as individuals. In any case, the substance of the science of organic chemistry and so on supports evolution. Life is composed of cells and ultimately molecules and other physical elements. There is no reason to feel this subtracts.
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“Organic chemistry only reinforces evolution. “
And now Old Atlantic steps into it also. Berlinski’s argument is to the contrary.
Someone banned from this website has emailed info to me worth considering. He says Stephen Jay
Gould’s book, The Mismeasure of Man, demonstrates that IQ testing is pseudoscience. And without my signing on to Gould’s intellectual program in toto, still Gould—if I may rescript Tom Wolfe—is a holy roller, foot washing, slain in the spirit, altar calling, in tongues speaking, hard shell, Missionary Alliance, Four Square Gospel, True Vine Holiness, snake handling Primitive DARWINIST! Wonders never cease.
To clarify my own position. I say neither yea or nay to Darwinism. It certainly is an improvement over Lamarckianism. And it has nothing to do with “race”. “Races”, which don’t exist anyway, are not species. Darwin’s theory is set up to explain speciation—and nothing more.
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The full title of Darwin’s book was “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”
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So? One proverbially can’t tell a book by its cover, or title.
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“At some future period the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races” - Charles Darwin, Descent of Man
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Nott’s translation of Gobineau, one jackass translating an ever bigger one, was the first in English, in 1856, Philadephia. Gobineau’s “science”—as scientific as astrology—granted came out three years before The Origin, yet too soon to have influenced Chuck D., the latter gentleman having already arrived at his theory with his Voyage of the Beagle, 1839. Frankly, I’d be surprised if Chuck ever read Gobineau. Before the wicked and stupid Gobineau, “race” meant only “kind”, as in “the human race”.
I’m looking for the quote from Chuck D. where he said, late in his life, that all humans were one species. “Races” aren’t different species anyway.
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Thank you Mr. Piatak.
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Are others having trouble posting links?
Race against the machines is machines replacing humans, article here:
http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=61912&page=1
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PB:
I think congratulations are in order: you have successfully based your entire argument on an obvious rhetorical fallacy, yet I failed to see it and fell right into your trap. Well done, I guess.
Specifically, you are approaching atheism (and possibly evolution itself) with an Appeal To Consequences logical fallacy. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, or even could be true: what matters is if it is GOOD. This is one of the core arguments of creationists: “Evolution caused the Holocaust, so stop talking about it.” The false assumption is cloaked behind a more inflammatory charge. Political Correctness by any other name....
Whether or not atheism might contribute to genocide is no reflection of its accuracy. A great many genocides have employed firearms, but gunpowder still ignites the same old way, and we still have a 2nd Amendment.
If you really want to talk just about consequences and not about truth and evidence, well, any imaginable benefit of religion can easily be reversed. The Bible says mankind was created out of mud and pebbles, instantly and effortlessly, by magic. How does THAT make life seem valuable? I’m proud to be an animal. Animals are cool. Especially primates, which are intelligent and care for their young. It’s a nice pedigree. But.... mud and pebbles? Yuck. That sure doesn’t make human life seem important. Plus, since we came about by divine magical fiat, it follows we could be just as instantly and effortlessly regenerated, as surely as the Sorceror’s Apprentice could have conjured up another walking broom. The atheist view of life is more appreciative of the tenuous unlikelihood and eons-long struggle that went into our very existence; something that unlikely and difficult is by definition more precious than an effortless, automatic fait-accompli.
Similarly, atheism bestows more value upon life because we know we only get ONE life, and not TWO. Just think of all the damage that a faith in the “afterlife” has done to the quality of this one. Any first-year econ student can illustrate how the value of something is inversely proportional to how abundant and replaceable it is; you and I both know full well that there are many cases of people committing murder or suicide because they were sure there was another life, another world, better than this one, to come. Life becomes devalued if you think you have more than one.
We could go on like this forever: since the Appeal to Consequences fallacy is unconcerned with truth or evidence, neither side will ever gain ground as long as there are enough anecdotal atrocities and speculated motives to go around. The “point” of atheism is that no claim of the supernatural, by anyone at anytime, has ever been verified, anywhere. All observable phenomena either already have pefectly workable natural explanations, or a framework of study and examination that could lead to such explanations in the future. If they could also lead to genocide, well, the Nazis also put numbers on their victims’ arms, yet counting still works.... doesn’t it?
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I think congratulations are in order: you have successfully based your entire argument on an obvious rhetorical fallacy, yet I failed to see it and fell right into your trap. Well done, I guess.
Specifically, you are approaching atheism (and possibly evolution itself) with an Appeal To Consequences logical fallacy. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, or even could be true: what matters is if it is GOOD. This is one of the core arguments of creationists: “Evolution caused the Holocaust, so stop talking about it.” The false assumption is cloaked behind a more inflammatory charge. Political Correctness by any other name....
Whether or not atheism might contribute to genocide is no reflection of its accuracy. A great many genocides have employed firearms, but gunpowder still ignites the same old way, and we still have a 2nd Amendment.
You’ve completely mis-stated the point and identified a fallacy where there is none. Is this deliberate on your part?
It is not:
If atheism (or evolution) leads to bad consequences, then evolution is false.
In fact, there is no attempt at any inference yet as to the falsity of atheism. I am merely questioning whether you really have “perfectly fine answers.”
Should a draw a conclusion from the fact that you’ve failed to answer my questions?
1. On what grounds does your brand of atheism prohibit genocide and ethnic cleansing?
2. Why human life is more valuable than animal life? Arguably animals and plants only get one life. So why should their lives be ended prematurely by us?
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@ Sid
“Random variation in genes… produces a new species, not over a thousand years but at once, in a new generation. Most such new species die because they cannot adapt.”
This has got to be the most ill-informed two sentences I have read in the history of Taki’s Mag.
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This essay, I think, puts evolution and Christianity too much in opposition. The inferences that one can derive from evolution are essentially conservative - they show the limits of man and “culture” and demonstrate man’s tribal nature. It’s true that some modern forms of Christianity have become so saturated with “universal human rights” talk that they, in a sense, have untethered man from his biological and historical restraints. But a more traditionalist understanding of Christianity does not presuppose opposition to evolution. I think that Thomas Fleming’s Politics of Human Nature does a good job of synthesizing findings in evolutionary biology with traditional Western mores. Evolution, in some ways, is a biological understanding of “the ancestral,” which was central to ancient (and even Medieval) morality.
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@ Ray
“Oh, boy, Mr. Derbyshire talking about race again. I’ve asked him a few questions that he NEVER had the answers for. Questions like: How many, scientifically delineated races are there? He couldn’t answer this simple question.”
Tell us, Ray, how many regions are there in the United States? I’ve seen it divided into 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 regions at least. Does the lack of disagreement show that meaningful geographic differences are imaginary?
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Inductivist,
If a there’s no scientifically delineated definition of “race,” then race as a SCIENTIFIC DESIGNATION does not exist. Population differences, of course, exist, but there’s only one human race. Racists like Derbyshire uses pseudo-science to categorize the human race into a whole bunch of little races so they could make sweeping generalizations with impunity. I just wish Derbyshire would just flat-out say what he means instead of hiding such highfalutin junk. And what he really mean is: “All non-white people are dumber than whites with the exception of Asian, who, while not unintelligent, can’t be trusted with maintaining civilization. Thus, white people should limit the migration of non-whites into all lands with predominantly white populations--Europe, Canada, US, Australia.” That’s the bottom line if you’ve read one iota of Derbyshire’s views.
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