I have been reading The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, edited by Knud Haakonssen and just published by Cambridge. The concluding essay by Haakonssen and Donald Winch, "The Legacy of Adam Smith," confirms some of my thinking about how Darwin and evolutionary ethics (particularly in the work of Edward Westermarck) fits into the Smithian tradition of thought.
One of the strongest arguments for Darwinian conservatism turns on the intellectual links between Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Charles Darwin.
While libertarian conservatives look to Smith as their intellectual founder, traditionalist conservatives look to Burke. The intellectual friendship between Smith and Burke shows the fundamental compatiblity of libertarian and traditionalist thought. When Darwin worked out his theory of the social evolution of morality, he relied on the moral philosophy of Smith (as well as others in the Scottish Enlightenment). This continuity between Smith, Burke, and Darwin manifests the moral philosophy of conservatism as rooted in the evolved nature of human beings as moral animals. The work of conservative thinkers like James Q. Wilson (in The Moral Sense) builds on this ground.
Burke's first letter to Smith (September 10, 1759)can be found here. He wrote to praise Smith's book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. "I have ever thought that the old Systems of morality were too contracted and that this Science could never stand well upon any narrower Basis than the whole of Human Nature." He thought Smith's book had done that. "A theory like yours founded on the Nature of man, which is always the same, will last, when those that are founded on his opinions, which are always changing, will and must be forgotten." In his review in the Annual Register, Burke observed: "The author sseeks for the foundation of the just, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and most allowed passions; and making approbation and disapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and shewing that those are founded on sympathy, he raises from this simple truth, one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared." Burke then quoted the entire first chapter of the book entitled "Of Sympathy."
In The Descent of Man, Darwin elaborated his evolutionary theory of morality, which can be found here. He was guided by Smith's moral philosophy, and he quoted the opening remarks about sympathy as the natural power of the human mind for sharing the feelings of others as the ground of moral experience. He then showed how this natural human capacity and the moral sentiments could have evolved from social instincts and human reason.
So as I argue in Darwinian Conservatism, this shows us how a conservative defense of traditional morality can be rooted in a Darwinian science of evolved human nature.
The moral sense is not a product of pure reason alone but is rather a humanly unique capacity for moral judgment that combines social emotions and rational reflection. As social animals, human beings have evolved to feel social emotions and to seek social approbation. As rational animals, human beings have evolved the cognitive ability to reflect on present actions in the light of past experience and future expectations. Consequently, human beings can plan their actions to satisfy their social desires for living well with others.
Recent research in neuroscience is uncovering the neural basis of moral experience in the brain, and it confirms the moral philosophy of Smith, Burke, and Darwin in showing how morality requires a combination of moral emotions and moral deliberation in the service of our social instincts.
Contrary to those conservatives who fear Darwinian science as a threat to morality, Darwinism actually shows the natural grounds of human morality in the nature of the human animal. In this way, Darwinian science supports the conservative commitment to traditional morality.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Spiritual Machines or Abolition of Man?
By the year 2045, we will have created robotic intelligence that will be one billion times more powerful than the biological intelligence of human beings. At that point, we will transcend our biology by uploading our human consciousness into "spiritual machines." That's the prediction of Ray Kurzweil in his book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. He welcomes this prospect, because he foresees that by uploading his consciousness into a robot, he will become immortal, and his intelligence will be increased.
But many people fear this. Religious conservatives see this as what C.S. Lewis called "the abolition of man." The modern quest to conquer nature might lead us to conquer human nature, perhaps by using our technological power to transform our nature so that we might be immortal. But in doing that, we would actually annihilate ourselves.
This leads religious conservatives like Carson Holloway to warn that Darwinian conservatism provides no obstacle to such uses of technology to alter and eventually abolish human nature. After all, if our existing human nature is understood as a product of biological evolution that serves no cosmic purpose, then why shouldn't we use our power to bring about a technological evolution of our nature to improve it in ways that we might hope would make us happier and more secure?
But if one believes in a cosmic teleological order designed by God, as Holloway does, then it's hard to see why he worries about the abolition of human nature by technology. Such a worry suggests that God's teleological order is so fragile that it can be upset by human technology. That's why Peter Lawler suggests that to speak about the technological abolition of human nature is an exaggeration.
Like Lawler, I have argued (in the last chapter of Darwinian Conservatism and in my March 8th posting on transhumanism)that human nature will endure, and that both the fearful opponents of transhumanism and the hopeful proponents exaggerate the power of technology for changing human nature.
But what should be said about Kurzweil? He rejects the idea of "transhumanism," because he thinks that what makes us human--the software patterns of information that make us the people that we are--will be preserved in nonbiological hardware.
Kurzweil is famous as a successful inventor who has developed optical scanners and voice recognition software. He identifies himself as a "pattern recognition scientist." Rather than being a "materialist," Kurzweil insists that he is a "patternist" who believes that emergent patterns of information are more important than the materials that embody them. That's why he thinks the human patterns of conscious experience can be preserved even in the complex computational mechanisms of the future.
Kurzweil's main idea is "that there is a specific game plan for achieving human-level intelligence in a machine: reverse engineer the parallel, chaotic, self-organizing, and fractal methods used in the human brain and apply these methods to modern computational software" (Singularity, 439).
Since I have argued that the human mind arose by emergent evolution in the brain, I would have to agree that at least in principle it should be possible to duplicate human intelligence in machines that replicate the causal complexity of the brain. But while I concede this as true in principle, I am skeptical that it will ever be possible in practice, because I doubt that we will ever have the perfect understanding of the brain that will allow us to "reverse engineer" its activity and then replicate it in a machine.
Some religious conservatives would disagree. They would say that the human mind cannot even in principle be replicated in a machine, because the machine would lack the immaterial spirituality that constitutes the human soul as created by God.
But even if God has created the human soul, isn't it clear that He has chosen to exercise His creation through the natural causal powers of the human brain and nervous system? The human mind arises in a human individual when the brain has developed to a critical point of complexity while interacting with the social and physical world in the early development of the individual.
But if this is so, then in principle we could replicate human intelligence if we knew enough about the causal powers of the brain to replicate them artificially in a machine. And yet I think this is unlikely, simply because I cannot foresee that our understanding of those causal powers will ever be deep enough to make this possible in practice. Kurzweil says that "the principles of the design of the brain are simpler than they appear" (446). To me, this seems remarkably naive.
Nevertheless, some of Kurzweil's critics would say that I have conceded too much to him. For example, John Searle insists that no computer could ever replicate human intelligence. He uses his famous Chinese Room Argument to support this claim.
In Are We Spiritual Machines?, a book edited by Jay Richards and published by Discovery Institute Press, Kurzweil meets his critics. Searle has a chapter in the book in which he says at one point: "Suppose you took seriously the project of building a conscious machine. How would you go about it? The brain is a machine, a biological machine to be sure, but a machine all the same. So the first step is to figure out how the brain does it and then build an artificial machine that has an equally effective mechanism for causing consciousness. These are the sorts of steps by which we build an artifical heart. The problem is that we have very little idea of how the brain does it. Until we do, we are most unlikely to produce consciousness artificially in nonbiological materials" (72).
I agree with Kurzweil in seeing this as a fundamental concession to Kurzweil's reasoning. Searle admits that in principle a machine could replicate human intelligence if it could replicate the causal powers of the human brain. The only disagreement, then, is that Searle thinks our knowledge of the brain's working is too limited to permit this. Kurzweil is much more optimistic about future advances in neurobiology that will allow us to "reverse engineer" the brain and thus build "spiritual machines."
Darwinian conservatives should be skeptical about Kurzweil's vision, because they should be skeptical that human beings will ever have the perfect knowledge of how the brain works that would allow the creation of artificial intelligence with the complexity and flexibility of human intelligence. Human beings are uniquely endowed with a freedom of thought and action that comes from the emergent evolution of the soul in the brain. It is unlikely that we will ever know enough about the brain to artificially recreate the brain's causal powers in a machine.
But many people fear this. Religious conservatives see this as what C.S. Lewis called "the abolition of man." The modern quest to conquer nature might lead us to conquer human nature, perhaps by using our technological power to transform our nature so that we might be immortal. But in doing that, we would actually annihilate ourselves.
This leads religious conservatives like Carson Holloway to warn that Darwinian conservatism provides no obstacle to such uses of technology to alter and eventually abolish human nature. After all, if our existing human nature is understood as a product of biological evolution that serves no cosmic purpose, then why shouldn't we use our power to bring about a technological evolution of our nature to improve it in ways that we might hope would make us happier and more secure?
But if one believes in a cosmic teleological order designed by God, as Holloway does, then it's hard to see why he worries about the abolition of human nature by technology. Such a worry suggests that God's teleological order is so fragile that it can be upset by human technology. That's why Peter Lawler suggests that to speak about the technological abolition of human nature is an exaggeration.
Like Lawler, I have argued (in the last chapter of Darwinian Conservatism and in my March 8th posting on transhumanism)that human nature will endure, and that both the fearful opponents of transhumanism and the hopeful proponents exaggerate the power of technology for changing human nature.
But what should be said about Kurzweil? He rejects the idea of "transhumanism," because he thinks that what makes us human--the software patterns of information that make us the people that we are--will be preserved in nonbiological hardware.
Kurzweil is famous as a successful inventor who has developed optical scanners and voice recognition software. He identifies himself as a "pattern recognition scientist." Rather than being a "materialist," Kurzweil insists that he is a "patternist" who believes that emergent patterns of information are more important than the materials that embody them. That's why he thinks the human patterns of conscious experience can be preserved even in the complex computational mechanisms of the future.
Kurzweil's main idea is "that there is a specific game plan for achieving human-level intelligence in a machine: reverse engineer the parallel, chaotic, self-organizing, and fractal methods used in the human brain and apply these methods to modern computational software" (Singularity, 439).
Since I have argued that the human mind arose by emergent evolution in the brain, I would have to agree that at least in principle it should be possible to duplicate human intelligence in machines that replicate the causal complexity of the brain. But while I concede this as true in principle, I am skeptical that it will ever be possible in practice, because I doubt that we will ever have the perfect understanding of the brain that will allow us to "reverse engineer" its activity and then replicate it in a machine.
Some religious conservatives would disagree. They would say that the human mind cannot even in principle be replicated in a machine, because the machine would lack the immaterial spirituality that constitutes the human soul as created by God.
But even if God has created the human soul, isn't it clear that He has chosen to exercise His creation through the natural causal powers of the human brain and nervous system? The human mind arises in a human individual when the brain has developed to a critical point of complexity while interacting with the social and physical world in the early development of the individual.
But if this is so, then in principle we could replicate human intelligence if we knew enough about the causal powers of the brain to replicate them artificially in a machine. And yet I think this is unlikely, simply because I cannot foresee that our understanding of those causal powers will ever be deep enough to make this possible in practice. Kurzweil says that "the principles of the design of the brain are simpler than they appear" (446). To me, this seems remarkably naive.
Nevertheless, some of Kurzweil's critics would say that I have conceded too much to him. For example, John Searle insists that no computer could ever replicate human intelligence. He uses his famous Chinese Room Argument to support this claim.
In Are We Spiritual Machines?, a book edited by Jay Richards and published by Discovery Institute Press, Kurzweil meets his critics. Searle has a chapter in the book in which he says at one point: "Suppose you took seriously the project of building a conscious machine. How would you go about it? The brain is a machine, a biological machine to be sure, but a machine all the same. So the first step is to figure out how the brain does it and then build an artificial machine that has an equally effective mechanism for causing consciousness. These are the sorts of steps by which we build an artifical heart. The problem is that we have very little idea of how the brain does it. Until we do, we are most unlikely to produce consciousness artificially in nonbiological materials" (72).
I agree with Kurzweil in seeing this as a fundamental concession to Kurzweil's reasoning. Searle admits that in principle a machine could replicate human intelligence if it could replicate the causal powers of the human brain. The only disagreement, then, is that Searle thinks our knowledge of the brain's working is too limited to permit this. Kurzweil is much more optimistic about future advances in neurobiology that will allow us to "reverse engineer" the brain and thus build "spiritual machines."
Darwinian conservatives should be skeptical about Kurzweil's vision, because they should be skeptical that human beings will ever have the perfect knowledge of how the brain works that would allow the creation of artificial intelligence with the complexity and flexibility of human intelligence. Human beings are uniquely endowed with a freedom of thought and action that comes from the emergent evolution of the soul in the brain. It is unlikely that we will ever know enough about the brain to artificially recreate the brain's causal powers in a machine.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
George Gilder's Intelligent Design Creationism
The July 17th issue of National Review has an article by George Gilder, "Evolution and Me". Gilder is a conservative economist who joined with Bruce Chapman in founding The Discovery Institute, the leading conservative think-tank promoting "intelligent design theory."
Gilder tries to persuade conservatives to reject Darwinian science because it promotes a scientific materialism that is both morally corrupting and scientifically false. Darwinian materialism is morally corrupting because it "banishes aspirations and ideals from the picture," and because it advances a crude vision of capitalism "as a dog-eat-dog zero-sum struggle." It is scientifically false because in reducing all of nature to material causes, it denies the primacy of information (as in the DNA code)in guiding organic order in a manner that can only be explained as the work of the Divine Mind. The New Testament teaching that "in the beginning was the word" (John 1:1) is confirmed by modern information theory.
I have answered these and related criticisms of Darwinian science in Darwinian Conservatism. But I can make a few points here.
In asserting that Darwinism cannot support the moral aspirations of human beings, Gilder says nothing about Darwin's account of the natural moral sense or the work of others (like James Q. Wilson) who have shown how Darwinism sustains morality.
In particular, it's hard to understand Gilder's assertion that Darwinism assumes a "zero-sum" view of human life. Darwin emphasized the importance of cooperation in moral evolution. Darwinian theorists have used game theory to show how cooperation could have evolved because of the advantages of "non-zero-sum" cooperation. Robert Wright has written a book--Nonzero--arguing the entire history of life can be understood as the expansion of synergistic cooperation through the logic of "non-zero" collaboration to resolve "prisoner's dilemma" situations.
In arguing that Darwinian evolution cannot explain the emergence of information, Gilder repeats a standard argument of the Biblical creationists like those at Ken Ham's "Answers in Genesis." They distribute a book entitled In the Beginning Was Information, which argues that information can only come from an intelligent creator, and therefore the DNA code proves the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis.
As I have said, there is nothing in Darwinian science to deny the possibility of God as the First Cause of nature who works His will through the evolutionary process. But Gilder and other intelligent design creationists assume that God cannot do this, because evolution cannot create information such as we see in the DNA code. Gilder insists: "Everywhere we encounter information, it does not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup."
But such talk about "random flux" ignores the power of natural selection for introducing information into the genome. For example, an article by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria, and Travis Collier in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown how biological complexity could evolve by chance mutation and natural selection. Applying information theory to evolution, they indicate how random mutation creates variation on which natural selection works--favoring those variations that are adapted to the environment, so that information about the environment is transferred to the organism's genome.
Gilder makes much of the emergent hierarchical order of the universe, relying on a famous argument by Michael Polanyi. But he does not tell his readers that many Darwinian biologists agree with this idea that biological phenomena show an emergent order that is not reducible to physics and chemistry. I have a whole chapter on "emergence" in Darwinian Conservatism
This article is clearly an effort by the folks at the Discovery Institute to blunt the effect of Judge John Jones decision in the Dover case. Gilder ridicules Jones as a "gullible federal judge." But Gilder does not tell his readers that even the Discovery Institute has admitted that the policy of teaching intelligent design in the Dover school district was adopted by Biblical creationists on the school board who had no interest in science.
Gilder tries to persuade conservatives to reject Darwinian science because it promotes a scientific materialism that is both morally corrupting and scientifically false. Darwinian materialism is morally corrupting because it "banishes aspirations and ideals from the picture," and because it advances a crude vision of capitalism "as a dog-eat-dog zero-sum struggle." It is scientifically false because in reducing all of nature to material causes, it denies the primacy of information (as in the DNA code)in guiding organic order in a manner that can only be explained as the work of the Divine Mind. The New Testament teaching that "in the beginning was the word" (John 1:1) is confirmed by modern information theory.
I have answered these and related criticisms of Darwinian science in Darwinian Conservatism. But I can make a few points here.
In asserting that Darwinism cannot support the moral aspirations of human beings, Gilder says nothing about Darwin's account of the natural moral sense or the work of others (like James Q. Wilson) who have shown how Darwinism sustains morality.
In particular, it's hard to understand Gilder's assertion that Darwinism assumes a "zero-sum" view of human life. Darwin emphasized the importance of cooperation in moral evolution. Darwinian theorists have used game theory to show how cooperation could have evolved because of the advantages of "non-zero-sum" cooperation. Robert Wright has written a book--Nonzero--arguing the entire history of life can be understood as the expansion of synergistic cooperation through the logic of "non-zero" collaboration to resolve "prisoner's dilemma" situations.
In arguing that Darwinian evolution cannot explain the emergence of information, Gilder repeats a standard argument of the Biblical creationists like those at Ken Ham's "Answers in Genesis." They distribute a book entitled In the Beginning Was Information, which argues that information can only come from an intelligent creator, and therefore the DNA code proves the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis.
As I have said, there is nothing in Darwinian science to deny the possibility of God as the First Cause of nature who works His will through the evolutionary process. But Gilder and other intelligent design creationists assume that God cannot do this, because evolution cannot create information such as we see in the DNA code. Gilder insists: "Everywhere we encounter information, it does not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup."
But such talk about "random flux" ignores the power of natural selection for introducing information into the genome. For example, an article by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria, and Travis Collier in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown how biological complexity could evolve by chance mutation and natural selection. Applying information theory to evolution, they indicate how random mutation creates variation on which natural selection works--favoring those variations that are adapted to the environment, so that information about the environment is transferred to the organism's genome.
Gilder makes much of the emergent hierarchical order of the universe, relying on a famous argument by Michael Polanyi. But he does not tell his readers that many Darwinian biologists agree with this idea that biological phenomena show an emergent order that is not reducible to physics and chemistry. I have a whole chapter on "emergence" in Darwinian Conservatism
This article is clearly an effort by the folks at the Discovery Institute to blunt the effect of Judge John Jones decision in the Dover case. Gilder ridicules Jones as a "gullible federal judge." But Gilder does not tell his readers that even the Discovery Institute has admitted that the policy of teaching intelligent design in the Dover school district was adopted by Biblical creationists on the school board who had no interest in science.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Harry Jaffa and Charles Darwin
The debate among American conservatives over Darwinian evolution is evident in some recent writing by James Q. Wilson and Harry Jaffa. Wilson wrote an article praising Judge John Jones' decision in the Dover case. In the spring 2006 issue of the CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS, Jaffa criticized Wilson. The summer 2006 issue of the CLAREMONT REVIEW has some correspondence on this debate.
It is hard for me to understand what Jaffa is trying to say in this article. But I would make three points.
First, Jaffa assumes that the school board policy in Dover, Pennsylvania, came from the school board members being persuaded by the arguments for intelligent design. In fact, the testimony at the trial made it clear that the board members who favored the policy knew almost nothing about intelligent design theory. They were Biblical literalists who thought intelligent design reasoning would support their Biblical creationism. The proponents of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute rejected the board's policy because it was motivated by a purely religious purpose.
My second point is that Jaffa is confusing in that he seems to both affirm and deny intelligent design theory. He seems to be defending it. But then he says: "there is . . . nothing in the theory of intelligent design--many intelligent design advocates to the contrary, notwithstanding--which necessarily implies a designer." Here Jaffa rejects the fundamental idea of intelligent design theory.
My third point is that--like many conservatives who criticize Darwinian science--Jaffa confuses ultimate and proximate causes in Darwinian explanations. If natural selection favors traits that enhance survival and reproduction, Jaffa suggests, then this must mean that all human desires are reduced to the desires for survival and reproduction, which is the crudest form of reductionism. But this is not so. For example, if mothers provide parental care because they love their children, this maternal love is comprehensible on its own terms as a proximate motivation for behavior. But this proximate motivation might also have been favored in evolutionary history because it enhanced human reproductive fitness in a species where offspring need extended care by parents. This explanation by ultimate causes is fully compatible with an explanation by the proximate causes of conscious motivation.
Most of what Jaffa says about the uniqueness of human beings as rational and moral animals is acknowledged by Darwin, who stressed the importance of deliberation, thought, and moral concern in distinguishing human beings from other animals. Jaffa says that we are "the only earthly species that can live outside the boundaries of the experience that is accessible only by sense perception." Similarly, Darwin says that "a moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions and motives,--of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who with certainty can be thus designated makes the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals" (DESCENT OF MAN, chap. 21).
As Jaffa intimates, Darwin agreed with Abraham Lincoln in condemning slavery as contrary to our natural moral sense. So it seems that Darwinian science can sustain human moral judgment. As Wilson has argued in his book THE MORAL SENSE, a Darwinian understanding of human nature supports morality as rooted in the natural moral sentiments of the human animal.
It is hard for me to understand what Jaffa is trying to say in this article. But I would make three points.
First, Jaffa assumes that the school board policy in Dover, Pennsylvania, came from the school board members being persuaded by the arguments for intelligent design. In fact, the testimony at the trial made it clear that the board members who favored the policy knew almost nothing about intelligent design theory. They were Biblical literalists who thought intelligent design reasoning would support their Biblical creationism. The proponents of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute rejected the board's policy because it was motivated by a purely religious purpose.
My second point is that Jaffa is confusing in that he seems to both affirm and deny intelligent design theory. He seems to be defending it. But then he says: "there is . . . nothing in the theory of intelligent design--many intelligent design advocates to the contrary, notwithstanding--which necessarily implies a designer." Here Jaffa rejects the fundamental idea of intelligent design theory.
My third point is that--like many conservatives who criticize Darwinian science--Jaffa confuses ultimate and proximate causes in Darwinian explanations. If natural selection favors traits that enhance survival and reproduction, Jaffa suggests, then this must mean that all human desires are reduced to the desires for survival and reproduction, which is the crudest form of reductionism. But this is not so. For example, if mothers provide parental care because they love their children, this maternal love is comprehensible on its own terms as a proximate motivation for behavior. But this proximate motivation might also have been favored in evolutionary history because it enhanced human reproductive fitness in a species where offspring need extended care by parents. This explanation by ultimate causes is fully compatible with an explanation by the proximate causes of conscious motivation.
Most of what Jaffa says about the uniqueness of human beings as rational and moral animals is acknowledged by Darwin, who stressed the importance of deliberation, thought, and moral concern in distinguishing human beings from other animals. Jaffa says that we are "the only earthly species that can live outside the boundaries of the experience that is accessible only by sense perception." Similarly, Darwin says that "a moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions and motives,--of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who with certainty can be thus designated makes the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals" (DESCENT OF MAN, chap. 21).
As Jaffa intimates, Darwin agreed with Abraham Lincoln in condemning slavery as contrary to our natural moral sense. So it seems that Darwinian science can sustain human moral judgment. As Wilson has argued in his book THE MORAL SENSE, a Darwinian understanding of human nature supports morality as rooted in the natural moral sentiments of the human animal.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Darwinism Is Not Atheism: The Darwin Fish, The Jesus Fish, and The Dawkins Fish
The primary reason why some conservatives oppose Darwinian science is clear: They assume that Darwinism is atheism. They are wrong.
Beginning with the first Christians in ancient Rome, a schematic drawing of a fish has symbolized Jesus Christ. Recently, in the United States, some Christians have put Jesus fish medallions on the back of their cars. Some people have responded to this by putting Darwin fish medallions on their cars. I once saw a car with a bumper sticker that showed a giant Jesus fish eating a tiny Darwin fish. Under the picture, it said "Survival of the Fittest."
I do not have either a Jesus fish or a Darwin fish on my car, because I do not accept the idea that these fish are predatory competitors. I think the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish can swim together without one eating the other.
Although conservatism does not require religious belief, most conservatives believe that religious traditions support morality and social order. As a result, many conservatives object to Darwinism in so far as it seems to promote atheism. They think that when the Darwin fish meets the Jesus fish, one must eat the other.
In defense of Darwinian conservatism, I argue that Darwinian biology is compatible with religious belief, and particularly with Biblical theism. Although Charles Darwin was probably not an orthodox Christian at the end of his life, he recognized that questions about ultimate first causes could not be answered by natural science, which left an opening for religious belief. He also thought that religious belief reinforced morality. Darwinian conservatism sees that religion satisfies some of the deepest desires of human nature as shaped by evolutionary history.
To see the importance of theistic religion for Darwin, one only needs to glance at the beginning and end of The Origin of Species. He begins the book with an epigram from Francis Bacon: "Let no man out of weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both." This metaphor of God as speaking through two books--the Bible as His word and nature as His works--was commonly used by Christians to justify the scientific study of nature as compatible with reverence for the revelation of Scripture.
Darwin's last sentence in The Origin of Species conveys a vivid image of God as Creator. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
In The Descent of Man, Darwin stressed the importance of religion for morality. "With the more civilized races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advancement of morality." In particular, he saw the Biblical statement of the Golden Rule as "the foundation-stone of morality."
But you will never see anything like this in the writing of Richard Dawkins! Dawkins is a dogmatic atheist who never tires in his widely publicized attacks on religious belief. Although Dawkins is a distinguished evolutionary biologist, he cannot really support his claim that evolutionary science dictates atheism. Here I agree with Carson Holloway in his recent piece on Dawkins for National Review Online. As Holloway indicates, Dawkins derives his atheism not from his science but from his own doctrinaire scorn for religion. Modern natural science cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural, ultimate causes behind the natural, proximate causes of ordinary experience.
And yet conservatives like Richard Weikart, Peter Lawler, and Ann Coulter agree with Dawkins in his claim that Darwinian science must be atheistic. The rhetoric of the Discovery Institute in its attacks on Darwinian evolution relies on this claim. But this ignores the compatibility of Darwinian science and the conservative respect for religion.
For conservatives, it is the moral and political utility of religious belief that is decisive, and Darwinian social theory can support that insight. But Darwinian science can neither affirm nor deny the transcendent theology of Biblical religion.
The human search for ultimate causes that would explain the universe culminates in a fundamental alternative. Either we take nature as the ultimate source of order, or we look beyond nature to God as the ultimate source of nature's order. Our natural desire to understand is satisfied ultimately either by an intellectual understanding of nature or by a religious understanding of God as the Creator of nature.
Darwinian conservatism cannot resolve these transcendent questions of ultimate explanation. But it can secure the moral and political conditions of ordered liberty that leave people free to explore the cosmic questions of human existence and organize their lives around religious or philosophical answers to those questions.
The Darwin fish cannot offer us supernatural redemption from earthly life and entrance into eternal life, which is the promise of the Jesus fish. But when it comes to earthly morality and social order, the Darwin fish and the Jesus fish are swimming in the same school.
Beginning with the first Christians in ancient Rome, a schematic drawing of a fish has symbolized Jesus Christ. Recently, in the United States, some Christians have put Jesus fish medallions on the back of their cars. Some people have responded to this by putting Darwin fish medallions on their cars. I once saw a car with a bumper sticker that showed a giant Jesus fish eating a tiny Darwin fish. Under the picture, it said "Survival of the Fittest."
I do not have either a Jesus fish or a Darwin fish on my car, because I do not accept the idea that these fish are predatory competitors. I think the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish can swim together without one eating the other.
Although conservatism does not require religious belief, most conservatives believe that religious traditions support morality and social order. As a result, many conservatives object to Darwinism in so far as it seems to promote atheism. They think that when the Darwin fish meets the Jesus fish, one must eat the other.
In defense of Darwinian conservatism, I argue that Darwinian biology is compatible with religious belief, and particularly with Biblical theism. Although Charles Darwin was probably not an orthodox Christian at the end of his life, he recognized that questions about ultimate first causes could not be answered by natural science, which left an opening for religious belief. He also thought that religious belief reinforced morality. Darwinian conservatism sees that religion satisfies some of the deepest desires of human nature as shaped by evolutionary history.
To see the importance of theistic religion for Darwin, one only needs to glance at the beginning and end of The Origin of Species. He begins the book with an epigram from Francis Bacon: "Let no man out of weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both." This metaphor of God as speaking through two books--the Bible as His word and nature as His works--was commonly used by Christians to justify the scientific study of nature as compatible with reverence for the revelation of Scripture.
Darwin's last sentence in The Origin of Species conveys a vivid image of God as Creator. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
In The Descent of Man, Darwin stressed the importance of religion for morality. "With the more civilized races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advancement of morality." In particular, he saw the Biblical statement of the Golden Rule as "the foundation-stone of morality."
But you will never see anything like this in the writing of Richard Dawkins! Dawkins is a dogmatic atheist who never tires in his widely publicized attacks on religious belief. Although Dawkins is a distinguished evolutionary biologist, he cannot really support his claim that evolutionary science dictates atheism. Here I agree with Carson Holloway in his recent piece on Dawkins for National Review Online. As Holloway indicates, Dawkins derives his atheism not from his science but from his own doctrinaire scorn for religion. Modern natural science cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural, ultimate causes behind the natural, proximate causes of ordinary experience.
And yet conservatives like Richard Weikart, Peter Lawler, and Ann Coulter agree with Dawkins in his claim that Darwinian science must be atheistic. The rhetoric of the Discovery Institute in its attacks on Darwinian evolution relies on this claim. But this ignores the compatibility of Darwinian science and the conservative respect for religion.
For conservatives, it is the moral and political utility of religious belief that is decisive, and Darwinian social theory can support that insight. But Darwinian science can neither affirm nor deny the transcendent theology of Biblical religion.
The human search for ultimate causes that would explain the universe culminates in a fundamental alternative. Either we take nature as the ultimate source of order, or we look beyond nature to God as the ultimate source of nature's order. Our natural desire to understand is satisfied ultimately either by an intellectual understanding of nature or by a religious understanding of God as the Creator of nature.
Darwinian conservatism cannot resolve these transcendent questions of ultimate explanation. But it can secure the moral and political conditions of ordered liberty that leave people free to explore the cosmic questions of human existence and organize their lives around religious or philosophical answers to those questions.
The Darwin fish cannot offer us supernatural redemption from earthly life and entrance into eternal life, which is the promise of the Jesus fish. But when it comes to earthly morality and social order, the Darwin fish and the Jesus fish are swimming in the same school.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The Intelligent Design Movement and the Dover Decision
On December 20, Judge John Jones released his decision in the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board. The decision appeared to be a devastating defeat for the intelligent design movement. Now the Discovery Institute--the leading think-tank promoting intelligent design--has published its critique of Jones' decision: David DeWolf, John West, Casey Luskin, and Jonathan Witt, Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2006). Reading the trial transcripts, Jones' decision, and this book allows us to see the general character of the debate over intelligent decision. Although I posted a statement about this case a few days ago, I deleted it because I decided that I was oversimplifying a complex case.
The Dover Area School District in Dover, Pennsylvania, had required that a statement be read to students in the ninth grade biology classes, a statement indicating that there there was controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution, and that they could consider "intelligent design" as an alternative theory by reading a reference book in the library--Of Pandas and People. Parents sued the school district, arguing that this was an unconstitutional establishment of religion, because "intelligent design" was not a genuine scientific theory but a religious doctrine.
Judge Jones decided in favor of the petitioning parents, concluding that those promoting the teaching of "intelligent design" in the school were motivated by religious doctrines of creationism, and that "intelligent design" was not really science at all.
Many American conservatives have criticized Judge Jones. Ann Coulter ridicules him as a "hack judge." Coulter and others see this as an attempt of the federal judiciary to indoctrine students in a liberal philosophy of atheistic materialism as rooted in Darwinian reductionism. I and some other conservatives disagree, because we think Darwinian science supports traditional morality and the general principles of conservative social thought, and because we think Darwinian science is supported by extensive evidence and logic.
From my reading of the trial transcripts, the judge's decision, and the Discovery Institute book, at least four points become clear.
The first point is that it is hard to disentangle the intelligent design movement and biblical creationism. The members of the Dover school board who instituted the disputed policy wanted the biblical account of creation to be taught as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. When they were advised that this would be clearly unconstitutional, they adopted "intelligent design" as a substitute for overt creationist doctrine. The Thomas More Law Center took over their legal representation. Initially, the Discovery Institute supported them and arranged to provide expert witnesses for them. But then shortly before the trial began, the Discovery Institute announced that it opposed the policy of the school district, becaused they feared that the case would be too hard to win. In the book published by Discovery Institute, the authors indicate that "the instigators of the policy were supporters of Biblical creationism, not intelligent design" (p. 8). So here they actually agree with Judge Jones's decision that this policy had a purely religious purpose and the claims of interest in scientific debate were just a cover for their religious agenda. The proponents of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute want to employ the rhetorical strategy of asserting that "intelligent design" is utterly different from Biblical creationism, but the Dover case illustrates how difficult this is to maintain. It is true, however, that advocates of "young Earth creationism" like Ken Ham scorn "intelligent design" as an attack on Biblical literalism.
The second point is that the establishment clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court is flawed if it requires an absolute separation between science and religion. Of course, most of us would agree that a literal reading of the Biblcial creation story is religion and not science. But something like "intelligent design theory" is harder to classify. It can have religious implications if one believes that the "intelligent designer" is God. But I think the Discovery Institute folks have a good point when they say that many scientific theories can have religious implications even when the theories themselves are not necessarily religious. The Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe has religious implications if one believes that the cause of the Big Bang must have been divine. But we can judge the scientific evidence and logic supporting this theory without taking up the religious implications. Similarly, why can't high school students study "intelligent design" reasoning as a scientific theory without deciding the religious issues?
The third point is that intelligent design reasoning is predominantly, but not entirely, negative rather than positive. In other words, most of the argumentation for intelligent design is an attack on Darwinism, with the assumption being that as long as Darwinian science is not conclusively proven, intelligent design remains as the only reasonable alternative. As I have argued, this is a weak position. Michael Behe and others argue that intelligent design does have a positive argument: if we see the purposeful arrangement of parts in living mechanisms, we can infer intelligent design as the cause. But this kind of reasoning is very vague, because we cannot infer from this exactly who (or what) the intelligent designer is, and we cannot infer exactly how this intelligent designer works in nature. (Behe argues that the same could be said about the Big Bang theory: that it happened does not tells us how it happened or what caused it.) The reasoning is also dubious because it works by analogy with human intelligent design. We have all seen human intelligent design at work. But we have not seen how a divine intelligent designer could create "out of nothing."
The fourth point is that Kenneth Miller distorts Behe's position by attacking a straw man. Behe's central argument in Darwin's Black Box depends on the idea that Darwinian evolution cannot explain any "irreducibly complex" system, which is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (p. 39). The problem for Darwinian evolution is that "an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Behe concedes, however, that this leaves open the possibility of "an indirect, circuitous route" of evolution by which mechanisms serving one purpose might be incorporated into more complex mechanisms with different functions (pp. 40, 66, 111-13, 177). And yet he thinks the probability of this happening decreases as the complexity of the mechanism to be explained increases.
When Miller tries to refute this reasoning (at the Dover trial and in various published writing), he attacks a straw man, because he ignores what Behe says about the possibility--even if unlikely--of an "indirect, circuitous route" of evolution. Miller shows, for example, that the type III secretory system of bacteria resembles some parts of the bacterial flagellum, which shows that one can take away many parts from the flagellum and still have a functioning system, although it will be serving a different function. This reasoning about "exaptation" is a standard response of Darwinian scientists to Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument. But this does not refute Behe's position, unless one ignores what Behe says about the "circuituous route."
It is true, of course, as I have indicated in previous postings, that Behe and other IDers set up an unreasonably high standard of proof for Darwinian science. To show rigorously and in precise detail the step-by-step evolutionary pathway for the emergence of the bacterial flagellum is extremely difficult. If students were permitted to study this debate, they would see this as belonging to what Darwin himself called the "difficulties" for his theory. But they might also see this as an example of the inevitable limitations of scientific reasoning, so that hardly anything is ever conclusively proven in science, although we can still judge theories as more or less plausible by weighing the relevant evidence and arguments.
The Dover Area School District in Dover, Pennsylvania, had required that a statement be read to students in the ninth grade biology classes, a statement indicating that there there was controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution, and that they could consider "intelligent design" as an alternative theory by reading a reference book in the library--Of Pandas and People. Parents sued the school district, arguing that this was an unconstitutional establishment of religion, because "intelligent design" was not a genuine scientific theory but a religious doctrine.
Judge Jones decided in favor of the petitioning parents, concluding that those promoting the teaching of "intelligent design" in the school were motivated by religious doctrines of creationism, and that "intelligent design" was not really science at all.
Many American conservatives have criticized Judge Jones. Ann Coulter ridicules him as a "hack judge." Coulter and others see this as an attempt of the federal judiciary to indoctrine students in a liberal philosophy of atheistic materialism as rooted in Darwinian reductionism. I and some other conservatives disagree, because we think Darwinian science supports traditional morality and the general principles of conservative social thought, and because we think Darwinian science is supported by extensive evidence and logic.
From my reading of the trial transcripts, the judge's decision, and the Discovery Institute book, at least four points become clear.
The first point is that it is hard to disentangle the intelligent design movement and biblical creationism. The members of the Dover school board who instituted the disputed policy wanted the biblical account of creation to be taught as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. When they were advised that this would be clearly unconstitutional, they adopted "intelligent design" as a substitute for overt creationist doctrine. The Thomas More Law Center took over their legal representation. Initially, the Discovery Institute supported them and arranged to provide expert witnesses for them. But then shortly before the trial began, the Discovery Institute announced that it opposed the policy of the school district, becaused they feared that the case would be too hard to win. In the book published by Discovery Institute, the authors indicate that "the instigators of the policy were supporters of Biblical creationism, not intelligent design" (p. 8). So here they actually agree with Judge Jones's decision that this policy had a purely religious purpose and the claims of interest in scientific debate were just a cover for their religious agenda. The proponents of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute want to employ the rhetorical strategy of asserting that "intelligent design" is utterly different from Biblical creationism, but the Dover case illustrates how difficult this is to maintain. It is true, however, that advocates of "young Earth creationism" like Ken Ham scorn "intelligent design" as an attack on Biblical literalism.
The second point is that the establishment clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court is flawed if it requires an absolute separation between science and religion. Of course, most of us would agree that a literal reading of the Biblcial creation story is religion and not science. But something like "intelligent design theory" is harder to classify. It can have religious implications if one believes that the "intelligent designer" is God. But I think the Discovery Institute folks have a good point when they say that many scientific theories can have religious implications even when the theories themselves are not necessarily religious. The Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe has religious implications if one believes that the cause of the Big Bang must have been divine. But we can judge the scientific evidence and logic supporting this theory without taking up the religious implications. Similarly, why can't high school students study "intelligent design" reasoning as a scientific theory without deciding the religious issues?
The third point is that intelligent design reasoning is predominantly, but not entirely, negative rather than positive. In other words, most of the argumentation for intelligent design is an attack on Darwinism, with the assumption being that as long as Darwinian science is not conclusively proven, intelligent design remains as the only reasonable alternative. As I have argued, this is a weak position. Michael Behe and others argue that intelligent design does have a positive argument: if we see the purposeful arrangement of parts in living mechanisms, we can infer intelligent design as the cause. But this kind of reasoning is very vague, because we cannot infer from this exactly who (or what) the intelligent designer is, and we cannot infer exactly how this intelligent designer works in nature. (Behe argues that the same could be said about the Big Bang theory: that it happened does not tells us how it happened or what caused it.) The reasoning is also dubious because it works by analogy with human intelligent design. We have all seen human intelligent design at work. But we have not seen how a divine intelligent designer could create "out of nothing."
The fourth point is that Kenneth Miller distorts Behe's position by attacking a straw man. Behe's central argument in Darwin's Black Box depends on the idea that Darwinian evolution cannot explain any "irreducibly complex" system, which is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (p. 39). The problem for Darwinian evolution is that "an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Behe concedes, however, that this leaves open the possibility of "an indirect, circuitous route" of evolution by which mechanisms serving one purpose might be incorporated into more complex mechanisms with different functions (pp. 40, 66, 111-13, 177). And yet he thinks the probability of this happening decreases as the complexity of the mechanism to be explained increases.
When Miller tries to refute this reasoning (at the Dover trial and in various published writing), he attacks a straw man, because he ignores what Behe says about the possibility--even if unlikely--of an "indirect, circuitous route" of evolution. Miller shows, for example, that the type III secretory system of bacteria resembles some parts of the bacterial flagellum, which shows that one can take away many parts from the flagellum and still have a functioning system, although it will be serving a different function. This reasoning about "exaptation" is a standard response of Darwinian scientists to Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument. But this does not refute Behe's position, unless one ignores what Behe says about the "circuituous route."
It is true, of course, as I have indicated in previous postings, that Behe and other IDers set up an unreasonably high standard of proof for Darwinian science. To show rigorously and in precise detail the step-by-step evolutionary pathway for the emergence of the bacterial flagellum is extremely difficult. If students were permitted to study this debate, they would see this as belonging to what Darwin himself called the "difficulties" for his theory. But they might also see this as an example of the inevitable limitations of scientific reasoning, so that hardly anything is ever conclusively proven in science, although we can still judge theories as more or less plausible by weighing the relevant evidence and arguments.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
William Dembski and the Negative Rhetoric of Intelligent Design Theory
Bill Dembski is one of the leading proponents of "intelligent design theory" as an alternative to Darwinian science. At his weblog, he has recently posted a Foreword to a forthcoming book. He boldly declares: "Evolutionary theory, in its grand macroevolutionary Darwinian form, flies in the face of the scientific method and should not be taught except as a discredited speculative hypothesis that properly belongs to nature religions and mystery cults and not to science."
To support this conclusion, he employs the same rhetorical strategy of negative argumentation that runs through all of the intelligent design reasoning. He concedes that there is plenty of evidence for "small-scale microevolution" and "a gradual progression of living forms." But he denies that the Darwinians have shown the "macroevolution" of novel species from ancestral species through chance mutations and natural selection. In one of his comments, he speaks of "the utter absence of a detailed account of how the Darwinian mechanism can build biological complexity."
Try this exercise. Go through this statement and replace "Darwinism" and "evolutionary theory" with "intelligent design theory." You will see that Dembski's negative argumentation depends on demanding a level of proof and evidence that has never been met by "intelligent design theory." We could easily speak of "the utter absence of a detailed account of how the intelligent-design mechanism can build biological complexity."
For example, one of the favorite examples of biological complexity for the IDers is the bacterial flagellum. They rightly point out that Darwinists have not yet offered a step-by-step account of the evolutionary pathway by which bacterial flagella have arisen by random mutation and natural selection. But the Darwinians could respond by pointing out that the IDers have not yet offered a step-by-step account of the precise pathway by which the Intelligent Designer did this. Exactly when, where, and how did the Intelligent Designer create flagella and attach them to bacteria? The IDers have no answer to that question. But their rhetorical strategy depends on negative argumentation in which they criticize the Darwinians for failing to provide exact step-by-step explanations for the emergence of biological complexity, while refusing to provide their own explanations.
As long as they put the Darwinians on the defensive, they win the debate. But if Darwinians were to employ the same rhetorical strategy, they could declare: "Intelligent design theory, in its grand Creationist form, flies in the face of the scientific method and should not be taught except as a discredited speculative hypothesis that properly belongs to nature religions and mystery cults and not to science."
But what would be accomplished by such sophistical invective? Wouldn't it be more sensible and intellectually productive for both sides in this debate to challenge one another to come up with the best positive explanations for biological complexity? If the IDers have a precise, testable explanation of exactly when, where, and how the Intelligent Designer created the bacterial flagellum, let them offer it, so that scientists can go into their laboratories to test it. If the Darwinians have a better explanation, let them offer it for testing.
To support this conclusion, he employs the same rhetorical strategy of negative argumentation that runs through all of the intelligent design reasoning. He concedes that there is plenty of evidence for "small-scale microevolution" and "a gradual progression of living forms." But he denies that the Darwinians have shown the "macroevolution" of novel species from ancestral species through chance mutations and natural selection. In one of his comments, he speaks of "the utter absence of a detailed account of how the Darwinian mechanism can build biological complexity."
Try this exercise. Go through this statement and replace "Darwinism" and "evolutionary theory" with "intelligent design theory." You will see that Dembski's negative argumentation depends on demanding a level of proof and evidence that has never been met by "intelligent design theory." We could easily speak of "the utter absence of a detailed account of how the intelligent-design mechanism can build biological complexity."
For example, one of the favorite examples of biological complexity for the IDers is the bacterial flagellum. They rightly point out that Darwinists have not yet offered a step-by-step account of the evolutionary pathway by which bacterial flagella have arisen by random mutation and natural selection. But the Darwinians could respond by pointing out that the IDers have not yet offered a step-by-step account of the precise pathway by which the Intelligent Designer did this. Exactly when, where, and how did the Intelligent Designer create flagella and attach them to bacteria? The IDers have no answer to that question. But their rhetorical strategy depends on negative argumentation in which they criticize the Darwinians for failing to provide exact step-by-step explanations for the emergence of biological complexity, while refusing to provide their own explanations.
As long as they put the Darwinians on the defensive, they win the debate. But if Darwinians were to employ the same rhetorical strategy, they could declare: "Intelligent design theory, in its grand Creationist form, flies in the face of the scientific method and should not be taught except as a discredited speculative hypothesis that properly belongs to nature religions and mystery cults and not to science."
But what would be accomplished by such sophistical invective? Wouldn't it be more sensible and intellectually productive for both sides in this debate to challenge one another to come up with the best positive explanations for biological complexity? If the IDers have a precise, testable explanation of exactly when, where, and how the Intelligent Designer created the bacterial flagellum, let them offer it, so that scientists can go into their laboratories to test it. If the Darwinians have a better explanation, let them offer it for testing.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Carson Holloway in THE WASHINGTON TIMES
On January 9th, I posted a response to Carson Holloway's book The Right Darwin? Evolution, Religion, and the Future of Democracy, which criticizes me and other Darwinian conservatives such as Francis Fukuyama and James Q. Wilson.
The Washington Times has published an interview with Holloway about his book. Here he repeats the general point of his book. He argues that Darwinian conservatism cannot properly support morality, because it relies on natural moral emotions rather than religious belief. The moral emotions are not reliable guides to moral judgments, he says, because "you need some principle that transcends our human nature," which comes only from religion, and particularly its teaching that "every human being has certain moral obligations to every human being, and no matter how much your interests may conflict with someone else's, you still have to respect their basic rights."
As I have indicated in my responses to Holloway and other religious conservatives such as Peter Lawler, these folks do not explain clearly how we derive moral principles from religion without appealing to our natural moral sense. For example, Holloway assumes in his book that religion teaches that slavery is immoral because it violates the moral dignity of human beings as created in God's image. But as I have said, the defenders of slavery have been able to support their position by citing the Bible. I assume that Holloway would say this is a misuse of the Bible. But how does he know that? When Paul in the New Testament tells slaves to obey their masters, how do we know that this is not a moral endorsement of slavery? How do we know that the Southern Baptists were wrong to believe that the Bible sanctioned slavery in the American South?
Charles Darwin denounced slavery because he thought it violated our natural moral sense that teaches us that human beings have a natural desire to be free from exploitation. The rhetorical attempts of slaveholders to justify slavery show that even they were sensitive to this injustice and felt the same moral emotions as their opponents. In Darwinian Natural Right, I have a long chapter on how slavery violates the evolved moral desires of human beings.
Is it really true that religion--particularly, Biblical religion--gives us an authoritative, clear, and reliable moral teaching that allows us to see the injustice of slavery? Or is it rather the case, as I argue, that we have to pass the Bible through our natural moral sense, because otherwise the Bible could support immoral practices such as slavery?
The Washington Times has published an interview with Holloway about his book. Here he repeats the general point of his book. He argues that Darwinian conservatism cannot properly support morality, because it relies on natural moral emotions rather than religious belief. The moral emotions are not reliable guides to moral judgments, he says, because "you need some principle that transcends our human nature," which comes only from religion, and particularly its teaching that "every human being has certain moral obligations to every human being, and no matter how much your interests may conflict with someone else's, you still have to respect their basic rights."
As I have indicated in my responses to Holloway and other religious conservatives such as Peter Lawler, these folks do not explain clearly how we derive moral principles from religion without appealing to our natural moral sense. For example, Holloway assumes in his book that religion teaches that slavery is immoral because it violates the moral dignity of human beings as created in God's image. But as I have said, the defenders of slavery have been able to support their position by citing the Bible. I assume that Holloway would say this is a misuse of the Bible. But how does he know that? When Paul in the New Testament tells slaves to obey their masters, how do we know that this is not a moral endorsement of slavery? How do we know that the Southern Baptists were wrong to believe that the Bible sanctioned slavery in the American South?
Charles Darwin denounced slavery because he thought it violated our natural moral sense that teaches us that human beings have a natural desire to be free from exploitation. The rhetorical attempts of slaveholders to justify slavery show that even they were sensitive to this injustice and felt the same moral emotions as their opponents. In Darwinian Natural Right, I have a long chapter on how slavery violates the evolved moral desires of human beings.
Is it really true that religion--particularly, Biblical religion--gives us an authoritative, clear, and reliable moral teaching that allows us to see the injustice of slavery? Or is it rather the case, as I argue, that we have to pass the Bible through our natural moral sense, because otherwise the Bible could support immoral practices such as slavery?
Friday, June 16, 2006
Reply to Peter Augustine Lawler
In his book Stuck with Virtue (ISI Books, 2005), Peter Augustine Lawler shows himself to be a conservative who is ambivalent about Darwinism. On the one hand, he welcomes Darwinian science as supporting the conservative view of the natural sociality of human beings. On the other hand, he scorns Darwinian science for promoting what he assumes to be a reductionistic, materialistic, and atheistic view of human nature that denigrates the transcendent longings of the human soul. Such criticism of Darwinism arises from a mistaken understanding of Darwinian thinking.
Lawler identifies some of my writing as "the most ambitious effort to unite political philosophy and evolutionary biology into a conservative ideology" (159-60). And yet while he concedes that the "partial truth" of Darwinian science does support the conservative defense of family life, moral norms, and social duties as rooted in evolved human nature, he also warns conservatives to resist my "Darwinian lullaby." He insists that all human beings are "aliens," because they have transcendent longings for supernatural redemption that make them feel homeless in the natural world. So he is bothered by the closing sentences of my book Darwinian Natural Right: "We have not been thrown into nature from some place far away. We come from nature. It is our home."
As a Heideggerian existentialist, Lawler thinks human beings really were "thrown" into nature from some place far away, and so they properly long to escape from their alienated condition in nature. This is expressed as a religious longing to return to our supernatural Creator. Lawler believes that this transcendent longing to escape from nature is what makes us uniquely human in a way that sets us apart from and above all other animals, who have no such longing. So when he sees me apparently denigrating that transcendent longing as illusory, he rejects this as a "reductionistic" claim that human beings are just animals--"clever chimps"--who differ only in degree not in kind from the other animals. This is the "Darwinian lullaby," because it seems to teach us to relax like other animals and give up those illusory longings for the transcendent that only create unnecessary anxiety. Religious conservatives often make this criticism of my Darwinian conservatism.
But far from being "reductionistic," I argue that a Darwinian science of human nature teaches us that human beings are uniquely complex in having diverse natural desires that are often in tension with one another. The natural desire for "intellectual understanding" can lead to the sort of scientific or philosophic understanding of nature that Lawler scorns as the "lullaby" that denies the existential anxiety of human transcendent longings. But he fails to tell his reader that I also identify the natural desire for "religious understanding." This is the desire to understand the world through religion or spirituality. Religious doctrines about human relationships with divine powers or spiritual feelings of self-transcending union with the universe satisfy this longing to make sense of one's place in the universe. So here I agree with Lawler that human beings are unique in their natural desire for religious transcendence.
But unlike Lawler, I see this desire as coming into conflict with the desire for purely intellectual understanding, the sort of intellectual desire that he attributes to Leo Strauss and those under his influence. The natural desire to understand the uncaused cause of everything ultimately leads human beings to a fundamental choice--nature or nature's God. Some human beings will assume that the ultimate source of order is nature. But others will assume that we must look beyond nature to God as the ultimate source of nature's order. Our desire to understand is satisfied ultimately either by an intellectual understanding of nature or by a religious understanding of God as the creator of nature. This is the choice between reason and revelation. I think that choice has to be left open, because neither side can refute the other.
Darwin always insisted that ultimate questions of First Cause--questions about the origins of the universe and the origin of the laws of nature--left a big opening for God as Creator. As Darwin said, "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us."
There is a similar mystery in explaining the origins of the human soul. Darwin often asserted that the mental capacities of human beings and other animals differed immensely in degree but not in kind. But he sometimes spoke of the human difference as a difference in kind. "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity." He also identified "the habitual use of articulate language" as "peculiar to man." And he observed that "no animal is self-conscious," if this means "that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth." Here Darwin would agree with Lawler that human beings are unique in their capacities for reflecting on the meaning of life and death, for self-conscious moral choice, and for articulate language, which make human beings different in kind from other animals.
How does one explain the origin of that human difference? Lawler rejects "fundamentalist creationism," and he concedes that natural evolution might explain most of human nature. But he asserts that an "ontological leap" would be necessary for the appearance of the human soul. He doesn't explain exactly how this "ontological leap" occurred. I would explain it as the human soul arising through the emergent evolution of the primate brain. With the increasing size and complexity of the frontal lobes of the primate neocortex, novel mental capacities appear at higher levels that could not be predicted from the lower levels. Even if we see this as the work of God in creating human beings in His image, we can't deny the possibility that He exercised his creative power through a natural evolutionary process.
My point here is that religious conservatives like Lawler have no reason to fear that a Darwinian science of human life will promote a reductionistic materialism that denies human freedom and dignity. A Darwinian conservatism can explain the unique freedom of human beings for deliberate thought and action as arising from the emergent evolution of the soul in the brain.
Religious conservatives like Lawler look to God's eternal order as providing a transcendent purpose for morality and politics. Skeptical conservatives like Friedrich Hayek look to the natural order of life as providing a purely natural purpose for morality and politics. Skeptical conservatives will be satisfied with Hayek's thought that "life has no purpose but itself."
Darwinian conservatism cannot resolve these transcendent questions of ultimate causation and purpose. But at least it can provide a scientific account of the moral and political nature of human beings that sustains the conservative commitments to private property, family life, and limited government as the grounds for human liberty. And in a free society, individuals will be free to associate with one another in social groups--in families, in religious communities, and other voluntary associations--in which people can freely explore the ultimate questions of human existence and organize their lives around religious or philosophical answers to those questions.
Lawler identifies some of my writing as "the most ambitious effort to unite political philosophy and evolutionary biology into a conservative ideology" (159-60). And yet while he concedes that the "partial truth" of Darwinian science does support the conservative defense of family life, moral norms, and social duties as rooted in evolved human nature, he also warns conservatives to resist my "Darwinian lullaby." He insists that all human beings are "aliens," because they have transcendent longings for supernatural redemption that make them feel homeless in the natural world. So he is bothered by the closing sentences of my book Darwinian Natural Right: "We have not been thrown into nature from some place far away. We come from nature. It is our home."
As a Heideggerian existentialist, Lawler thinks human beings really were "thrown" into nature from some place far away, and so they properly long to escape from their alienated condition in nature. This is expressed as a religious longing to return to our supernatural Creator. Lawler believes that this transcendent longing to escape from nature is what makes us uniquely human in a way that sets us apart from and above all other animals, who have no such longing. So when he sees me apparently denigrating that transcendent longing as illusory, he rejects this as a "reductionistic" claim that human beings are just animals--"clever chimps"--who differ only in degree not in kind from the other animals. This is the "Darwinian lullaby," because it seems to teach us to relax like other animals and give up those illusory longings for the transcendent that only create unnecessary anxiety. Religious conservatives often make this criticism of my Darwinian conservatism.
But far from being "reductionistic," I argue that a Darwinian science of human nature teaches us that human beings are uniquely complex in having diverse natural desires that are often in tension with one another. The natural desire for "intellectual understanding" can lead to the sort of scientific or philosophic understanding of nature that Lawler scorns as the "lullaby" that denies the existential anxiety of human transcendent longings. But he fails to tell his reader that I also identify the natural desire for "religious understanding." This is the desire to understand the world through religion or spirituality. Religious doctrines about human relationships with divine powers or spiritual feelings of self-transcending union with the universe satisfy this longing to make sense of one's place in the universe. So here I agree with Lawler that human beings are unique in their natural desire for religious transcendence.
But unlike Lawler, I see this desire as coming into conflict with the desire for purely intellectual understanding, the sort of intellectual desire that he attributes to Leo Strauss and those under his influence. The natural desire to understand the uncaused cause of everything ultimately leads human beings to a fundamental choice--nature or nature's God. Some human beings will assume that the ultimate source of order is nature. But others will assume that we must look beyond nature to God as the ultimate source of nature's order. Our desire to understand is satisfied ultimately either by an intellectual understanding of nature or by a religious understanding of God as the creator of nature. This is the choice between reason and revelation. I think that choice has to be left open, because neither side can refute the other.
Darwin always insisted that ultimate questions of First Cause--questions about the origins of the universe and the origin of the laws of nature--left a big opening for God as Creator. As Darwin said, "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us."
There is a similar mystery in explaining the origins of the human soul. Darwin often asserted that the mental capacities of human beings and other animals differed immensely in degree but not in kind. But he sometimes spoke of the human difference as a difference in kind. "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity." He also identified "the habitual use of articulate language" as "peculiar to man." And he observed that "no animal is self-conscious," if this means "that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth." Here Darwin would agree with Lawler that human beings are unique in their capacities for reflecting on the meaning of life and death, for self-conscious moral choice, and for articulate language, which make human beings different in kind from other animals.
How does one explain the origin of that human difference? Lawler rejects "fundamentalist creationism," and he concedes that natural evolution might explain most of human nature. But he asserts that an "ontological leap" would be necessary for the appearance of the human soul. He doesn't explain exactly how this "ontological leap" occurred. I would explain it as the human soul arising through the emergent evolution of the primate brain. With the increasing size and complexity of the frontal lobes of the primate neocortex, novel mental capacities appear at higher levels that could not be predicted from the lower levels. Even if we see this as the work of God in creating human beings in His image, we can't deny the possibility that He exercised his creative power through a natural evolutionary process.
My point here is that religious conservatives like Lawler have no reason to fear that a Darwinian science of human life will promote a reductionistic materialism that denies human freedom and dignity. A Darwinian conservatism can explain the unique freedom of human beings for deliberate thought and action as arising from the emergent evolution of the soul in the brain.
Religious conservatives like Lawler look to God's eternal order as providing a transcendent purpose for morality and politics. Skeptical conservatives like Friedrich Hayek look to the natural order of life as providing a purely natural purpose for morality and politics. Skeptical conservatives will be satisfied with Hayek's thought that "life has no purpose but itself."
Darwinian conservatism cannot resolve these transcendent questions of ultimate causation and purpose. But at least it can provide a scientific account of the moral and political nature of human beings that sustains the conservative commitments to private property, family life, and limited government as the grounds for human liberty. And in a free society, individuals will be free to associate with one another in social groups--in families, in religious communities, and other voluntary associations--in which people can freely explore the ultimate questions of human existence and organize their lives around religious or philosophical answers to those questions.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
A Battle of Titans: Charles Darwin versus Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter's latest book--Godless: The Church of Liberalism--became a best-selling book as soon as it was published this week. Although liberals might not think of themselves as religious, Coulter declares that liberalism is actually an anti-Christian religion that has become the state-sanctioned religion of the United States. Liberalism's "creation myth" is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which supports the atheistic materialism of liberalism. Far from being science, evolutionary biology is "just a crazy religious cult" (199, 217).
The popularity of this book might come from the deep wisdom and incisive wit of Coulter's writing. Or it might come from the sexy photograph of Coulter that fills up the cover of the book jacket. She stares at us with a sweet smile, blue eyes, long blond hair, a slender body in a low-cut black dress showing cleavage, and a necklace with a cross dangling over the cleavage. At her website, Coulter has a photo gallery. My favorites are the pictures of her in a black leather dress. This Christian conservative sexpot is going to seduce us away from Darwinian liberalism!
Ok, I won't challenge her in a beauty contest. But I might try to convince her conservative readers that her arguments against Darwinism as a liberal religion are shallow. She has never actually read any of Darwin's writings. But she has picked up all of her arguments against Darwinism from three proponents of "intelligent design theory" at the Discovery Institute--Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski (303).
For example, she argues that Behe has "disproved evolution" by showing that Darwin's theory cannot explain the evolution of "irreducibly complex" mechanisms like the bacterial flagellum. But she ignores the criticisms of Behe's reasoning. It has been shown that some bacteria have a type III secretory system (TTSS) that allows them to inject protein toxins into the cells of host organisms. The similarity in the protein structures of the TTSS and those in the bacterial flagellum suggest that the flagellum could have evolved by incorporating the structures of TTSS, so that mechanisms originally serving one function could be taken up into new mechanisms serving new functions. In fact, Behe himself admits that such explanations could be possible (see his Darwin's Black Box, 40, 66, 111-13, 177).
Now actually showing the step-by-step evolutionary pathway that led to the bacterial flagellum or other complex biomolecular mechanisms is extremely difficult. But, of course, it's also extremely difficult to show the step-by-step pathway by which the Intelligent Designer created the bacterial flagellum! Comparing these alternative explanations, we can not conclusively prove one over the other, but we can at least weigh the evidence and arguments. Coulter doesn't do this.
Coulter also makes the famous argument about the "Cambrian explosion" refuting Darwin. About 540 million years ago, at the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time, many forms of shelled invertebrate animals appeared over a period of 5 to 10 million years. Darwin assumed that there had to have been many animal species long before the Cambrian Period. But in his time, there was no fossil record to show this. He admitted in The Origin of Species that this was "the most obvious and gravest objection" to his theory. He offered a "hypothesis" that conditions prior to the Cambrian did not permit the formation of a fossil record. Coulter cites the "Cambrian explosion" as showing how "absurd" the "evolution fable" is.
But over the past 30 years, paleontologists have found an extensive fossil record of animal life prior to the Cambrian. Coulter dismisses this by saying: "instead of a glut of evolutionary ancestors, all we have at the outset of the Cambrian explosion are some sad little worms and sponges" (222). Here's the typical rhetorical strategy for Darwin's critics. First, they say that to prove Darwin's theory, there should be a fossil record of animal life prior to the Cambrian epoch. Then, when this fossil record is discovered, the critics say this not enough--"some sad little worms and sponges." What would satisfy them? "A glut of evolutionary ancestors"! And how many transitional fossils do we need to make a "glut"?
Here's how this works: as the evidence for evolution accumulates, just raise the standard higher and higher so that it can never be satisfied. And in a historical science like evolutionary biology, where demonstrative proof is unattainable, and where a preponderance of the evidence is the best we can hope for, setting an unrealistic standard of proof is an effective rhetorical move for denigrating the evidence.
And yet what really drives people like Coulter is not the scientific arguments over Darwinism, but the religious, moral, and political arguments. To prove her religious argument that Darwinism is necessarily atheistic, she quotes from Darwinian scientists like Richard Dawkins who are proud of their atheism. But one could just as easily prove that Christianity is necessarily anti-Semitic by quoting Martin Luther's brutally anti-Semitic writings.
Coulter admits the fallacy in her rhetoric when she says, "Of course it's possible to believe in God and in evolution," because "if evolution is true, then God created evolution" (265, 277). The point here is that evolutionary theory is about the natural causes of life, but whether those natural causes depend on some ultimate supernatural causes is beyond evolutionary theory as a natural science.
Coulter worries about atheism, because she believes that morality is impossible without belief in God's commands as the source of morality. "If God is dead, everything is permitted" (277). This completely ignores Darwin's account of the "moral sense" as rooted in the evolved nature of the human animal, which would suport a morality of natural law. Apparently, Coulter would reject this natural morality because it is not based on divine command. By contrast, she declares, "religious people have certain rules based on a book about faith with lots of witnesses to that faith" (281). She doesn't explain how religious people resolve disputes over the authority, clarity, or reliability of those "rules based on a book."
And yet, even as I find Coulter's scientific, religious, and moral arguments weak, I am more persuaded by her political argument. I agree with her that it is unreasonable and perhaps even undemocratic to prohibit high school biology students from studying the debates over Darwinian biology. There is no absolutely conclusive proof for Darwin's theory. Darwin himself admitted that there were many reasonable objections to his theory. The best we can do is to weigh the evidence and arguments for competing positions. So why shouldn't we allow high school students to study the debates? If they were to read some of Darwin's writings, some writings from recent evolutionary research, and some of the critical writing from the proponents of intelligent design such as Behe and Dembski, they could study the reasoning in this debate and decide for themselves which side seems more plausible. Wow! Students thinking through scientific arguments for themselves! What a novel idea.
Not long ago, at an academic conference, I made this proposal for an open discussion of evolutionary reasoning in public high school biology classes. Chris Mooney--the author of The Republican War on Science--was present, and he protested that high school students were not smart enough to read Darwin or to study the controversy over evolution. Instead, he insisted, they should only be presented with standard textbooks that summarize what the "experts" in biology believe. High school students should never be permitted to question these "experts."
I can't agree with this. Mindless memorization of what the scientific "experts" believe does not cultivate a serious intellectual ability to assess scientific evidence and arguments. This is especially important when it comes to something like Darwinian science, which has moral, religious, and political implications that citizens need to understand and debate. Here Coulter and the intelligent design folks have a good point: some of the proponents of Darwinian biology assume a stance of arrogant superiority and dogmatism that suggests fear of real debate and free inquiry.
Darwinian conservatism does not require a dogmatic commitment to Darwinism. It requires only a serious inquiry into the ways that Darwinian science might support the moral and political principles of conservative thought as rooted in human nature.
The popularity of this book might come from the deep wisdom and incisive wit of Coulter's writing. Or it might come from the sexy photograph of Coulter that fills up the cover of the book jacket. She stares at us with a sweet smile, blue eyes, long blond hair, a slender body in a low-cut black dress showing cleavage, and a necklace with a cross dangling over the cleavage. At her website, Coulter has a photo gallery. My favorites are the pictures of her in a black leather dress. This Christian conservative sexpot is going to seduce us away from Darwinian liberalism!
Ok, I won't challenge her in a beauty contest. But I might try to convince her conservative readers that her arguments against Darwinism as a liberal religion are shallow. She has never actually read any of Darwin's writings. But she has picked up all of her arguments against Darwinism from three proponents of "intelligent design theory" at the Discovery Institute--Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski (303).
For example, she argues that Behe has "disproved evolution" by showing that Darwin's theory cannot explain the evolution of "irreducibly complex" mechanisms like the bacterial flagellum. But she ignores the criticisms of Behe's reasoning. It has been shown that some bacteria have a type III secretory system (TTSS) that allows them to inject protein toxins into the cells of host organisms. The similarity in the protein structures of the TTSS and those in the bacterial flagellum suggest that the flagellum could have evolved by incorporating the structures of TTSS, so that mechanisms originally serving one function could be taken up into new mechanisms serving new functions. In fact, Behe himself admits that such explanations could be possible (see his Darwin's Black Box, 40, 66, 111-13, 177).
Now actually showing the step-by-step evolutionary pathway that led to the bacterial flagellum or other complex biomolecular mechanisms is extremely difficult. But, of course, it's also extremely difficult to show the step-by-step pathway by which the Intelligent Designer created the bacterial flagellum! Comparing these alternative explanations, we can not conclusively prove one over the other, but we can at least weigh the evidence and arguments. Coulter doesn't do this.
Coulter also makes the famous argument about the "Cambrian explosion" refuting Darwin. About 540 million years ago, at the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time, many forms of shelled invertebrate animals appeared over a period of 5 to 10 million years. Darwin assumed that there had to have been many animal species long before the Cambrian Period. But in his time, there was no fossil record to show this. He admitted in The Origin of Species that this was "the most obvious and gravest objection" to his theory. He offered a "hypothesis" that conditions prior to the Cambrian did not permit the formation of a fossil record. Coulter cites the "Cambrian explosion" as showing how "absurd" the "evolution fable" is.
But over the past 30 years, paleontologists have found an extensive fossil record of animal life prior to the Cambrian. Coulter dismisses this by saying: "instead of a glut of evolutionary ancestors, all we have at the outset of the Cambrian explosion are some sad little worms and sponges" (222). Here's the typical rhetorical strategy for Darwin's critics. First, they say that to prove Darwin's theory, there should be a fossil record of animal life prior to the Cambrian epoch. Then, when this fossil record is discovered, the critics say this not enough--"some sad little worms and sponges." What would satisfy them? "A glut of evolutionary ancestors"! And how many transitional fossils do we need to make a "glut"?
Here's how this works: as the evidence for evolution accumulates, just raise the standard higher and higher so that it can never be satisfied. And in a historical science like evolutionary biology, where demonstrative proof is unattainable, and where a preponderance of the evidence is the best we can hope for, setting an unrealistic standard of proof is an effective rhetorical move for denigrating the evidence.
And yet what really drives people like Coulter is not the scientific arguments over Darwinism, but the religious, moral, and political arguments. To prove her religious argument that Darwinism is necessarily atheistic, she quotes from Darwinian scientists like Richard Dawkins who are proud of their atheism. But one could just as easily prove that Christianity is necessarily anti-Semitic by quoting Martin Luther's brutally anti-Semitic writings.
Coulter admits the fallacy in her rhetoric when she says, "Of course it's possible to believe in God and in evolution," because "if evolution is true, then God created evolution" (265, 277). The point here is that evolutionary theory is about the natural causes of life, but whether those natural causes depend on some ultimate supernatural causes is beyond evolutionary theory as a natural science.
Coulter worries about atheism, because she believes that morality is impossible without belief in God's commands as the source of morality. "If God is dead, everything is permitted" (277). This completely ignores Darwin's account of the "moral sense" as rooted in the evolved nature of the human animal, which would suport a morality of natural law. Apparently, Coulter would reject this natural morality because it is not based on divine command. By contrast, she declares, "religious people have certain rules based on a book about faith with lots of witnesses to that faith" (281). She doesn't explain how religious people resolve disputes over the authority, clarity, or reliability of those "rules based on a book."
And yet, even as I find Coulter's scientific, religious, and moral arguments weak, I am more persuaded by her political argument. I agree with her that it is unreasonable and perhaps even undemocratic to prohibit high school biology students from studying the debates over Darwinian biology. There is no absolutely conclusive proof for Darwin's theory. Darwin himself admitted that there were many reasonable objections to his theory. The best we can do is to weigh the evidence and arguments for competing positions. So why shouldn't we allow high school students to study the debates? If they were to read some of Darwin's writings, some writings from recent evolutionary research, and some of the critical writing from the proponents of intelligent design such as Behe and Dembski, they could study the reasoning in this debate and decide for themselves which side seems more plausible. Wow! Students thinking through scientific arguments for themselves! What a novel idea.
Not long ago, at an academic conference, I made this proposal for an open discussion of evolutionary reasoning in public high school biology classes. Chris Mooney--the author of The Republican War on Science--was present, and he protested that high school students were not smart enough to read Darwin or to study the controversy over evolution. Instead, he insisted, they should only be presented with standard textbooks that summarize what the "experts" in biology believe. High school students should never be permitted to question these "experts."
I can't agree with this. Mindless memorization of what the scientific "experts" believe does not cultivate a serious intellectual ability to assess scientific evidence and arguments. This is especially important when it comes to something like Darwinian science, which has moral, religious, and political implications that citizens need to understand and debate. Here Coulter and the intelligent design folks have a good point: some of the proponents of Darwinian biology assume a stance of arrogant superiority and dogmatism that suggests fear of real debate and free inquiry.
Darwinian conservatism does not require a dogmatic commitment to Darwinism. It requires only a serious inquiry into the ways that Darwinian science might support the moral and political principles of conservative thought as rooted in human nature.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Review in THE NEW CRITERION
The June issue of The New Criterion has a review of Darwinian Conservatism by Paul Gross. Unfortunately, this is available online only to subscribers.
Gross generally praises the book: "The argument is conscientious, documented, and timely." He agrees with me that Darwinian science does indeed support conservative thought.
His only disagreement with me is that he thinks I go too far in conciliating the proponents of "intelligent design." I suggest that it could be good for high school biology students to study the "intelligent design" arguments compared with Darwinian science. He dismisses "intelligent design" as not being a true science, and so he thinks it has no place in a science class. He also questions my recommendation that high school students read Darwin's own writings. He doesn't think this would work. He might be right.
In any case, I am encouraged that some of the reviews in conservative journals are favorable to my book, which suggests that there is a growing openness among conservatives to the idea of Darwinian conservatism.
Gross generally praises the book: "The argument is conscientious, documented, and timely." He agrees with me that Darwinian science does indeed support conservative thought.
His only disagreement with me is that he thinks I go too far in conciliating the proponents of "intelligent design." I suggest that it could be good for high school biology students to study the "intelligent design" arguments compared with Darwinian science. He dismisses "intelligent design" as not being a true science, and so he thinks it has no place in a science class. He also questions my recommendation that high school students read Darwin's own writings. He doesn't think this would work. He might be right.
In any case, I am encouraged that some of the reviews in conservative journals are favorable to my book, which suggests that there is a growing openness among conservatives to the idea of Darwinian conservatism.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Conservative PC? More on Patrick Henry College
The article that got Erik Root into trouble at Patrick Henry College is now available here.
To see why this apparently uncontroversial article could be controversial at Patrick Henry College, look at the College's Institutional Statement of Biblical Worldview. You will notice that biology teachers at PHC are expected to teach that the Biblical book of Genesis is actually a science textbook. They must teach that the entire creation of the universe "was completed in six twenty-four hour days." They can teach Darwinian evolution and intelligent design theories, but they must make it clear to the students that the 6-days-of-creation theory must be seen "as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data." Consequently, not only would teaching Darwinian evolution as true be rejected, but even teaching intelligent design as taking longer than 6 days would be in violation of the College's mission.
I am reminded of a comment by Peter Augustine Lawler, a Catholic conservative, in his new book STUCK WITH VIRTUE: "This secessionist impulse of our evangelicals is, in part, the result of their intellectual weakness, their tendency not to read or write great books. Their Christian America is founded in the revelation of the Bible, not that realistic view of nature and human nature that all citizens can share in common" (p. 105).
Part of my argument for "Darwinian conservatism" is to present it as an appeal to "that realistic view of nature and human nature that all citizens can share in common." Most citizens--conservatives included--are not going to agree on a literal reading of the Bible that concludes that the universe was created in six twenty-four-hour days. Neither are most citizens going to agree on the details of the moral rules set forth in the Bible. If we are not going to have a biblical theocracy, then we need to appeal to some shared natural standards of truth and morality--something like the tradition of natural law. Darwinian naturalism supports such a tradition.
PHC proudly announces that it is on the Young America's Foundation list of Top 10 Conservative Colleges. American conservatives often complain about left-wing "political correctness." But now it seems that conservatives enforce their own "political correctness" at colleges like Patrick Henry, Hillsdale College, Grove City College, and elsewhere. Isn't this in violation of the great tradition of liberal arts education? Would Socrates be permitted to teach at schools like Patrick Henry? Apparently not.
Most of the students at Patrick Henry have been home-schooled by evangelical parents. Should we begin to wonder about the wisdom of this home-schooling movement, especially if these home-schooled kids are being taught that any teacher who believes the creation of the universe might have taken longer than 6 days should be scorned as a corrupter of the youth?
To see why this apparently uncontroversial article could be controversial at Patrick Henry College, look at the College's Institutional Statement of Biblical Worldview. You will notice that biology teachers at PHC are expected to teach that the Biblical book of Genesis is actually a science textbook. They must teach that the entire creation of the universe "was completed in six twenty-four hour days." They can teach Darwinian evolution and intelligent design theories, but they must make it clear to the students that the 6-days-of-creation theory must be seen "as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data." Consequently, not only would teaching Darwinian evolution as true be rejected, but even teaching intelligent design as taking longer than 6 days would be in violation of the College's mission.
I am reminded of a comment by Peter Augustine Lawler, a Catholic conservative, in his new book STUCK WITH VIRTUE: "This secessionist impulse of our evangelicals is, in part, the result of their intellectual weakness, their tendency not to read or write great books. Their Christian America is founded in the revelation of the Bible, not that realistic view of nature and human nature that all citizens can share in common" (p. 105).
Part of my argument for "Darwinian conservatism" is to present it as an appeal to "that realistic view of nature and human nature that all citizens can share in common." Most citizens--conservatives included--are not going to agree on a literal reading of the Bible that concludes that the universe was created in six twenty-four-hour days. Neither are most citizens going to agree on the details of the moral rules set forth in the Bible. If we are not going to have a biblical theocracy, then we need to appeal to some shared natural standards of truth and morality--something like the tradition of natural law. Darwinian naturalism supports such a tradition.
PHC proudly announces that it is on the Young America's Foundation list of Top 10 Conservative Colleges. American conservatives often complain about left-wing "political correctness." But now it seems that conservatives enforce their own "political correctness" at colleges like Patrick Henry, Hillsdale College, Grove City College, and elsewhere. Isn't this in violation of the great tradition of liberal arts education? Would Socrates be permitted to teach at schools like Patrick Henry? Apparently not.
Most of the students at Patrick Henry have been home-schooled by evangelical parents. Should we begin to wonder about the wisdom of this home-schooling movement, especially if these home-schooled kids are being taught that any teacher who believes the creation of the universe might have taken longer than 6 days should be scorned as a corrupter of the youth?
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Mansfield's Manly Nihilism
As I indicated in my previous post, Harvey Mansfield asserts that the "manly virtue" of Plato and Aristotle depends on the eternity of species and cosmic teleology, which are denied by Darwinian evolution. In response, I have argued that Darwinian science supports the idea of natural right through an immanent teleology of species-specific natural ends.
It is odd, however, that Mansfield never actually asserts the truth of eternal species and cosmic teleology. And while he opens and closes his book by apparently endorsing the teaching of Plato and Aristotle that virtue is rooted in nature, the central chapter of his book (Chapter 4)is devoted to the "manly nihilism" of Teddy Roosevelt and Friedrich Nietzsche. He thus leaves his reader suspecting that the secret teaching of the book is the truth of "manly nihilism."
"The most dramatic statement of manliness," Mansfield asserts, "would be the one where the man is the source of all meaning," which is nihilism (82). Nietzsche is "
the philosopher of manliness in modern times" (110). Teddy Roosevelt is the best political expression of manly nihilism, particularly in the "assertiveness of executive power" (97).
Mansfield is famous for his Machiavellian defense of executive prerogative, which includes some recent articles defending President Bush's displays of the "assertiveness of executive power." Is this all in the service of "manly nihilism"? Does this support the suspicion that Mansfield and other "Eastern Straussians" really are nihilists?
There would no need for nihilism if we saw how a Darwinian naturalism supports natural right as rooted in human nature and immanent teleology.
It is odd, however, that Mansfield never actually asserts the truth of eternal species and cosmic teleology. And while he opens and closes his book by apparently endorsing the teaching of Plato and Aristotle that virtue is rooted in nature, the central chapter of his book (Chapter 4)is devoted to the "manly nihilism" of Teddy Roosevelt and Friedrich Nietzsche. He thus leaves his reader suspecting that the secret teaching of the book is the truth of "manly nihilism."
"The most dramatic statement of manliness," Mansfield asserts, "would be the one where the man is the source of all meaning," which is nihilism (82). Nietzsche is "
the philosopher of manliness in modern times" (110). Teddy Roosevelt is the best political expression of manly nihilism, particularly in the "assertiveness of executive power" (97).
Mansfield is famous for his Machiavellian defense of executive prerogative, which includes some recent articles defending President Bush's displays of the "assertiveness of executive power." Is this all in the service of "manly nihilism"? Does this support the suspicion that Mansfield and other "Eastern Straussians" really are nihilists?
There would no need for nihilism if we saw how a Darwinian naturalism supports natural right as rooted in human nature and immanent teleology.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Darwin and Mansfield on Manliness
Harvey Mansfield's new book Manliness is one of the most profound books I have read in recent years. It is a deep study of the nature of human sex differences and of the moral and political implications of those differences.
Mansfield's reasoning about the human nature of male and female is very close to what I have said about sex differences in Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism. And yet he fails to fully embrace Darwinian science because he does not rightly understand the Darwinian account of human nature as confirming Aristotelian naturalism. Mansfield's mistakes in his view of Darwinian biology are shared with other Straussians who fail to see how Darwinism supports the idea of natural right.
Mansfield defines manliness as expressed in assertiveness and spiritedness. He regards such manliness as both good and bad, but essential for politics.
He thinks that in modern liberal society, manliness exists, but it is unemployed. The danger in this situation comes from either too little manliness (bourgeois softness) or too much manliness (Nietzschean will to power). We need to see the wisdom in the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle, who saw the need for a middle ground between too little manliness and too much.
Against the tendency to explain manliness as falling on one side or the other of the nature/nurture dichotomy, Mansfield explains it as emerging from the complex cooperation of nature and nurture. Manliness is a social construction that cultivates a natural inclination.
While criticizing the radical feminist pursuit of gender neutrality, in which manliness would be denied or repressed, Mansfield does not think we can go back to traditional arrangements--with women confined to the home and men free for public careers. Ultimately, he proposes a new liberal feminism based on the liberal distinction between public and private, state and society, so that there would be formal gender neutrality in the public realm but not in the private realm. He concludes: "We need to both respect and ignore sex differences" (228).
Mansfield surveys some of the evidence and reasoning from Darwinian biology that confirms his assertion of differences in men and women rooted in nature that are not likely to be radically altered or abolished by social engineering. But even as he does this, he makes four criticisms of the Darwinian view of manliness.
First, although Darwin rightly sees manliness as aggression, he does not see how that manly aggression among human males becomes assertiveness (48-49, 64-65).
Second, because Darwin does not recognize manly assertiveness, he does not see how such assertiveness supports male dominance in politics (49-50).
Third, the Darwinian denial of eternal, fixed nature and cosmic teleology prepares the way for nihilism (16, 83, 89, 196, 201).
Finally, Darwin assumes a "spontaneous nature" that denies the need for habituation and reasoning in cultivating natural inclinations (192-93, 196-97, 202, 215).
The first criticism is inaccurate. Male assertiveness is a clear theme in Darwin's writing. In The Descent of Man (London: J. Murray, 1871), Darwin wrote: "Man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness" (2:326). He saw men as showing "higher energy, perseverance, and courage" than women in the pursuit of "eminence" and "victory" (2:327-28).
Against the second criticism--Darwin's neglect of politics--I would point to Darwin's account of human sociability as manifested in distinct communities with leaders that lead them in competition with other communities (1:74, 79, 84-85, 95). Mansfield is simply wrong when he asserts that in Darwin's writing, we have no politics, because "all we have is the individual and the species" (1:49).
Mansfield's third criticism is hard to handle, because while he warns that the Darwinian denial of the eternity of species and cosmic teleology prepares for nihilism, he never explicitly affirms the truth of the eternity of species and cosmic teleology.
Mansfield concedes that Darwin himself was not a nihilist. He was not, I would say, because he believed that each species had a species-specific nature, so that there were natural ends for each species for as long as the species endured. This sustains an immanent teleology of species-specific ends as a ground for natural right without any need for a cosmic teleology by which the universe as a whole is ordered to some end. That species are not eternal does not deny the natural order of each species for as long as it exists. As Aristotle said: "The Idea of the Good will not be any more good because it is eternal, seeing that a white thing that lasts for a long time is not whiter than a white thing that lasts for a day" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1096b3-5). For as long as the human species exists in its present form, there will be natural differences between men and women, and we will need to take those diffences seriously.
Mansfield's fourth criticism--Darwin saw only "spontaneous nature"--is wrong, because Darwin repeatedly affirmed the importance of habit, custom, and reason in cultivating human nature. In this respect, as in many others, Darwin was close to Aristotle. Darwin explained that "the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection" (2:404; see also 1:165-166, 1:173).
Darwin would agree with Mansfield that natural human inclinations--such as manliness--set a natural guide for action, but we are free to decide how to follow that natural guide as we deliberate about how best to cultivate and direct those inclinations.
If Mansfield--and other Straussian conservatives--were to recognize how Darwinian science supports Aristotelian naturalism, they might see the wisdom in Darwinian natural right and Darwinian conservatism.
Mansfield's reasoning about the human nature of male and female is very close to what I have said about sex differences in Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism. And yet he fails to fully embrace Darwinian science because he does not rightly understand the Darwinian account of human nature as confirming Aristotelian naturalism. Mansfield's mistakes in his view of Darwinian biology are shared with other Straussians who fail to see how Darwinism supports the idea of natural right.
Mansfield defines manliness as expressed in assertiveness and spiritedness. He regards such manliness as both good and bad, but essential for politics.
He thinks that in modern liberal society, manliness exists, but it is unemployed. The danger in this situation comes from either too little manliness (bourgeois softness) or too much manliness (Nietzschean will to power). We need to see the wisdom in the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle, who saw the need for a middle ground between too little manliness and too much.
Against the tendency to explain manliness as falling on one side or the other of the nature/nurture dichotomy, Mansfield explains it as emerging from the complex cooperation of nature and nurture. Manliness is a social construction that cultivates a natural inclination.
While criticizing the radical feminist pursuit of gender neutrality, in which manliness would be denied or repressed, Mansfield does not think we can go back to traditional arrangements--with women confined to the home and men free for public careers. Ultimately, he proposes a new liberal feminism based on the liberal distinction between public and private, state and society, so that there would be formal gender neutrality in the public realm but not in the private realm. He concludes: "We need to both respect and ignore sex differences" (228).
Mansfield surveys some of the evidence and reasoning from Darwinian biology that confirms his assertion of differences in men and women rooted in nature that are not likely to be radically altered or abolished by social engineering. But even as he does this, he makes four criticisms of the Darwinian view of manliness.
First, although Darwin rightly sees manliness as aggression, he does not see how that manly aggression among human males becomes assertiveness (48-49, 64-65).
Second, because Darwin does not recognize manly assertiveness, he does not see how such assertiveness supports male dominance in politics (49-50).
Third, the Darwinian denial of eternal, fixed nature and cosmic teleology prepares the way for nihilism (16, 83, 89, 196, 201).
Finally, Darwin assumes a "spontaneous nature" that denies the need for habituation and reasoning in cultivating natural inclinations (192-93, 196-97, 202, 215).
The first criticism is inaccurate. Male assertiveness is a clear theme in Darwin's writing. In The Descent of Man (London: J. Murray, 1871), Darwin wrote: "Man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness" (2:326). He saw men as showing "higher energy, perseverance, and courage" than women in the pursuit of "eminence" and "victory" (2:327-28).
Against the second criticism--Darwin's neglect of politics--I would point to Darwin's account of human sociability as manifested in distinct communities with leaders that lead them in competition with other communities (1:74, 79, 84-85, 95). Mansfield is simply wrong when he asserts that in Darwin's writing, we have no politics, because "all we have is the individual and the species" (1:49).
Mansfield's third criticism is hard to handle, because while he warns that the Darwinian denial of the eternity of species and cosmic teleology prepares for nihilism, he never explicitly affirms the truth of the eternity of species and cosmic teleology.
Mansfield concedes that Darwin himself was not a nihilist. He was not, I would say, because he believed that each species had a species-specific nature, so that there were natural ends for each species for as long as the species endured. This sustains an immanent teleology of species-specific ends as a ground for natural right without any need for a cosmic teleology by which the universe as a whole is ordered to some end. That species are not eternal does not deny the natural order of each species for as long as it exists. As Aristotle said: "The Idea of the Good will not be any more good because it is eternal, seeing that a white thing that lasts for a long time is not whiter than a white thing that lasts for a day" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1096b3-5). For as long as the human species exists in its present form, there will be natural differences between men and women, and we will need to take those diffences seriously.
Mansfield's fourth criticism--Darwin saw only "spontaneous nature"--is wrong, because Darwin repeatedly affirmed the importance of habit, custom, and reason in cultivating human nature. In this respect, as in many others, Darwin was close to Aristotle. Darwin explained that "the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection" (2:404; see also 1:165-166, 1:173).
Darwin would agree with Mansfield that natural human inclinations--such as manliness--set a natural guide for action, but we are free to decide how to follow that natural guide as we deliberate about how best to cultivate and direct those inclinations.
If Mansfield--and other Straussian conservatives--were to recognize how Darwinian science supports Aristotelian naturalism, they might see the wisdom in Darwinian natural right and Darwinian conservatism.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Reason and Revelation at Patrick Henry College
Patrick Henry College in Purcellvile, Virginia, was founded six years ago as an evangelical Christian college promoting conservative politics. The school was specifically designed as a college for Christian conservative students who had been home-schooled by their parents. The college made a name for itself quickly because many of its first graduates found jobs in the Bush administration, which indicated the influence of evangelical fundamentalism in the Bush coalition.
About two months ago, I was contacted by Erik Root, a professor of government at Patrick Henry College and a Ph.D. candidate in political philosophy at Claremont Graduate School. Root had written an article in the school newspaper about Augustine's view of education, in which he spoke of the philosophic tradition of natural law. Root quoted some comments from me about how natural law might be rooted in human nature. College President Michael Farris responded to his article by criticizing him for quoting me, since I was a "known Darwinist." I advised Root to be careful about what he said, and I suggested he might be better off not quoting me.
Now I have learned that President Farris has fired Root. In response to this firing, four other faculty members have resigned in protest. Consequently, 5 of the school's 16 faculty members are leaving. News reports have quoted President Farris has saying, "I believe what the Scripture said, and that is that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."
So it seems that studies of science and philosophy must be subordinated to the authority of the Bible. The five faculty members who are leaving argue that Christian students need to be open to the knowledge that comes from rational inquiry outside of Biblical religion.
Beginning this summer, the College will have a new president--Graham Walker. In explaining his vision for the College, Walker says: "Most colleges today, even many evangelical schools, have veered away from truth because of their infatuation with human reason."
Isn't there something disturbing about a Biblical conservatism that thinks that college students must avoid any "infatuation with human reason," and that any college professors who defend human reason should be fired?
Wouldn't it be wiser to say that faith and reason have nothing to fear from one another, because God speaks not only through the words of the Bible as revealed to faith, but also through the works of nature as comprehended by reason?
As suggested by the quotation from Francis Bacon about God's "two books" that is the epigram for Darwin's Origin of Species, Darwinian science is open to both Biblical faith and scientific reason. So religious conservatives can also be Darwinian conservatives.
About two months ago, I was contacted by Erik Root, a professor of government at Patrick Henry College and a Ph.D. candidate in political philosophy at Claremont Graduate School. Root had written an article in the school newspaper about Augustine's view of education, in which he spoke of the philosophic tradition of natural law. Root quoted some comments from me about how natural law might be rooted in human nature. College President Michael Farris responded to his article by criticizing him for quoting me, since I was a "known Darwinist." I advised Root to be careful about what he said, and I suggested he might be better off not quoting me.
Now I have learned that President Farris has fired Root. In response to this firing, four other faculty members have resigned in protest. Consequently, 5 of the school's 16 faculty members are leaving. News reports have quoted President Farris has saying, "I believe what the Scripture said, and that is that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."
So it seems that studies of science and philosophy must be subordinated to the authority of the Bible. The five faculty members who are leaving argue that Christian students need to be open to the knowledge that comes from rational inquiry outside of Biblical religion.
Beginning this summer, the College will have a new president--Graham Walker. In explaining his vision for the College, Walker says: "Most colleges today, even many evangelical schools, have veered away from truth because of their infatuation with human reason."
Isn't there something disturbing about a Biblical conservatism that thinks that college students must avoid any "infatuation with human reason," and that any college professors who defend human reason should be fired?
Wouldn't it be wiser to say that faith and reason have nothing to fear from one another, because God speaks not only through the words of the Bible as revealed to faith, but also through the works of nature as comprehended by reason?
As suggested by the quotation from Francis Bacon about God's "two books" that is the epigram for Darwin's Origin of Species, Darwinian science is open to both Biblical faith and scientific reason. So religious conservatives can also be Darwinian conservatives.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
A Reply to Jonathan Wells
The May 22nd issue of The Weekly Standard has a letter by Jonathan Wells concerning James Seaton's review of Darwinian Conservatism in the May 8th issue.
Wells writes: "In his review of Larry Arnhart's Darwinian Conservatism, James Seaton seems to be confused about the nature of conservatism. Arnhart's argument that Darwinism supports conservative social ideals is based on evolutionary psychology, an approach based on so little evidence that even some Darwinists dismiss it. Arnhart ignores central aspects of Darwinian theory that are deeply inimical to traditional Christianity. Arnhart's argument that Darwinism supports conservative political/economic ideals obscures the fact taht Darwinian thinking underlies the 'zero-sum' concept that reduces us to competing for limited resources and justifies leftist-managed economies--the exact opposite of creating wealth through new technology and engaging in free-enterprise capitalism. It's no accident that leftists have historically embraced Darwinism while conservatives have tended to reject it."
Wells is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is best known for his book Icons of Evolution, which argues that some of the standard arguments for Darwinian science are flawed.
I cannot respond to Wells' dismissal of evolutionary psychology, because he does not specify exactly what he is criticizing. Actually, I rely very little on evolutionary psychology (of the Tooby-Cosmides sort), because I prefer to stay close to Darwin's own texts.
Likewise, it's hard to respond to the claim that "central aspects of Darwinian theory" are "deeply inimical to traditional Christianity," because Wells does not specify what he has in mind. I have a whole chapter on religion in my book. Wells does not indicate what he finds wrong in this chapter.
The only clear point that I can see in Wells letter is the assertion that Darwinian thinking promotes a "zero-sum" concept, in which one person's gain is another person's loss. By contrast, a "non-zero-sum" game is one in which players gain by cooperating.
Wells ignores my emphasis on how Darwinian thought promotes the evolutionary benefits of sympathy and cooperation that sustain free-market capitalism. As I indicate in the book, Darwin quoted Adam Smith freely about the importance of sympathy and reciprocity in social order. I also stress the Darwinian character of what Frederich Hayek called the "extended order" of civilization achieved through the "spontaneous orders" of cooperation. I have an entire chapter on how Darwinian thinking supports private property and the gains from trade.
So I am baffled as to what Wells is talking about when he asserts that "zero-sum" concepts must dominate Darwinian thinking.
Wells writes: "In his review of Larry Arnhart's Darwinian Conservatism, James Seaton seems to be confused about the nature of conservatism. Arnhart's argument that Darwinism supports conservative social ideals is based on evolutionary psychology, an approach based on so little evidence that even some Darwinists dismiss it. Arnhart ignores central aspects of Darwinian theory that are deeply inimical to traditional Christianity. Arnhart's argument that Darwinism supports conservative political/economic ideals obscures the fact taht Darwinian thinking underlies the 'zero-sum' concept that reduces us to competing for limited resources and justifies leftist-managed economies--the exact opposite of creating wealth through new technology and engaging in free-enterprise capitalism. It's no accident that leftists have historically embraced Darwinism while conservatives have tended to reject it."
Wells is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is best known for his book Icons of Evolution, which argues that some of the standard arguments for Darwinian science are flawed.
I cannot respond to Wells' dismissal of evolutionary psychology, because he does not specify exactly what he is criticizing. Actually, I rely very little on evolutionary psychology (of the Tooby-Cosmides sort), because I prefer to stay close to Darwin's own texts.
Likewise, it's hard to respond to the claim that "central aspects of Darwinian theory" are "deeply inimical to traditional Christianity," because Wells does not specify what he has in mind. I have a whole chapter on religion in my book. Wells does not indicate what he finds wrong in this chapter.
The only clear point that I can see in Wells letter is the assertion that Darwinian thinking promotes a "zero-sum" concept, in which one person's gain is another person's loss. By contrast, a "non-zero-sum" game is one in which players gain by cooperating.
Wells ignores my emphasis on how Darwinian thought promotes the evolutionary benefits of sympathy and cooperation that sustain free-market capitalism. As I indicate in the book, Darwin quoted Adam Smith freely about the importance of sympathy and reciprocity in social order. I also stress the Darwinian character of what Frederich Hayek called the "extended order" of civilization achieved through the "spontaneous orders" of cooperation. I have an entire chapter on how Darwinian thinking supports private property and the gains from trade.
So I am baffled as to what Wells is talking about when he asserts that "zero-sum" concepts must dominate Darwinian thinking.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The Atheism of Intelligent Design Theory
In much of the journalistic coverage of "intelligent design theory" as an alternative to Darwinian science, it is assumed that ID is on the side of Biblical religion, while Darwinism is not. But this is not correct.
The proponents of ID stress the fact that they do not accept the Bible as a guide for science. Specifically, they do not take a literal reading of the Genesis story of six days of creation as superior to the Darwinian theory of evolution. They assume that the Intelligent Designer could have taken millions or billions of years to do his work. And they speak of the Intelligent Designer as a disembodied intelligence with none of the traits of the Biblical God.
The proponents of "young Earth Creationism"--such as Ken Ham of "Answers in Genesis"--scorn ID as an attack on the Bible. A recent article in Christianity Today surveys this controversy and quotes Ham as saying: "What good is it if people believe in intelligence? That's no different than atheism in that if it's not the God of the Bible, it's not Jesus Christ, it's not salvation."
This article also reports that ID proponent William Dembski has been replaced by creationist Kurt Wise as director of the program in science and theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Apparently, the Southern Baptists have found that Dembski's ID is not an orthodox Biblical doctrine.
Christian conservatives who support ID should recognize that they are rejecting the literal reading of the Bible as a guide for science. Having taken that step, I ask, why not consider the possibility of a theistic evolution that would make Biblical religion and Darwinian science compatible?
The proponents of ID stress the fact that they do not accept the Bible as a guide for science. Specifically, they do not take a literal reading of the Genesis story of six days of creation as superior to the Darwinian theory of evolution. They assume that the Intelligent Designer could have taken millions or billions of years to do his work. And they speak of the Intelligent Designer as a disembodied intelligence with none of the traits of the Biblical God.
The proponents of "young Earth Creationism"--such as Ken Ham of "Answers in Genesis"--scorn ID as an attack on the Bible. A recent article in Christianity Today surveys this controversy and quotes Ham as saying: "What good is it if people believe in intelligence? That's no different than atheism in that if it's not the God of the Bible, it's not Jesus Christ, it's not salvation."
This article also reports that ID proponent William Dembski has been replaced by creationist Kurt Wise as director of the program in science and theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Apparently, the Southern Baptists have found that Dembski's ID is not an orthodox Biblical doctrine.
Christian conservatives who support ID should recognize that they are rejecting the literal reading of the Bible as a guide for science. Having taken that step, I ask, why not consider the possibility of a theistic evolution that would make Biblical religion and Darwinian science compatible?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Nature's God and the Founders' Faith
In my previous post, I have claimed that the American Founding Fathers were predominantly Deists, and thus not orthodox Christians. The historical evidence for that claim is laid out clearly in a recent book--David Holmes' The Faiths of the Founding Fathers.
He shows that some of the leaders in the founding generation--such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and John Jay--were probably orthodox Christians. But he also shows that Benjamin Franklin and the first five presidents of the United States--Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe--were Deists.
The Deists believed in God, but this was--in the phrase of the Declaration of Independence--"Nature's God." In other words, they believed that God as First Cause was most clearly manifested in the lawful order of nature. Therefore, the best way to study God was through a rational and scientific study of nature as God's work.
Darwin suggested a similar thought in the epigram from Francis Bacon that begins The Origin of Species. "Let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both." Consequently, the scientific study of nature could be seen as the study of God's works, or of what Darwin called "the laws impressed on matter by the Creator."
Nature's God could work through the natural laws of evolution. And so there should be no conflict between believing in God as the First Cause of nature and the scientific study of natural evolution.
He shows that some of the leaders in the founding generation--such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and John Jay--were probably orthodox Christians. But he also shows that Benjamin Franklin and the first five presidents of the United States--Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe--were Deists.
The Deists believed in God, but this was--in the phrase of the Declaration of Independence--"Nature's God." In other words, they believed that God as First Cause was most clearly manifested in the lawful order of nature. Therefore, the best way to study God was through a rational and scientific study of nature as God's work.
Darwin suggested a similar thought in the epigram from Francis Bacon that begins The Origin of Species. "Let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both." Consequently, the scientific study of nature could be seen as the study of God's works, or of what Darwin called "the laws impressed on matter by the Creator."
Nature's God could work through the natural laws of evolution. And so there should be no conflict between believing in God as the First Cause of nature and the scientific study of natural evolution.
Monday, May 08, 2006
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
On this blog and in Darwinian Conservatism, I have argued that Darwin and the evolutionary science that he founded supports religious belief, at least insofar as religion helps to reinforce the moral sense inherent in human nature. Moreover, Darwin acknowledges that the ultimate origin of life is mysterious in such a way that one cannot reject the idea of God as First Cause of life.
But for many American Christian conservatives, this is not enough. They insist that nothing less than orthodox Christian piety can support the traditional morality defended by conservatives.
One manifestation of this thought is the current obsession about the religious beliefs of the American Founding Fathers. Recently, there have been a half dozen or more books on the religious beliefs of the Founders--those who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--to determine whether they were orthodox Christians. Many Christian conservatives want to argue that the Founders were good Christians who saw Christian beliefs as essential for the moral and political health of the nation.
To me this ignores the obvious fact that the American Founders were not orthodox Christians but Deists. In other words, they were open to talking about how the "Almighty" created the universe, including human beings, and how this "Almighty" enforced a moral law in the universe. But they did not believe that God intervened in human affairs in answer to prayers. Nor did they believe in the divinity of Jesus as the incarnation of God. They spoke often about how important religion might be for reinforcing healthy morality. But they were not inclined to believe in the salvational power of Jesus or the efficacy of prayer for changing events.
Consider just the most obvious evidence. The Declaration of Independence refers to God as Creator and Lawgiver. But there are no references to Jesus or Christianity. The Constitution of the United States makes no references to Jesus or God, except for dating the document "in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth." The only reference to "religion" is the clause declaring that "no religious test" shall be required for any public office (Article 6). In the Ratification Debates, this "no religious test" clause was criticized by some Christians as an anti-Christian provision.
The most revealing evidence comes from a notorious episode in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. On June 28th, the delegates appeared to be deadlocked in their debates because of the opposing interests of large States and small States. Benjamin Franklin rose to propose that the Convention invite some local minister to attend and offer daily prayers to invoke the aid of God. "If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's notice, is it probable that an empire without his aid?" According to a popular legend, the Convention accepted Franklin's proposal, and from the moment that they had these prayers, the deadlock was broken by God's providential intervention. This story has been repeated by many American ministers as evidence that the American Constitution was divinely inspired.
I first heard this story as a child when it was part of a sermon at the First Baptist Church of Wills Point, Texas. But years later, as a college student in a class on the American Founding, I was shocked when I looked at James Madison's notes for the Convention as edited by Max Farrand in the Yale University Press edition (particularly 1:450-52, 3:470-73, 3:499, 3:531), and I saw that this story was false. Franklin did make his proposal for daily prayer at the Convention. But the response was silence. Finally, Alexander Hamilton offered a quip about how they did not need "foreign aid." The motion was dropped.
This is not the action of good Christians. It is the action of men who respected religious belief, but who did not believe that God would answer their prayers and intervene to promote their political success. Since the meetings of the Convention were kept secret, they were not concerned about public appearances. If the meetings had been open to the public, they surely would have felt compelled to accept Franklin's motion.
The American Founders were conservatives with a realistic view of human nature, who designed a Constitution based on their view that the concentration of power was dangerous, and therefore that the best government was a limited government of separated powers with checks and balances. Moreover, they believed in the importance of family life and private property in securing individual liberty and moral order. They also believed that religion could provide support for such principles. In all of this, they conformed to what I have called "Darwiniana conservatism."
But none of this requires a pious belief in orthodox Christianity. Anyone who wants to turn the American Founders into good Christians must deny the most obvious facts about their words and deeds.
But for many American Christian conservatives, this is not enough. They insist that nothing less than orthodox Christian piety can support the traditional morality defended by conservatives.
One manifestation of this thought is the current obsession about the religious beliefs of the American Founding Fathers. Recently, there have been a half dozen or more books on the religious beliefs of the Founders--those who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--to determine whether they were orthodox Christians. Many Christian conservatives want to argue that the Founders were good Christians who saw Christian beliefs as essential for the moral and political health of the nation.
To me this ignores the obvious fact that the American Founders were not orthodox Christians but Deists. In other words, they were open to talking about how the "Almighty" created the universe, including human beings, and how this "Almighty" enforced a moral law in the universe. But they did not believe that God intervened in human affairs in answer to prayers. Nor did they believe in the divinity of Jesus as the incarnation of God. They spoke often about how important religion might be for reinforcing healthy morality. But they were not inclined to believe in the salvational power of Jesus or the efficacy of prayer for changing events.
Consider just the most obvious evidence. The Declaration of Independence refers to God as Creator and Lawgiver. But there are no references to Jesus or Christianity. The Constitution of the United States makes no references to Jesus or God, except for dating the document "in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth." The only reference to "religion" is the clause declaring that "no religious test" shall be required for any public office (Article 6). In the Ratification Debates, this "no religious test" clause was criticized by some Christians as an anti-Christian provision.
The most revealing evidence comes from a notorious episode in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. On June 28th, the delegates appeared to be deadlocked in their debates because of the opposing interests of large States and small States. Benjamin Franklin rose to propose that the Convention invite some local minister to attend and offer daily prayers to invoke the aid of God. "If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's notice, is it probable that an empire without his aid?" According to a popular legend, the Convention accepted Franklin's proposal, and from the moment that they had these prayers, the deadlock was broken by God's providential intervention. This story has been repeated by many American ministers as evidence that the American Constitution was divinely inspired.
I first heard this story as a child when it was part of a sermon at the First Baptist Church of Wills Point, Texas. But years later, as a college student in a class on the American Founding, I was shocked when I looked at James Madison's notes for the Convention as edited by Max Farrand in the Yale University Press edition (particularly 1:450-52, 3:470-73, 3:499, 3:531), and I saw that this story was false. Franklin did make his proposal for daily prayer at the Convention. But the response was silence. Finally, Alexander Hamilton offered a quip about how they did not need "foreign aid." The motion was dropped.
This is not the action of good Christians. It is the action of men who respected religious belief, but who did not believe that God would answer their prayers and intervene to promote their political success. Since the meetings of the Convention were kept secret, they were not concerned about public appearances. If the meetings had been open to the public, they surely would have felt compelled to accept Franklin's motion.
The American Founders were conservatives with a realistic view of human nature, who designed a Constitution based on their view that the concentration of power was dangerous, and therefore that the best government was a limited government of separated powers with checks and balances. Moreover, they believed in the importance of family life and private property in securing individual liberty and moral order. They also believed that religion could provide support for such principles. In all of this, they conformed to what I have called "Darwiniana conservatism."
But none of this requires a pious belief in orthodox Christianity. Anyone who wants to turn the American Founders into good Christians must deny the most obvious facts about their words and deeds.
On the other hand, one could argue that at least some of the American Founders were pious Christians in the tradition of Roger Williams, who thought that New Testament Christianity requires a "wall of separation" between church and state to protect the spiritual purity of the church and the political purity of the state. And therefore, it is blasphemy to pray for God's sanctification of a government.
After all, as Williams argued, in the first three hundred years of Christianity (before Constantine), the Christians did not think God wanted them to establish a Christian government.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
American Conservatives and Intelligent Design Theory
Until recently, it seemed that the Discovery Institute--a conservative think-tank in Seattle--had succeeded in persuading American conservatives to adopt "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian evolutionary science. Their appeal to conservatives was based on the claim that Darwinian science is necessarily atheistic and materialistic in ways that deny the traditional morality that conservatives want to defend.
But now it seems that the tide is turning the other way. In December, Judge John Jones--a Republican appointee--issued a meticulous decision in the famous Dover, Pennsylvania, school case, in which he ruled that teaching "intelligent design" in public schools as a scientific theory was unconstitutional. He explained in careful detail why "intelligent design theory" was not supported by the scientific evidence.
Some conservative commentators--such as Charles Krauthammer and James Q. Wilson--have rejected "intelligent design" and defended Darwinian science. In First Things, one of the leading journals of religious conservatism, Stephen Barr has argued that there is no necessary contradiction between religious belief and Darwinian science, because there is no reason to deny that God could not have worked His creative will through the natural laws of evolution. Charles Darwin himself indicated this at the end of The Origin of Species, when he spoke of "the laws impressed on matter by the Creator."
The ultimate fear of conservatives is that Darwinian evolution is morally corrupting. But I have argued that when Darwin explains the "moral sense" as rooted in the evolved nature of human beings, he supports the conservative view of morality as founded in human nature. Moreover, the conservative commitments to family life, private property, and limited government can all be justified as conforming to human nature as shaped by evolutionary history.
As I have indicated previously, I see nothing wrong with allowing high school biology students to debate the competing claims of "intelligent design" and Darwinian science. If they were to read Darwin's own writings along with some of the "intelligent design" writings, students would see that Darwin anticipated all the major criticisms of his theory and offered plausible responses. Most importantly, they would see that his science supports traditional morality and allows for the possibility that God could be the First Cause of life.
Unfortunately, the conditions in American public schools are not hospitable to such a free and thoughtful debate. But at least now it seems that some conservative leaders are open to such a debate
But now it seems that the tide is turning the other way. In December, Judge John Jones--a Republican appointee--issued a meticulous decision in the famous Dover, Pennsylvania, school case, in which he ruled that teaching "intelligent design" in public schools as a scientific theory was unconstitutional. He explained in careful detail why "intelligent design theory" was not supported by the scientific evidence.
Some conservative commentators--such as Charles Krauthammer and James Q. Wilson--have rejected "intelligent design" and defended Darwinian science. In First Things, one of the leading journals of religious conservatism, Stephen Barr has argued that there is no necessary contradiction between religious belief and Darwinian science, because there is no reason to deny that God could not have worked His creative will through the natural laws of evolution. Charles Darwin himself indicated this at the end of The Origin of Species, when he spoke of "the laws impressed on matter by the Creator."
The ultimate fear of conservatives is that Darwinian evolution is morally corrupting. But I have argued that when Darwin explains the "moral sense" as rooted in the evolved nature of human beings, he supports the conservative view of morality as founded in human nature. Moreover, the conservative commitments to family life, private property, and limited government can all be justified as conforming to human nature as shaped by evolutionary history.
As I have indicated previously, I see nothing wrong with allowing high school biology students to debate the competing claims of "intelligent design" and Darwinian science. If they were to read Darwin's own writings along with some of the "intelligent design" writings, students would see that Darwin anticipated all the major criticisms of his theory and offered plausible responses. Most importantly, they would see that his science supports traditional morality and allows for the possibility that God could be the First Cause of life.
Unfortunately, the conditions in American public schools are not hospitable to such a free and thoughtful debate. But at least now it seems that some conservative leaders are open to such a debate
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