Morality, Religion & Philosophy: February 2008 Archives

The comments to the first post with this title were quite interesting. Rather that respond at length there, I've decided to put my thoughts in a new post so that the conversation stays near the top of the queue.

I think Ben Bateman has done an admirable job, and his eloquent explanation of Intelligent Design is well worth reading. In response to commenters Bernardo and Mauyr, I think there are a couple of points that Mr. Bateman made that got lost in the shuffle.

1) Mutations are in exponential space, information is in linear space. I don't see how this can be overcome, and in fact long periods of time and large populations work against information accumulation. Despite Mauyr's characterization of natural selection as "aggressively favoring" beneficial mutations, that's only true for mutations that accumulate to the point of being useful. So even if Behe isn't convincing to you, you must concede that his arguments drastically weaken the power of natural selection.

2) Mutations don't seem to be randomly distributed. From my limited research there appears to be a rather small set of very common mutations, all harmful, largely cancerous. (Mostly studied in humans, for obvious reasons.) So the information generation through mutation is probably significantly less than linear in an exponential space. Perhaps logarithmic, but that's purely speculation.

Finally, I think Darwin's motivations and beliefs matter more than, e.g., Newton's or Shakespeare's. Plenty of people have used Darwin's theories to support all sorts of evil, from fascism to eugenics to genocide. I'm not aware of any fans of Newton with an aggressive alchemy agenda. Nor, to my knowledge, does Shakespeare's antisemitism provoke many non-fictional villains.

In fact, I believe that the rise of Darwin's dogma and the vehemence of some of its defenders can be traced back to the same philosophy that motivated Darwin. There are a great many people who desperately want to believe that men are no better than apes, that the human race is a cancer on the planet, that a man is worth no more than what he produces, and that the role of government is to protect and coddle a population that is incapable of self-determination. These are all pernicious deceptions, and evolution is the cornerstone of this philosophy.

People who push evolution would have you believe that they approached the question with complete neutrality, performed some intellectually rigorous research, and subsequently concluded that evolution is the most likely explanation for life as we know it. In fact, their journey was more like this: starting with rejection of God as an axiom, man spent thousands of years searching for an explanation for life that could explain existence without him. Darwin proposed an untestable process that cannot be refuted because it cannot be observed, and because of this non-falsifiability the people who were already eager to discard any notion of the divine latched onto it and built their secular humanist religion upon it. They present evolution as the cause and their disbelief in God as the effect, but in reality those roles are reversed.

Questioning the validity of evolution is unacceptable and provokes rage because it threatens the very foundation of secular humanism. Without a godless creation myth secularists would be forced to confront spiritual matters on a personal level rather than with skepticism and detachment, which is a scary prospect for any man.

Did anyone else have no idea about the full title of Darwin's "masterpiece" that is now commonly referred to simply as On the Origin of Species?

Those who argue at school board meetings that Darwin should be taught in public schools seldom have taken the time to read him. If they knew the full title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, they might have gained some inkling of the racism propagated by this controversial theorist. Had they actually read Origin, they likely would be shocked to learn that among Darwin's scientifically based proposals was the elimination of "the negro and Australian peoples," which he considered savage races whose continued survival was hindering the progress of civilization.

In his next book, The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin ranked races in terms of what he believed was their nearness and likeness to gorillas. Then he went on to propose the extermination of races he "scientifically" defined as inferior. If this were not done, he claimed, those races, with much higher birthrates than "superior" races, would exhaust the resources needed for the survival of better people, eventually dragging down all civilization.

Darwin even argued that advanced societies should not waste time and money on caring for the mentally ill, or those with birth defects. To him, these unfit members of our species ought not to survive.

Uh, yeah. As Professor Tony Campolo writes in the rest of the article, Darwin's philosophy is no less morally and spiritually influenced than the theory of intelligent design. It even has its own gods: whites. I can't figure out why they didn't mention any of this in high school... it's almost like the secular humanist education system was trying to brainwash me by teaching half-truths and concealing all contrary viewpoints.

(HT: Ed Driscoll and Brothers Judd.)

Here's an offensive characterization of modern women!

We can argue endlessly about whether "femininity” is natural or constructed—whether women are innately frigid, needy, and demanding, or socialized to be that way—but there’s no denying the lesson of today’s media marketplace: give young women a choice between adult responsibility on the one hand, and makeup, chick flicks, gold digging, and the Facebook on the other, and it’s the makeup, chick flicks, gold digging, and Facebook by a mile. For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young woman’s default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn girls into women.

Oh no wait, I got the quote wrong:

We can argue endlessly about whether “masculinity” is natural or constructed—whether men are innately promiscuous, restless, and slobby, or socialized to be that way—but there’s no denying the lesson of today’s media marketplace: give young men a choice between serious drama on the one hand, and Victoria’s Secret models, battling cyborgs, exploding toilets, and the NFL on the other, and it’s the models, cyborgs, toilets, and football by a mile. For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man’s default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn boys into men.

How about if people started taking men seriously again and quit being so judgmental? It's not a crime for men to be different from women... civilization seems to have benefited quite a bit from our gender.

(HT: Dr. Helen.)

A few months ago the Heritage Foundation published a new analysis of "poverty" in America that once again illustrates that there is essentially no poverty among the able-bodied in our country.

To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers—to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor. For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 37 million per­sons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity. Most of America's "poor" live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of house­holds equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.[6]

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov­ernment reports:

* Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

* Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

* Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

* The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

* Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher. ...

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrig­erator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had suf­ficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

And the left wants to tax me to buy the impoverished a third color TV?

These sorts of statistics greatly diminish my inclination towards traditional charitable giving. Almost all of my giving now is focused on meeting spiritual needs in America, and meeting physical and spiritual needs in places of the world that are truly destitute. World Vision is a tremendous ministry that not only feeds, clothes, and educates some of the poorest people on the planet, but also introduces them to Christ. (Needs are met without any sort of religious obligation on the part of the recipient, of course.) My wife and I are sponsoring two little girls: Seema in India and Isata in Sierra Leon, who both live in mud huts on dirt floors. Because of our tiny donations these girls are going to school, sleeping with blankets, getting vitamins, and so forth.

Even more directly spiritual, check out Voice of the Martyrs. There are millions of Christians around the world being persecuted right now for their faith and they need our prayers more than they need our money. Sending cards and letters to these imprisoned Christians will also encourage them greatly and has led to reduced sentences when their persecutors become aware of the international scrutiny.