HBD’er says I’m too liberal and rejects idea that blacks are human

John F. writes (August 29):

Regarding the debate between you and the HBD’ers, the contradiction is not between religion and HBD [Human Biodiversity] or even religion and Darwin. I can balance them both.

It is between HBD/Darwinism and any religion based on equality. Not just sexual or racial, but also “the equality of all souls” espoused by your religion, Christianity.

A perfect example is your post, “The problem of racial differences, again,” in which you decide that blacks are inferior in intellect and civility and all sorts of things, but then say, “But that doesn’t mean that black Africans are worthless or less than human” and expend a surprising amount of compassion on the issue.

This is really all it is. You still believe in the equality of all souls, for reasons I don’t understand, while all HBD’ers would see no such “dilemma” in declaring that Stephen Hawking and Trigg Palin are not of the same species, and could not conceive of seeing Snoop Dogg as equally “created in the image of God” as Mozart. Nor can I, honestly, and surely, nor could Nietzsche.

But that doesn’t preclude a religion that accepts inequality.

LA replies:

You are not just rejecting liberal equality. You are not just rejecting the liberal Christian idea of “equality of all souls” (which I also don’t believe in, and if you read the Gospels you will see that Jesus certainly didn’t believe in it, since he constantly speaks of how unequal people are, and I’ve never seen the phrase “equality of all souls” in any traditional Christian liturgy). No. You go further. You reject the idea that human beings are members of the same species. You are saying that blacks are not human beings. You are saying that a Downs Syndrome child is not a human being. Basically you’re saying that any human that doesn’t come up to your standard is not human. Which actually means that you DO believe in equality, since, according to you, people who are too unequal can’t be members of the same species. For you, humanity must be completely equal. You exclude from humanity those not equal to yourself.

Obviously I reject this. The falsity and ugliness of your view is a direct result of your materialism. If you’re a materialist, everything is on one level. So if a black is less intelligent than you, he is absolutely of a different order and is not a human being. And in this you show your philosophical commonality with liberals. Liberals, like you, reject traditional Christianity, reject the God of the Bible. They believe everything is on one level, though they express this level not in terms of materialism, as you do, but in terms of the equality of all human selves and desires. And therefore if blacks are inferior to whites in faculties, intelligence and so on, that means that their choices and desires, their very selves, are inferior to ours, and therefore (since there is only one level of reality), blacks are absolutely inferior to us, they are completely other from us, they are not really human beings, and we can kill them. That is the terror that drives liberals to deny the manifest facts of racial differences. Lacking belief in God, they think that if it is accepted that blacks are of a lesser order of abilities than ourselves, we will kill them. And so they fanatically suppress and demonize the truth of racial differences. Ironically, your Nazi-like belief and the liberals’ belief is the same, since you both believe that if a race is different in abilities from our own, we can treat them as non-human. The only difference between you and the liberals is that you embrace that conclusion, and they fear it. But the liberals’ premise, that humanity cannot accommodate significant differences, is identical to your own.

Traditionalist Christianity, unlike liberal Christianity, allows us to see two levels at the same time. On one level, we are different, and human society needs to recognize those differences, and, for example keep mutually incompatible peoples apart, in different societies. On another level, we are all human beings. And we do not have the right to regard other human beings as things to whom we can do what we will. Which is clearly your view.

You say that I believe that Snoop Doggy Dog is made in the image of God. That distorts the whole biblical idea. When we say that man is created in the image of God, that doesn’t refer to the actual, sinning, flawed, and disgusting person before us. It refers to what we are created to be. and what we have rejected through sin, thus becoming distorted and monstrous. But because you reject God and the Christian idea of sin, you cannot conceive that man is created to be in the image of God, and that through sin he turns away from God and the image of God. Your one-level, reductionist view of existence leads you to a position which at least implicitly and perhaps explicitly is indistinguishable from Nazism.

In my earlier, hard line article about race differences that you link, I laid out policies that would result in profound racial inequality in outcome in America. Then I continued:

But what about Africa? Is Africa destined to be forever behind the other continents? In a word, yes. But that doesn’t mean that black Africans are worthless or less than human—which is the way the liberals see such an acceptance of difference. It means that a different type of society is appropriate for blacks compared to other races. Blacks have their own qualities, their own way of being. As long as there is the refusal to recognize racial differences, it will remain impossible to organize life in Africa in a way suited to the abilities of its people.

I believe that man is created in the image of God, and that includes blacks. But that doesn’t mean that all peoples have the same abilities. We are all one, in that we are all human. But we are different, in that we belong to different nations, cultures, races with very different qualities. True diversity means accepting the diversity of the human race.

And you object to this, because I “expend a surprising amount of compassion” on blacks. In other words, a re-ordered society, with a complete rejection of racial equality in outcomes, with whites restored in their rightful place in America, would not be satisfactory to you, so long as whites still regarded blacks as human beings. As long as blacks are seen as human beings, that, for you, is still the regime of “liberal equality.” You define as “liberal equality” anything short of your Nazi-like view of the human race.

You asked your question, I’ve answered it, and there is no need for further discussion between us.

* * *

In connection with the above, also see my August 31 entry, “Conservatism, God, and HBD.”

- end of initial entry -

John Dempsey writes:

You wrote:

“Basically you’re saying that any human that doesn’t come up to your standard is not human. Which actually means that you DO believe in equality, since, according to you, people who are too unequal can’t be members of the same species. For you, humanity must be completely equal. You exclude from humanity those not equal to yourself.”

This is extremely insightful and it makes perfect sense. Most people would not have been able to see this on his terms, as you have here. I certainly didn’t before I read your reply. Your follow up is excellent.

September 8 John F. replies:

It was you, not me, who came to the conclusion of black inferiority. I emailed you simply to try to reconcile your own position to yourself. So, to post in public that I’m the one rejecting black people’s humanity, is simply wrong. I am rejecting your position for being contradictory.

To come to the conclusion that blacks are incapable of all the things that make life worth living, yet still try to carve out a place for them, is inconceivable to me. But even if I came to that conclusion, I would not behave like a Nazi, but rather I would help them evolve up and find those things.

Simply put, I have too much love for high-functioning humans, the founders of the West, which I regard as the only ones behaving in the image of God, by fulfilling the meaning of man. I guess I am left wondering what exactly it is that you value.

You have always been trying to thread the needle and see reality as multi-layered, so I approach you respectfully with my disagreement, as a God-fearer, though surely you look at me as a Gnostic.

PS Also, if I am wrong to say Christianity is not “equality of all souls,” then let it be “all souls have the potential for salvation.” Is that right?

LA replies:

You write:

“It was you, not me, who came to the conclusion of black inferiority. I emailed you simply to try to reconcile your own position to yourself. So, to post in public that I’m the one rejecting black people’s humanity, is simply wrong. I am rejecting your position for being contradictory.”

Your reply shows a failure of reading comprehension. I said as clearly as could be said, that to say a group is inferior in intellectual endowments is not the same as saying that they are not human. Yet you ignore what I clearly said and keep asserting that it’s a contradiction to say that blacks are inferior in certain respects yet human.

You deny a Nazi-like program. I’m glad to hear it. Then you say you want to help blacks “evolve up,” i.e., to evolve up from their present, non-human state to the human state. That’s interesting. First, why should you care? Second, for whites to get involved in helping blacks evolve to a higher level means a project infinitely more ambitious and costly and draining on whites’ energies than liberal egalitarianism. It’s a bizarre position for you to take. Third, your belief that we have the power over evolution and can help non-humans evolve into humans is bizarre beyond belief.

You wrote:

“Simply put, I have too much love for high-functioning humans, the founders of the West, which I regard as the only ones behaving in the image of God, by fulfilling the meaning of man. I guess I am left wondering what exactly it is that you value.”

For you to say that you don’t know what I value, after what I’ve said about getting rid of egalitarianism and restoring whites to their rightful place in charge of their own society and their own destiny, shows a total lack of comprehension.

“Also, if I am wrong to say Christianity is not ‘equality of all souls,’ then let it be ‘all souls have the potential for salvation.’ Is that right?”

In my view, yes. But as Jesus said over and over (though modern Christians ignore it), only very few are saved. Entrance to the kingdom of heaven is not democratic. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” “Narrow is the gate, and straight is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”

At the same time, we are only human, we don’t know what our and other people’s destiny is. We’re not 17th century Puritans who claimed to be able to know who is destined to be saved and who isn’t. However, I’m not versed in modern Calvinist theology. Perhaps modern Calvinists still claim to know who is saved and who isn’t.

But this is taking us beyond the subject.

However, Ian B. has sent a comment which makes a point similar to what I was going to say, so I’ll let him say it.

Ian B. writes (this comment was sent before the most recent exchange between John F. and me was posted):

I had wanted to write to you last week about why the HBD crowd makes me extremely uneasy, but never got around to it. However, your commenter John F. has, by demonstration, helped me make my point more succinctly than I otherwise could have.

The problem is that having part of the truth can be more dangerous than having none of it. Liberals believe that there is no God. If there is no God, then humans are simply a species of mammal that happens to be distinguished by a greater degree of intelligence than other animals. From this it follows that individuals with greater intelligence are more human than individuals with lower intelligence, and from that it follows that it is in principle okay to treat them in ways that we treat animals of lower intelligence (ie, for food, clothing, and medical experimentation).

In order to avoid this ugly Nazi-like logic, liberals try to hold on to a belief in human equality, but because they don’t believe in God, they cannot ground the concept of equality on the idea of equal value in God’s eyes. Instead, they formulate a preposterous premise of material equality, according to which each gender and all races are exactly equal in their physical capacities (and especially intelligence), and they furiously guard this unsupported notion, by threat of violence if necessary, against any and all contrary evidence.

This invincible, closed-minded ignorance to facts and reason, backed up by social and legal threats, is obnoxious in the extreme, but it’s important to remember that it serves as a check on even worse behavior. You can catch a glimpse of what this worse behavior would be like by observing how liberals treat those humans that are too unequal to maintain the pretense of material equality, namely the unborn and the infirm: they are chaff, of no value, to be thrown away at whim.

So to sum up, liberals believe that there is no God, and they believe in material equality. They are wrong on both counts. They are shielding themselves from the effects of one lie by concocting another one, and so they have none of the truth.

The HBD’ers, in attacking the material equality lie, have part of the truth, but they happily promote the original lie that necessitated the second one.

Now, here is where I would normally lay out the logical consequences of this position, and expect the inevitable backlash from atheists accusing me of slander on the grounds that they personally don’t believe the logical implications of their own position. Luckily, John F. has saved me the trouble.

I’ll just say that I don’t think that HBD displacing liberalism on a mass societal scale is anything that any conservative should hope for. The results would almost surely be the return of Nazi-style eugenics, only with different targets this time. As I said, part of the truth can be more dangerous than none of it.

Jeff W. writes:

In my mind, souls are equal because they are equally loved by God. No soul is beyond redemption.

Because of our human limitations, we are not qualified to judge human worth. It is wrong to attempt to make such judgments. Nor should we ever pretend to know who is saved (I say this as a modern Calvinist).

Because there is a near-infinite gap between the God and man, we should also recognize that we humans are such small beings that we are all nearly equal in our smallness.

Because humans are equally loved by God, we are also equally worthy of being loved by other people. This is not the same as saying that people of differing abilities should be stewards of material resources of equal value. Important responsibilities should obviously be assigned to the most capable workers. But even those who perform the most humble tasks, or who are incapable of doing any work at all, should be equally loved.

These HBD’ers you are running into are another species of materialists who ignore the existence of God and love. They ignore what is central to human happiness. Like godless Randists and Communists, they claim they deserve to rule because they have figured it all out. It is best to let these materialists fight among themselves, and with other types of nihilists, while going about other business.

Here is a link to an image that helps illustrate the smallness of man.

Michael Jose writes:

John F. wrote:

“It was you, not me, who came to the conclusion of black inferiority. I emailed you simply to try to reconcile your own position to yourself. So, to post in public that I’m the one rejecting black people’s humanity, is simply wrong. I am rejecting your position for being contradictory.”

What you (Mr. Auster) actually have said is that blacks on average are less intelligent than whites, which is largely innate, and that they tend to be less civil and more violent (which may be partially innate but is also something that can be controlled if society demands a certain level of behavior). It is not obvious to me why this would make them inferior in terms of their humanity, unless you view people as means to an end who are only valuable for their ability to accomplish things.

John F. wrote:

“To come to the conclusion that blacks are incapable of all the things that make life worth living, yet still try to carve out a place for them, is inconceivable to me.”

This statement was the one that floored me the most. When did anyone ever say that blacks are incapable of the things that make life living? There are lots of things that make life worth living that do not take much IQ at all. Does John F. think that a high-school dropout’s life is not worth living, or even someone who graduated high school but not college?

Moreover, the implication of saying that someone’s life is not worth living is that they should die. So I don’t see the Nazi comparison as far-fetched.

“Simply put, I have too much love for high-functioning humans, the founders of the West, which I regard as the only ones behaving in the image of God, by fulfilling the meaning of man.”

No, he has hatred (or indifference) for non-high functioning humans. This reminds me of something I thought of a while back: the flaw of the racist is not his love of his own race, it’s his hatred of other races. As for behaving in the image of God, I’m not certain what he means by that. People of all levels of ability can demonstrate that they were made in God’s image; the issue is not your ability but whether you use it to God’s glory. Apparently John F. assumes that only those who aare on the cutting edge of science and culture (which, he apparently believes, is currently exclusively the province of Caucasians) are truly demonstrating the image of God. Of course, considering that God is all-knowing, unchanging, and not in need of progress or discovery, this is sort of an odd test to use.

LA replies:

I thank Michael for bringing out points about John F.’s strange attitudes better than I did.

I’d say the explanation for John F.’s statements is that he is someone who from an early age has valued high IQ and high mental functioning above all else, like your classic Mensa member, and dismisses everything else about life; and that that attitude, combined with the materialist reductionist teachings of HBD and racial Darwinism, which teaches that genes and competition to spread superior genes are all that we are, led him to believe that if people are less intelligent than us they’re not in the same species.

Leonard D.writes:

I hope that you will not take John F.”s attitudes as paradigmatic for HBD believers. I don’t think they are.

John F. writes as if our intelligence is the only thing that makes us human, or that matters. But this is manifestly untrue. We have many traits that are unrelated to intelligence, or only loosely. For example, we, alone among animals, communicate complex ideas via language. We alone create music. We take pleasure in forming plans and executing them successfully. But we also have many traits we share analogically with animals, which are nonetheless specifically human. For example, we appreciate the human form. We love our children. Of course, animals probably “think” each other good looking. And they “love” their young. But regardless of how similar their hypothesized emotions are to ours, those emotions are focused on animals (their own species), not humans.

All of these aspects of humanity (and others not mentioned) might be “social constructs.” That is the position of the progressive left. Or to be fair: progressives only believe that those that matter are social constructs. HBD is an assertion that many human qualities are not purely socially constructed, but rather, at least partly genetically determined. And this is why intelligence assumes such disproportionate influence in the debate: its importance is accepted by the progressives (and even celebrated—privately), but against voluminous evidence, its genetic links are denied.

Nonetheless, humans are biodiverse in many ways; very few of our physical traits or mental traits are independent of our genes. And all of this stuff, not just IQ, is of interest to those willing to entertain the notion of HBD. Steve Sailer spends plenty of time discussing sports, not because he is a big jock or sports fan, but because competitive sports are one domain where good evidence of HBD will naturally out. It’s hard to maintain that there’s something social that explains why all the best sprinters are West African men.

Given that there are many aspects of being human, it is impossible to construct any total ordering of people. (Indeed this will almost certainly be true even with just two important aspects if they are unrelated.) With no total ordering, there can be no absolute superiority and inferiority. Thus we can only speak sensibly of superiority within specific contexts.

I don’t see any conflict with HBD with any serious brand of conservative thought.

LA replies:

I like Leonard’s “multiple” view of what makes us human, and I particularly agree with his point that superiority has meaning only within specific contexts.

September 9

Alan Roebuck writes:

Although it was tangential to your main point, you said something about Calvinism to which I must respond, because my church is Calvinistic.

You said

At the same time, we are only human, we don’t know what our and other people’s destiny is. We’re not 17th century Puritans who claimed to be able to know who is destined to be saved and who isn’t. However, I’m not versed in modern Calvinist theology. Perhaps modern Calvinists still claim to know who is saved and who isn’t.

Calvinism (i.e., one of the two main Protestant ways of interpreting the Bible) does not claim that man can know who will be saved. Predestination, i.e., God choosing, in eternity past, whom He will save, is not knowledge available to man. Calvinism—more correctly called Reformed theology—calls on Christians to preach the Gospel whenever possible: The elect will hear it and be saved (perhaps after a long process) and the non-elect (the reprobate) will reject it and be damned.

In fact, Reformed theology makes allowance for the fact that we don’t know who is saved: Begin with the idea that those who really are saved will remain saved, because what God foreordains will certainly happen. Add in the fact that some people who make a profession of faith and appear to be Christians will go on later to repudiate the faith. This means it is possible that some who appear to be our fellow Christian are not really Christians. But Calvinism says that we must make a “judgment of charity,” and treat those who appear to be believers as genuine believers.

On a practical level, Reformed theology is no different from its opposite, Arminianism, which claims that not even God knows who will be saved (or that He knows because He “looks down the corridor of time,” and not because He made it happen.) Both schools hold that we must treat people as if they have free will, and will be influenced by what we say. In fact, Reformed theology holds that man does have free will, in the sense that he can choose whatever he wants to choose. But man does not have free will in the sense that his actions are unpredictable even to God, nor in the sense that he can freely will to choose something that he does not want to choose!

The reason Calvinists are sometimes held to know who will be saved is largely because of lowbrow anti-Calvinistic propaganda which distorts Calvinism to make it sound like an absurd and unbiblical system.

Christian apologist Greg Koukl has said “Calvinism describes what goes on behind the scenes.” On stage, as it were, we see people, including ourselves, making what appear to be free choices. On stage, our actions are the causes of other actions, including even that some people come to Christ and are saved. God foreordains the means as well as the ends. But behind the scenes God, operating in a way that we canot even in principle grasp, makes it happen.

All this is not abstract philosophizing, as some have accused reformed theology of being. It is all based on biblical passages; quite a few of them, in fact.

Bottom line: we don’t know the future. All we know is that God does, and that He makes it happen.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 05, 2009 03:27 PM | Send