Good Eugenics

Critics of Darwinian conservatism--John West, for example--often argue that the history of eugenics illustrates the morally repugnant consequences of Darwinian thinking. In my chapter on "Social Darwinism" in Darwinian Conservatism and in various posts on this blog responding to West, I have suggested that for Darwin, eugenics--the management of human breeding to promote the physical and mental health of the offspring--can be either good or bad. Eugenics is good when it is based on a realistic understanding of our limited knowledge of biological inheritance, and when it is guided by a moral sympathy for the weaker members of society. Eugenics is bad when it is motivated by a utopian vision of human perfectibility through the breeding of superior races, and when it is unchecked by humanitarian sympathy. Darwin promoted good eugenics, as in his concern about the consequences of incest and cousin marriage. Francis Galton promoted bad eugenics rooted in a tradition of utopian eugenics that began with Plato's Republic. Like Plato, Galton described his eugenics as directed to producing "a race of gifted men," so that "the utopias in the dreamland of philanthropists may become practical possibilities."

Good eugenics would allow parents to exercise prudence in making informed decisions about reproduction to satisfy their natural desire for parental care. We need prudence to decide particular cases where no absolute rule would work because of the contingencies and uncertainties in each decision. And we need to rely on parental care (as one of the 20 natural desires) to guide such decisions as conforming to our human nature.

As an illustration of such good eugenics, consider the recent article by Wesley Smith in The Weekly Standard. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute who campaigns against abortion and what he calls "politically correct eugenics." But in this article, he implicitly supports what I would call good eugenics by supporting some legislation proposed by Senators Edward Kennedy and Sam Brownback. The legislation would require that parents making decisions about pre- and postnatal disabilities be given full information about "life expectancy, development potential, and quality of life" for children born with genetic disabilities such as Down syndrome. Smith hopes this would persuade many parents to care for Down children once they learn that such children can live good lives. He quotes from one parent of a Down child who decided that "Down's syndrome is not an insupportable horror for either the sufferer or the parents." Smith cites this parent's report as showing "the joy that many parents of Down children discover." He supports the Kennedy/Brownback legislation because it would allow parents to make a "fully informed decision," which might be a decision to care for a Down child as a joyful experience.

We allow parents to make such reproductive decisions because we assume that most parents will be motivated by a desire for parental care that considers the best interests of their children. Using governmental coercion to force a decision on them would be bad eugenics. Allowing them to make their own decisions based on the best available information and their natural desire for a healthy family life is good eugenics.

Why Eugenics is Good for Jews

Proponents of "intelligent design" at the Discovery Institute and elsewhere have charged that Darwinian biology is immoral because of its association with eugenics. This is part of the rhetoric of Ben Stein's movie Expelled.

But as I have indicated in some previous posts, this crude attack on eugenics as evil fails to consider the sort of good eugenics that Darwin favored. Darwin was worried, for example, about the deleterious effects of inbreeding, and so he wanted the British Parliament to sponsor some studies of the effects of first cousin marriages. (Darwin had a personal interest in this, because his wife Emma was his first cousin.)

The crude propaganda of the "intelligent design" proponents (like John West and those in Ben Stein's movie) assumes that eugenics is purely evil because of its abuse by the Nazis in their attack on the Jews. But this ignores the benefits of eugenics for Jews.

Most American Jews are Askenazim. The Askenazi Jews come from Eastern Europe, and because they were a small breeding population in the Middle Ages, many deleterious genes were propagated in the population. For example, about one in 25 Ashkenazi Jews is a carrier of Tay-Sachs disease, which causes the progressive degeneration of the central nervous system in infants, who usually die by the age of 4. It is a horrible disease, and parents would surely want to minimize their chances of producing children with such a disease. To deal with this problem, there are now many Jewish organizations in the United States that provide genetic screening programs so that Jews can determine the likelihood of their being carriers of such diseases, and then they can try to avoid mating with other carriers. As a result of this, the rate of Tay-Sachs and other diseases among Jews has declined dramatically.

This is what I call "good eugenics." Participation in these counseling and screening programs is voluntary. It is not forced on anyone. But it's available for people who want to make good decisions about reproduction and the prospects for their children. It's eugenics, because it is designed to improve the genetic health of offspring.

What's wrong with this? Isn't it good for Jews to be able to participate in such eugenic programs? Doesn't this show how genetics and Darwinian science can improve human life? Rather than denouncing eugenics as evil, wouldn't it be better to distinguish good eugenics from bad eugenics? Why don't the proponents of "intelligent design" do this? Is it because they are advancing a rhetorical strategy that does not favor intelligent thought about the issues?

For more information about genetic testing and family-planning decisions among American Jews, you can go to the website for the Victor Center for Jewish Genetic Diseases at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

The First Darwinian Left?

In 1998 and 1999, when Peter Singer proposed a "Darwinian left" as a "new paradigm" for the left, he presented this as an alternative to the "traditional left," and particularly the Marxist left.  Generally, he argued, the left had not interpreted Darwin correctly.  The left had assumed that in explaining human evolution as a product of the "struggle for existence," Darwin had understood human life--and all life--as shaped by the competition of individuals, which supported the view of human nature favored by liberal individualism, rather than the view of the left that emphasized the human need for social cooperation.  This was a mistake because Darwin's account of human evolution, particularly in The Descent of Man, argued that human beings evolved as social animals with moral and intellectual capacities that allowed them to cooperate within their families and groups in ways that enhanced their survival and reproduction.  Only recently, Singer claimed, has this cooperative side of Darwinism been brought into clear view by the work of sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists who see that human beings are evolved to be both competitive and cooperative.  And while this denies the utopian dream of the traditional left for human perfectibility, it does allow for a Darwinian left to work for a more cooperative society.

According to Singer, the only person on the left who saw this cooperative side of Darwinism was Peter Kropotkin, in his book Mutual Aid, who saw that Darwin's Descent recognized cooperation between animals of the same species as a factor of evolution.  Since human beings were naturally cooperative, Kropotkin argued, they did not need government, which actually impeded their natural cooperation, and they would be more cooperative without government.  Thus, Kropotkin's anarchism lessened his influence with the traditional left, particularly Marxists.

There's one big mistake in Singer's story:  he ignores the long period from 1859 to World War II when many people on the left--socialists and progressive liberals--identified themselves as Darwinians.  It was only after the Second World War that those on the left generally rejected any Darwinian understanding of morality and politics as tainted by the seemingly right-wing history of "Social Darwinism."  It was this later turn away from Darwin that explains why the left reacted with such vehement scorn to the publication of Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology in 1975.  When Barack Obama condemns his opponents as Social Darwinists, he is manifesting this leftist tradition of scorn for Darwinism.

To correct Singer's story, David Stack has written The First Darwinian Left: Socialism and Darwinism, 1859-1914 (2003).  Stack shows the influence of Darwinian ideas on the history of British socialism, particularly the tradition that led into the Independent Labour Party of  Great Britain, which defended its socialist position against Marxism on the left and liberalism on the right.  He identifies a long line of Darwinian socialists, including Alfred Russel Wallace, Annie Besant, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, and Ramsay MacDonald.  (Stack's book elaborates an argument first stated in an article available online.)

Stack succeeds in so far as he shows that many of the socialists who were looking for an alternative to Marxist revolution employed Darwinian language in arguing for an evolutionary socialism that would emerge gradually through democratic reforms.  These socialists saw the evolutionary process as a progressive movement towards ever greater cooperation, so that the competitive individualism of capitalism was only a temporary stage on the road to the cooperative society of socialism.

Although he does not express it in this way, Stack's argument can be stated as three premises leading to a conclusion:

1.  Darwinism provides a scientific explanation of the human propensity to social cooperation as part of our evolved human nature, and thus it denies atomistic individualism.

2.  Classical liberalism promotes atomistic individualism, and thus it denies the human propensity to social cooperation.

3.  Socialism promotes social cooperation as superior to atomistic individualism.

Therefore, Darwinism supports socialism.

Stack helps us to see the plausibility in this line of reasoning as explaining the history of Darwinian socialism.  But I see at least five weaknesses in Stack's argument.

The first weakness is that Charles Darwin himself never identified support for socialism as a necessary conclusion from his science.  Stack quotes (p. 2) from a letter that Darwin wrote in December 26, 1879, in which he wrote to a Dr. Scherzer: "What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection."  Far from being a socialist, Darwin was an enthusiastic supporter of the Liberal Party, when liberalism was identified as classical liberalism.

Moreover, some of the Darwinian socialists admitted that there was no support in Darwin's writing for connecting evolution to socialism.  In Socialism and Society (1908), Ramsay MacDonald observed: "The influence of Darwinism upon Socialism does not depend upon whether Darwin's special theories of evolution do or do not lead to Socialism" (109).  Enrico Ferri began his Socialism and Positive Science (Darwin-Spencer-Marx) (1905) by admitting: "It is true that Darwin, and especially Spencer, stopped short half-way from the final conclusions of religious, political and social order, which necessarily follow from their indisputable premises" (xi).

Nevertheless, as Ferri suggests, one might argue that even if Darwin himself did not see the connection to socialism, Darwin's science necessarily leads to socialism as a final conclusion.  But to make such an argument, one would have to offer a careful reading of Darwin's Descent to show that the logic of Darwin's reasoning pointed to socialism.  In fact, none of the Darwinian socialists covered by Stack do this.  With the possible exception of Kropotkin, none of them make any effort to show how their socialist conclusions emerge necessarily from a meticulous reading of Darwin's Descent. 

This indicates the second weakness in Stack's argument.  He has to admit that socialist conclusions are only "loosely drawn from Darwinism" (56, 63, 119).  The Darwinism of Darwinian socialism consists of nothing more than some loose language of biological metaphors--"the organic and evolutionary metaphor" of the "social organism" (53, 79, 81, 119-20).  The metaphor of society as an organism comes more from Spencer than from Darwin, and Spencer stresses that the metaphorical likeness of a human society to a human body is incomplete because while a human body has one central nervous system and brain, a human society has no single mind beyond the separate minds of the individuals composing the society.  This is a crucial point, because the socialist use of the metaphor of the "social organism" presumes that the government in a socialist state can act as one mind over a whole society.

This points to the third weakness in Stack's argument.  The Darwinian socialists had to assume that the Darwinian evolution of cooperation was an evolution towards an ever more socialistic state (47, 60, 83, 120).  But this is not necessarily true.  As Stack admits, both Spencer and Kropotkin saw the natural evolution of cooperation as showing that the state was not necessary for cooperation, and that the state might even rightly be seen as an impediment to the cooperation that can naturally emerge in social life.

The weakness here in Stack's reasoning turns on what one means by "cooperation."  Does one mean voluntary cooperation or compulsory cooperation?  Contrary to the second premise in Stack's argument, classical liberalism does not assert an atomistic individualism that denies cooperation, because liberalism affirms the natural propensity of human beings for voluntary cooperation in society.  One can see that, for example, in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, which presents human beings as naturally other-regarding in their capacity for sympathy and moral sentiments, and it was this reasoning that Darwin adopted in his account of the evolution of the natural moral sense in his Descent of Man.  This is a fundamental claim of liberalism as promoting voluntary cooperation in society as superior to compulsory cooperation enforced by the state.

The natural evolution of cooperation is a recurrent theme of classical liberal thought.  So, for example, Ludwig von Mises in Human Action wrote: "The notion of the struggle for existence as Darwin borrowed it from Malthus is to be understood in a metaphorical sense. . . . It need not be a war of extermination. . . . Reason has demonstrated that, for man, the most adequate means of improving his condition is social cooperation and division of labor."

Classical liberals worry about the concentration of coercive power in the state because they worry about the natural tendency of human beings to be corrupted by the exercise of coercive rule over others.  This point is related to the fourth weakness in Stack's argument.  Stack criticizes Singer for arguing that leftists like Marx "know nothing at all about human nature," because, in fact, Stack claims, Marx had a concept of human nature (64).  But here Stack hides the important point that Singer is making. 

The remark that leftists like Marx "know nothing about human nature" is actually a quotation from the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin who predicted that a Marxist socialist regime would become tyrannical.  Bakunin wrote:  "And from the heights of the state they begin to look down upon the whole common world of the workers.  From that time on they represent not the people but themselves and their own claims to govern the people.  Those who doubt this know nothing at all about human nature." 

Marx responded to Bakunin by dismissing his "nightmares about authority" and his "hallucinations about domination."  Of course, Bakunin's nightmares about the tyranny of socialist statism turned out to be accurate prophecies.  Singer rightly observes that a Darwinian view of human nature would sustain Bakunin's belief about the corrupting effects of the natural desire for coercive power. 

At one point, Stack describes the British socialists as experiencing the "thrill of power," and he doesn't find this troublesome (120).  But perhaps he would say that in contrast to the Marxist socialists, the British socialists were not corrupted by the power of the state.

And yet, Stack has to recognize the morally repugnant commitment of many British socialists to coercive eugenic policies, which seems to me to be a fifth weakness in his argument.  Stack writes:

     In a number of ways, the eugenic analysis overlapped with a socialist exegesis of Darwinism--to such an extent that Galton's most important follower, Karl Pearson, defined himself as a socialist.  Firstly, eugenics was a collectivist doctrine.  Whereas Darwin had left the unit of natural selection undecided between the individual and the group, the notion of racial fitness demanded that natural selection be a group process.  Secondly, eugenics rested upon a positivistic faith in scientific rationality, and man's Promethean destiny to wrest control of his future, that echoed the agenda of most socialists.  Thirdly, the instrument of eugenic policy, what Galton called the "agencies under social control" intervening to improve "the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally" was to be the state.  This chimed with the socialist objective of a strong state overcoming the interests of petty individualism.  Fourthly, in the "positive" versions of eugenics, the state was to institute a social health programme that cared for mothers and babies.
     Thus, although eugenics did not, as is sometimes asserted, resuscitate the Enlightenment dream of perfectibility, it did hint at a "rational selection" that would dispose, once and for all, of laissez-faire individualism.  It did so, moreover, by substituting the human mind, in the form of the state, for the vicissitudes of nature.  As Galton put it, "what Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly."  This, of course, was the essence of the socialist case.  No wonder historians of both inter-war Britain and France have suggested that we reassess our attitudes towards eugenics, and learn to see it as a progressive force in politics. (86-87)

Stack immediately tries to reject this idea of socialist eugenics by claiming that eugenics assumed a hard hereditarianism that was contrary to the environmentalist explanations of human behavior usually favored by the left.  But this is implausible since the very people that Stack regards as most representative of British socialism were enthusiastic about coercive eugenics.  Indeed, Stack must admit: "There was no question of socialists rejecting eugenics outright" (88).

Darwin rejected Galton's proposals for eugenics as utopian.  Darwin did suggest, however,  that Parliament should investigate the effects of inbreeding to see if cousin marriages might be dangerous. 

The general point here is that socialist eugenics illustrates the danger inherent in socialist statism, in "the socialist objective of a strong state overcoming the interests of petty individualism," and "substituting the human mind, in the form of the state, for the vicissitudes of nature."  If this is the "essence of the socialist case," as Stack indicates, then this illustrates the danger in the socialist preference for compulsory cooperation as opposed to the liberal preference for voluntary cooperation.

Some of my posts on related themes can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Questions and Answers for John West

In a recent blog post, John West claims that in our debates, I have refused to answer his four major questions for me. Here I will briefly summarize my answers to those questions and then pose some questions for West.

West's first question: "If Darwinism provides the standard for determining what is moral or immoral (as Arnhart claims), how can we condemn any activity that persists over time among even a subpopulation of human beings or animals?" Since Darwin indicates that practices such as infanticide, rape, and polygamy have been common in human history and thus "natural," doesn't this imply that Darwinism would endorse such practices?

The answer to this question is to be found in Darwin's account of the moral sense. Although natural selection through the "struggle for existence" shapes the social instincts of human beings and their capacities for reason, speech, and social learning, "the highest part of man's nature," Darwin indicates, comes from the moral development that arises more from habit, reason, instruction, and religion than through natural selection (Descent of Man, Penguin Classics, 163, 681-82, 688-89). So, for example, we can understand that in primitive societies, people felt compelled to kill their offspring when it was difficult or impossible to successfully rear all the infants that were born (65, 659-60). But modern conditions of life allow us to preserve our offspring without threatening the lives of others. We can also understand why polygyny (one husband with many wives) has been common in human history, while polyandry (one wife with many husbands) has been rare (655-63). Men of high status and wealth will be inclined to seek multiple mates, and polygyny has worked in many societies. But the sexual jealousy among the co-wives will always create conflicts. And while an extreme scarcity of women might make polyandry necessary, the intense sexual jealousy of males will make this almost impossible to sustain. Thus, through moral experience and moral reasoning, we can see the advantages of monogamy in securing the peaceful management of the natural desires for sexual mating. This kind of reasoning led Thomas Aquinas to conclude that while monogamy was fully natural, polygyny was partly natural and partly unnatural, and polyandry was completely unnatural.

West's second question is: "If Darwinism is so friendly toward Biblical theism (as Arnhart insists), why do the vast majority of leading Darwinists identify themselves as atheists or agnostics? Are they all stupid?"

Well, are Darwinian scientists like Francis Collins stupid for believing that theism and evolution are compatible? Was Darwin stupid for concluding The Origin of Species by describing the "grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one"? Was Pope John Paul II stupid in asserting that there was no necessary conflict between evolution and religion? I don't think so. Fanatical atheists like Richard Dawkins might not be stupid. But they are certainly remarkably shallow thinkers who refuse to ponder the mystery of the First Cause of nature, which leaves a big opening for God as the Creator.

West's third question is: "If Darwinism is so friendly toward limited government (as Arnhart also claims), why did most of the leading Darwinian biologists in the first several decades of the twentieth century champion state-sanctioned eugenics, the effort to breed a better race applying Darwinian principles? Moreover, why did these evolutionary biologists insist that eugenics was a logical corollary to Darwin's theory? Were they all stupid as well? Why and in what way?"

If grossly ignorant utopianism is stupidity, then they were stupid. The eugenicists followed in the utopian tradition of Plato's Republic, which assumed that philosopher-kings could breed human beings to improve their moral and intellectual capacities. Francis Galton openly claimed that his proposed eugenics would fulfill the dreams of utopian philosophers. This eugenics was utopian because it assumed human perfectibility in knowledge, power, and virtue. It assumed that human beings could fully understand and precisely control the mechanisms of biological inheritance so as to shape a new human race superior in physical and mental traits. This is unrealistic because complex behavioral traits are almost always shaped by the joint action of many genes interacting with the social and physical environment of the individual in ways that cannot be perfectly understood or controlled. Galton's eugenics also assumed that those people who would manage his selective breeding programs could be trusted to exercise their power for the common good without being corrupted by tyrannical interests like those of the Nazis.

West's fourth question is: "If Darwin himself only supported what Arnhart describes as 'good eugenics' such as preventing incestuous marriages, how does Arnhart explain the remarkable passage in Darwin's Descent of Man where Darwin warns of the dangers to the human race of helping the poor, caring for the mentally ill, saving the sick, and even inoculating people against smallpox? In Darwin's own words, 'no one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man . . . excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.'"

Isn't Darwin right in seeing that insofar as modern civilization promotes the propagation of inherited defects, this is "highly injurious to the race of man"? Don't we know today of many genetic disorders that parents pass on to their offspring? Wouldn't it be desirable if we could eliminate or at least minimize the propagation of such disorders? So, for example, isn't it good that Ashkenazi Jews are using genetic testing to identify the carriers of Tay-Sachs and to discourage them from passing on that genetic trait to the next generation? But isn't it also right that our desire to eliminate these genetic disorders must be combined, as Darwin insisted, with a desire to aid the weak as an expression of that moral sympathy that constitutes "the noblest part of our nature" (Descent of Man, 159)?

Now let me address four questions of my own to West--questions that he has refused to clearly answer in our debates.

1. What does West mean in his book Darwin's Conservatives when he says that the alternative to a Darwinian morality of the natural moral sense is a morality grounded on a "transcendent standard of morality" (21), a "permanent foundation for ethics" (22), or "moral truth" (40)? What is the source of that "transcendent standard"? When people disagree about the meaning of that "transcendent standard," are they just stupid?

2. What does West mean when he refers to "traditional Judeo-Christian morality" (21)? Does this refer to Biblical morality--the moral teaching of the Old and New Testaments--which would include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (69-71, 143)? If so, then how exactly does the Bible provide a clear and reliable moral teaching contrary to the Darwinian moral sense? When the Bible teaches the "curse of destruction" that requires killing innocent women and children (Numbers 31:1-20; Deuteronomy 20:10-20), and when the book of Revelation teaches that history is moving towards a bloody battle for extinguishing the armies of Satan, is this "traditional Judeo-Christian morality"? When radical Islamists appeal to the Biblical tradition of holy war, is this also part of "traditional Judeo-Christian morality"? When the Bible endorses infanticide (Genesis 22; Numbers 31; Deuteronomy 21:18-21; Judges 11:29-40) and slavery (Exodus 21:20; Leviticus 25:44-46; Ephesians 6:5), must we accept this as "traditional Judeo-Christian morality"? How do we judge the moral reliability of such Biblical teachings without appealing to some natural moral sense beyond biblical revelation?

3. What exactly does West mean when he speaks of biological desires as normative? He writes: "I am not quarreling with Arnhart's attempt to enlist biology to support traditional morality. I actually agree with him that showing a biological basis for certian moral desires could conceivably reinforce traditional morality--but only if we have reason to assume that those biological desires are somehow normative. . . . If one believes that natural desires have been implanted in human beings by intelligent design, or even that they represent irreducible and unchanging truths inherent in the universe, it would be rational to accept those desires as a grounding for a universal code of morality" (22-23). So does this mean that we are morally obligated to follow all of our natural desires if we believe they are the product of intelligent design or an unchanging nature? How exactly would that work? How can we judge that the intelligent designer or unchanging nature is good if we do not already have some independent standard of goodness? Is it possible that the intelligent designer used the evolutionary process to create the human species--as suggested by Michael Behe? If so, would that make our biological desires as shaped by evolution normative for us?

4. If "intelligent design theory" is a purely scientific theory that does not depend on religious belief, then why do the majority of scientists deny this? Are they stupid? And why is it that so many Biblical creationists--like those involved in the Dover school case--see the teaching of "intelligent design" as a way of teaching creationism as science?

John West in "The Intercollegiate Review"

The Fall 2010 issue of The Intercollegiate Review has two articles on the debate over Darwinian conservatism. My article is entitled "Darwinian Conservatism Versus Metaphysical Conservatism." John West's article is entitled "Darwin, Scientism, and the Misguided Quest for Darwinian Conservatism." This issue of the journal is available online.

West works at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, where he leads the campaign for "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian science. In response to my book Darwinian Conservatism, West wrote Darwin's Conservatives: A Misguided Quest (Discovery Institute Press, 2006). I have written many posts responding to his criticisms. Some of them can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Since West's article adds nothing to his earlier book, I see no need to add much to my earlier responses to his book. But I should make a few points.

West's main idea is that conservatives should reject Darwinian science because it represents "scientism," which he defines as "a credulous belief that modern science can answer all important questions about human life and that scientists have the right to dictate public policy merely because of their presumed technical expertise" (34). More specifically, he says that Darwinian scientism "refers primarily to the claim that the mechanism of evolution is an undirected material process of natural selection acting on random mutations, and furthermore to the reductionist corollary of this view that seeks to understand mind, morality, and religion as fully explicable by such a blind material process" (35).

West does not cite any passage in Darwin's writings that would support such a reductionist view of "mind, morality, and religion." In fact, West ignores Darwin's extensive comments on how cultural evolution, rational judgment, and religious belief shape moral history in ways that cannot be reduced to evolution by natural selection. In The Descent of Man, Darwin repeatedly indicates that although natural selection has shaped the social instincts of human beings, the primary causes of moral progress are "the approbation of our fellow-men--the strengthening of our sympathies by habit--example and imitation--reason--experience, and even self-interest--instruction during youth, and religious feelings" (Penguin edition, p. 163). This doesn't look like reductionism to me.

Moreover, throughout my writing, I have emphasized how explaining moral and political order requires a complex interaction of genetic evolution, cultural evolution, and deliberate judgments. West ignores all of this in his claim that Darwinism requires genetic reductionism.

West's article is organized around five questions: "(1) Does Darwinism support or subvert traditional morality? (2) Does it erode or reinforce the basis of capitalism? (3) Does it promote or undermine limited government? (4) Does it nurture or weaken religious faith? (5) Finally, is the evidence for Darwinism so overwhelming that all rational people must accept it?" (35).

(1) TRADITIONAL MORALITY. "According to Darwin," West claims, "specific moral precepts develop because under certain environmental conditions they promote survival. Once those conditions for survival change, however, so too do the dictates of morality" (36). West doesn't cite any passages from Darwin to support this sweeping assertion.

Survival surely is important for morality. Or does West deny this? Whenever Moses has to give a reason for the people of Israel to obey his laws, he says that obeying the law will allow them to live and propagate themselves (Deuteronomy 4:1, 4:40, 5:29, 6:1-3, 24, 8:1, 11:8-9, 20, 22:7, 23:9-14, 25:15, 30:15-20). Does West disagree?

Of course, survival is only a minimal condition of morality. I argue that the natural desire for life is only one of 20 natural desires that constitute the natural standards for moral order.

Through experience and reasoning, Darwin declares, we can conclude that the Golden Rule--doing unto others as we would have them do unto us--"lies at the foundation of morality" (Descent, 151). West doesn't comment on this claim or explain how it can be part of a crudely reductionist view of morality.

West complains that Darwin recognizes that polygamy has been practiced in many societies, which West interprets as an attack on monogamy. Would West say that that the Old Testament and the Koran are immoral because they teach the propriety of polygamy? Thomas Aquinas noted that polygamy was "partly natural," although it was "partly unnatural" in that the sexual jealousy of the co-wives promotes disorder. A Darwinian view of marriage would support this same conclusion in favoring monogamy over polygamy, while acknowledging that in some circumstances polygamy might be justified. It's not clear to me why West rejects this.

Like many of Darwin's critics, West is deeply disturbed by Darwin's suggestion that if bees had morality, their morality would differ from human morality. But does West mean to suggest that bee morality should be exactly the same as human morality?

(2) CAPITALISM. West claims that Darwinism cannot support capitalism, because a Darwinian understanding of commerce would require a Malthusian view of economics as a zero-sum game. But in making such a claim, West has to ignore all of the Darwinian research on the evolutionary benefits of cooperation and reciprocity. Robert Wright's book Nonzero summarizes much of this research.

(3) LIMITED GOVERNMENT. West argues that Darwin promoted a utopian eugenics, which subverted the conservative principles of limited government. To do this, West has to denigrate Darwin's insistence that utopian eugenics (like that proposed by Francis Galton) violated our "sympathy," which is "the noblest part of our nature" (Descent, 159). The only form of eugenics that Darwin ever endorsed was laws against incestuous marriages.

Darwin observes that in civilized societies, we "check the process of elimination" by protecting the weak and disabled. This "must be highly injurious to the race of man." This is what West quotes as evidence that Darwin favored the sort of eugenics that would later be practiced by the Nazis.

But West acknowledges that this passage is immediately followed by Darwin's warning that we should not practice such eugenics. Darwin writes:

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind."

This seems to be a clear rejection of eugenics--to "neglect the weak and the helpless" would be "evil," because it would violate that "sympathy" that is "the noblest part of our nature." Amazingly, West dismisses this casually with the comment that "such misgivings represented a lame objection at best." "A lame objection"? How could it be a "lame objection" to see eugenics as violating "sympathy," when Darwin insists, again and again, that "sympathy" is the foundation of our natural moral sense? Here we see West straining in his effort to distort Darwin's text to get the conclusions he wants.

(4) RELIGION. I have argued that Darwinian science leaves open the question of religious belief. In searching for the unexplained ground of all explanation, we can either invoke "Nature" as the final ground, or we can look beyond Nature to "Nature's God." Darwin suggested this when he spoke about the "two books"--the Book of God's works, and the Book of God's words--as the two sources of understanding. He ended the Origin of Species with a vivid image of God as the Creator of Nature's laws. It is possible, therefore, to be a theistic evolutionist.

West rejects any possibility of being a theistic evolutionist. He doesn't even mention that Michael Behe--the leading biologist supporting "intelligent design"--suggests the possibility of theistic evolution in his book The Edge of Evolution. Behe says that treating the Bible as a science textbook would be "silly" (166), and he insists that there should be "no relying on holy books or prophetic dreams" (233). If one does not read the Creation Story literally as six-days-of-creation, then it is possible to combine belief in an intelligent designer with belief in the natural laws of science. "The purposeful design of life to any degree is easily compatible with the idea that, after its initiation, the universe unfolded exclusively by the intended playing out of natural laws" (232).

West concedes that Darwinian science leaves open the possibility of God as "first cause." "But this 'first cause' allowable by Darwinism cannot be a God who actively supervises or directs the development of life. Such an absentee God is hard to reconcile with any traditional Judeo-Christian conception of a God who actively directs and cares for His creation" (40).

But notice that West here is silent about something he acknowledges in some of his other writing: the "intelligent designer" of "intelligent design theory" is not the Biblical God. That's why many "creationists" have rejected "intelligent design theory" as a new form of atheism. After all, West rejects "biblical literalism" (41). As Behe says, intelligent design theory does not tell us "whether the designer of life was a dope, a demon, or a deity" (238).

(5) SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. In claiming that scientific evidence denies Darwinism, West cites an article by Douglas Axe, who is an employee of the Discovery Institute. West doesn't tell his readers that some biologists have disputed the way West uses Axe's article. For example, in one analysis of the article, the author concludes: "the claims that have been and will be made by ID proponents regarding protein evolution are not supported by Axe's work. As I show, it is not appropriate to use the numbers Axe obtains to make inferences about the evolution of proteins and enzymes. Thus, this study does not support the conclusion that functional sequences are extremely isolated in sequence space, or that the evolution of new protein function is an impossibility that is beyond the capacity of random mutation and natural selection."

I have debated John West on various occasions. A few years ago, one of our debates received coverage in the New York Times, which can be found here.

The Lucretian Modernity of Darwinian Liberalism

Modern science, modern liberalism, and even the whole of modern culture began in January of 1417.  That's when Poggio Bracciolini was looking for old books in a monastic library in southern Germany, and he discovered a copy of Lucretius' ancient poem On the Nature of Things.

Written near the middle of the first century B.C., Lucretius' book was a poetic exposition of the philosophical atomism of Epicurus.  Although Epicurus and Lucretius professed to believe in the existence of gods, they argued that the gods were immortal but natural beings who had no care for human beings, and who never interfered with the natural order of the cosmos.  That natural cosmic order was explained as the product of atomic particles combining and dissolving by chance and material necessity.  As part of that natural motion of atoms, human beings were purely material beings--in their bodies and their minds--and as such they were mortal.  Religious beliefs in the immortality of the soul and an afterlife in which those immortal souls were to be eternally rewarded or punished should be recognized as delusions.  Indeed, those delusions based on religious fears were the primary source of human anxiety.  To be happy, to be able to enjoy the pleasures of mortal life, human beings needed to overcome their fear of death and of divine judgement.  They could do that, Epicurus and Lucretius believed, by understanding the way things really are as a product of the evolutionary history of the world as atoms in motion.

This materialist cosmology of Epicureanism was a radical alternative to the other views of cosmic order in the ancient Greek and Roman world--including Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism.  And while many of the early Christian theologians could accommodate modified forms of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism as compatible with Christianity, they had to reject Epicurean materialism as utterly contrary to Christianity.  The Christian fear of the Satanic temptation of Epicureanism was so deep that the writings of Epicurus and Lucretius were hidden away and largely disappeared from medieval Christendom.

But then with the passionate revival of ancient learning in the European Renaissance, there was a curiosity, even among some devout Christians, about the long forgotten writings of Epicureanism.  As one of the greatest hunters of ancient books in the Renaissance, Poggio was elated to finally discover a copy of Lucretius' text in 1417.  But he had no idea that his discovery would lead to a renewal of Epicurean thought that would transform the culture of the Western world.  In fact, we can make a good argument that what makes the world modern is the materialist cosmology presented in Lucretius' On the Nature of Things.  We are all Epicureans now.

This story has recently been told in a most engaging way by Stephen Greenblatt in his book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Norton, 2011), which has received the National Book Award for nonfiction for 2011.  The book is wonderfully well-written, perhaps reflecting the fact that Greenblatt is a professor of English literature at Harvard. 

It's surprising that Greenblatt never mentions another book published 10 years ago that covers much of the same ground as his book--Benjamin Wiker's Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists (InterVarsity Press, 2002).

Greenblatt and Wiker agree in their historical narrative of the modern world as a product of the turn away from the Christian cosmology of intelligent design to the Lucretian cosmology of evolutionary atomism.  They disagree, however, in their assessment of this historical turn:  Greenblatt celebrates it as moral progress, while Wiker laments it as moral degeneration.  Comparing the two books illuminates this fundamental cosmological debate, a debate that runs through much of my writing for this blog.

Wiker is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute, and he wrote his book with the financial support of the Discovery Institute as part of their "wedge strategy" for overturning the modern culture of Darwinian materialism and replacing it with a Christian culture of intelligent design.  The back cover of Wiker's book bears endorsements from many of the luminaries of the intelligent design movement, and the Foreword is written by William Dembski.

Dembski indicates the fundamental issue in declaring that Wiker's book poses the primary question between intelligent design and Darwinism:  "Is reality fundamentally mindful and purposive or mind-less and material?" (13).

Christians must see the world as intelligently designed by the divine Creator, who exercises providential care over human beings and who judges them in the afterlife as deserving heavenly rewards or hellish punishments for eternity.  Christians can interpret many of the ancient philosophers--Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics--as teaching that the world is "fundamentally mindful and purposive" and thus supporting a Christian cosmology.  But they can't do this with the atomistic cosmology of Epicurus and Lucretius, which must be seen as the fundamental rival to Christianity.

Moreover, Wiker argues, one must defend Christian cosmology if one wants to defend Christian morality.  As a comprehensive account of the universe, every cosmology implies a morality, because every account of nature as a whole implies an account of human nature--the moral and intellectual life of human beings--as part of cosmic nature.

With this in mind, Wiker argues that "the culture wars are cosmological wars" (314).  The current debates over the morality of abortion, gay marriage, sexual conduct generally, biotechnology, and the teaching of evolution in public schools are all ultimately rooted in an irreconcilable choice between intelligent-design cosmology and materialist cosmology.  The cosmology of intelligent-design provides cosmic support for Christian morality.  The cosmology of materialist atomism promotes an individualistic hedonism free from any absolute standards of right and wrong.

Wiker would seem to agree with Greenblatt's summary of the 20 fundamental propositions of Lucretius' account of "the way things are" (182-202):

1.  Everything is made of invisible particles.
2.  The elementary particles of matter--"the seeds of the things"--are eternal.
3.  The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.
4.  All particles are in motion in an infinite void.
5.  The universe has no creator or designer.
6.  Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve.
7.  The swerve is the source of free will.
8.  Nature ceaselessly experiments.
9.  The universe was not created for or about humans.
10. Humans are not unique.
11. Human society began not in a Golden Age of tranquillity and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival.
12. The soul dies.
13. There is no afterlife.
14. Death is nothing to us.
15. All organized religions are superstitious delusions.
16. Religions are invariably cruel.
17. There are no angels, demons, or ghosts.
18. The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain.
19. The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
20. Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.

Greenblatt and Wiker show how these Lucretian ideas shaped the leading modern thinkers in philosophy and science--including Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Hume, Spinoza, and Darwin.  

The one person overlooked here, I think, is Nietzsche.  Particularly, in his middle writings--Human, All Too Human, Dawn, and the first four books of The Gay Science--Nietzsche develops one of the most elaborate modern statements of Epicurean and Darwinian Enlightenment.  In his earlier and later writings, however, Nietzsche essentially agrees with Wiker that human beings cannot live well as Darwinian Epicureans without a redemptive cosmology, and we see Nietzsche striving for a cosmology of atheistic religiosity.  The agreement between Wiker and Nietzsche is most evident in their scorn for David Friedrich Strauss in his failing to see the nihilistic consequences of Darwinian science.  Some of my posts on this point can be found here, here, and here.

Although there is no evidence that Darwin read Epicurus or Lucretius, one can clearly see the fundamental ideas of Darwinian evolution in Book 5 (see lines 837-877) of De rerum natura, although one does not see a clear account of the gradual transmutation of one species into another.  Moreover, one sees the fundamental agreement between Lucretius and Darwin in their general cosmology of a world in which complex order arises through a natural evolutionary process that does not require miraculous interventions by an intelligent designer.

Although I find Wiker's intellectual history illuminating, we fundamentally disagree in that I don't share his apocalyptic fear of what he sees as the moral nihilism of the Lucretian/Darwinian cosmology.  The disagreement was evident some years ago when Wiker and I had an exchange in the pages of First Things.  In the November 2000 issue of First Things, I wrote an article defending "Darwinian Conservatism," which was followed by critical responses from Michael Behe and Bill Dembski, and then my response to them.  A year later, Wiker wrote an article in First Things attacking me, and much of his argument was incorporated into his book (see pp. 245-46).  There was then a brief exchange between us in a later issue of First Things.

Our disagreement comes at two levels.  At the first level, Wiker refuses to see--as I do--that a purposeful human nature can arise within a purposeless cosmic nature.  I believe that we can judge the moral and intellectual virtues as contributing to the flourishing of evolved human nature, even when we think those virtues have no correspondence to any cosmic order of intelligent design.  Thus we can recognize that there is a natural law for human beings rooted in their evolved natural inclinations without any need to see this natural human order as the fulfilment of some intentionally designed cosmic order.

At the second level of our disagreement, I find Wiker sophistical in his writing.  By that, I mean that he intentionally suppresses evidence and arguments that counter his case for Epicurean Darwinism as morally degrading.  For example, in trying to cite evidence in Darwin's Descent of Man that he promoted the eugenics that would lead to Hitler's eugenics, Wiker carefully omits any passages that would contradict his interpretation.  One illustration of this is how he selectively quotes from a paragraph near the end of Descent (1871, 2:402-403).  In his book (252-53), Wiker quotes the following:  "Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes such care. . . . Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even partially realised until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known.  All do good service who aid towards this end."  Wiker says this last sentence is a "most damning remark" showing his endorsement of eugenics. 

But Wiker is quoting here from one paragraph that concludes with this one sentence that he fails to quote: "When the principles of breeding and of inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan of ascertaining by an easy method whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man."  This makes it clear that Darwin's concern here was to study the possibly injurious effects of incest.  In particular, he had proposed that the British Parliament should sponsor a study of the effects of first-cousin marriages to see if they had a high rate of physical and mental birth defects in their children.  Darwin had a personal interest in this, since his wife Emma was his first cousin, and he worried about whether the ill health of some of his children might be a consequence of inbreeding.  Eventually, Darwin's son George carried out the research Darwin sought, and George concluded that the danger of inherited defects from first-cousin marriages was very low. 

Here then is an example of what I have called "good eugenics," the kind of eugenics that almost all of us would support.  For instance, many Ashkenazi Jews have voluntarily organized genetic testing of their children, so that when they want to marry, they can investigate the probability of birth defects in their children (such as Tay Sachs disease), and then decide whether they want to marry and have children.  This is eugenics.  Indeed, all the laws that prohibit incestuous marriages are based on eugenics--trying to promote "good births."  But this is good eugenics.  Wiker hides this from his reader because it would weaken his moral denunciation of Darwin.

Similarly, Wiker strengthens his case for the moral superiority of Christian cosmology by carefully refusing to mention any Christian teachings or practices that his readers might find troublesome.  For instance, in presenting the moral teachings of the Bible, Wiker never mentions the fact that the Bible endorses slavery and genocide.  He speaks of infanticide as a moral abomination.  But he never mentions the troublesome story of Abraham being commanded by God to kill Isaac.  Nor does he mention Jeptha's murdering of his daughter as a sacrifice to God.  As I have noted in some recent posts, even Pope John II and Pope Benedict XVI have asked foregiveness for Christian traditions of violence.  Wiker is silent about all of this.

Moreover, Wiker is also silent about the Epicurean books of the Bible--Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs--both of which teach the goodness of pleasure. The Song of Songs celebrating erotic love without reference to marriage or reproduction contradicts Wiker's claim that sexual pleasure must always to directed to producing children.  The Epicureanism of Ecclesiastes was noted by Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles, III.27.11).

Wiker accuses Darwin of racism, but never mentions that much of the argument for the unity of the human species in the Descent of Man was part of Darwin's argument against slavery.

Another troubling part of Wiker's writing is how he warns against the "secularization" of the modern world as the source of our moral degradation, and thus implies that what we need is a "sacralization" of the world, but he never explains what this would mean.  Would he have us revert to the world of medieval Christendom based on its intelligent-design cosmology?  He mentions those Epicurean Christians--like Giordano Bruno--who were burned at the stake for their Epicureanism.  He doesn't condemn this.  So would he want to bring back such executions? 

Similarly, Wiker condemns homosexuality as evil because it goes against Christian cosmology and Biblical teaching.  He doesn't mention that the Bible commands the killing of homosexuals.  For centuries, homosexuality was a capital crime.  Would he endorse this?  If not, would that mean that he doesn't really want to enforce Christian cosmology and abolish Epicurean cosmology?

Furthermore, Wiker assumes that intelligent design reasoning is not only morally but also scientifically superior to evolutionary reasoning, because the evolutionists cannot explain exactly the step-by-step pathway by which all complex forms have evolved.  But then he never offers any account of how the intelligent design proponents would explain exactly when, where, and how the Intelligent Designer did this.

And while Wiker criticizes Darwinism as based on faith rather than demonstration, he never demonstrates the truth of the anthropomorphic analogy behind all intelligent design reasoning--the idea that we can infer divine intelligent agency from what we know about human intelligent agency.  As I have argued in some previous posts, this is dubious assumption that needs to be proven.

John West's DARWIN DAY IN AMERICA

I have had a series of debates with John West, the Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute will sponsor our next debate on November 15 at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle.

I have responded to West's book Darwin's Conservatives in various posts, some of which can be found here, here, and here.

West's new book--Darwin Day in America--is being published by ISI Books. The book will be released next month. But I have already read the book in page proofs. It is a very good book in surveying the bad effects of a crude scientific materialism in American public policy. That's why I have written a blurb for ISI Books praising it.

My one point of disagreement with West, however, is that I cannot understand why he wants to blame Darwinian science for all of the bad thinking and bad policies attributed to scientific materialism. For example, he criticizes Louis Sullivan's modern architecture for its "reductionist view of buildings as the sum of their functions and building materials." What does this have to do with Darwin? Well, Sullivan said that he was influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution, and therefore, West concludes, Darwin must have been responsible for modern architecture. But then West also notes that Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright also manifested a mystical romanticism that didn't seem very Darwinian. Again, I don't see that there is any kind of inevitable connection to Darwinian science.

Similarly, West criticizes John Watson for his behavioral psychology. But Watson's denial of human nature and affirmation that human beings come into the world as a "blank slate" with no innate propensities and open to environmental conditioning rejects any Darwinian science of human nature! And yet somehow, according to West, this behaviorist rejection of human biological nature is a consequence of Darwinism. I can't see the logic in this at all.

West assumes that Darwinian science requires a strong reductionism in which "the parts are more important than the whole--to the degree that sometimes the whole seems to be a lot less than the sum of the parts." But in Darwinian Conservatism, I argue that Darwinian biology requires the idea of emergence, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That's why I argue against E. O. Wilson's "consilience" as strong reductionism and in favor of "consilience" as emergent complexity.

West presents his argument in almost totally negative terms. He indicates the weaknesses in a strongly reductionist science--particularly, in its moral and political implications. But he never elaborates his positive alternative. (This reliance on negative argumentation is common for the proponents of intelligent design theory.) His argument would be strengthened if he could say: having shown the morally dubious consequences of scientific reductionism, now let me explain to you the moral strength of my alternative conception, which is . . .

West says that Darwin's science cannot support "traditional morality," because it provides no "permanent foundation for ethics," and it abolishes "transcendent moral standards." But then he never explains anywhere in his book the content or ground of those "transcendent moral standards."

At the end of the book, he criticizes Darwin for not appealing to "timeless standards of truth sanctioned by God or nature." He thinks the clearest evidence for this is the "startling passage" about how the morality of human beings would be different if they were hive-bees. If human beings lived like bees, Darwin suggests, "our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering." But why does West find this "startling"? Does he believe that the morality of bees must be the same as the morality of human beings, because all living things are governed by the same "timeless standards"? But surely what is naturally good or desirable for human beings is not the same as what would be good or desirable for bees.

West says that "according to Darwin's framework, everything that regularly occurred in nature must be regard as normal almost by nature." But Darwin's hive-bee passage says just the opposite. What is "normal" for hive-bees is not "normal" for human beings.

So, again, I ask, what is West's alternative conception of morality as based on "timeless standards of truth sanctioned by God or nature"? Could he give us an example of the "transcendent moral standards" that he has in mind? Perhaps he could say that the Bible provides such transcendent moral standards sanctioned by God. But don't we have to pass the Bible through a moral filter to get morally correct conclusions, because sometimes the Bible is contrary to our natural moral sense?

As someone deeply influenced by C. S. Lewis, West might want to appeal to Lewis's idea of the universal morality that he calls the Tao in The Abolition of Man. But isn't it interesting that when Lewis adds his appendix to that book, with examples of the Tao, he is very selective. Lewis quotes from the Bible the commandment "thou shalt not kill." But he does not quote the command to "let no breathing thing live" in the conquest of Canaan (Deuteronomy 20:10-20). Nor does Lewis quote any of the biblical passages endorsing slavery. Thus, Lewis carefully picks out those biblical passages that conform to his natural moral sense and rejects those that don't.

West devotes a lot of attention to the debate over the moral status of fetuses, because he sees abortion as a denial of the human dignity of the fetus. But there is no clear biblical statement that life begins at conception. On the contrary, the only biblical passage that seems pertinent suggests that a fetus's life has less value than that of a fully formed human being (Exodus 21:22-27). Even the papal statesments on abortion concede that the belief in life as beginning at conception cannot be based on the Bible. By contrast, many Jews interpret the biblical account of the creation of Adam as indicating that a fetus does not become human until there is a respiratory system in place, because Adam was less than fully human until God breathed life into him.

When readers of the Bible go through the story of God commanding Abraham to kill his innocent son Isaac as a test of Abraham's faith (Genesis 22), some readers interpret this to mean that we must obey any command of God no matter how immoral it is, and thus we are taught, as Kierkegaard said, that faith in God requires "the suspension of the ethical." But most readers assume that there must be some mistake in this biblical story, because surely God would not command what most of us recognize as an immoral act.

On this and other moral issues, it is not clear how we could grasp the transcendent moral standards sanctioned by God if we did not already have a natural moral sense.

West makes a lot of the connection between Darwin and eugenics. In Darwinian Conservatism, I argue that Darwin supported "good eugenics"--such as legally forbidding incestuous marriages that would produce harmful physical and mental disabilities. The recent efforts of Ashkenazi Jews to discourage the marriage of Tay-Sachs carriers would illustrate such "good eugenics." But I don't see any evidence in Darwin's writing that he endorsed Francis Galton's utopian schemes that we could properly condemn as "bad eugenics." West says that "Charles Darwin himself praised the idea of eugenic restrictions on marriage." But West doesn't notice that Darwin was specifically concerned about the effects of incest, which should be of concern for most people. Nor does West indicate that Galton's utopian eugenics goes back to Plato's proposal for eugenic mating in the Republic (459d). The cause of bad eugenics is not Darwin but utopianism.

The Rhetorical Blunder in Ben Stein's EXPELLED

Ben Stein's movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed opened yesterday in theatres around the nation. This movie is the latest project of the Discovery Institute in promoting the political rhetoric of "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian evolutionary science. The National Center for Science Education has set up a good website that corrects the many mistakes in the movie.

The folks at the Discovery Institute have made a big mistake in their production of this movie. The political rhetoric of the Discovery Institute's "wedge strategy" depends upon hiding a fundamental contradiction. But this movie makes the contradiction so evident that any viewer can see it. On the one hand, the rhetorical strategy of the Discovery Institute is to say that "intelligent design" is not a creationist religious belief but pure science, and therefore teaching "intelligent design" in public high school biology classes does not violate the First Amendment's prohibition on establishing religion. On the other hand, the popular success of the Discovery Institute's rhetoric depends on appealing to Biblical creationists who assume that "intelligent designer" is just another name for God the Biblical Creator.

This contradiction--both affirming and denying that "intelligent design theory" is the same as Biblical creationism--became evident in the 2005 case in Dover, Pennsylvania. Leaders of the Dover Area Public School board wanted to teach Biblical creationism. They were warned that this would violate U.S. Supreme Court decisions declaring that teaching creationism as science violated the First Amendment separation of church and state. They then decided to teach "intelligent design theory" as a disguised form of Biblical creationism. The trial made clear their deception, and this also exposed the contradiction in the Discovery Institute's rhetoric.

Rather than covering up this contradiction, this movie makes it hard for any viewer to ignore the contradiction. When Bruce Chapman--President of the Discovery Institute--is interviewed by Stein, Chapman says that journalists distort the true position of intelligent design by saying that it's a creationist religious belief, because the "intelligent designer" is clearly God. Chapman vehemently denies this. But then for the rest of the movie, it's asserted that anyone who denies "intelligent design" is therefore an atheist who denies the existence of God!

Viewers of the movie who know nothing about the debate over intelligent design will easily see this contradiction. Those who do know something about the debate will notice another indication of the contradiction--the absence of Michael Behe. Stein interviews almost all of the major spokesmen for intelligent design. The one remarkable exception, however, is Behe--the LeHigh University biologist who until recently has been the star scientific witness for intelligent design theory.

As I indicated in a blog post last year, Behe's most recent book is is strong attack on biblical creationism. Behe concedes so much to Darwinian science--the limited power of natural selection working on random mutation, evolution by common descent, the evolution of human beings from primate ancestors shared with chimpanzees, rejection of Biblical creationism as "silly," and support for theistic evolution--that Behe actually subverts much of the moral and religious agenda of the Discovery Institute. Behe even questions the goodness and omnipotence of the intelligent designer in deliberately creating malaria! The remarkable absence of Behe from this movie indicates that Behe's positions are no longer helpful to the Discovery Institute's rhetoric.

There are many other weaknesses in the rhetoric of this movie, but they are weaknesses that I have already taken up in many previous posts on intelligent design reasoning. The last third of the movie is devoted to Richard Weikart's "Darwin to Hitler" argument that I have analyzed in various posts. As is usual, a quotation from Darwin's Descent of Man is used to suggest that Darwin promoted something like Nazi eugenics. But the quotation is taken out of context to hide the fact that Darwin rejected the eugenics of Francis Galton. I refer you to my various posts on the issue of Nazi eugenics.

The movie assumes that evolutionary science must be atheistic. To support this assumption, Stein is careful only to interview people like Richard Dawkins who are atheistic evolutionists. He is very careful not to interview theistic evolutionists like Ken Miller or Francis Collins, or even someone like Behe who argues that God might have worked through an evolutionary process. Stein also is careful not to quote from any of Darwin's references to God as Creator.

Consider how different this movie would have been if Stein had interviewed someone like Francis Collins. Collins could have explained how reading C. S. Lewis helped to convert him to Christianity. He could also have explained how he as a geneticist accepts evolutionary science as supported by the evidence and rejects "intelligent design theory" as unfounded. He could have indicated how he sees evolution as compatible with his Christian beliefs and why he rejects Richard Dawkins' atheism as not based on science. Such an interview would have raised some deep questions about the relationship between science and religion--questions that would have been intellectually challenging to the viewers. But Stein chose not to do anything like this. Why? Because it would have subverted his intention in producing a crude piece of propaganda that insults the intelligence of his viewers?

The movie also assumes that evolutionary science denies morality and promotes moral nihilism. To support this assumption, Stein is careful to interview only people like Will Provine who interprets evolution in a nihilistic manner. But this means that Stein has to be very careful not to interview people like David Sloan Wilson who emphasize Darwin's theory of the "moral sense."

A big part of this movie argues that scientists who question Darwinian science or suggest the possibility of intelligent design are censored or otherwise punished and thus their intellectual freedom of thought is denied. The NCSE website surveys the evidence in these cases and indicates how the movie distorts the facts. The one case that might support the movie's argument is that of Guiellermo Gonzalez, an astronomer who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. From what little I know of this case, it does appear that Gonzalez has a pretty good record of academic research that might justify tenure, and so it's possible that his support for intelligent design might have provoked some unfair bias against him. The problem, however, is that the policy of confidentiality in academic tenure cases makes it hard to know for sure what motivated the people involved.

I agree on the importance of freedom of thought in these matters. I have argued on this blog and elsewhere that biology classes--both at the high school level and at the college and university level--should be open to discussion of "intelligent design theory" as a possible alternative to Darwinian science. As I have indicated, I don't find the arguments and evidence offered by the ID proponents persuasive. But I see nothing wrong in allowing students to debate this in their biology classes. I have promoted such open debate in my own university classes.

The problem, however, is that both sides of this debate are caught up in a frenzy of rhetorical posturing that makes it impossible to have a thoughtful exchange of competing ideas. I have seen this on those many occasions when I have debated these folks in public. This movie is an example of the rhetorical distortions that make me wonder whether I am being naive in thinking that students and scholars should be able to debate these vital questions in an open and honest manner.

A few of my blog posts relevant to these issues can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

My argument for "teaching the controversy" by teaching Darwin has received some coverage in Inside Higher Ed, which can be found here and here.

One of my first essays on "intelligent design theory" for Salon.com in 2001 can be found here.

I also have a chapter on intelligent design in Darwinian Conservatism.

Last year, I debated intelligent design at the American Enterprise Institute with John West and George Gilder. The New York Times article on the debate can be found here. A podcast of this AEI debate can be found here.

Response to Andrew Ferguson's WEEKLY STANDARD Article

The AEI debate continues to draw commentary. Andrew Ferguson has written an article on the debate for the Weekly Standard, which can be found here.

Although Ferguson's report is generally accurate as a brief summary, a few points need clarification.

His opening is cute: "They only had two and a half hours to settle some knotty questions--Does reality have an ultimate, metaphysical foundation? Is there content to the universe?--so they had to talk fast. But not fast enough."

Ok, I did talk fast, but not because I was silly enough to think I could answer such questions. Just the opposite: I explicitly stressed in my comments that ultimate questions of First Cause must be left open. To answer such questions, we must appeal either to nature or to nature's God, which means appealing either to reason or revelation, and this requires a fundamental choice between alternatives that must always be open, because neither side can refute the other.

Ferguson quotes from Steven Hayward's introductory remarks the claim that social Darwinist principles were "invoked by the Confederacy's most articulate theorist, Alexander Stephens." What he doesn't say is that Darwin explicitly criticized slavery and the Confederacy and argued against the claim of scientific racists that the human races were actually separate species. Nor does he say that the American proslavery folks were able to quote the Bible as supporting slavery. I have commented on this extensively on this blog and in Darwinian Natural Right.

Ferguson quotes a passage from chapter 5 of Darwin's Descent of Man a passage that appears to endorse Francis Galton's eugenics. But Ferguson very carefully does not quote the immediately following passage in which Darwin declares that "sympathy" as "the noblest part of our nature" teaches us that we must care for the weak and the helpless. Nor does Ferguson quote from Darwin's comments in the last chapter of Descent in which he rejects Galton's eugenics as "utopian". I have a whole chapter on social Darwinism and eugenics in Darwinian Conservatism.

Ron Bailey of Reason magazine was more favorable to my side of the AEI debate. His post can be found here.

A Darwinian Left?--A Reply to Jiro Tanaka

Politics and Culture is an online journal that has just published a special issue on "Bioculture: Evolutionary Cultural Studies," edited by Joseph Carroll. One of the essays for this issue is Jiro Tanaka's "Notes Toward a Darwinian Left." Tanaka's article includes some strange comments on my argument for Darwinian natural right.

As the epigram for his essay, Tanaka quotes from Stephen Jay Gould: "Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our noble traits as well?" I would agree with this idea that even our noblest traits show some evolutionary continuity with other animals, and in fact this is a fundamental part of my argument for Darwinian natural right. But how exactly does this support a "Darwinian left"? Tanaka never gives a clear answer.

Tanaka indicates his agreement with Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left. But Tanaka never explains how he would respond to the many criticisms of Singer coming from me and from others.

As I have argued in Darwinian Conservatism, Darwin's biological science of human nature challenged the utopian vision of the left by denying human perfectibility and suggesting that social reform would always be constrained by the limitations of human nature. Unless they chose to totally reject Darwinian science, leftists were forced to look for some way of accommodating Darwinism while preserving their utopian vision. There were three strategies for doing this. One strategy was to embrace Francis Galton's eugenics, because this assumed that biological nature could be brought under human control and thus directed to utopian reform. But Galton's utopian eugenics was both scientifically false and morally repugnant.

Another strategy for the left was to follow Alfred Russel Wallace in asserting a dualism of nature and culture, so that human social life could be seen as a product of culture unconstrained by nature and thus subject to utopian improvement. Although Wallace formulated his own theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time that Darwin developed his, Wallace broke with Darwin in arguing that the moral and intellectual powers of human beings transcended natural selection. Natural selection shaped the "animal nature" of human beings but not their "spiritual nature," which must arise from "the unseen universe of Spirit." This led Wallace to attend seances where he could talk to dead people who lived as disembodied spirits in the spiritual afterlife. Although many leftists found it hard to accept Wallace's spiritualism, they did accept a dichotomy between animal nature and human culture, which implied that human culture belonged to some kind of transcendental or supernatural realm of experience, which denied Darwin's claim that human cultural history was part of the natural history of the human species. So it seemed that the leftist belief in human perfectibility must deny a Darwinian science of human nature that constrains the human freedom for utopian transformation.

Another strategy for a Darwinian left is to reject any radical dichotomy between animal nature and human history and to adopt a Darwinian view of human beings as embedded fully within the natural world. This is evident in the work of Peter Kropotkin, a socialist anarchist who saw human beings as shaped completely by Darwinian natural selection. In contrast to those Darwinians who stressed the competitive character of the struggle for existence, Kropotkin argued that Darwin himself saw that natural selection often favored the cooperation of animals within their species. Kropotkin emphasized the importance of sociality, mutual aid, and the moral sense in Darwin's account of human nature in The Descent of Man. For Kropotkin, this suggested that human beings could organize their societies as a socialist anarchy based on spontaneous cooperation without government.

But while a Darwinian view of human nature does show how social cooperation is rooted in biological nature, such cooperation is not totally selfless, because it depends on norms of kinship, mutuality, and reciprocity, so that individuals cooperate with those people whom they trust but not with those whom they distrust. This will not sustain pure anarchy without government. Moreover, by embracing Darwinian naturalism, Kropotkin rejects the leftist tradition of utopian reform unconstrained by human nature, and in doing so, he rejects the fundamental ground of leftist thought.

Kropotkin's strategy for a Darwinian left has been adopted by Peter Singer. But like Kropotkin, Singer in caught in a dilemma: his Darwinian view of human nature forces him to deny leftist utopianism, but in doing that, he denies the core of leftist thought. Singer concedes that a Darwinian left would have to realize that natural tendencies (such as social ranking, male dominance, sex roles, and attachment to one's kin) cannot be abolished. He is forced to conclude: "In some ways, this is a sharply deflated vision of the left, its utopian ideas replaced by a cooly realistic view of what can be achieved. That is, I think, the best we can do today." In fact, much of his "deflated" leftism would be acceptable to conservatives, who have long assumed that conformity to human nature is a fundamental standard for good social policy. For example, Singer agrees with Adam Smith about the benefits of a market economy in channeling the selfish motivations of human nature in ways that serve the common good. While Tanaka embraces Singer's Darwinian left, he never explains how he escapes Singer's dilemma.

As one might expect, Tanaka has to reject my arguments for Darwinian conservatism, but his reasoning is hard to understand. He writes: "Darwin himself was for the most part a progressive and liberal thinker, kind in his personal relations and hostile to all forms of social cruelty and exploitation. He hated slavery, which he had witnessed firsthand in Brazil." He doesn't indicate, however, that Darwin's liberalism was the classical liberalism of the Liberal Party of Great Britain. And he doesn't respond to my claim that the modern exponents of classical liberalism are people like Friedrich Hayek who belong to the modern tradition of libertarian conservatism.

Tanaka's analysis of my position is hard to follow. Here it is:

"It is not enough simply to invoke the naturalistic fallacy. The conservative scholar Larry Arnhart forces us to confront this inadequacy when he derives several 'oughts' from 'ises.' In direct opposition to the fact-value distinction, Arnhart argues for the ultimate compatibility of Darwinian evolution and Aristotelian natural right. The context of this endeavor is clear: Darwin has few advocates on the political right these days, due in large part to the coalition, forged in the Reagan era, between fiscal and social conservatives on the one hand, and Christian conservatives on the other. Arnhart therefore finds himself in a minority when he claims that 'conservatives need Charles Darwin.' To make this claim, he must argue that our evolved human nature is a source of moral--and specifically conservative--values.

"Like almost all modern evolutionists, Arnhart posits a panhuman, species-typical nature. On the basis of this human nature, he takes a moral stand on the issues of slavery and female circumcision. Both practices, he argues, violate the basic, evolved needs of human nature. Theoretically, this move puts us in the same place as Hauser puts us: it takes evolutionary biology as the source of factual knowledge, and then leaves us to decide about how to deploy that knowledge. But unlike most evolutionists, Arnhart goes on to invest 'human nature' with a kind of sacral authority that he feels is self-evidently wicked to contravene. But therein lies the false step: by choosing loaded examples, Arnhart makes the derivation seemingly self-evident. But one could also point to other historical examples in which what comes naturally is not self-evidently 'good.' Puritanism (and other belief systems that value chasteness) exhorts its followers to contravene our nature, and then identifies that contravention--that abstention or forbearance--as the Good.

"'Human nature' itself cannot stand in as a proxy for God. We're back to feeling, but not without having made some progress. Yes, it is possible for some to feel pleasure at the suffering of children, and for others to find our highest good in frustrating the natural impulses of human nature. Nonetheless, if we recognize the limits and potential in our common humanity, we shall at least know where we stand. We can put the norms implicit in the feelings of psychopaths and the ethos of Puritans--and the norms implicit in our judgment of them--into their appropriate biological context. It is probable that the brains of psychopaths exhibit irregularities in regions of the frontal lobe that mediate pro-social emotions like empathy and compassion. Belief systems that place a premium on chasteness, by contrast, may represent social constructs that tap into and amplify an evolved, but highly variable, instinct for 'purity.'"

Later, he observes: "Nothing prevents us from advancing a progressive version of Arnhart's argument, so long as we do not invest human nature with sacral authority!"

Unfortunately, Tanaka never explains specifically what he means by "a progressive version of Arnhart's argument."

Nor does he explain how he reaches the conclusion that I "invest human nature with sacral authority." Sacral authority? He even puts this phrase in italics, which suggests that I use this exact phrase in application to human nature. In fact, as far as I know, I have never used this phrase, and I have never identified human nature as having sacral authority. I am not even sure what this would mean. I do understand that some religious believers might believe that God as Creator has used the evolutionary process to create human beings in His image. But I have never said that a scientific understanding of evolved human nature requires believing that human nature is sacred or has sacred authority. Since Tanaka never provides any citation of my writings to support his claim that I invest human nature with sacral authority, I am left perplexed as to what he has in mind.

Maybe what he means by this is that I believe that human beings are naturally good, that every natural disposition is good. But it's hard for me to figure out how he pulls this out of my writing, especially since I stress human imperfection and the tragic situations that arise from conflicting natural desires. For example, I explain the tragic character of slavery as showing the conflict between the slavemaster's natural desire for exploitation and the slave's natural desire to be free from exploitation. I also explain female circumcision as showing the conflict between the natural desire of parents to make their daughters marriageable and the natural desire to avoid the pain and suffering from the customs of clitoridectomy and infibulation. As Tanaka indicates, the natural feelings of psychopaths deviate from the moral feelings typical for most human beings. But he doesn't indicate that I have a whole chapter on psychopaths as people with natural temperaments that render them "moral strangers" who cannot respond normally to moral persuasion.

How Tanaka infers from this that I regard human nature as having "sacral authority" is beyond my comprehension.

Some of my posts on why the "naturalistic fallacy" is not a fallacy can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Richard Weikart's New Book--HITLER'S ETHIC

What difference would it make for our view of morality if we rejected the Platonic/theistic cosmology of intelligent design in favor of a Darwinian cosmology of evolutionary order?

In the Platonic dialogues, the Athenian Stranger (especially in book 10 of the Laws) and Timaeus argue that morality requires a moral cosmology of intelligent design. Much of the tradition of biblical theology--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--has adopted a similar position: God the Creator has intelligently designed His universe to conform to His good ends, and He has created human beings in His Image so that they are endowed with a conscience that can grasp God's moral law. Much of the opposition to Darwinian science has come from Platonic philosophers and religious believers who fear that a Darwinian morality is corrupting, because it denies the intelligent-design cosmology necessary for any healthy morality.

Some of these critics of Darwinian morality have pointed to Adolf Hitler's Nazi morality as a terrifying illustration of how dangerous a Darwinian morality can be. Richard Weikart's book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004) argued that the evils of Nazism showed the consequences of adopting a Darwinian view of morality that rejected the traditional Judaic-Christian morality based on the belief that human beings have equal moral dignity as created in God's Image. If human beings have evolved by a natural process of evolution in which the strong prevail over the weak in the struggle for existence, then, the Nazis concluded, the rule of the biologically stronger races over the weaker races must be a moral imperative rooted in the laws of evolutionary nature as studied by science.

Some of my previous posts on this book can be found here, here, here, and here.

Weikart's new book--Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (2009)--is a sequel to the earlier book. While the earlier book concentrated on the history of Social Darwinism as shaping Nazi ideology, this new book concentrates on Hitler's own writings as showing the fundamental influence of Darwinian ethics.

The evil of Hitler makes it hard for many people to understand how one could speak of "Hitler's ethic." But Weikart argues that Hitler illustrates how the greatest evils are often perpetrated under the appearance of doing good--especially, if the apparent good is a utopian vision that seems to justify any means to the utopian end. I agree with this, because I am persuaded of the Platonic and Aristotelian principle that people tend to act for the good, or at least for what appears good to them. It is unlikely that any influential moral or political movement can prevail if it does not appeal to some moral sense that a great good is being achieved. The problem, however, is that human beings are often mistaken in their moral beliefs, particularly when they are seduced by some utopian conception of radical transformation that requires evil means to apparently good ends.

According to Weikart, the fundamental end for Hitler's ethic was the evolutionary improvement in the human species. Hitler interpreted the Darwinian conception of evolution as dominated by a struggle for existence as teaching that the only moral imperative was the survival and reproduction of the superior races over the inferior races. The Aryan or Nordic race prevalent in the German Volk arose in evolutionary history as the superior race. Promoting the progressive expansion of that race would therefore promote the biological improvement of the human species.

The elements of Nazi ideology seem diverse--racism, German nationalism, anti-Semitism, socialism, militarism, imperialistic expansionism, the "leadership principle," eugenics, and genocide. But Weikart is remarkably persuasive in showing how all of these strands of Nazi ideology are woven together by the final end of Hitler's ethic--the evolutionary improvement of the human species through the triumph of the Aryan race in the struggle for existence.

Proponents of Darwinian ethics--like myself--should be honest in recognizing the impressive evidence that Weikart marshalls from Hitler's writings and speeches to show how Hitler's thought and actions were driven by a coherent view of Darwinian ethics.

But once this is conceded, then we are left with at least three questions. First, was Hitler's Darwinian ethics scientifically correct? Second, was it logically derived from Darwin's science? Third, what alternative view of morality is Weikart offering us?

In response to the first question, Weikart admits that Hitler's evolutionary thinking was scientifically false--often ridiculously so (201-202). But Weikart's point here is that its falsehood was not evident at the time. In Hitler's times, many prominent people--including many prominent scientists--embraced the same crude ideas about the evolution of superior races that run through Hitler's thought.

Weikart's response to the second question seems to be that even if Hitler's ethic did not arise by logical necessity from Darwin's teaching, Darwin's language could easily be interpreted as supporting Hitler. Although I agree with Weikart that some of what Darwin says is open to Hitler's Social Darwinist interpretation, any careful reader of Darwin would have to conclude that Hitler and the Nazis had to distort Darwin's teaching to get the conclusions they wanted.

First of all, it should be noted that, as Weikart indicates, Hitler never uses the term "Darwinism" or refers directly to Darwin. The only evidence that Hitler ever specifically mentioned Darwin comes from a report by Otto Wagener, a Nazi associate of Hitler (36, 41, 185). In any case, it is clear that Hitler had no direct knowledge of Darwin's writings.

And yet Weikart insists that Hitler's writing shows the influence of thinkers who did read Darwin and who did find support for their Nazi thinking in Darwin's writing. Weikart admits that Darwin never recommends violence against "inferior races," and he never says anything to support anti-Semitism. But Darwin does describe the conflict between "the higher civilized races" and the "lower savage races," which was interpreted by Darwinians like Ernst Haeckel as supporting scientific racism.

But here Weikart overstates his case and glosses over weaknesses. For example, he notes that Haeckel taught that the human races were actually separate species (57-58). But he doesn't tell his reader that Darwin denied this, and that affirming the unity of the human species was part of Darwin's life-long argument against slavery and scientific racism. Moreover, while Weikart cites Daniel Gasman's book on the fundamental influence of Haeckel on Hitler's Social Darwinism, Weikart does not mention the fact that Gasman argues that Haeckel's thinking "had little, if anything at all, to do with Charles Darwin" (The Scientific Origins of National Socialism). Here is one of many examples of where Weikart passes over in silence evidence and argument that works against his position.

As Weikart indicates, Hitler was a crude genetic determinist who believed that not only physical traits but even morality and culture were inherited genetically along racial lines, so that moral and cultural evolution depended on genetic evolution. But Weikart doesn't indicate to his readers that Darwin denied this. Although the capacity for human morality requires biologically inherited social instincts and cognitive abilities, the actual progress of morality and civilization depends more on social learning, cultural traditions, religious ideas, and individual reasoning than on biological evolution by natural selection. (See, for example, in the first edition of the Descent of Man, vol. 1, pp. 72, 165-66, 173; vol. 2, pp. 326, 404.)

As our final question for Weikart, we might wonder what exactly he is suggesting as an alternative view of morality that would avoid the horrors of Hitler's Nazism. In his earlier book, he spoke of traditional "Judeo-Christian ethics," particularly as based on the idea of humans with equal dignity from being created by God in His Image. Is this the alternative to Hitler's evolutionary ethics? Well, not exactly. Weikart admits that Hitler often refers to God as Creator and to human beings as created in His Image (38-39, 50-51, 56, 85). Weikart says he wants to write another book showing that Hitler was "neither an atheist nor a Christian" (40). He doesn't explain this except to say that if Hitler was a "theist," he was a "theistic evolutionist"--that is, someone who thought God did His creative work through a natural process of evolution (51). "Hitler saw evolutionary ethics as the expression of the will of God" (40).

So where exactly did Hitler go wrong, according to Weikart? Weikart writes: "In none of the relevant quotations from Mein Kampf does Hitler state that humans were specially created in the recent past by the miraculous intervention of God. On the contrary, Hitler repeatedly insisted that humans are subject to inescapable natural laws and that they are the product of eons of change. He often presented evolution as a universal process encompassing humans as well as other creatures" (51).

So what exactly is Weikart suggesting here? To avoid the evils of Hitler's evolutionary ethics, it seems, it is not enough to believe that God created human beings in His Image. Is Weikart saying that one must be a young-earth special creationist who believes that human beings were created a few thousand years ago in the Garden of Eden? Is he saying that believing that God would use a natural evolutionary process to bring about His creative intentions would necessarily lead to something like Hitler's Nazi ethics?

If Weikart is suggesting that the only reasonable basis for morality is young-earth creationism based on a literal 6-days-of-creation reading of Genesis, then he is in disagreement with the Discovery Institute's promotion of "intelligent design theory" as something distinct from young-earth creationism. If this is Weikart's position, then he is also opposed to those many thoughtful Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have become theistic evolutionists--people like C. S. Lewis, for example.

Unfortunately, this book is grossly overpriced by Palgrave Macmillan. Although it is only 254 pages long with a plastic binding, the publisher's price is $80, and the Amazon price is $54. Instead of buying this book, you should find a library copy and photocopy it.

Writing at the Discovery Institute's blogsite, Weikart has responded to this review of his book.