In “Ben Carson and the evolution-morality debate” (Baltimore Sun, May 13, 2012), historian Richard Weikart reflects on the fact that a gifted pediatric neurosurgeon who gave the commencement address at Emory University today was insulted by a faculty letter against him because he doubts Darwin. And the university president has resolved to see to it that no such useful person who doubts Darwin will ever be permitted to give a commencement address again:
Since I am a historian who has studied and published on the history of evolutionary ethics, I was rather surprised by the Emory faculties’ consternation over Dr. Carson’s belief that evolution undermines objective ethics and morality. Last summer, I attended a major interdisciplinary conference at Oxford University on “The Evolution of Morality and the Morality of Evolution.” Thus, I am well aware that there are a variety of viewpoints in academe on this topic. Nonetheless, many evolutionists — from Darwin to the present (including quite a few at that Oxford conference) — have argued and are still arguing precisely the point that Dr. Carson was highlighting: They claim that morality has evolved and thus has no objective existence.
One of the keynote speakers at the Oxford conference was the leading philosopher of science, Michael Ruse, who stated in a 1985 article co-authored with Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson: “Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to co-operate.” Why do biologists at Emory try to make Dr. Carson appear foolish for asserting that evolution undermines ethics, while one of the leading evolutionary biologists and one of the leading philosophers of science admit that evolution destroys any objective morality? Professor Wilson in his book “Consilience” argued: “Either ethical precepts, such as justice and human rights, are independent of human experience or else they are human inventions.” He rejected the former explanation, which he called transcendentalist ethics, in favor of the latter, which he named empiricist ethics.
Doctors who help kids should be dissed so that the Darwinists can conceal their real beliefs from the public?
Sure, Emory faculty. Make your priorities clear. Disgusting “morality is an illusion” theories over kids.
Note: People who have a child or grandchild whose mental faculties were saved by a pediatric neurosurgeon are not a fan group for the Emory Darwinbots.