Liberals and Darwinism
Ben W. writes:
You recently brought up the issue of “goodness” in Darwinian evolution. In USA Today we read:
“IPCC report: One-third of species will be lost.”
Now since most scientists and environmentalists subscribe to Darwinian evolution, why would they care that species are being lost? According to Darwinian evolution, time is the historical record of any and every species being “lost,” i.e., transitioning into other forms (which BTW brings into question whether Darwinists logically have the right to use the word “species”). If transition of forms, loss of organisms, and death of species weren’t considered “bad” then, why are they considered “bad” now?
If Darwinian evolution is neutral with respect to ethics as species change from one form to another (and in the process die out), then how come ethical evaluations suddenly come into play (the goodness or badness of species survival and death) today?
If man had no ethical say in his biological evolution previously as a historical form in transition, how comes it now that man says with respect to these transitions, “Bad”?
Evolutionists demand an amoral biological history but not an amoral biological present…
LA replies:
I suppose the liberals would reply that evolution created humans, who care about ethics. There has thus been a “meta-evolution” to a new kind of species, one of the naturally selected random mutations of which is that it cares about other species.
In a second note, Ben W. continues:
The other day Barack Obama accused President Bush of “social Darwinism.”
Is that good or bad? I thought Darwinian evolution was neither good or bad… Can “social Darwinism” be bad but “biological Darwinism” be good? How can “social Darwinism” be bad if it is an evolutionary outgrowth of biological Darwinism? Where did evolution go wrong?
If Obama feels that “social Darwinism” is bad, then he must harbor suspicions about “biological Darwinism” (though I won’t hold me breath that Obama will bring into question the teaching of Darwinian evolution in schools).
LA replies:
I suppose the answer would be the same as the above: evolution red in tooth and claw has by some serendipity created man, who is compassionate toward the other and concerned about the well-being of the totality of life on earth. However, the problem with this view, as Ben indicates, is that evolution has also created man the Social Darwinist and Destroyer of Ecology. Why should we believe that Compassionate man is superior to Social-Darwinist and Ecology-Destroying man, given that both are equally the product of chance mutations naturally selected in a world without any moral telos? It must be because we inchoately think that compassion is in reality morally “better” than Social and Ecological Darwinism, despite the fact that they are both products of mindless amoral evolution. Meaning that, without saying so, we are relying on faith in the existence of an inherent moral order. Of course, we appeal to such a faith only when it suits our desires … which are, after all, the product of mindless Darwinian evolution.
One way or another, human beings need a moral framework to live. If their explicit world view denies any basis for morality, they will perforce find some way—namely the unprincipled exception—to sneak their own notion of morality into the scheme of things. Without unprincipled exceptions, the world of liberalism would disintegrate in a moment.
Ben W. writes:
You wrote, “Evolution red in tooth and claw has by some serendipity created man, who is compassionate toward the other and concerned about the well-being of the totality of life on earth.”
I was brought up to think of science as the study of cause and effect of natural phenomena. And here we have Darwinian evolution, parading as science, depending on “random” effects of mutation and on the “serendipitous” results of transitions. It appears that the logic of Darwinian evolution has its own set of unprincipled exceptions, relying as it does on randomness, chance, indeterminacy, and unpredictable cause and effect. How is that “science”; how is that even “logic”?
Liberal Man (should he be called Homo Liberalis) relying on human “logic” (his own “sola scriptura”) comes to a point of indeterminacy, chance, randomness and unprincipled exceptions. And yet parasitically rides on the back of Western civilization for moral support and ethical foundations (all the while undermining this bedrock).
RB writes:
The late Stephen Jay Gould, a staunch defender of Darwinism provides an example of the unprincipled exception among the proponents of natural selection. His theories on race were conveniently self serving. His view and that of many of his colleagues can be summarized as follows.
Evolution is a process of the constant (or perhaps in his case punctuated) branching from a “bush”. These different branches have unequal characteristics, and the probability of any re-convergence is so small as to be disregarded. Except, of course, in the case of human evolution, where by an astounding coincidence the differences between groups in the areas of emotional and intellectual functioning vanish. What a wonderfully politically correct outcome which just so happens to conform to the prevailing academic ideology!
LA replies:
Agreed, except that an unprincipled exception is a non-liberal attitude asserted against the prevailing liberalism. Gould’s exception was a liberal attitude asserted against the prevailing non-liberal Darwinism. But it’s certainly true that his exception is unprincipled.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 01, 2007 02:17 PM | Send