Pathological consequences of Darwinism vs ID
| November 9, 2007 | Posted by DLH under Darwinism, Global Warming, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
The global warming debate has striking parallels to the evolution/intelligent design debate. James Lewis explores the pathological consequences when political correctness replaces the search for truth in science: “Trofimko Lysenko is not a household name; but it should be, because he was the model for all the Politically Correct “science” in the last hundred years. Lysenko was Stalin’s favorite agricultural “scientist,” peddling the myth that crops could be just trained into growing bigger and better. . . . Hundreds of thousands of peasants starved during Stalin’s famines, in good part because of fraudulent science. . . . The explosive spread of AIDS occurred when the known evidence about HIV transmission among Gay men was suppressed by the media. . . .” “. . . Rachel Carson’s screed against DDT caused malaria to re-emerge in Africa, killing hundreds of thousands of human beings. . . .”
How and why do we allow theories to control public policies and resource allocation?
Bjorn Lomborg launched the Copenhagen Consensus with the question “How to spend $50 billion to make the World a Better Place” (2006, ISBN-13: 978-0521685719). The 2004 Copenhagen Consensus published “Global Crises, Global Solutions” (2004, ISBN 0 521 60614 4) where eight distinguished economists ranked global challenges by cost effectiveness. The 2004 Copenhagen Consensus results were:
- Control of HIV/AIDS
- Providing micronutrients
- Trade liberalisation
- Control of malaria
- Develop new agricultural technologies
- Community-managed water supply and sanitation
- Small-scale water technology for livelihoods
- Research on water productivity in food production
- Lowering the cost of starting a business
- Lowering barriers to migration for skilled workers
- Improving infant and child nutrition
- Scaled-up basic health services
- Reducing the prevalence of LBW
- Guest worker programmes for the unskilled
- Optimal carbon tax
- The Kyoto Protocol
- Value-at-risk carbon tax
Why was controlling disease and health the most cost effective, while controlling climate change ranked dead last? Yet high profile global warming advocates dominate the news, research funding and resources – at the expense of far more cost effective applications benefiting millions of lives.
Consider the parallels to the moral and philosophical consequences of Darwinism versus Intelligent Design. What if some randomly “fitter” Homo sapiens dominated others? What if they controlled resources resulting in millions dieing with little consequence. Compare intelligent beings having value as the product of Intelligent Design. In the 20th century, totalitarian regimes appealing to Darwinian evolution caused the deaths of 125 million people. They especially targeted those holding to Intelligent Design and opposing Darwinism. Advocates of both theories claim they are founded on scientific principles. Yet both theories have far reaching consequences and moral implications.
Will Darwinian policies again cause over 100 million deaths by diverting funds from the greatest needs of human suffering to ineffectual efforts to control climate change?
61 Responses to Pathological consequences of Darwinism vs ID
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Bugsby
I don’t know if I have back a bit allowance for this to go through, but some further comments are appropriate on Lysenkoism, Darwinism and Stalinism.
First, note again from DLH at 47.
During Stalin’s reign, this work was published; but it does not carry the implication you tried to give it at 60: for, Stalin’s controlled press APPROVED a book that spoke to his intellectual roots from childhood on in Marxism AND Darwinism.
Thus, the point I and others have made on the intellectual progenitors of Marxism-Leninism etc stand even on this minor point. (Onlookers, observe how B et al have tried to latch on to what they think is an error of fact on Stalin’s personal story, while they have been — apart from a dismissive wave of the hand or two — tellingly silent on the survey of the sources and structure of Marxist evolutionary thought that I learned from Marxist students and lecturers on the Mona Campus UWI in the 1970′s – 80′s, and from the readings I had to do to understand and respond to them. I suspect a start from Fuerbach and Marx’s inheritance from him may be an interesting point of further departure, on the linked materialist philosophical roots from the 1840′s on.)
Further to this, perhaps, B, you are not aware, but as I recall, Darwin toyed with some very Lamarckian ideas as well. In short, insofar as we may make a distinction between Darwinian and Lamarckian evolution, it glides over some pretty grey areas between the two men.
Thirdly, as I pointed out, the critical issue on Lysenko so far as politics was concerned was about the overly theoretical, purist research approach of the biologists, which came up short in Stalin’s eyes as compared with Lysenko’s quick fixes. On technical issues, this spilled dover into “debates” over evolutionary mechanisms: e.g. issues on inheritance of acquired traits.
Indeed, to this day, there are people around who argue that there are mechanisms that can get acquired traits into the genes, thus they champion a neo-Lamarckianism in contradistinction to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis to which Lysenko [and Stalin] objected.
Interesting as they may be, such debates simply do not address the critical, worldview level issue on why evolutionary materialism — and Darwinism as a part of it [used to provide persuasive "scientific" support] have so often lent themselves to the degradation of morality, including to tyranny. In particular, to Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist tyranny. And, leaving some room for flexibility on materialism, Nazi Aryan man racist tyranny. And, allowing room for the many theistic evolutionists involved at technical and popular levels, for the horrors and abuses of the eugenics movement in the US and elsewhere.
In short, it is the worldview-linked elements and associations of evolutionary theory that have historically been (and God help us, even now are) used as a prop for materialism, for racism, and for various linked doctrines that undermine our duty to respect and care for one another as fundamentally equal and valuable in nature. And once we put in a wedge like that into ethics, so that we can denigrate, devalue, dehumanise and abuse the “other,” we are in big trouble. 45 million unborn babies worth of trouble, for just one instance. Watson’s recent dismissal of Africa as genetically isolated and intellectually deficient is another.
No, Lysenko is not an effective smokescreen.
GEM of TKI