A Frightening Admission?
| December 8, 2009 | Posted by Flannery under Darwinism, Ethics |
Peter J. Bowler published an article in Science (Jan. 9, 2009) titled “Darwin’s Originality.” While much of Bowler’s analysis is just plain wrong (e.g., Darwin’s theory being already “in the air” is NOT accurately premised largely upon Wallace co-discovery of natural selection as Bowler suggests but upon much deeper secularizing processes coextensive with skeptics like David Hume and positivists like Auguste Comte, both of whom deeply influenced Darwin, and ideas even predating them), but another of his comments is just plain frightening. Toward the end of his essay Bowler distances Darwinism from the racial hygiene of the Nazis but then writes the following: “But by proposing that evolution worked primarily through the elimination of useless variants, Darwin created an image that could all too easily be exploited by those who wanted the human race to conform to their own pre-existing ideals. In the same way, his popularization of the struggle metaphor focused attention onto the individualistic aspects of Spencer’s philosophy.” Lauding “modern science” for recognizing “Darwin’s key insights,” Bowler admits that some of them are “profoundly disturbing” and that “the theory, in turn, played into the way those implications were developed by later generations. This is not,” he adds, “a simple matter of science being ‘misused’ by social commentators, because Darwin ‘s theorizing would almost certainly have been different had he not drawn inspiration from social, as well as scientific, influences. We may well feel uncomfortable with those aspects of his theory today, especially in light of their subsequent applications to human affairs. But if we accept science’s power to upset the traditional foundations of how we think about the world, we should also accept its potential to interact with moral values [emphasis added].”
So what is Bowler saying here? Should we adopt the standards of Peter Singer? Are we all due for a little “culling of the unfit”? Are we to sacrifice ethics on the alter of Darwinian “science”? Bowler’s conclusion regarding Darwin’s “originality” is hardly the uplifting message one would expect.
41 Responses to A Frightening Admission?
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Jerry @ 29:
jerry, again thank you for your personal interest. The problem is that I don’t see a science blog as the place for a broader discussion of dogma and religious practise.
Please bear with me if I just give you my personal opinion (which happens to coincide with that of my priest).
A couple should have children because they love children, not because they feel obliged to.
The abundance of children in some more traditional Catholic countries, e.g. the Philippines, could perhaps be better explained by Catholicism’s disapproval of mechanical and chemical contraception, relying instead on the Knaus-Ogino method which is quite complicated to practise.
Kontinental,
It is the social and religious implications of science that is also a concern here. So the connection between science and Catholic beliefs and religious beliefs in general are at issue here. That people alter their beliefs based on false scientific conclusions is an issue here. So European reproductive changes in a time of plenty is an issue of interest if it may be due to false beliefs. It is constantly pointed out to us how backward the US is compared to Europeans on evolution. The Europeans have bought the bad science rather willingly while the US has not. Interesting phenomenon.
So that is why these topics come up here quite frequently.
By the way I got an email back from a priest who my friend contacted and it confirmed what I was told yesterday.
Good news, jerry: I think we have just been misunderstanding each other!
Of course the church wishes couples to have children. It’s about how to deal with the issue.
So my priest would never threaten a childless couple with fire and brimstone or promote their excommunication.
Instead, he would say: “Oh dear, are you sure you can’t afford kids? Let’s see if we find a charity to tide you over those first years one of you will have to stay at home.”
As for “the social and religious implications of science”:
Of course you are aware that the church has no problems with the Theory of Evolution – but very much so with one of its applications, human stem cell research.
Kontinental,
There has been several threads on Catholics and evolution here over the years. From the things I read, they are ok with evolution (term has many meanings) and could live with Darwinian processes but do not necessarily endorse Darwinian positions of unguided evolution. There are several Catholics here and two of the leaders of ID are Catholic.
Many Catholics take the Theistic Evolution approach which we disagree with here not for any philosophical or theological reasons but because it embraces bad science. And ID does not have a theological position but many here believe that theology and science should be one in the sense that there should be no contradiction.
I am home for the day trying to shake a cold and decided to listen to the debate between Francis Ayala, a former priest and evolutionary biologist, and William Lane Craig, a theologian who has taken up the ID cause. Craig makes good points about the science but it gets a little obscure when it gets into theology as the issue of theodicy is one that causes lots of people to stray in different directions. If you are interested there is an mp3 of the debate at
http://apologetics315.blogspot.....ayala.html
It took place a month ago. Ayala is hard to understand as he still speaks with a heavy accent. He is originally form Spain. Craig I believe is a Protestant but spent several years at Louvain, s Catholic university in Belgium.
It is my opinion that the Catholic Church will abandon Darwinism as soon as it comes to terms with the theodicy issue. Craig has some rather strange theological/biological arguments during the debate which I do not agree with but that is me.
jerry:
You’re just bluffing jerry. There is not a single case of positive evidence for ID. You can’t even name an example. Give me an example and we have something to discuss.
“You’re just bluffing jerry. There is not a single case of positive evidence for ID. You can’t even name an example. Give me an example and we have something to discuss.”
No I am not bluffing at all. In the cell and in the body there are several irreducibly complex systems. None have any naturalistic avenue for origin. Behe has a list of several of them. Pick anyone you want.
How about the origin of the eye, nervous system, ribosome, ATP synthase, flight, DNA transcription/translation process, body plans, the tens of thousands of genes for a few. And do not forget the bacterial flagellum.
The fine tuning of the universe is another area.
Now for you, provide evidence for the origin of a single complex novel capabilities. We have asked for such for over 4 years here and no one has provided anything as of yet. I just listened to a debate from a month ago where a major player in evolutionary biology used peppered moths as an example and changes in microbes in treating disease. How pathetic is that. But you can take his place at the podium because you are going to educate us at last.
jerry:
Yes you are bluffing. You still didn’t manage to provide any positive evidence for ID. Irreducible complexity (IC) is an entirely negative theoretical concept intended to shed doubt on evolution. But even theoretically IC is a joke. You need to provide some evidence that biological structures were actually designed and implemented. We all know why you don’t provide such evidence. It doesn’t exist.
Yes, how about them? How and when were they designed and implemented?
They have, but you just ignore it, or the contributors were banned from this site. Consider this.
How do you explain that from an ID perspective?
lryna,
Your argument is nothing more than an argument from incredulity – and it dosn’t stand up. Computational algorythms based on symbolic data input is a positive evidence of design – or – you can provide one that happened by necessity manipulated by chance. And why did you not answer the question as to how we could test the assumption that un-guided processes are all that is at work in the cosmos?
My God, he is back and with even more inane questions. My guess he thinks absurd questions is the mode of attack. For example,
“But even theoretically IC is a joke. You need to provide some evidence that biological structures were actually designed and implemented. We all know why you don’t provide such evidence. It doesn’t exist.”
and
“Yes, how about them? How and when were they designed and implemented?”
Well, I got word from the designer a few weeks ago and he said the original lab and blue prints were subducted under what was to become the African plate 3.4 billion years ago but by then they were mostly rubble anyway. The original cells were relatively simple but still very complex. Subsequent plants/labs went the same way and unfortunately all holograph videos of design process and implementation are now in hyper space and haven’t been looked at for at least 5 million years. It was touch and go for a long time as the designer said he had to periodically make changes to make sure the ecological systems he set up could function properly and advance to be able to handle more complex forms. No further work has been done for quite awhile (about 15 thousand years ago he did do some major tuning on his last design) and the designer expects future work to be done by this latest design itself. The designer travels via hyper space between his home and our area of the universe when it is necessary.
The designer said the techniques used were much more sophisticated than anything dreamed of by current synthetic biologist crowd but in thirty to forty thousand years they may get up to speed and understand how it was actually done. The designer said it was a lot more difficult than people think especially since this was a new technique and he had to invent the DNA/RNA/protein process from scratch but amazingly they had the right chemical properties. His comment was “Thank God for that” or else he doesn’t think he wouldn’t have been able to do it. It took him about 20,000 of our years just experimenting with amino acid combinations to get enough usable proteins. He said there are only a relatively small percentage of useful proteins out of the gazillion combinations possible. (He didn’t really use the term gazillion; that is my expression for the incredibly large exponent of 10 he said were possible) He also said it many ways it will be easier for current scientists since they will have a template to work off.
He said he is keeping a more frequent monitoring on his experiment these days as his last design may screw up the ecologies that were implemented. That is all I know at the moment. Next time I hear from him, I will tell him you are interested. When he comes to Earth he likes New Mexico best of all but will occasionally visit all the areas. Do you ever get to New Mexico?
Hope this helps you.
Hi Upright BiPed,
No, your argument is from incredulity. You are using vocabulary like “computational algorithms”, apparently without realizing that those are just abstractions that we invented. Real chemistry doesn’t care about that.
Sorry, I forgot I was asked that question. My answer is that you need to define precisely what you mean by “unguided processes” before I can try to say something useful about it. So go ahead and we might get somewhere!
jerry:
It’s she, not he, OK?
The rest of your post is real funny. But you still didn’t manage to provide a single example of positive evidence for ID.