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Why Darwinism is compelling, and why it is false
Kristor writes:
Darwinism is an extremely compelling paradigm, until you twig its fundamental inadequacy. It seems to explain everything with fantastic, irresistible parsimony, until you realize that the randomness upon which it fundamentally depends, being the opposite of order, can’t “explain” anything at all.
The thing is that the whole edifice of evolutionary biology does indeed explain a great deal, indeed may explain everything about us (in a coherent universe, each general truth entails and comprehends every other), and does certainly support traditionalism—but only if we abandon the randomness that lies at the root of Darwinism. That is, evolutionary biology makes a ton of sense in a world that is ordered toward the realization of certain values. In a world that is not thus ordered, nothing can make any sense.
But a world that is ordered toward the realization of certain values can be comprehended only if it is understood as environed pervasively by some transcendent system of values that, as Alan Roebuck might have said, has some ontological “oomph” to it. Values that, i.e., impose a certain degree of “oughtness” upon everything that happens—and I do mean, absolutely everything. Only in such a world can the concept of natural law, or moral law, have any meaning. In such a world, the laws of physics are seen to be derivative from more basic laws of morality, goodness, aesthetic value. It’s not physics that’s basic, it’s the Good. If there is no compelling vision of the Good, there can be no such thing as physical order—for order of every sort is a moral and aesthetic value. Physics is a department of morals. Amazing that Plato saw this so very long ago. What a guy!
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Jeff W. writes:
Do Darwinists and atheists really think that the laws of physics arose spontaneously somehow out of randomness? How did we get the laws of physics if there is no God?
A concise description of the observed behavior of all forms of matter and all forms of energy, at all levels of scale from the intergalactic to the subatomic, would take up many megabytes of words, numbers, mathematical symbols, charts and drawings. That description would be a very large and compex information structure—and yet it still very much incomplete, as humans continue to make observations. Who wrote it? Not the physicists; they just write down what they observe. Who wrote the underlying rules that govern what physicists observe? Monkeys on typewriters?
Beyond that, how are the laws of physics enforced? As far as man knows, every carbon atom in the universe is exactly the same. Who does the quality control on that? Why are no carbon atoms defective? Nobody really knows. It’s just how things are.
I have no sympathy for atheists, who absurdly pretend to know that there is no God. They are fools. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1)
I believe that the existence of the laws of physics is a powerful proof of God’s existence, and it is a weapon to use against atheists, and that this weapon should be used whenever possible
LA replies:
Agreed. I’ve made a similar argument with regard to one particular physical (or rather chemical) law, in the article, “A simple proof of the existence of God,” in which I coin the term, “the law of eight.” See also the entry , “Did the laws of physics create themselves?”
I don’t know that the materialists and atheists have ever answered these challenges. Perhaps they believe that the laws of physics and chemisty evolved by random change and natural selection.
Tim W. writes:
The usual explanation I hear from Darwinists about the laws of physics is that there are an infinite number of universes, most of which have imperfect physical laws and are thus useless. We just happen to live in the one where those laws are consistent. It’s all just one big coincidence.
Of course, that’s not an explanation at all, just a wild conjecture on the part of the materialists. Not to mention that if there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of structures and possibilities, then there must be one or more in which God exists. And this
LA replies:
“The usual explanation I hear from Darwinists about the laws of physics is that there are an infinite number of universes, most of which have imperfect physical laws and are thus useless. We just happen to live in the one where those laws are consistent. It’s all just one big coincidence.”
People making such arguments are without shame and are not speaking in good faith.
Chuck Ross writes:
I’m surprised at the hypocrisy entwined in your response to Jeff W.’s comment. You routinely get upset and start pitching a fit when someone calls into question your rational argument for God by saying that you rely on faith instead, but you are okay with Jeff W. calling atheists “fools”. Now, I don’t care about fairness, I just care that you are principally unbiased. Just as Jeff W. thinks I’m a fool, I believe he’s just as much one for believing in some silly superstition and quoting it on the Internet.
LA replies:
I think you’re overreacting. Jeff W. was speaking of people who make a particular argument. He wasn’t calling anyone a fool by name, least of all you.
LA continues:
Correction: he wasn’t just speaking of people who made a particular argument. He wrote:
I have no sympathy for atheists, who absurdly pretend to know that there is no God. They are fools. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1)
It looks like Jeff has good authority for that statement. Or perhaps you believe that Christians should be barred from quoting the Bible? Either way, it remains the case that he was not insulting any individual, which, as a general rule, I do not allow at VFR. At the same time, VFR makes no claim to be being a liberal “equal playing field” for all beliefs. It favors Christianity and does not allow Christianity to be gratuitously insulted. In having that policy, I am giving VFR the same rule that I think a well ordered society would have. In a well-ordered society, Christianity could not be publicly derided as “some silly superstition.” In America up to around 1960, such a contemptuous remark about Christianity would not have been allowed—not as a matter of law, but as a matter of shared custom and belief. Meanwhile, the statement, “The fool says in his heart, there is no God,” is several thousand years old, is contained in the Bible, and thus has a good deal more acceptability and authority in our culture than Chuck Ross calling Christianity “some silly superstition.”
LA adds:
Mr. Ross spoke of the “hypocrisy” in my reply to Jeff. W., implying that I was agreeing with Jeff’s “fools” comment. But when I said “Agreed,” to Jeff, I was referring to his remark about physical laws, “the existence of the laws of physics is a powerful proof of God’s existence,” not to his “fools” comment. So I don’t see how there is any basis at all for Chuck’s charge that I was being hypocritical. However, perhaps he will say that even if I wasn’t agreeing with Jeff, the fact that I posted his comment, or at least the part of his comment where he quoted and paraphrased the psalm, was hypocritical. On that score, I return to my point that at this pro-theist website, statements from commenters criticizing atheism in generic terms (e.g. “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God”) are permissible. Such a statement is part of the received wisdom of Western-Christian culture. And atheists, who themselves are members and heirs of that culture, should not be bent out of shape about that. At the same time, when it comes to discussion between theists and anti-theists, atheists are respected as persons and the rules of debate prohibit insulting language by either side about the other participants.
As for atheists who don’t consider themselves to be members and heirs of Western-Christian culture, or who are actively hostile toward it, or who are actively hostile toward Christianity and belief in God, as I’ve said many times, I regard them neither as allies nor as fellow participants in a discussion. They’re on the other side.
To return to the initial issue: Chuck made two salient mistakes in his comment: his charge that he personally was being insulted, when in fact he had not previously been mentioned or referred to in the thread; and his charge that I was being hypocritical for agreeing with Jeff’s “fools” remark, when in fact I did not refer to the remark but only posted it, as a familiar biblical saying, frequently repeated in our culture.
Leonard D. writes:
Atheists have certainly speculated and conjectured some ideas about the origins and nature of the universe and physical law. But this is just speculation. The broader point here is that atheists (and scientists operating within science) simply do not know what the cause(s), if any, of the universe is or are, nor the mechanism(s). In my opinion, they cannot know that. At least not within science. Whatever there was “before the Big Bang” (if such a concept is even meaningful), lies outside the universe and thus outside of science. [LA replies: Wow, you and I are in complete agreement on that point. But doesn’t your statement indicate a break with current scientific orthodoxy, which says science can know everything?]
Similarly, in response to Kristor’s original point, Darwinists (at least those acting as scientists) are not looking for what supernatural order, if any, evolution is acting towards the realization of. Such an order may exist, but it is not a part of science. As such, what appears to us as randomness may not be “really” random viewed from an omniscient viewpoint—but we treat it as randomness anyway.
There is, though, one useful application of metascientific reasoning that I think must necessarily be sound. That is the anthropic principle. The basic idea is that, if the universe’s laws had been such that intelligent life could not have happened, then as a consequence, nobody would exist to observe the universe’s laws. That is, our existence implies the preconditions for our existence.
I do not think such an argument is bad faith. Of course, neither does it get you very far.
Jeff W. writes:
To illustrate the relationship between God and the universe, C.S. Lewis once cited a vision of St. Julian of Norwich. St. Julian said that she saw God in a vision and that “He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazelnut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made.”
In my view, even if there were an infinite number of universes (a conjecture for which there is not one shred of evidence), all of them would fit inside that hazelnut. That is the proper sense of proportion one should have in mind when thinking about the Creator and all that he made.
Kristor writes:
Leonard D. writes:
Similarly, in response to Kristor’s original point, Darwinists (at least those acting as scientists) are not looking for what supernatural order, if any, evolution is acting towards the realization of. Such an order may exist, but it is not a part of science. As such, what appears to us as randomness may not be really random viewed from an omniscient viewpoint—but we treat it as randomness anyway.
Right, this is good. This is what a philosophically careful scientist should do. I just want to point out that there is a pernicious effect, a momentous and vicious effect, to using the word “random” in the term “random variation.” If, as Leonard says, evolutionary biologists don’t really know whether or not the variation is random, they shouldn’t use the word “random.” They should say, rather, “unexplained.” But they do use “random,” and so their lay interpreters understand them to mean that the variation is really, in fact, random—which is to say, “unexplainable in principle, and thus unintelligible, because utterly disordered.” Atheists and liberals can then rely upon this interpretation in their moral calculations: “Oh, it doesn’t really matter what I do, or whether the West survives, because after all everything that happens in the biosphere is the result of random events.”
If they were being truly careful with their terms, evolutionary biologists would have to say something like, “the variations in living form that give rise to different species are not random—for in an orderly, coherent universe there can be no such thing—but, as scientists, we don’t really know what they are. All we can do is point out that the opposite of ‘random’ is ‘teleological.’ ” But note that this is just a weaselly way of saying, “the variations in living form that give rise to different species are teleological.” Scientists could say this, without going so far as to say that they know what the telos is, or how it operates in nature.
They could leave that to the philosophers.
Leonard D. writes:
Contra Kristor, it is not appropriate for a scientist (at least when operating within science) to speculate about telos, at least telos understood as meaning something supernatural. “Random” is perfectly appropriate for describing things that within our finite, human, secular knowledge are not predictable. Now, it is true that “random” is a broad term encompassing many subtly different meanings, and that the lay public is certainly prone to misunderstanding things. But that is not the fault of science, and I doubt anything can be done about it in any case.
Even without bringing in the supernatural, we still use “random” for things that are not completely random. I.e., mutations in DNA are not completely random; because of the chemical properties of DNA some of them are likelier than others. Or consider nuclear decay in atoms: that we can characterize it (with a half-life) means the process is not random in one sense. But that we cannot predict the decay of a given atom means it is random in another sense.
LA replies:
Leonard says:
“Random” is perfectly appropriate for describing things that within our finite, human, secular knowledge are not predictable.
I don’t like this definition of randomness. If random means non-predictable, well, most events are non-predictable. I observe a man getting into his car as he leaves his house. Will he go first to the bank, or to a restaurant? I, the observer, can’t predict it. Therefore it’s random. Everything become random. If unpredictability becomes the definition of randomness, then most acts in the human world, including crimes, are random.
A rapist is looking for a woman to attack. He sizes up a couple of possible victims, all complete strangers, but for various reasons rejects them. Then he sees another woman, also a complete stranger, and follows her and attacks her. Prior to the event, an observer could not have predicted that he would choose that particular woman to attack. Therefore from the “scientific” point of view the attack is “random.” The attack is also “random” from the point of view of today’s police chiefs and crime reporters, since they call any crime that is not planned long in advance against a particular victim “random”; they call all crimes against strangers “random,” which means that virtually all black on white murders and rapes are “random.”
But both the scientific and the liberal definitions contradict the correct, commonsense definition of random, which is (quoting my WordWeb dictionary):
Lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance.
The rape described above is not random. The criminal had an intention, and plan, and then the intention settled on a particular victim. Yes, the particular victim could not have been known in advance, but the crime itself was not random, it was the result of an intention and a plan.
If an event is intended beforehand, it’s not random, even if it’s details could not be predicted.
By contrast, if genetic mutations (i.e. bad copies of genes) happen the way Darwinism says they do, then it is impossible to predict in advance some never-before-seen bad copy of a gene. When such a bad copy occurs, that is truly a random event, like whether a speck of dust from one part of the room or another part of the room will settle on the corner of the table. There was no necessary or discernible or predictable reason for that bad copy of gene to happen, or for one speck of dust as compared with another to settle in that spot. And it is from such randomness that Darwinians believe that all the features of all living things result.
(In this example I’m accepting the Darwinian picture and am not addressing Kristor’s point that genetic mutations may not be random.)
October 15
Leonard writes: I read your reply, and I am in full agreement with you. Thus it is clear I did not express myself clearly in my older email. Like you, I reject the use of “random” for the examples you give of humans carrying out plans. I was not attempting a complete definition in the sentence you quoted. Intended consequences are not random. (Animal actions are an interesting intermediate case. If a hiker in the Rockies is mauled by a bear would you accept calling it a “random animal attack”?)
October 17
Todd White writes:
Kristor wrote: “If there is no compelling vision of the Good, there can be no such thing as physical order—for order of every sort is a moral and aesthetic value.”
In contrast, listen to Dr. William Provine, an evolutionary biologist, explain the moral implications of Darwinism in 37 seconds.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 13, 2009 11:54 AM | Send
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