Do readers remember when it was customary to sneer—on behalf of the great medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas—at the idea that the universe and life forms show evidence of design? It’s hard to imagine any medieval philosopher, let alone Thomas, thinking that the world around us does not show evidence of design. Medieval thinkers generated orderly hierarchies the way people today generate graphs, except they used imagination, not software. They were often over the top but their instinct was not wrong.
But suddenly, for some years earlier in this century, Thomas—of all people—was cast as the anti-design guy. I won’t soon forget Barry Arrington’s comment on possibly the most egregious example of this trend at First Things, of all places, “This year I let my subscription to FT run out after nearly 20 years. If I want misguided, uninformed anti-ID rants, I can go to Panda’s Thumb for free.”
The writer of the First Things article advised “Readers interested in these arguments are urged to visit websites such as The Panda’s Thumb”
Hmmm. Taking the yayhoo-driven Panda’s Thumb seriously is not a good look for a thinkmag inspired by traditional Western religion and philosophy. For a while, there was silence.
Iust recently, George Weigel made explicit at First Things that Panda’s Thumb Darwinism is not consistent with serious thinking in the Western tradition.
And now, another First Things type, addresses the misuse or bad handling of evidence prevalent among Darwinists:
Philip Kitcher, a philosopher of biology and a supporter of natural selection, chastises Darwin for “appeasing his critics,” writing that “If the presence of particular goals can interfere with the epistemic evaluation of a novel proposal, then it is epistemically desirable for the proposer to respond to those goals, even if it requires deception.”
In other words, you may have to lie to the stupid people to get them to take Darwinism as seriously as we smart people do.
A more elaborate argument in favor of deception is offered by philosopher Phillip L. Quinn, who says that sometimes, in public debate over Darwinism, the only arguments that have a chance of convincing policymakers are bad ones. He argues that presenting arguments one knows to be faulty is morally permissible, but only “provided we continue to have qualms of conscience about getting our hands soiled.” He does worry that after presenting effective but bad arguments has become easy and second nature, one’s hands “become dirty beyond all cleansing and one suffers from a thoroughgoing corruption of mind.” But perhaps scholars could “divide up the labor so that no one among us has to resort to the bad effective argument too frequently.” That way, “we can succeed in resisting effectively without paying too high a price in terms of moral corruption.”
In others words, if you feel bad about lying to the stupid people, that makes it okay, so long as you take turns with other liars so that the habit doesn’t become so well-entrenched that it spills over into the rest of your life. (Why, you might then begin lying to us smart people too.)
J. Budziszewski, “I’m with stupid” at MercatorNet
Budziszewski is onto something here. In a Darwinian universe, there is no reason not to lie to achieve a survival goal. In the traditional universe, classically assumed to exist by most human civilizations, morality is intrinsic to the nature of the conscious entities of the universe. That is, whether one believes in God or in karma, lying separates one from reality. And the universe keeps score and it eventually catches up with you, as surely as physics will.
Not so in a Darwinian frame where consciousness is an evolved illusion and free will does not exist. And morality is an evolved illusion too so … happy are those who know nothing of morality.
It is good to see people clarifying where they stand on such fundamental issues. Could David Gelernter, recently waving Darwin goodbye, have had something to do with what seems now to be a trend?
See also: (for reference) First Things Goes From Giving ID A Platform To Viciously Attacking It (Barry Arrington)
and
Brit commentator Melanie Phillips weighs in on David Gelernter dumping Darwin. For many intellectuals, it must seem like an agonizing, nasty divorce but Phillips would be well placed to take it in stride.
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Too funny, a Darwinist, of all people, worried about becoming too morally corrupt by constantly trying to deceive people into believing Darwinian evolution:
You just can’t this stuff up. Nobody would believe it.
But anyways, might I suggest to those Darwinists whose hands have now “become dirty beyond all cleansing and one suffers from a thoroughgoing corruption of mind” that they visit the one who specializes in cleansing us from our sin?
Darwinian microevolution “works” by taking an existing information-rich structure and degrading it in a way that provides a short-term survival advantage. The Discovery Institute writers analogize this to jettisoning bits and pieces of a vehicle in order to save it. Both the Book of Jonah ans a story in the Book of Acts tell how sailors threw everything overboard in order to save their ships from a storm; that’s a lousy way to stay in the shipping business in the long term, but it may be the only way to stay afloat through the storm.
Darwinian LIES do the same thing at a higher level. The “information rich system” in which Darwinism operates is the Western scientific community, which is founded on certain premeses derived from the Christian consensus. When a modern Darwinist “tweaks” the truth, he/she/it is throwing the luggage overboard. “Scientism” may be a kind of cancer on “science,” as it has come to us.
But–it does make sense that Darwinists would follow the logic of their own thinking and compromise science. There is nothing about Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest that leads one to pursue truth for its own sake. If a lie will gain me social advantages, my “selfish genes” will urge me to lie so that I can have a string of trophy wives (or get Welfare to pay for half a dozen illegetimate brats). The truth is demonstrably good for our species as a whole, but NOT clearly advantageous to the individual truth-teller. (I don’t know that Socrates, Jesus, of Buddha ever had children. Mohammed and Joseph Smith are the only major religious leaders I can name who reproduced.)
Ironically, the most fecund human populations are the religious, and the least fecund are the Darwinian atheists.
If fitness is the ultimate arbiter of truth, then what this say about Darwinism? Hoisted by his own petard.
Sometimes all it takes is to free up a few logs from the logjam. Then they all break free and go down the river. No stopping them then…….
Darwinists, since they have ZERO substantiating evidence for their grandiose claim that all life arose via the mindless processes of Darwinian evolution,,,
,,, since they have ZERO substantiating evidence for their grandiose claim, Darwinists, in grade school textbooks, use misleading evidence, and/or straight out deceptive evidence, to try to indoctrinate children into believing that Darwinian evolution is true.
Must reading for anyone concerned about their children being taught deceptive information about evolution in grade school textbooks is Jonathan Wells’s book ‘Icons Of Evolution’
Here are two articles defending Wells’s criticism against the Ten Icons of Evolution in detail here:
Dr. Wells has recently wrote a subsequent book, “Zombie Science”, showing how Darwinists, since they don’t have any real evidence to support their grandiose claim, are forced to constantly recycle, or try to recycle, fraudulent evidence into grade school textbooks in order to try to deceive students into believing in Darwinian evolution:
Not surprisingly, the indoctrination into Darwinian evolution with deceptive evidence continues after grade school. In the following interview, Dr. Cornelius Hunter discusses some of the misrepresentations and fallacies that are presented in the typical undergraduate evolutionary biology course
One final note, Darwinists will often falsely claim that to teach Intelligent Design in school is to teach religion in school (and claim that ID therefore violates the establishment clause of the constitution). What they don’t mention is the fact that Darwinian evolution, since it has no real time scientific evidence supporting its sweeping claims, is itself crucially dependent on faulty Theological presuppositions. That is to say, to teach Darwinism is schools is, ironically, to teach (a false) religion to your children in public school.
Darwinists, with their vital dependence on misleading Theological presuppositions, instead of any actual substantiating scientific evidence, in order to try to deceive people into believing in Darwinian evolution, (besides violating the establishment clause of the constitution), are as Cornelius Van Til put it, like the child who must climb up onto his father’s lap into order to slap his face.
Dean_from_Ohio at 6. Many of us think FT is hardly dead. Rather, it may be coming to terms with some ill-advised changes in direction in the years following Fr. Neuhaus’s death.
For example, why IS an ecumenical Western-religion journal engaged in a war on the idea of design in nature? Who, exactly, is the intended audience for that sort of thing among thoughtful people?
Isn’t it rather something we might expect of I SUCK! and AtheistBlogRant Central?
Design in nature should be a “default acceptable” position among traditional Western thinkers. Critiques of specific positions should proceed on that basis. If one wishes to critique Michael Behe, for example, on the whether the bacterial flagellum, the malaria parasite, or polar bear genetics provide evidence either way, his underlying position should be seen as reasonable in principle.
In the same way, arguments for the reality of the mind or free will should be seen as reasonable in principle, while individual claims from evidence must defend themselves on their merits.
For too long, publications like First Things have fudged points like that, acting like they could afford a merely neutral stance in the matter. No more, not if they want to survive.
I was a subscriber to the FT print edition for a couple of years ’till FT disappeared an online Maureen Mullarkey article (and her) critical of Pope Francis. There is nothing more disgusting than supposedly good people running cover for corruption WHEN THEY DONT HAVE TO. Puke.
Andrew
So because this Quinn has argued that it is sometimes acceptable to lie to persuade public policymakers, the whole of evolutionary biology is based on lies? As Dr Gregory House was wont to say “Everybody lies”. I’d be willing to bet that everyone here, without exception, has lied at one time or another so none of us are in a position to get all high-and-mighty about it. Especially not Christians since the Bible records could be the first lie ever told as in God telling Adam that if he eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil on that day he will surely die. Except he doesn’t. He and Eve get tossed out of the Garden on their ears but he lives on for a few hundred years. So if God tells porkies, why not the rest of us?
If evolutionary biology promotes the lie that life’s diversity arose via blind and mindless processes, then yes, it is based on lies, promotes lies and has no place in science except to show how not to proceed. And relying on an English translation and interpretation of the OT is sheer desperation.
Seversky @ 9
Did God give any kind of timeline to Adam?
As for all the Darwinist droolers, macro-evolution has no actual evidence to support the claim. Science deals with what is witnessed, not what is perceived to have existed.
Genesis 2:16-17 (KJV)
Can’t say plainer than that.
Seversky states:
You got to be kidding me! It was a ‘spiritual death’, i.e. separation from God who is the source of all life , that was being talked about for crying out loud,
And in John 3:3 Jesus specifically mentions to Nicodemus that we must be ‘born again’ of the spirit which directly implies that we need a spiritual rebirth since we are spiritually dead
‘Spiritual death’ in the Garden of Eden is one of the first things that I learned as a Christian. I find it very hard to believe that Seversky could, at his adult age, make such an elementary mistake in Theology.
Seversky also asked
To wit: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true?”
Seversky @ 12
I suggest you speak with an orthodox Rabbi, since it was originally written in Hebrew and Hebrew cannot be translated. It’s a very figurative language based on Eastern thought. Each word has tremendous meaning and you could fill entire volumes and still not understand the full meaning. The problem with translations that exist today is that it originates with Western thought and much is missed in the translation. If you really want to understand something written in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible, aka The Old Testament), then ask an orthodox Rabbi.