Philippe Rushton, call your office: you’re right on race differences, wrong on Darwinism

A story appearing in the Daily Mail :

Man fathers 21 children by 11 different women … and he’s only 29

And guess what his race is? Just guess.

Desmond Hatchett

If you guessed right, does that mean you’re guilty of racial stereotyping?

Desmond Hatchett is a poster boy for Philippe Rushton’s theory of race differences.

Now Rushton, of course, also believes in Darwinian evolution via the survival of the fittest, and its its offshot, sociobiology.

But if Darwinian evolution and sociobiology were true, then how could a society evolve that enables its least intelligent and least competent individuals to produce the most children?

Could someone please ‘splain that to me?

Here’s the article:

By Paul Thompson
28th May 2009

A man aged 29 has fathered 21 children with 11 different women, it emerged yesterday.

Desmond Hatchett’s brood came to light after authorities in Tennessee in the U.S. took him to court for non-payment of child support.

He has apparently set a U.S. record but said: ‘It just happened.’

He added that he would not have any more children. ‘I’m done. I’ll say I’m done,’ he said.

Hatchett, who earns a minimal wage, told TV reporters he knows the names and ages of all his offspring.

Authorities in Knoxville said they plan to take half of his monthly salary to pay for the youngsters but officials said that would work out to just over 1 pound a week for each.

His lawyer Keith Pope said: ‘The children can’t all be supported by Desmond, so the state of Tennessee has had to step in.’

Many Knoxville residents called for him to be castrated.

Prolific father Desmond Hatchett even boasted of fathering four children by different women in the same year.

Hatchett’s name appeared on court documents 11 times representing 15 of his 21 children.

U.S. authorities are now braced for more women coming forward to claim Hatchett is the father of their children after he appeared on local TV.

He said the women he was involved with all knew he had other children.

One mother, who has two children with Hatchett, said she should get 44 pounds a month but rarely receives any child support.

‘It’s frustrating, but usually, when I ask he gives it to me,’ she said.

Authorities in Knoxville, Tennessee ordered Hatchett to court to explain how he intends to pay child support.

He arrived for the hearing with just over 300 pounds.

- end of initial entry -

Leonard D. writes:

You write:

“If Darwinian evolution and sociobiology were true, then how could a society evolve that enables its least intelligent and competent individuals to produce the most children?”

You misunderstand what “fit” means within evolution. Fitness is measured by success in reproduction. It is true that Darwinian fitness usually correlates with various traits that we find useful or admirable, but that is not always true. Hatchett’s children will not die of starvation or exposure. In Darwinian terms, Hatchett is fitter than the rest of us.

LA replies:

I understand that “fitness” means reproducing the most.

But, as you seem to have forgotten, “fitness” also implies steady improvement, both in animal species and in man. A central idea of The Origin of Species is the sense of wonder that differential rates of reproduction could keep producing such marvelous and ever-improving and more complex and more capable life forms. And when it comes to human evolution, the Darwinians believe that Darwinian evolution has led to continual improvement in the species, including higher intelligence.

Further, many Darwinians today accept sociobiology, which says that Darwinian processes produced human civilization and civilized behavior, and that all that’s needed for further human progress is the continued working of this evolutionary process.

How then did we end up with Desmond Hatchett? Do you really not sense something amiss?

Dana writes:

You really do not appear to understand evolution, which you oddly persist in calling “Darwinism” (which would be like insisting on referring to modern quantum physics as Einsteinism). “Fittest” doesn’t mean “best”, it means “most successful at passing on its genes”. In some eras that means smartest, in others it means dumbest, or fastest, or blackest or whitest. Look at the situation that obtains today, our best and brightest, wealthiest and most talented are steadfastly refusing to breed even to replacement level while the poorest and worst, artificially kept alive and healthy by government largesse breed like fruitflies. In THIS environment—the poor ARE the “fittest” and their genes shall inherit the future. Its not a MORAL concept—it’s a scientific term of art, like the much misunderstood SCIENTIFIC meaning of the word “theory” vs. the lay meaning which are almost opposites. Intelligence, low preference for time saving and high impulse control make for great individual lives but they are, in fact, maladaptive traits in that they cause the group that develops them not to pass those traits on to future generations by breeding.

This is the heart of Evolution—the future belongs to those who breed. That’s Darwinian “success”. That’s it—nothing else.

Your entire concept of evolution seems mired in the progressive social Darwinist era and you seem to have no interest in the current concept and I don’t understand why. You are not normally intellectually dishonest, so I can’t ascribe it to that.

Richard H. writes:

“Now Rushton, of course, also believes in Darwinian evolution via the survival of the fittest, and its its offshot, sociobiology.

But if Darwinian evolution and sociobiology were true, then how could a society evolve that enables its least intelligent and least competent individuals to produce the most children?

Could someone please ‘splain that to me?”

Gladly. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean that the most “competent” or “intelligent” are going to populate the earth. Only that those people with the genes that allow them to best survive and reproduce in their given environment will pass them on.

In Asia and Europe in prehistoric times, relatively more intelligence and monogamy were selected for. In Africa, less intelligence and monogamy and more physical strength.

In today’s multicultural West, well, just look at who’s breeding and who isn’t.

Nobody ever said that intelligence, competence or anything else we consider good leads to the greatest success from a Darwinian perspective. It was the case in prehistoric Eurasia and maybe during different historical epochs, but it’s certainly not the case today.

LA replies:

I repeat to Dana and to Richard what I said to Leonard. Of course I know what “fittest” means. But, as I pointed out, Darwinians combine “fittest” in the sense of maximum reproduction with the idea that mere success in reproduction is enough to create and shape and improve and perfect all the species that exist. I was deliberately using the word in both senses, to point to the unlikelihood of the notion that mere mechanical success in reproductive competition could produce new organs and species and high-level human beings. Further, I was also directing my comments at the conservative sociobiologists who believe that evolutionary forces in and of themselves produce a viable, conservative society.

Just as Darwinians are constantly injecting purpose, into a Darwinian process that rigidly excludes purpose, they also constantly inject value, the idea of “better” and ‘best,” into a process that rigidly excludes any notion of value. Just consider the famous last paragraph of Origin of Species, as well as Dawkins’s, Wilsons’s, and Coyne’s continuing ecstacies (their substitute religion) over the wonders and beauties of the life forms produced by evolution. The fact is that the Darwinians believe in value, they believe in purpose, they believe in fitness (in the normative sense of “better” and “best”), they just want to have those things while formally denying that they exist, because if they admitted that they exist, then they would have admitted that God exists.

Also, Dana wrote:

You really do not appear to understand evolution, which you oddly persist in calling “Darwinism” (which would be like insisting on referring to modern quantum physics as Einsteinism).

But some evolutionists do call it Darwinism and refer to themselves as Darwinians. Also, everyone understands that Darwinism means not the theory as it existed at the time of Darwin’s death but the evolutionary theory in its full development. Yet it’s correct to call this Darwinism, as the modern evolutionary theory remains, at its core,—at its scandalously controversial core—Darwin’s theory that random variations naturally selected produce everything that lives.

Also, I find “Darwinism” more precise than “evolutionary theory,” as it clearly denotes the Darwinian evolution by random mutation and natural selection, whereas “evolution” properly means different life forms succeeding each other over time. The Darwinians want to conflate “evolution” with Darwinian evolution, thus making it much harder for people to think critically about the Darwinian theory of how evolution occurs. They say, for example, that “evolution” has been proved, meaning that the gradual succession of life forms on earth has been proved, but they want their readers to believe that the Darwinian theory of how this evolution occurred has been proved. The only way to resist this pervasive conceptual confusion, which is promoted by the Darwinians themselves, is to keep distinguishing between evolution and the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Robert B. writes:

Darwinism does not apply at all in this circumstance. Man has intervened to enable this man’s behavior. Without the modern welfare state, it would not be possible. Either the women and/or the children would starve to death or someone would have killed this man long ago.

This man is, instead, a product of socialism.

LA replies:

In the initial entry I was pushing the boundaries to the point of humor, but I was really just applying Darwinism consistently. You say that this man is a product of socialism. I agree. But whence cometh socialism? According to Darwinism, humans and their political institutions are themselves nothing but products of the naturalistic Darwinian process. So, how does nature red in tooth and claw produce the welfare state for mentally subnormal racial others? Yes, yes, I know, altruistic genes and all that, but the Darwinian explanations for altruism are even more of a fairy tale than the tales for biological evolution. Jerry Coyne, in the most recent and highly regarded book explaining the truth of Darwinism, has NO EXPLANATION OF HUMAN MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS. Zilch, nada. He doesn’t even pretend to. Meaning that he has no explanation for any human capability of intentional choice that would take humans beyond being mechanical toys whose every action is determined by naturally selected random genetic mutations that occurred in their ancestors. So, again, how do genes selected solely for their ability to achieve the reproductive out-competition of all others, lead to the welfare state that subsidizes the mass reproduction of mentally subnormal others?

As I said to Leonard, doesn’t he feel even a twinge of discomfort about all this?

Leonard D. writes:

“Do you really not sense something amiss here?”

Of course I sense something amiss there. But not in human evolutionary terms; in terms of our society and our civilization. Western civilization was created by intelligent men. I do not know what was necessary for it, in terms of human culture. But I am quite confident that linking reproduction to the ability to support children was a part of it. This is what patriarchy does: it harnesses men to create wealth. Hatchett is a harbinger of the new matriarchal society progressives are building. It is that society I sense as wrong, in part simply because the American culture I grew up in is patriarchal, but also in part because I fear that matriarchy will not support our civilization at anything like its current level of sophistication, complexity, and wealth. I do not want America culture to turn into one large inner city.

LA replies:

But everything humans do is determined by the Darwinian process. I forget if I posted something on this, but I meant to say a few days ago that I had been feeling vaguely uncertain for some time about my statements that there was no basis for human rational choice in the Darwinian scheme. I thought maybe I was missing something here, maybe the Darwinians had a good theory of how humans had some incredible genetic mutation that gave them intentional consciousness and so they ceased to be merely determined animals and acquired the ability to make deliberate choices that went against and beyond Darwinian processes. But in reading Jerry Coyne, the current designated Darwinian authority for the general reader (so far I’ve read the last two chapters of his book dealing with human evolution and the first two chapters), I found to my utter astonishment that there is not even a claim for a Darwinian origin of human consciousness and human culture. Which leaves humans as part of the mindless naturalistic process. Which leaves them with no ability to do anything that transcends the combination of chance mutations and maximal-reproductive determinism known as Darwinian evolution. So, just as Darwinism has no explanation for human consciousness and moral reasoning (as we’ve discussed at length in other entries), Darwinism has no explanation for insanely destructive human behavior such as constructing a welfare state for low IQ high breeders.

LA continues:

The above comment would be more accurate if I changed the phrase, “Darwinism has no explanation for X and Y,” to, “Darwinism is totally incompatible with X and Y,” or, “Darwinism precludes X and Y.”

Phillip M. writes from England:

“Man fathers 21 children by 11 different women … and he’s only 29”

Liberals like Hilary Clinton love to quote the “wise” African saying “it takes a village to raise a child.” It never occurs to them that the reason it takes a whole village is that there are no fathers to look after them. If a liberal ever quotes this to you, say to them “oh really? In my country it only takes two people. What are they doing wrong?”

In the context of this story, it is of course the Tennessee taxpayers that are taking the role of the “village.”

A. Zarkov writes:

You write:

“I was deliberately using the word in both senses, to point to the unlikelihood of the notion that mere mechanical success in reproductive competition could produce new organs and species and high-level human beings. Further, I was also directing my comments at the conservative sociobiologists who believe that evolutionary forces in and of themselves produce a viable, conservative society.”

which I think points out that mere reproductive fitness does not necessarily lead to overall fitness. In other words, we can’t rely on the mysterious forces of Darwinian evolution alone to produce a society that’s better in all ways, or at least in ways that human volition might desire. In the United States Hispanics are certainly more fit than white people. Their Total Fertility Rate is about 4 versus 1.87 for whites. They even have a longer life expectancy. The Hispanic population is increasing in the U.S. while the white population is decreasing. Who is more fit according to Darwin? Moreover, Total Fertility Rate in Mexico is 2.3, showing that Mexicans in the U.S. are even more fit in that they are able to draw resources away from whites and use them to increase their own fertility and ultimate power. Thus in a competition, Hispanics win over whites who seem on the whole only too happy to give away their resources. Ultimately the U.S. becomes Mexico, who wins the fitness race in less than 100 years.

Alex H. writes:

Desmond Hatchett is the modern-day cuckoo bird.

Don’t miss the YouTube video, at about 1:17, where it shows the docket listing the names of the various “wimmins.”

Ken Hechtman writes:

But if Darwinian evolution and sociobiology were true, then how could a society evolve that enables its least intelligent and least competent individuals to produce the most children?

Could someone please ‘splain that to me?

This is easy. “Fitness,” in the Darwinian sense, applies to quantity of life in the next generation. It has absolutely nothing to do with quality of life.

Before you ask, yes, Darwinians do know that that makes it a circular definition and yes, we do find that vaguely unsatisfying. But what are we going to do? Contradict the great prophet Darwin? We’re stuck with the unsatisfying term.

There are no end of discussions in Darwinian circles about exactly this question, why intelligence is not synonymous with “fitness.”

Tim W. writes:

Two years after the Christian-Newsom killings we get this Desmond Hatchett character. It reminds me of why I never stray off Magnolia Avenue when heading into downtown Knoxville.

Regarding survival of the fittest, and the presumed advantage of producing more offspring, I’ve always thought something was odd. I don’t profess to be a scientist. I’m a complete layman in that regard. But some things that are supposedly true about evolution seem illogical. Perhaps someone can address them.

Supposedly the first life on earth was a micro-organism of some sort. All life on earth is alleged to have evolved from this minuscule organism. Yet micro-organisms seem to be quite fit at surviving and reproducing. All they have to do is split. After all these millions or billions of years, micro-organisms are not only still around, but outnumber the larger organisms by an incredible margin.

Yet we’re told that survival of the fittest led to some of these tiny organisms eventually evolving through various stages into larger creatures. But to reproduce, those larger creatures must find a mate, go through a mating ritual, go through a gestation period, and then they must care for their offspring for a period of time. This means that evolutionary progress led to a quick, simple method of reproduction developing into a complex, lengthy, more difficult to succeed method. [LA replies: And mating and childrearing at the human level is vastly more complicated than among other animals.]

Also, we tend to think of huge creatures as being high on the evolutionary scale. Certainly higher than single cell organisms. Yet they’re less survivable due to high vulnerability to food shortages, environmental change, and even hunting practices. Whales and elephants are often found on the endangered species list. Eagles are endangered, but sparrows aren’t. Dinosaurs became extinct. People even worry about giant redwoods becoming extinct. So what is the evolutionary reason for tiny creatures that have a high survival rate evolving into huge creatures that can become extinct if the temperature changes a few degrees?

Just a few questions someone might want to tackle.

LA replies:

The Darwinians would say that 600 million years ago a sub-population of these microorganisms somehow ended up in an ecological niche different from the niche of the main population. In this changed environment, the normal features of that species were less adaptive, and so there was selective pressure for new features to develop by random genetic mutation and natural selection. The main body of the species, which was not subjected to unusual environmental pressures, continued as was, while the subpopulation of the species began to evolve.

However, your main point is absolutely correct: there is no plausible or imaginable reason why organisms that could survive and reproduce with effortless ease should evolve by random genetic mutation and survival of the fittest into vastly larger and more complicated species for which survival and reproduction is much more difficult and complicated. If evolution really were controlled by random genetic mutation and natural selection, the only life on earth would be, at most, bacteria.

Richard H. writes:

Nothing in your story is evidence against the truth of the theory itself. It seems to me that your beef here is with the terminology used by the Darwinists. I say my computer “tries” to beat me in chess or “wants” to take my queen but I’m not superimposing meaning on my hard drive. It’s just a convenient and necessary way of talking about things; I’m not going to go into a discussion about computer programming every time I talk about playing chess.

Also, many terms when used in scientific literature mean different things than they do in common parlance. Such is the case with “fitness.”

LA replies:

You write:

I say my computer “tries” to beat me in chess or “wants” to take my queen but I’m not superimposing meaning on my hard drive. It’s just a convenient and necessary way of talking about things;

Just wondering, but what about when you are speaking about yourself or another person? When you say that a friend of yours is “trying” to defeat you in chess or that he “wants” to take your Queen, is that just a convenient and necessary way of talking about things? Is your friend, like the computer, really just a machine but you have to talk about him as though he had intentional consciousness because it’s convenient and necessary to do so?

I ask this not to give you a hard time but because according to Darwinism there is no essential difference between a human being, an animal, and a computer; they are all machines being run by their respective programs.

Second, your example of the computer is not good, because people rarely in fact talk that way about computers, attributing to them intention. But people do constantly speak that way about evolution, attributing to it intention.

Which leads to the question: Why is the teleological way of talking necessary and convenient when talking about evolution? Because it makes evolution intelligible. Why do Darwinians NOT use the proper and consistent Darwinian way of talking about the evolution of organisms? Because it’s not intelligible. It doesn’t make sense of the world as we actually experience and know it. Which strongly suggests that the Darwinian way of talking about evolution isn’t true.

When Darwinians use teleological language to describe Darwinian evolution to the public, thus leading the public inchoately to believe that there is some kind of purpose in Darwinian evolution, which makes Darwinian evolution acceptable to them, which it would not be if evolution were described in honest terms, the Darwinians are guilty of profound bad faith. You may say that their inappropriate way of talking about evolution does not mean that Darwinian evolution itself is untrue. I disagree. I would say that when an entire scientific establishment unceasingly uses dishonest language to describe their theory, that is a strong sign that the theory itself is not true.

Adams writes:

Landru had sexual relations with 283 women. He was found guilty of 11 murders.

And guess what his race is? Just guess.

LA replies:

I don’t know who “Landru” is, but—white?

Remember that Don Giovani had relations with over 1,000 women. And white serial murderers are common.

But “had 21 children by 11 women by age 29”?

Seriously, drop the liberal piety about racial stereotyping, and honestly tell me what you think the odds are that a man who has had 21 children by 11 women by age 29, four of the children in one year by four different women, would be any other than a black. Go on. Tell me.

Also, Wilt Chamberlain, who called the AIDS infected Magic Johnson his role model in that department (or maybe Johnson called Chamberlain his role model), boasted that he had had relations with 20,000 women.

LA continues:

I realize I’m taking this thread off in another direction but I misremembered. In Leporello’s aria to Donna Elvira enumerating his master Don Giovanni’s amorous conquests (here is YouTube, here is text of aria with English translation), he lists 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey, and 1,003 in Spain:

In Italia seicento e quaranta;
In Alemagna duecento e trentuna;
Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;
Ma in Ispagna son gia mille e tre.

* * *

Also, here is an audio of the aria, by Yoram Chaiter & Technion Symphony Orcestra:

What is my point in bringing upDon Giovanni ? I had none when I first mentioned it. But now I realize there is one. The most famous seducer of women in the white West is the subject of one of the greatest works of art in the world.

And here is the finale of Don Giovanni, beginning with the terrifying sound of sustained D minor chord that seems to promise damnation. Don Giovanni comes to the Commendatore’s tomb and keeps stubbornly rejecting the bidding of the Commendatore that he repent, until, after his final “No!”, he is sent to hell. Then the good, pious people come out and rejoice over the downfall of their enemy. It is one of the most cosmic moments in all art. On one level, Donna Anna and Ottavio are merely conventional, sentimental, self-righteous, they do not attract us as does that force of nature Don Giovanni. On another level they are singing this music of cosmic joy that completely transcends their conventional selves, showing us the nature of the world. I don’t remember if Nietzsche wrote about Don Giovanni, but it strikes me as a consummate fulfilment of his idea of the tragic as laid out in The Birth of Tragedy.. (For all I know, Nietzsche himself makes that point in BoT, and I am just echoing him.)

May 29

Ian B. writes:

The truth is, as you’ve seen here, that Darwinists have a protean (or “evolving” if you will) definition of fitness. It means whatever they need it to mean at the moment.

If you point out somebody like Desmond Hatchett, you’ll be told that “fitness” in Darwinian terms is a relative thing, and that it only means whatever happens to survive and reproduce the most in at a given time and place, and implies no long-term goals. Note that this definition of fitness renders “survival of the fittest” tautological and hence non-explanatory, and that it gives no in-principle explanation for the apparent design of large-scale, complex biological features.

On the other hand, if you ask about the origin of complex, integrated structures, such as the flagellum, or the eye, or the human brain, or even civilization itself with all its norms and institutions, you’ll be told a story of increasing fitness over time, as if fitness were an objective and cumulative thing that Darwinian evolution has a long-term goal of building up, rather than just whatever goes at the moment.

Zachary W. writes:

“Darwinian evolution” (or Darwinian selection) is a widely used term among evolutionary biologists for exactly the reason you point out: it implies the mechanism of natural selection, vs. all other mechanisms (e.g. types of genetic drift).

However, your question (“if Darwinian evolution and sociobiology were true, then how could a society evolve that enables its least intelligent and least competent individuals to produce the most children?”) is not a good one, in my opinion. If anything, it’s evidence for Darwinian evolution, in the sense that Mr. Hatchett is probably quite competent in his circle, and his children would no doubt have excellent fitness in Africa, where their mothers’ ancestors presumably developed their sexual tastes (and promiscuous leanings).

Let me add that I find some of your posts on Darwinism really challenging and thought-provoking. Keep up the good work.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 28, 2009 04:20 PM | Send