Now that issues around status in society are increasingly contentious, it’s interesting that the “evolutionary” view is flatly against equality, according to historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. A friend writes to say, “one helpful thing about Sapiens is that Harari is honest about the implications of a Darwinian viewpoint—he admits that it removes an objective basis for human equality, human value, and human rights (pp. 109-110)”:
Yet the idea that all humans are equal is also a myth. In what sense do all humans equal one another? Is there any objective reality, outside the human imagination, in which we are truly equal? Are all humans equal to one another biologically? Let us try to translate the most famous line of the American Declaration oflndependence into biological terms:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal’? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal’ should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently’.
…
So here is that line from the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.
Advocates of equality and human rights may be outraged by this line of reasoning. Their response is likely to be, ‘We know that people are not equal biologically! But if we believe that we are all equal in essence, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.’ I have no argument with that. This is exactly what I mean by ‘imagined order’. We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively. Bear in mind, though, that Hammurabi might have defended his principle of hierarchy using the same logic: ‘I know that superiors, commoners and slaves are not inherently different kinds of people. But if we believe that they are, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.’
It seems our friend wrote to Evolution News and Science Today as well.
As Nancy Pearcey asks in her book Love Thy Body, “As the implications of evolutionary materialism filter down through the public mind, the rights enjoyed in free societies will be demoted to the status of “myth.” And then who will defend those rights?”
The “evolutionary” view (Darwinism, in fact) is often portrayed as a sort of liberation but people may be rather surprised to discover exactly what that liberation is.
Note: Michael Egnor has addressed some of Harare’s assertions in Is Free Will a Dangerous Myth and AI IsIndeed a Threat to Democracy (But not in quite the way historian Yuval Noah Harari thinks)
See also: Ernst Haeckel studied sponges to demonstrate “a universe devoid of supernatural beings or purpose” Just to set the record straight, embryologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) had, according to learned expert, a “philosophy of sponges.” And the title above captures part of it.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
(1) Individuals donm’t evolve – populations do (unless you’re using a wider meaning of evolve, where here it would be a synonym for develop).
(2) If you’re saying that people are different, then this is an observation that precedes Darwin by a long time, and I think even the most ardent creationist wouldn’t want to argue against that. But that’s not a moral statement, so although one can’t use that to say everyone should be treated equally, it also doesn’t rule out that possibility.
Darwinian definition of equality:
“Survival of the fittest” i.e. Some people are more equal than others.
“(1) Individuals donm’t evolve – populations do”
Bob O’H,
So if I see a Galapagos Finch while I’m out bird watching, and his beak is different from all the other Galapagos Finches I’ve seen that day, I can proclaim he couldn’t be evolving?
Andrew
News,
I observe:
Obviously, humans come in two distinct sexes, so that the two together form a natural reproducing unit (BTW, foundational to soundly understanding marriage). Humans are not biologically equal, or physically equal or intellectually equal, or equal in age, hair colour, eye colour, and much more.
So, is it a mere myth to say we are equal?
No, for the equality is right there, staring us in the face: we are equally HUMAN, i.e. there are core characteristics shared by all members of our common race. That is, we share a common nature or essence, as we read in your quote. That is A is A i/l/o core characteristics and two instances h1 and h2 are of the same kind precisely as they have the common human archetype of characteristics A. Where — predictably — it is no surprise that recognising the reality of such abstracta is precisely one of the great errors of our day.
Worldview errors come in clusters forming a destructive, tangled, thorny problematique that requires a systemic, from the roots answer. If we only hack away at branches, the fast-growing branches will spring right back. In short it is reformation from the roots or ruin at this stage for our civilisation.
Of course, this is being cast as a myth, probably tied to rejection of the concept that we are a creation. Where, such myths are dismissed by the oh so sophisticated, even as they enable the guilty secret of our civilisation.
This is therefore key:
Liberation from the first principles of justice, right reason, prudence and truth, for a morally governed creature, is akin to liberating a fish from water. And in the end, it is just as fatal.
Indeed, manifestly, and under false colour of rights, the right is being undermined, pushed to the fringes, dismissed. Law is now about state power to impose whatever rules they see fit regardless of justice. So, lawfare is precisely that, war of conquest using what formerly were state organs of justice repurposed to serve anti-civilisation agendas.
We need to wake up real quick, we are at the brink of an abyss.
With nukes and other oh so lovely toys in play.
Have we gone collectively stark, staring bonkers?
KF
Bornagain77 @ 2
Natural selection more or less depends on inequality in terms survival fitness and I think Darwin understood that. I also think he understood the is/ought problem, ie, just because certain behavior happens in Nature does not mean that human beings can justify doing the same thing on that basis alone.
The un-ironic reference to the US Declaration of lndependence sums about how much practical difference this makes. A country that held it obvious that all men where at essence created equal was founded on teh genocide of one pople, the enslavement of the other and took until the 20th century to ensure women could vote. Racism and intolerance are much older than Darwinism, and “essence” thinking can be just as esaily warped to support racist views as (poorly understood) evolutionary thinking can be used by the Alt Right today.
Asauber – indeed. Unless the beak is still developing. The population of finches, of course, may well be evolving.
Seversky, you claim that “just because certain behavior happens in Nature does not mean that human beings can justify doing the same thing on that basis alone.”
Atheists certainly can and have justified doing not only the same thing but much worse ‘on that basis alone.’
Hitler stated:
So much for equality
Darwinism also directly undermined Stalin and Mao’s innate sense of objective morality,
Karl Marx was deeply influenced by Darwin:
In fact, Lenin even kept a little statue of an ape staring at a human skull on his desk. The ape was sitting on a pile of books which included Darwin’s book, “Origin”.
Here is a picture of what the little statue on Lenin’s desk looked like:
Stalin likewise, while at a seminary of all places, was also heavily influenced by Darwinism,
Even Chairman Mao was deeply influenced by Darwinian ‘morality’:
Whereas inequality is ‘baked into’ Darwinism, on the other hand, equality is ‘baked into’ Christian
Bornagain77 @ 8
The atrocities committed by the various communist or socialist autocracies in the twentieth-century were justified by their perpetrators largely on the basis of their ideological commitments. They were animated much more by some perverted nationalism or racism then they were by atheism. Regardless, the whole claim about atheism is a good example of the fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam
From the Old Testament:
I could go on but I think you get the idea.
The only reason the casualty figures in the twentieth-century were so high is that there were more people around to kill and much more efficient means of doing the killing than in previous centuries.
He also said in 1937, as Chancellor of Germany
Does that make Christianity responsible for the Holocaust, bearing in mind that Christian anti-Semitism had been endemic in Europe for centuries before that?
The theory of evolution has nothing to say about the existence or otherwise of objective morality and whatever perverted use Mao or Stalin or Lenin or Hitler may have made of it is still a fallacious argument from consequences.
Geeze Seversky, when you sit in judgment of God like you are doing, you are very much acting like there is some objective moral law or something.
And you do realize that God gives life and takes it away as he deems fit?,,,
,,, Or has that little detail slipped your notice? Perhaps you should rightly fear God instead of trying to sit in judgment of Him? (especially since you, as an atheist, have no objective basis for judging anyone much less judging God. i.e. The God who created your soul and Who holds its eternal fate in his hands?