Every so often, for whatever reason. US conservative thinkmags step on Darwin’s rake. A while back, it was “Darwin’s conservatives” Larry Arnhart (First Things, 2000, response here ) and John McGinnis (National Review, 1997). But that was just the usual stuff.
Last year, it was “unapologetic elitist,” Kevin Williamson at National Review, with David Klinghoffer responding at Evolution News and Science Today. Summary here. Not so think-tanky, that one.
Now, just recently, doctoral student in genetics Razib Khan got into the act, again at National Review, proclaiming that “Conservatives Shouldn’t Fear Evolutionary Theory” because “It is a crowning achievement of Western civilization and a rejoinder to the modern myths of the Left.”
Hey, wait a minute. Who talks up a storm about “Western civilization” anyhow? Ah yes… the rake…
Khan, it turns out, knows more apparent racists and anti-Semites than is good for his reputation:
Was Khan unaware of what was going on around him at the alt-right magazines? He spoke to the online journal Undark:
“Khan said that he used to be more tolerant of those perspectives. “Obviously, I don’t condone it,” he said. When I observed that standing by silently — and even linking to [Steve] Sailer’s work — seemed like the definition of “condone,” Khan hesitated. “In terms of being at Unz, I was probably there too long,” he said.”
“Probably there too long”? Gee, do ya think so? Actually, today his name is still on the Unz homepage, at the very top of the list of “ARCHIVED BLOGS AND COLUMNS,” juxtaposed with newer stories including “‘The Holocaust’ Is a Myth That Conceals Our Shame,” “9/11 Was an Israeli Job,” “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” reflections on the “Old Testament, Israel’s Trojan Horse inside Christianity,” and the current banner article at the top promoting the “magisterial” scholarship of Holocaust denier David Irving. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was all a colossal misunderstanding, that he demanded that Unz take him off their putrid site, but was rebuffed. David Klinghoffer , “Razib Khan: A Geneticist and the Alt-Right” at Evolution News and Science Today:
Well, if he isn’t really one of them, he could threaten to sue, couldn’t he?
Klinghoffer recommends that Khan watch Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism
Also whistling past: New Scientist asks, “Does population genetics have a racism problem, even today?” Well, so far as we know, the problem never actually left. No matter what the politics espoused, racism is implicit in the nature of Darwinism as a way of understanding human history. At best, political correctness is a cover for it.
Remember, with Darwinism, someone must be the subhuman. That’s the point. They cannot find him, so they invent him.
Note: Five years ago, there was also the curious saga of retired science writer Nicholas Wade and his book Troublesome Inheritance, which few seemed able to discuss honestly – with unfortunate consequences for at least one party.
We thought, after it all blew over, that the Dark Enlightenment had moved on. To judge from recent antics at National Review, maybe not.
No, racism is implicit in the ego-centric nature of humans. It sadly became inevitable the day we became self-aware. If you can show me a person who claims not to have any racist thoughts I will show you a liar. Thankfully, most of us are able to use our reasoning abilities to know that these thoughts are irrational.
Maybe Bill Nye, the science guy, can chime in and explain to us why Darwinism is not inherently racist. What with the survival of the fittest and all that jazz. He might also want to explain to us the fitness of homosexuals for survival. After all, he’s the science guy.
Darwin’s theory is not inherently racist but human beings clearly are. All of us. The sooner we accept that the seeds of racism are in all of us, regardless of race, color or creed. the sooner it can be dealt with. Trying to offload responsibility on to something like Darwinism or liberalism or conservatism – whatever they mean – is discriminatory in itself. It says they’re racist but we’re not. But you are, because we all are to some degree. Maybe not blatantly or overtly, but if you look deep enough inside yourself you will find those seeds hidden away in some dark corner, waiting for the right conditions to germinate.
As for homosexuality, only panadaptationsts insist that all observable traits exist because they confer some definite advantage on the organism. Pluralists recognize that traits that are largely neutral in effect – neither beneficial nor detrimental – can persist in a population because they are not harmful enough to be filtered out by selective pressures. Whether you approve or disapprove of homosexual behavior on religious or moral grounds is a different question..
Sev claims, “Darwin’s theory is not inherently racist…”
Well actually it is inherently racist:
Sev goes on to state,
Better watch out Seversky, you are getting very close to the Christian doctrine of ‘original sin’. ,,, Even very close to admitting that an objective moral law really does exist.
Despite what Sev and other atheists such as Sam Harris may claim,,, Morally noble altruistic behavior of any sort is simply completely antithetical to Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory.
Remember Seversky, Objective Morality can only be grounded within Theism. Atheistic materialism only allows morality to be subjective and illusory.
,,, and I would further argue that the ‘noblest morality’ of all, to be found within any particular Theistic worldview, is clearly to be found within Christian Theism alone:
Darwin’s theory is inherently racist precisely because it calls for the survival of the fittest, the selection mechanism that gives us new (superior) organisms that are more fit than the other (inferior) ones. Any argument to the contrary goes directly into my trash can. Deny at your own detriment.
The truth about homosexuality is that it is not selected at all. How could it? It either happens because of one or more (deleterious) mutations or it is a direct epigenetic result of environmental pressure (e.g., bad parenting and/or child abuse). One man’s opinion, of course.
Four faces
And chemical theory is inherently genocidal because it was used to gas Jews during the holocaust.
Strange, I’ve always hearing from Creationists and ID proponents, etc, that no one, not even Young Earth Creationists, deny “survival of the fittest” or natural selection – it’s only macro-evolution that they don’t believe.
Scientific theories don’t “call for” anything. Think that might be where you are going wong here…
Hunt’s book was indeed pro-slavery, but it was also pro-polygenist – and opposed to evolution and Darwinism.
The title of Hunt’s book should look familiar, it was written in opposition to T. H. Huxley’s 1863 pro-Darwinist work “Man’s Place in Nature.” That was the first book written on human evolution. (Darwin’s Descent of Man didn’t appear until 1871). Hunt and Huxley would go on to have one the most famous feuds of the decade.
James Hunt was the president of the Anthropological Society of London, and most members were opposed to Darwinism. The rival society was the Ethnological Society of London, which Hunt mocked for being a “Darwinian club”.
The Confederacy also (secretly) funded Hunt’s Anthropological Society. Why? Because many in the South believed that Darwin’s theory jeopardized the institution of slavery.
What a piece of racist diatribe is Hunt’s “On the Negro’s Place in Nature”. I can not find one dime’s worth of difference as far as racism is concerned between Darwin and Hunt’s view of Africans:
Compared to
Like I said, not one dimes worth of difference
Now compare that to Wilberforce’s Christian view of slavery prior to when Darwin and Hunt came along,
As well Abraham Lincoln’s own view of slavery was based on Christian principles.
Goodusername:
Strange, I’ve always hearing from Creationists and ID proponents, etc, that no one, not even Young Earth Creationists, deny “survival of the fittest” or natural selection – it’s only macro-evolution that they don’t believe.
Adaptation is the result of a genetically programmed mechanism in all species. It calls for neither inferiority nor superiority. And it does not necessarily need selection. It can happen while the organism is still alive. In fact, growing up from childhood to adulthood is a form of adaptation. Are children inferior to adults? Of course not.
Bornagain77 @ 10
Yes, it is and not uncommon at that time.
Darwin was predicting what he thought might happen to the non-European races and apes. Not unreasonable given the way the way native peoples were being treated at that time by (mostly Christian) European colonists in the Americas, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. But there’s nothing there to say that he approved of what was happening.
Is it necessary to point out yet again that Darwin was an ardent abolitionist? A position that’s hard to square with your interpretation of that passage from Descent.
You mean when he said this in the fourth debate with Steven Douglas at Charleston, IL in 1858?
Would you call Lincoln a racist on the basis of that passage?
We agree there – so does Huxley who describes the book as “the preposterous ignorance, exaggeration, and misstatement in which the slave-holding interest indulges.”
Well, anyone familiar with Darwin’s position would have no problem pointing out numerous differences between Hunt and Darwin’s position on nearly every page. The whole point of the book was to counter Darwin’s conception of human races and the relationship between the races. That’s why the book’s title was a play on the title of the (then) only Darwinian book on human evolution.
Yet you seem to think that abolitionism is “worth a dime’s of difference” to Hunt – you do realize that Darwin was an abolitionist, right?
Darwin may well have been an abolitionist, but his supposed ‘scientific’ theory did more to promote inequality between races and classes than anything else in the 20th century. Hundreds of millions of deaths speak for itself.
That you would dare try to defend such a position is insane.
That Darwin’s theory is completely false makes it all the more insane for you to do.
Seversky, perhaps you should also realize that Lincoln became much more anti-slavery as his Christian faith greatly deepened while he was in his presidency following the death of his son.
Bornagain77 @ 14
Darwin was not responsible for whatever purposes his theory may have been perverted to serve after his death. Neither does the claim that his theory was used to justify twentieth-century atrocities have any bearing on its scientific validity. Remember argumentum ad consequentiam?
Which position are you referring to?
Darwin’s theory is not false but it’s now recognized as being only part of the picture. There is more to evolution than just natural selection
Lincoln’s anti-slavery views are well-established by a large body of documentary evidence. One passage lifted out of context is not sufficient to overturn all that. Just as that one passage from Descent lifted out of context does not represent Darwin’s position. Cherry-picking quotes and lifting them out of context, because they support your religious or political views, is dishonest if they do not fairly represent the author’s views.
Seversky, you claim that Darwin’s supposed ‘scientific’ theory was ‘perverted’ after his death.
Yet the moral implications of Darwin’s theory was pointed out to Darwin himself by Sedgwick, “There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. Tis the crown & glory of organic science that it does thro’ final cause , link material to moral; & yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, & our classification of such laws whether we consider one side of nature or the other— You have ignored this link; &, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.,,,”
Seversky, you then claim,
Actually, contrary to what you falsely believe, the amorality inherent within atheistic materialism (i.e. blind pitiless indifference, Dawkins), and indeed the ‘anti-morality’ inherent within Darwin’s theory itself when one couples the amorality inherent within atheistic materialism with Darwin’s mechanism of ‘survival of fittest’, (i.e. red in tooth and claw, Dawkins), does falsify the validity of Darwin’s theory.
Morally noble altruistic behavior of any type is simply completely antithetical to Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’, i.e. red in tooth and claw, theory.
If evolution by natural selection were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only life that should be around should be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most ‘mutational firepower’, since only they, (since they greatly outclass multi-cellular organism in terms of ‘reproductive success’ and ‘mutational firepower’), would be fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution ruled and only the fittest are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here in this following Richard Dawkins’ video:
In other words, since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful, and highly efficient reproduction, be realistically ‘selected’ for? Darwin himself stated, “every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers;”
The logic of natural selection is nicely and simply illustrated on the following graph:
As you can see, any other function besides successful reproduction, such as much slower sexual reproduction, sight, hearing, abstract thinking, and especially altruistic behavior (such as grandmothers spoiling their grandkids), would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successful reproduction, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded, and/or ‘eaten’, by bacteria, as so much excess baggage since it obviously would slow down successful reproduction.
Yet, contrary to this central ‘survival of the fittest’ assumption of Darwinian evolution, instead of eating us, time after time we find micro-organisms helping each other, and us, in ways that have nothing to with their own ‘survival of the fittest’’ concerns.
The following researchers said they were ‘banging our heads against the wall’ by the contradictory findings to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking that they had found:
And again, directly contrary to the central ‘survival of the fittest’ assumption of Darwinian evolution, we find that bacteria are also directly helping us in essential ways that have nothing to do with their own survival of the fittest concerns:
Moreover, it is now known that “Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides.”
In fact, Darwin himself offered this following ‘anti-altruism’ standard as a falsification criteria for his theory, “Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species”… and even stated that “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.”
And yet, directly contrary to Darwin’s claim that “Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species” or it would annihilate his theory, it is now known that ” “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as the modern versions of it.”
Moreover, to dive a little bit deeper, the falsification of this ‘survival of the fittest’, i.e. ‘selfish’, thinking occurs at the molecular level too.
Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’ concept is more of less directly based on Darwin’s own ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking about competition. Yet genes are now found to be anything but selfish. Instead of being ‘selfish’, genes are now found to be existing in a holistic web of mutual interdependence and cooperation (the antithesis of selfishness).
Such ‘holistic cooperation’ is, needless to say, the exact polar opposite of being ‘selfish’ as Dawkins had envisioned. (And should, if Darwinism were a normal science instead of being basically a religion for atheists, count as another direct falsification of the theory).
In fact on top of genes being in a holistic web of mutual cooperation, the genetic responses of humans are designed in a very sophisticated way so as to differentiate between hedonic (selfish) and ‘noble’ (altruistic) moral happiness:
Moreover on top of all that, if anything ever went against Darwin’s claim that “Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species”, it is the notion that a single cell can somehow became tens of trillions of cells that cooperate “exclusively for the good of other cells” in a single organism for the singular purpose of keeping that single organism alive.
To claim that one cell transforming into the tens of trillions cells, (of extremely cooperative, even altruistic, cells that make up our ONE human body), is anything less than a miracle is either sheer arrogance or profound and willful ignorance (most likely both).
Thus Seversky, the ‘anti-morality’ inherent in Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ mechanism, contrary to what you believe, actually does falsify the validity of Darwin’s theory.
Of course you claimed that the atrocities of the atheistic/Darwinian regimes of the 20th century, in and of themselves, does not falsify Darwin’s theory, but I would also beg to differ on that front. Francis Bacon, whom many consider to be the founder of the scientific method, put the ‘fruitfulness’ criteria for determining whether something is science or not this way,,,
This is a particularly interesting falsification of Darwinian evolution to think about. Scientific theories have a history of deepening man’s understanding of Nature, and thus providing man with beneficial technological breakthroughs because of that deepened understanding of nature (For instance, Newton’s theory of Gravity was ‘good enough’ to land men on the moon). Evolution, unlike those other scientific theories, has completely failed on this account to foster research and deliver technological breakthroughs:
In fact, instead of fostering discovery, it can be forcefully argued that Darwinian evolution has hindered scientific discovery, and has led to much scientific and medical malpractice, by falsely predicting both junk DNA and vestigial organs.
Moreover, besides failing to deliver on scientific, technological, or medical breakthroughs, it can also be forcefully argued, via hundreds of millions of deaths, that Darwinian evolution has also had a tremendous negative impact on society in so far as it has influenced society at large:
Thus, in regards to Francis Bacon’s criteria of determining whether a theory is scientific, i.e. “Of all signs there is none more certain or worthy than that of the fruits produced: for the fruits and effects are the sureties and vouchers, as it were, for the truth of philosophy”, then certainly Darwin’s theory has miserably failed to meet Bacon’s falsification criteria of “fruit produced” and is indeed a shining example of that particular falsification criteria being met over and over again.
Verse:
Seversky, you finish up your post by trying to further denigrate Lincoln’s Christian morality. Yet, besides the fact that you, as an atheist, have no objective moral basis for judging anyone, might I also point out the fact that he actually freed the slaves is a rather dramatic ‘moral’ point in favor of his Christianity?
Or has that little detail slipped your notice?