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The Silent Yawn

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A culture’s creation narrative is foundational, for it forms the template for everything else. One of the consequences of evolution—the belief that the world spontaneously arose by itself—is that it underwrites moral relativism, which is not to say there is no right and wrong but rather that right and wrong is something that we decide. And since evolution is true, it is to evolution that we go for our rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, “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.” But with evolution there is no such endowment, for there is no such Creator. Not that evolution derives from atheism, it does not. Evolution derives from a different kind of theism, a kind where we decide what is right.  Read more

Comments
Alan (41):
Not sure how hat bears on my point ...
Evolutionary thought long predates 1859. Darwin built on a foundation that had been laid for two centuries (you can trace it back to antiquity as well). In the 17th and 18th centuries theologians and philosophers were calling for and mandating a naturalistic origins. And scientists were providing it, mainly in cosmology in the 18th century (such as Laplace). Darwin's arguments come right out of those earlier thinkers. He did a great job of applying the thinking to biology and the origin of species, but evolutionary thought didn't start with Darwin or biological origins.Cornelius Hunter
November 25, 2012
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KN (46):
What I’m saying here is that someone who accepts evolution can consistently accept that there are objective moral principles. But there’s all the difference in the world between believing that there are objective moral principles and believing that the principles that one actually holds are objectively right. The commitment to objective principles means that there are standards against which one’s own views can be compared, and quite possibly, found wanting.
This doesn't address my question very directly, but now I think I get it. I don't see how you avoid moral relativism because there can always different people (who evolved) who hold to different ethics (and believe they are right). Since they both evolved their ethics are the products of evolution, so evolution can create opposing ethics. But if I understand you correctly, you simply would say that one or both of them are wrong, by definition. So you are simply decreeing there to be an objective ethics out there that evolution somehow created, even if we can never figure out what it is. Of course there is the question of how evolution could have done this. The usual answers provided are no better than explanations of how evolution could have created arms, legs, muscles, brains, consciousness, etc. And since it is contingent on chance events, there is the question of why should evolution's system of ethics be any better than any other system, which evolution happened not to create?Cornelius Hunter
November 25, 2012
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Picking back up on my exchanged with Hunter, @ his 17:
Now you are simply asserting right and wrong ethics. So it sounds circular. You say an evolutionist can have objective ethics. I ask what about a friend with different ethics. You say if it doesn’t roughly fit my ethics, then its wrong.
What I'm saying here is that someone who accepts evolution can consistently accept that there are objective moral principles. But there's all the difference in the world between believing that there are objective moral principles and believing that the principles that one actually holds are objectively right. The commitment to objective principles means that there are standards against which one's own views can be compared, and quite possibly, found wanting. In other words, my own commitment to objectivity, in ethics as in everything else, just consists in my willingness to be persuaded that I'm wrong. There's a very deep connection here between objectivity and error or falsity, to the point where we can say that objective reality just is whatever it is we can be wrong about. By contrast, if I'm depressed or angry, then I cannot be wrong about my being in that emotional state -- those are subjective. (Though of course I can be mistaken about the objective causes of my subjective emotional states -- I might be angry with a friend because she broke a trust, but I'm really angry with myself for not having communicated my expectations more clearly -- the subjective reality of my being angry is not something I can be mistaken about.) The key to discovering objective reality, of course, is the process of mutually reinforcing self-criticism and criticism from others. If someone proposes an ethical judgment that differs from mine, then it falls to me to decide if I'm going to challenge or let it slide. Same with the other person. Either we engage with each other, or we don't. If we do, then the dialectic gets underway, and it's sustained by our joint commitment to using reason to figure out what the objectively right principles are, and also -- very importantly -- which principles apply in this particular situation, how conflicts between principles should be resolved, what the reasonable compromises might be, the epistemological and metaphysical status of those principles, and so on. What I'm pointing out isn't rocket science -- these are the truisms of what it is to be a mature, rational, human being. (Or so I would naively think.)Kantian Naturalist
November 25, 2012
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Wrong again, Alan- Joe messes up the "h". that = tat. the = teh- it's just a random variation, ie evolution.Joe
November 25, 2012
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'Why did Laplace say to Napoleon, “I’m in no need of that hypothesis”?' Wasn't that what the general said to Napoleon, when the latter asked him if the young officer he was recommending for promotion was lucky? KN - Don't mind me. And don't put yourself down by saying you were 'retreating' into an intellectual mode of self-presentation. You boffins probably probably wouldn't recognize my forays into intellectual self-presentation, but I often have to replace the more vernacular, Anglo-Saxon words, when they 'lower the tone' inappropriately. And I don't doubt your desire for the good, or for the true. Truth-seeking is always personal and idiosyncratic, isn't it? Everyone's path is different.Axel
November 25, 2012
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Axel, I don't disagree with anything you said in (40) above. In a format like this, where I'm talking with people who are basically complete strangers to me, I tend to retreat into an intellectual mode of self-presentation. But I do take these issues as seriously as you do.Kantian Naturalist
November 25, 2012
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Excuse the Joeism! "hat" should be "that".Alan Fox
November 25, 2012
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Cornelius Hunter
Why did Laplace say to Napoleon, “I’m in no need of that hypothesis”?
There seems some doubt that he actually said "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.". The only eye-witness that recorded the meeting between Laplace and Bonarparte in his diary does not confirm it. Not sure how hat bears on my point that evolutionary theory only attempts an explanation of the diversity of life on Earth, not its origin nor the origin of the World.Alan Fox
November 25, 2012
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'There’s an interesting question here, about how to specify the relationship between atheism and capitalism. My hunch (I really don’t know what else to call it) is that Epicureanism becomes the legitimizing ideology for capitalism in the modern period, much as the Church turned Aristotelianism into the dominant legitimizing ideology for the late medieval period. How exactly Epicureanism assumed that role is a complicated story I don’t fully understand, and no doubt there are rival forces at work that need to be taken into account — for example, the rise of Christian Stoicism during the Scottish Enlightenment.' - Kantian Naturalist Well, KN, perhaps you find that interesting as a scholar, who likes to see such issues within an eclectic, academic context: the big, erudite picture, so to speak. However, for me, atheism's inevitable path towards moral relativism and all its ugly consequences, of which we are already seeing for too much, is far too brutishly simple for me to countenance speculating upon. One could say that capitalism is akin to the law of the jungle, but with the difference that the worst malefactors of capitalism derive sadistic pleasure from the effects of their machinations - and they can never have a full belly. The point is that it is designed in a quite dedicated way to favour the advancement of psychopaths and chronic recidivists to very top of their companies, sometimes, professions, too. The 'bottom line', shareholders' profit, is God, so to speak; moral considerations are touted as potential enemies of the common good, against the national interest, national security, etc. Milton Freedman expressed it succinctly enough. That same moral relativism also bears on the pursuit of knowledge - particularly in the field of medicine. Among all the other cynical stunts of a similar kind pulled by the Allied intelligence services after WWII, the CIA, possibly at the time, still the SOE, did a deal with the owner of a Japanese chemicals plant, who had used captured GIs for cryogenic tests to destruction: he would not be punished, if he made the research available to them. Not that I imagine they would have coveted such data for the furtherance of benign medical knowledge. However, medical and pharmaceutical laboratories now routinely perform research and invention in ways the Nazis might initially have blenched at: truly the stuff of nightmares. It's a long time ago since I read it, but if I remember correctly, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World doesn't begin to approach the wickedness of the worst activities currently being performed in genetic engineering. Domestic cats will play with their captured mice, but, generally, I believe, in the wild, even the big cats only kill to eat. Alas, it looks like it will take a global economic cataclysm to rein in some of the worst of mankind's predators. Hubris-nemesis.Axel
November 25, 2012
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Why should the theory require that mutations be random with regard to fitness? How does that follow from the theory or even advance the theory in any meaningful way? Do you think that if mutations are discovered which are not random with regard to fitness that it would falsify evolutionary theory?
You know, that's a good question. I stand by my claim but now I'm puzzled as to why it makes sense. If mutations were discovered which were not random with regards to fitness, it wouldn't falsify the entire body of evolutionary theory, but it would mean that a lot of the theory would have to be seriously re-examined.Kantian Naturalist
November 25, 2012
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A few years ago I was in a room full of IDists and they were scapegoating Darwin for ills actually caused by Descartes.
That's hilarious -- and very interesting -- please feel free to elaborate!Kantian Naturalist
November 25, 2012
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But don’t you see that those material causes arising from precisely such evils as you mention, namely, the pathological narcissism driving the consumer-based ethos, which is part and parcel of our western economic system, with its dependence on ‘constant over-production and over-consumption’, are totally atheistic, whatever pious blandishments the aforesaid narcissists and their PR people of a similar stamp will utter.
There's an interesting question here, about how to specify the relationship between atheism and capitalism. My hunch (I really don't know what else to call it) is that Epicureanism becomes the legitimizing ideology for capitalism in the modern period, much as the Church turned Aristotelianism into the dominant legitimizing ideology for the late medieval period. How exactly Epicureanism assumed that role is a complicated story I don't fully understand, and no doubt there are rival forces at work that need to be taken into account -- for example, the rise of Christian Stoicism during the Scottish Enlightenment.Kantian Naturalist
November 25, 2012
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In those terms, it’s clear that shallow randomness is all that evolutionary theory requires.
Why should the theory require that mutations be random with regard to fitness? How does that follow from the theory or even advance the theory in any meaningful way? Do you think that if mutations are discovered which are not random with regard to fitness that it would falsify evolutionary theory?Mung
November 25, 2012
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Plantinga’s distinction, which marks the difference between ontological randomness and epistemological randomness, does not apply in this situation. Proponents of Darwin’s theory assert ontological randomness and would reject the proposition that Random Mutations can be reduced to epistemological randomness. In other words, Darwin’s theory asserts that the randomness is real, not merely perceived as such. While the orthodox Christian might be able to accept epistemological randomness, he must reject Darwin’s ontological randomness in principle.
Though I'm ashamed to admit it, I haven't read Origin of Species, so I'm in no position to make any claims about where Darwin himself stood on the question. That said, I understand "epistemological randomness" to mean, "so far we humans can tell, the sources of genotypic variation can't predict what will be adaptive to the organism". And I understand "ontological randomness" to mean, "at the most fundamental levels of reality, there are some events that have no intelligible relation to other events". I'd like to call these shallow randomness and deep randomness -- how things seem, on the 'surface' of human experience, and how things really and truly are. In those terms, it's clear that shallow randomness is all that evolutionary theory requires. I agree that there are various exponents and popularizers of Darwin's theory who also accept deep randomness. Jacques Monod might be a good example, and perhaps also Dawkins, though I find Dawkins almost incoherent as a philosopher. But I don't think there's any direct inference which runs from shallow randomness to deep randomness, and any argument which gets us from one to the other would have to a lot of serious metaphysics in between.Kantian Naturalist
November 25, 2012
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Alan (27):
Absolutely wrong!!!
Why did Laplace say to Napoleon, "I'm in no need of that hypothesis"?Cornelius Hunter
November 25, 2012
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Alan Fox:
Evolution is a theory that attempts to explain how, given that somehow life [but not just any life, specifically, life capable of Darwninian evolution] got started on Earth around 2 billion years ago, it diversified into the objective nested hierarchy of extant and extinct organisms we observe.
Alan Fox:
But I find the interesting question (and the hardest for science to answer, I suspect) is where is the point that evolutionary processes can kick in.
The "theory of evolution" doesn't even tell us the point at which evolutionary processes can "kick in."Mung
November 25, 2012
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Prediction- Alan Fox will never support his claim about objective nested hierarchies and he will not answer to the refutations of his claims (because he is a coward).Joe
November 25, 2012
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PS @ Alan Fox, Your ignorance has been exposed, again. Deal with it. And yes what happened at Dr Hunter's blog was evos were allowed to run around spewing their lies unabated. That has now stopped.Joe
November 25, 2012
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Correction For "around 2 billion years ago" please read; "around 3.6 billion years ago". PS @ Joe Please remember what happened at Dr Hunter's blog. ;)Alan Fox
November 25, 2012
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Alan Fox:
Evolution says absolutely nothing about how the world arose.
Then it can't say anything about how the diversity of life arose as the two are directly linked- as in how life arose is how it evolved. If life was designed then the inference would be that life was designed to evolve/ evolved by design.
Evolution is a theory that attempts to explain how, given that somehow life got started on Earth around 2 billion years ago, it diversified into the objective nested hierarchy of extant and extinct organisms we observe.
1- It can't do that unless it says something about the ORIGIN of life 2- We do NOT see an objective nested hierarchy with prokaryotes- so you "theory" is falsified, according to you 3- If all the alleged transitionals were still around we would NOT have any objective nested hierarchy with metazoans as gradual evolution PREDICTS a smooth blending of characteristics indicative of a Venn diagram. IOW Alan Fox continues to prove that he doesn't know anything and he is apparently proud of that.Joe
November 25, 2012
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'This is a bit helpful in explicating the differences between my understanding and yours. On my view, the fragmentation of world-views, and the resulting eclecticism (to put it politely), has material causes: here I’m thinking about such things as the rise of pathological narcissism due to a consumer-based ethos due to the fact that the economic system of the modern West would collapse if not for constant over-production and over-consumption.' - Kantian Naturalist But don't you see that those material causes arising from precisely such evils as you mention, namely, the pathological narcissism driving the consumer-based ethos, which is part and parcel of our western economic system, with its dependence on 'constant over-production and over-consumption', are totally atheistic, whatever pious blandishments the aforesaid narcissists and their PR people of a similar stamp will utter. I know there are exceptions, or individual atheists who are, substantially, exceptions, such as yourself, but most polemical atheism we encounter in the public arena are driven by a fierce desire for there not to be a God, or should he exist, for such God not, under any circumstances, to be acknowledged. So I see naturalism, Evolution, materialism, all, as simple expressions of atheism - the operative, the most seminal culprit. And, what's more that same godless, unbridled capitalism has indeed brought the now hegemonic, global, economic system to the verge of collapse. Not simply and proximately via the extreme polarisation of the wealth through usury and massive fraud - for which our narcissistic-psychopath friends, the arch-malefactors are totally impenitent and just as determined to hold onto every last cent they have effectively stolen from the rest - but through the pillaging of the planets raw materials, most notably of course, oil. Unless science is able to come up with an energy source as portable and convenient as oil, the days of clippers and barges seem likely to return - not to speak of horse-drawn carriages. If only the Christian Church had been as critical of the economic right as it has been of Communism! Yet, ironically, the sole description of the Last Judgment in the whole of Christian scripture, given in Matthew 25 by Christ himself, God Almighty, does not even cite formal belief in God, as being pivotal, but instead, Charity, selfless - and real, because practical - love of our fellow human beings in their need. 'Not everyone who calls me, Lord! Lord!....'Axel
November 25, 2012
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Cornelius Hunter writes:
Evolution says that the world arose spontaneously (random chance events + natural law).
Absolutely wrong!!! Evolution says absolutely nothing about how the world arose. Evolution is a theory that attempts to explain how, given that somehow life got started on Earth around 2 billion years ago, it diversified into the objective nested hierarchy of extant and extinct organisms we observe.Alan Fox
November 25, 2012
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"Darwinism is being treated here as a scapegoat for social ills actually caused by capitalism." Hehehe... A few years ago I was in a room full of IDists and they were scapegoating Darwin for ills actually caused by Descartes.Gregory
November 25, 2012
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KN:
"[abortion]... could be made considerably less necessary with significantly better sex eduction, more widespread contraceptive education and use, and less puritanical attitudes towards sex in general."
Actually, artificial contraception leads to abortion. From Dr. Janet Smith: "Most abortions are the result of unwanted pregnancies, most unwanted pregnancies are the result of sexual relationships outside of marriage, and most sexual relationships outside of marriage are facilitated by the availability of contraception. To turn this 'progression' around: contraception leads to more extra-marital sexual intercourse, more extra-marital sexual intercourse leads to more unwanted pregnancies; more unwanted pregnancies lead to more abortions." From Germain Grisez: "In the first place, promoting contraception, especially among the young, condones and even encourages immoral sexual activity. Even if contraceptives are provided and used, this activity will lead to many pregnancies, since all methods of contraception have a failure rate. Moreover, the children who come to be as unwanted are likely to be aborted, or neglected and abused, because, unlike children who are unplanned by people open to new life, they were rejected in advance." From George Akerlof (a liberal-leaning Nobel prize-winning economist) "Thus, many traditional women ended up having sex and having children out of wedlock, while many of the permissive women ended up having sex and contracepting or aborting so as to avoid childbearing. This explains in large part why the contraceptive revolution was associated with an increase in both abortion and illegitimacy."StephenB
November 24, 2012
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KN: "I’m strongly against making abortion illegal or hard to access, because I do not believe that any woman should be forced to give birth against her will" That is the official definition of "pro-choice."--- the elevation of the woman's legal right to kill a fetus over the fetus' moral right to live.StephenB
November 24, 2012
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KN (22): Thx for the response.Cornelius Hunter
November 24, 2012
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btw, are you pro-choice or pro-life?
I don't have political views that can be summarized on a bumper sticker or T-shirt. So if you're taking a survey, you can put me as "neither" or "both", I don't care which. :) I think that in a perfect world, there wouldn't be any abortions, or very few, because in a perfect world, all pregnancies would be intentional. I'm strongly against making abortion illegal or hard to access, because I do not believe that any woman should be forced to give birth against her will. But, at the same time, I do think that there is something morally wrong with abortion, though it does not, in my view, rise to the level of murder. Under existing economic and political realities, I consider access to safe and legal abortion to be a necessary evil -- which is to say, it's being evil does not make it less necessary, nor does its being necessary make it less evil. It could be made considerably less necessary with significantly better sex eduction, more widespread contraceptive education and use, and less puritanical attitudes towards sex in general. Generally speaking, I guess you could say I'm a left-wing cultural conservative. It's a "type" that doesn't exist much anymore. Theodor Adorno represented it well in the mid-20th century, and so did Christopher Lasch in the 1970s through 1990s. The gist of this position, especially in Lasch's version, is that cultural conservatives have some of the correct complaints -- the decline of confidence in the objectivity of moral principles, the rise of sexual promiscuity, lack of critical thinking, lack of a historical sensibility, pathological narcissism and consumerism -- but that these symptoms of cultural decline have material causes (that's where the 'left-wing' comes in), and in particular, with transformations in the structure of post-WWII capitalism.Kantian Naturalist
November 24, 2012
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KN (19):
The theistic evolution and the naturalistic evolutionist do not disagree about the science. They disagree about the metaphysics,
No, they do not disagree on the metaphysics. Read Ken Miller, Francis Collins, etc. Same metaphysical claims about divine intent as Christians from centuries back. And same metaphysical claims about divine intent as atheists of today.Cornelius Hunter
November 24, 2012
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KN: "Or she could read Plantinga’s nice distinction between “random” and “unguided” and thereby claim that evolutionary processes are random from the human point of view but guided from the divine point of view." Plantinga's distinction, which marks the difference between ontological randomness and epistemological randomness, does not apply in this situation. Proponents of Darwin's theory assert ontological randomness and would reject the proposition that Random Mutations can be reduced to epistemological randomness. In other words, Darwin's theory asserts that the randomness is real, not merely perceived as such. While the orthodox Christian might be able to accept epistemological randomness, he must reject Darwin's ontological randomness in principle.StephenB
November 24, 2012
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If an evolutionist says that evolution was according to divine intent, then he simply is, as I mentioned, believing in a different sort of evolutionary theory.
I'm sorry, but I have trouble seeing how that can be right. The theory concerns the best explanations for various patterns and processes. The theistic evolution and the naturalistic evolutionist do not disagree about the science. They disagree about the metaphysics, about the "deeper" reality that transcends all possible empirical testing. So they have the same evolutionary theory; where they part ways has everything to do with the interpretation of the theory, but not the content of the theory itself.Kantian Naturalist
November 24, 2012
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