"Darwinist Morality" Is An Oxymoron
Sound of Trumpet
Darwin and the Descent of Morality
By: Benjamin Wiker
First Things
An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support
it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker
asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis
Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil
(as Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a
new foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?
The obvious place to go in the debate is to the source. Darwin himself
considered morality of whatever stripe to be a byproduct of evolution,
one more effect of natural selection working upon the raw material of
variations in the individual. Nature did not "intend" to create any
particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create
one certain length of finch beak. Nor does nature "judge" any
particular type of morality as long as it does not violate the
principle of natural selection. That, as we shall see, allows for such
moral leeway that it creates insuperable problems for conservatives
who might solicit Darwin's help in their cause.
We find Darwin's account of morality in his Descent of Man, a work
published after his more famous Origin of Species. As should be no
surprise, the arguments of the Origin provided the theoretical
foundations for his natural history of morality in the Descent.
True to his naturalist bent, Darwin's natural history of morality (or
more properly, moralities) assumed evolution to be true and sought to
explain how the existing moral varieties could have evolved in the
same way that natural selection had brought about the great variety of
existing species.
For Darwin the "moral faculties of man" were not original and
inherent, but evolved from "social qualities" acquired "through
natural selection, aided by inherited habit." Just as life came from
the nonliving, so also the moral came from the nonmoral.
>From the beginning, then, Darwin rejected the Christian natural law
argument, according to which human beings are moral by nature.
Instead, he followed the pattern of the modern natural right reasoning
of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which assumed
that human beings were naturally asocial and amoral, and only became
social and moral historically. That is why Darwin called his account a
natural history of morality.
For Darwin, in order to become moral we first had to become social.
"In order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man,
should have become social," Darwin reasoned, "they must have acquired
the same instinctive feelings which impel other animals to live in a
body." As with all animal instincts, the "social instincts" of man
were the result of variations bringing some benefit for survival.
What we call "conscience" was also the result of natural selection.
Darwin described it as a "feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably
results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct." Since the "ever-enduring
social instincts" were more primitive and hence stronger than
instincts developed later, the social instincts were the sources of
our feelings of unease when some action of ours violated them. Such
feelings of unease, Darwin explained, we now call "conscience."
It might seem that Darwin's arguments for human sociability and the
moral conscience could be marshaled to support a conservative moral
position. Yet mere "sociality," even with a conscience grounded in
evolutionary imperatives, does not at all mean that nature has created
a definite moral standard, such as natural law. Quite the reverse. At
bottom, everything is variable. As Darwin writes:
If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-
bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would,
like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers,
and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one
would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social
animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some
feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an
inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to
have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought
to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other
wrong.
The same variability holds as well within the natural history of human
moralities as they actually evolved. So, for example, the "murder of
infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and
has met with no reproach." Indeed, "infanticide, especially of
females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not
injurious." As for suicide, in "former times" it was "not generally
considered as a crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an
honorable act. . . . For the loss to a nation of a single individual
is not felt." Neither did infanticide or suicide cause the "feeling of
dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied
instinct." Monogamy, too, Darwin in formed the reader, was a fairly
recent evolutionary phenomenon.
Yet Darwin balked at embracing the relativism he created, and insisted
on ranking evolved moral traits. The unhappy result, however, was his
espousal of views we would today call racist, and his justification of
a program of eugenics.
Ranking evolved moral traits meant ranking the races accordingly. Thus
Darwin cheerfully asserted that the "western nations of Europe
immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the
summit of civilization." As a member of the favored race, Darwin
embraced a typically nineteenth-century view of moral progress.
"Looking to future generations," he wrote, "there is no cause to fear
that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that
virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by
inheritance . . . [so that] virtue will be triumphant."
But the engine of evolution, even moral evolution, is natural
selection. Therefore, Darwin believed that the evolution of morality
would require the extermination of "less fit" races and individuals--a
process that could be helped along by artificial selection, or
eugenics.
This unsavory conclusion was derived directly from the principles of
evolution. We see in animals that, "in regard to mental qualities,
their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic
animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence,
courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. With
man we see similar facts." Since different races, like different
breeds of dogs or horses, develop different capacities, it followed
that distinct gradations in moral capacities would be found among
human races.
Whereas St. Thomas' natural law account began from the assumption that
all human beings belonged to the same species (and were therefore all
subject to the same moral demands), Darwin tried to determine whether
human races should be considered distinct species. In the end, he was
unsure whether to rank the races "as species or sub-species" but
finally asserted that "the latter term appears the most appropriate."
Whether races are species or sub-species, it is easy to see how such
reasoning allowed Darwin to rank the races on an evolutionary scale.
Because natural selection must be the cause of the existence of
different races, Darwin argued that the various races would
necessarily have varying intellectual and moral capacities. So that,
for example, the "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ
as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named."
As we have seen, the Europeans came out on top.
Darwin argued further that the different races created by natural
selection were necessarily and beneficially locked in the severest
struggle for survival. As he put it in the Origin,
It is the most closely allied forms . . . which, from having nearly
the same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the
severest competition with each other; consequently, each new variety
of species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press
hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them.
This argument translated directly to his assessment of the
evolutionary history of human races, and the necessary and beneficial
extinction of the less favored races.
The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and
replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the
anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break
will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a
more civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some ape
as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or
Australian and the gorilla.
The European race will inevitably emerge as the distinct species
"human being," and all the transitional forms--such as the gorilla,
the Negro, and so on--will be extinct.
Furthermore, natural selection functions not only between races, but
also among individuals within races. Here, oddly enough, Darwin
maintained that savage man has an advantage over civilized man. In
savage man, the intellectual and moral qualities are not as developed,
but such lack actually works to weed out the unfit: "With savages, the
weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive
commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health." Unfortunately, the very
development of human compassion which serves to mark the Europeans as
more civilized also works against the principle of survival of the
fittest.
We civilized men . . . do our utmost to check the process of
elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. . . . Thus the
weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who
has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this
must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon
a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of
a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly
anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
What could be done to prevent the European race from devolving under
the influence of the weak and the sick? Let the principles of natural
selection be applied without obstruction. "Man, like every other
animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a
struggle for existence," Darwin reminded the reader, "and if he is to
advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle."
Turning to the wisdom of animal breeders, Darwin proclaimed that
"there should be open competition for all men; and the most able
should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and
rearing the largest number of offspring." The worst, of course, should
not be allowed to breed at all.
How forcefully ought this program to be carried out? Darwin was vague,
but ended with the remark: "All do good service who aid toward this
end."
What may we gather from Darwin's evolutionary account of morality? To
begin with, Darwin rightly understood that bare sociality allowed for
a startling variety of moralities. In contrast to the very determinate
list of requisite virtues, definite commands, and established ends in
the traditional natural law account, evolution brings forth many
different modes of group survival. Just as male lions, when taking
over a pride, kill the young that were fathered by the ousted dominant
male, so also human societies have flourished quite well with the
murder of rivals to regal authority. And just as many female animals
will let the runt of the litter die by refusing it nourishment, so
also many human societies have survived for hundreds of years by
exposing their unwanted and deformed babies. Merely having "social
instincts" includes so much that it excludes almost nothing considered
morally reprehensible.
Although many today would shudder at Darwin's racism, we must concede
that Darwin's conclusions were correctly drawn from his evolutionary
principles. If evolution is true, and the races themselves are the
result of the struggle to survive, then how could intellectual and
moral qualities not be diversely acquired by different races?
As for the survival of the fittest, contemporary liberals have
attempted to separate Darwin from Social Darwinism, but Darwin's own
words advocating severe struggle show us quite clearly that he was the
first Social Darwinist. Conservatives (who are often early modern
liberals in outlook and temperament) sometimes look fondly at the
purifying effects of "severe struggle," substituting economic for
natural battle. Such fondness is not rooted in the natural law of
Aquinas, but, as Leo Strauss argued, in the modern natural right
theory of John Locke (as filtered through Adam Smith). But modern
natural right theory has led to the world according to Pinker and
Dawkins.
Larry Arnhart, in particular, seems to have blurred this fundamental
distinction, for he quotes Aquinas ("Conservatives, Darwin & Design:
An Exchange," FT, November 2000) as saying that "natural right
[emphasis added] is that which nature has taught all animals," when
Thomas actually said that "those things are said to belong to the
natural law [lex naturalis] which nature has taught to all animals."
In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas does not mean to say that natural law
is shared by all animals including human beings--the natural law, as
the "participation of the eternal law in the rational creature,"
pertains only to human beings (I-II, 91.2)--but that natural law
includes natural inclinations shared by other animals, "such as sexual
intercourse, education of offspring, and so forth." But for Darwin, we
don't just share some aspects of our nature with animals. We are
ultimately indistinguishable from other animals, and therefore subject
to the very same laws of evolution.
The effort of Arnhart and others to affirm the premises of evolution,
and to affirm at the same time a morality grounded in natural law,
inevitably fails. Natural law doctrine only makes sense in a universe
governed by a benevolent Creator. Nor will it do to affirm both
Darwinian evolution and a vague theism, for the engine of such
evolution is, on principle, incompatible with any design or direction
from above--and that includes moral design and direction. The
Darwinism of Pinker and Dawkins, one must conclude, is much more
coherent than that of Fukuyama and Arnhart.
Benjamin Wiker teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the
Franciscan University of Steubenville and is a fellow of the Discovery
Institute.
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MarkA
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
Why would the "moral implications" of a scientific theory have ANY bearing
on its validity? Scientific theories are based on EVIDENCE. If they
inconvenience your sense of morality, that's YOUR problem, not the
Universe's.
--
MarkA
(This space accidentally filled in)
Denis Loubet
"Sound of Trumpet" <soundof...@mailcan.com> wrote in message
news:1187920565.0...@l22g2000prc.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
Only if you're a moron.
There's no such thing as Darwinian morality. Just like there's no Newtonian
morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's no gravitic morality or
electrical morality. Basing a morality on gross physical processes is simply
stupid. Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our friend! The
mountains of extinct species is ample proof of that. There's certainly no
reason to model our actions after it.
--
Denis Loubet
dlo...@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
http://www.ashenempires.com
James A. Donald
> There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
Sound of Trumpet does.
>Just like there's no Newtonian
> morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's
> no gravitic morality or electrical morality. Basing a
> morality on gross physical processes is simply stupid.
> Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our
> friend!
Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
result of evolution. Einsteinian physics does not tell
us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
much about our nature.
--
----------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/ James A. Donald
Steven J.
wrote:
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
> evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support
> it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker
> asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis
> Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil
> (as Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a
> new foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?
>
important part of the current controversy over the theoretical status
must be addicted to the logical fallacy of _argumentum ad
consequentiam_. Whether accepting evolutionary theory has good or bad
social effects is a completely different question from whether it is a
good explanation for biological diversity and complexity.
Second, there is, strictly speaking, no contradiction between the
proposition that nonhuman nature, in and of itself, is neither good
nor evil, but a place of, in Dawkins' words, "sheer pitiless
indifference," and the proposition that human beings have an evolved
nature which can be the basis for moral reasoning. Nor is there, for
that matter, a necessary contradiction between the proposition that
infanticide (or rape, or, for that matter, overindulgence in sweets)
is "natural," and the proposition that it is bad for the person doing
it, bad for others, and to be discouraged.
Benjamin Wiker manages to commit two atrocities against rational
thought in his opening paragraph. This is not a good start.
>
> The obvious place to go in the debate is to the source. Darwin himself
> considered morality of whatever stripe to be a byproduct of evolution,
> one more effect of natural selection working upon the raw material of
> variations in the individual. Nature did not "intend" to create any
> particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create
> one certain length of finch beak. Nor does nature "judge" any
> particular type of morality as long as it does not violate the
> principle of natural selection. That, as we shall see, allows for such
> moral leeway that it creates insuperable problems for conservatives
> who might solicit Darwin's help in their cause.
>
Evolutionary theory does not rest on Darwin's personal authority, it
is not limited to (nor does it encompass) his personal views, and his
is not the final word on either the contents or the implications of
evolutionary theory. Wiker here falsely assumes that "Darwinism" is a
basically religious doctrine with dogma and scriptures, in which
questions can be settled by appeals to the prophet and his holy
writings. Again, one cannot expect a very sound analysis by a man so
addicted to bad reasoning.
Still, it must be conceded that most evolutionists hold that human
nature is itself a product of evolution, and with it our moral sense,
and that human morality is indeed contingent rather than some
ontological necessity. But it does not follow, and certainly is not
the case, that all evolutionists must or do agree with Darwin's
particular views on the subject.
>
> We find Darwin's account of morality in his Descent of Man, a work
> published after his more famous Origin of Species. As should be no
> surprise, the arguments of the Origin provided the theoretical
> foundations for his natural history of morality in the Descent.
>
> True to his naturalist bent, Darwin's natural history of morality (or
> more properly, moralities) assumed evolution to be true and sought to
> explain how the existing moral varieties could have evolved in the
> same way that natural selection had brought about the great variety of
> existing species.
>
Wiker might, perhaps, profit from noting the distinction between
"evolution" (common descent: humans and other species share more or
less remote ancestors with one another) and "natural
selection" (differential reproductive success of variant offspring as
the mechanism of adaption). He might profit even more from noting the
difference between an "assumption" that something happened and an
argument that it could, in fact, have happened and that it in fact
did.
>
> For Darwin the "moral faculties of man" were not original and
> inherent, but evolved from "social qualities" acquired "through
> natural selection, aided by inherited habit." Just as life came from
> the nonliving, so also the moral came from the nonmoral.
>
Just in passing, evolutionary theory does not deal with the origin of
life, and Darwin's (or any other evolutionist's) discussion of the
evolution of human morality does not depend on how, or whether, life
had a beginning: it would work as well if (as Fred Hoyle suggested)
primitive life had always been present in the universe, or even if
life were "supernaturally" created.
>
> From the beginning, then, Darwin rejected the Christian natural law
> argument, according to which human beings are moral by nature.
> Instead, he followed the pattern of the modern natural right reasoning
> of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which assumed
> that human beings were naturally asocial and amoral, and only became
> social and moral historically. That is why Darwin called his account a
> natural history of morality.
>
"History," in the phrase "natural history," retains its original sense
of "investigation." A "natural history of morality" is a study of the
nature of morality. Darwin did not distinguish sharply between
biological and cultural evolution (which distinguishes him from many
later "Darwinists" who refined and added to his ideas), but I do not
think he was arguing that the first humans were a moral "blank slate"
upon which social forces etched a moral code. Certainly modern
evolutionists who have turned their minds to this problem have
emphasized how many of our propensities for moral judgment -- our
sense of what is fair or unfair, our tendencies towards compassion or
punishment -- have counterparts in other primates, and presumably
their evolution was well underway before our ancestors became
distinctly human. That is, an attempt to explain the origins of
morality in "Darwinist" terms implies that humans are NOT "naturally
asocial and amoral."
>
> For Darwin, in order to become moral we first had to become social.
> "In order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man,
> should have become social," Darwin reasoned, "they must have acquired
> the same instinctive feelings which impel other animals to live in a
> body." As with all animal instincts, the "social instincts" of man
> were the result of variations bringing some benefit for survival.
>
So Wiker first asserts that Darwin held that humans are innately
asocial, and then asserts that Darwin held that our prehuman ancestors
evolved to be social and that we inherited this trait. He seems less
concerned with logical consistency than one might wish.
>
> What we call "conscience" was also the result of natural selection.
> Darwin described it as a "feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably
> results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct." Since the "ever-enduring
> social instincts" were more primitive and hence stronger than
> instincts developed later, the social instincts were the sources of
> our feelings of unease when some action of ours violated them. Such
> feelings of unease, Darwin explained, we now call "conscience."
>
> It might seem that Darwin's arguments for human sociability and the
> moral conscience could be marshaled to support a conservative moral
> position. Yet mere "sociality," even with a conscience grounded in
> evolutionary imperatives, does not at all mean that nature has created
> a definite moral standard, such as natural law. Quite the reverse. At
> bottom, everything is variable. As Darwin writes:
>
> If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-
> bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would,
> like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers,
> and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one
> would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social
> animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some
> feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an
> inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to
> have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought
> to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other
> wrong.
>
There would be some difficulty in raising men under precisely the same
conditions as hive-bees. Darwin is not, here, talking about how
society shapes morals, but about how evolutionary history and
particular adaptions to particular niches shape morality. He is not
arguing for cultural relativism. He is, to be sure, arguing that
human nature and the human moral sense are not foreordained, necessary
outcomes of evolution, but contingent, which I suppose Wiker finds
offensive enough.
>
> The same variability holds as well within the natural history of human
> moralities as they actually evolved. So, for example, the "murder of
> infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and
> has met with no reproach." Indeed, "infanticide, especially of
> females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not
> injurious." As for suicide, in "former times" it was "not generally
> considered as a crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an
> honorable act. . . . For the loss to a nation of a single individual
> is not felt." Neither did infanticide or suicide cause the "feeling of
> dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied
> instinct." Monogamy, too, Darwin in formed the reader, was a fairly
> recent evolutionary phenomenon.
>
How extremely nasty of Charles Darwin to go around telling people
things that actually happened in the past. He should by no means have
informed his readers that anyone, anywhere might have reached
different conclusions about morality than they themselves had.
Although, it seems to me, in light of Wiker's next words, that Darwin
could be setting the ground for an argument that moral progress is
possible and has been made.
>
> Yet Darwin balked at embracing the relativism he created, and insisted
> on ranking evolved moral traits. The unhappy result, however, was his
> espousal of views we would today call racist, and his justification of
> a program of eugenics.
>
Charles Darwin was not a proponent of eugenics.
>
> Ranking evolved moral traits meant ranking the races accordingly. Thus
> Darwin cheerfully asserted that the "western nations of Europe
> immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the
> summit of civilization." As a member of the favored race, Darwin
> embraced a typically nineteenth-century view of moral progress.
> "Looking to future generations," he wrote, "there is no cause to fear
> that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that
> virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by
> inheritance . . . [so that] virtue will be triumphant."
>
So Darwin was an optimistic subscriber to what has been called "the
Whig view of history." Please note that nowhere in the quoted passage
does Darwin assert that Western Europeans are morally or otherwise
superior to other, contemporary human cultures (he quite possibly did
feel that way, as did so many of his white European contemporaries,
but Wiker nowhere shows this); he speaks of the extent to which they
surpass "their former savage progenitors." Perhaps Wiker feels that
Victorian England was a crueller, less civilized place than Ice Age
Europe. I don't see that it's particularly racist to disagree with
Wiker on that point, though.
>
> But the engine of evolution, even moral evolution, is natural
> selection. Therefore, Darwin believed that the evolution of morality
> would require the extermination of "less fit" races and individuals--a
> process that could be helped along by artificial selection, or
> eugenics.
>
Wiker is confused or dishonest here. Natural selection is about
differential success in leaving descendants, not necessarily about
differential success in killing one's conspecifics. The evolution of
morality requires that individuals who were social, compassionate, and
demanding of fairness succeed in having more children and
grandchildren, on average, than individuals who were asocial,
indifferent or hostile to their neighbors, and who were unconcerned
about whether they treated others fairly or were treated fairly
themselves. The fit and the less fit all die in due time; the
distinction between them is the average number of descendants
inheriting their traits.
There's another point here, by the way: Wiker first complains about
evolution having no goals, and then complains, in quite contradictory
fashion, that "Darwinism" implies that we can help evolution attain
its goals through genocidal eugenics programs. A more logical person
might suppose that no degree of ferocity could possibly help evolution
attain goals that, by its nature, it doesn't have. Darwin's thinking
on this subject was not always consistent (as I've noted, no
evolutionist holds him to be an inerrant authority figure), but he is
more consistent that Wiker: Darwin noted that our evolved compassion
and sense of justice militated against coercive eugenics measures, and
that attempting to prevent the breeding of those we considered "less
fit" would be contrary to our noblest instincts.
>
> This unsavory conclusion was derived directly from the principles of
> evolution. We see in animals that, "in regard to mental qualities,
> their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic
> animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence,
> courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. With
> man we see similar facts." Since different races, like different
> breeds of dogs or horses, develop different capacities, it followed
> that distinct gradations in moral capacities would be found among
> human races.
>
It does not seem to me that it follows, from the principle that there
are inheritable, biologically-based differences among humans in their
moral senses and temperments, that there must be such differences
among "races." By way of analogy, humans have different blood types,
but these blood types are not confined each to a single "racial"
group. Darwin did note that there was no trait on which one could
base a claim of racial superiority that was common to all members of
one "race" and absent in all members of other "races." Furthermore,
it is perfectly possible that "races" differ in the frequency of some
traits but not of others.
>
> Whereas St. Thomas' natural law account began from the assumption that
> all human beings belonged to the same species (and were therefore all
> subject to the same moral demands), Darwin tried to determine whether
> human races should be considered distinct species. In the end, he was
> unsure whether to rank the races "as species or sub-species" but
> finally asserted that "the latter term appears the most appropriate."
>
A magazine, like _First Things_, which prides itself on its
intellectuality and historical scholarship, ought to have writers who
know that the definition of "species" changed somewhat between the
13th and 19th centuries. In St. Thomas's day, the same class of
entities could be a "species" (a particular kind of thing) within a
"genus" (a general kind of thing) for one purpose, and a "genus"
subdivided into "species" for another purpose (e.g. "house" could be
species within the genus "building," and a mansion could be a
"species" within the genus "house"). John Ray, a couple of centuries
before Darwin and four centuries after Aquinas, created the idea of
"species" as a particular biological rank, which could not contain
other species. So technically, in the 13th century, declaring that
all humans belong the the species "rational animal" would not preclude
dividing humans into different species of the genus "rational
animal."
Darwin was considering a question that Aquinas could not have raised.
Oddly, though, Darwin's contemporary creationists could and did raise
it: many of them subscribed to the position Darwin considered and
rejected, that different "races" were different species. Note that
for a 19-century creationist, this would imply that different "races"
did not share common ancestors; Darwin pointed out that under his
theory, humans were indeed all related by shared ancestors more recent
than their common ancestors with any other species, regardless of how
one ranked the biological distinction between different human
populations.
>
> Whether races are species or sub-species, it is easy to see how such
> reasoning allowed Darwin to rank the races on an evolutionary scale.
> Because natural selection must be the cause of the existence of
> different races, Darwin argued that the various races would
> necessarily have varying intellectual and moral capacities. So that,
> for example, the "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ
> as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named."
> As we have seen, the Europeans came out on top.
>
Yet Wiker does not actually quote Darwin as saying "the Europeans come
out on top." Darwin claims, based on his own experiences and those of
other travellers, that different races have different temperments and
mental habits: he contrasts, for example, the "taciturn, even morose"
South American Indians with the "lighthearted, talkative negroes."
This is not a comment about "intellectual and moral capacities." I
should furthermore repeat myself: evolutionary theory has progressed
since Darwin's day. So has thought about evolutionary psychology
(although evolutionary psychology is still criticized by evolutionists
for its lack of rigor) and "race." If Wiker wishes to argue that
evolutionary psychology is a bunch of speculation and "just-so
stories," then Darwin's speculations on the subject would be of more
relevance. If he wishes to argue that evolutionary psychology is
essentially racist, pro-eugenics, and genocidal, though, then citing
the first fumbling efforts in the field from over a century ago would
be pointless even if Wiker were presenting Darwin's views honestly.
>
> Darwin argued further that the different races created by natural
> selection were necessarily and beneficially locked in the severest
> struggle for survival. As he put it in the Origin,
>
> It is the most closely allied forms . . . which, from having nearly
> the same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the
> severest competition with each other; consequently, each new variety
> of species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press
> hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them.
>
The careful and astute reader will here note that Darwin is being
descriptive, not prescriptive: he is neither offering a vision for the
ideal society, nor recommending any course of action, but attempting
to describe what actually does happen in nature.
>
> This argument translated directly to his assessment of the
> evolutionary history of human races, and the necessary and beneficial
> extinction of the less favored races.
>
Darwin, of course, is not arguing that the extinction of other human
cultures and "races" is beneficial. His argument below is not about
the evolution of the moral sense, or the rise of civilization, nor is
it advocacy of anything.
>
> The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and
> replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the
> anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break
> will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a
> more civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some ape
> as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or
> Australian and the gorilla.
>
Wiker, again, is a bad researcher or a dishonest one (or perhaps
both). Darwin, in the above paragraph and those preceeding it in
_Descent of Man_, is attempting to answer a question: why, if we
evolved from a monkey stage, and a nonhuman ape stage, and an apeman
stage, and monkeys and apes still exist, do "ape-men" no longer
exist? Why are there no living intermediates between humans and
nonhuman apes? Note that fossils of _Homo erectus_, _H. habilis_, and
the various australopithecines were unknown at the time Darwin wrote
_Descent of Man_, so he could not simply say, "see, they existed once,
even if they no longer do."
He offers the explanation that _Homo sapiens_ and their "ape-man"
relatives competed for the same ecological niche, and that we drove
the "ape-men" to extinction. He offers, in defense of this thesis,
the observable fact of what was happening in his own day:
technologically advanced humans were seizing the land and killing off
or driving into desolate areas less technologically-advanced
societies: this was happening in the Americas and in Australia, for
examples. Humans were even threatening the survival of ape species
that lived in the jungle, by turning jungle into farmland. Darwin
extrapolates from this, and concludes that first, the "ape-men" that
once provided an intermediate between modern humans and nonhuman apes
were wiped out by us, and second, that the apparent gap between
civilized humans and other primates will grow wider (making it harder
to intuit the truth of our common ancestry with them) as the other
apes are wiped out and low-tech human tribal societies either
disappear or become civilized.
>
> The European race will inevitably emerge as the distinct species
> "human being," and all the transitional forms--such as the gorilla,
> the Negro, and so on--will be extinct.
>
It is of course very insensitive and Victorian of Darwin to speak in
such ways of black Africans. On the other hand, I can cite modern
creationists, such as James Perloff (who, in _Tornado in a Junkyard_,
assumes that the human species can't be much older than the oldest
human records because human beings naturally learn to read and write
while young -- implicitly relegating preliterate cultures to not-quite-
human status) or Hank Hanegraaff (who speaks of the metaphysical
distance between a nonhuman ape and a human being who can read and
write as "the distance of infinity," implying that an illiterate
person, or culture, might be only a finite distance from the monkeys)
who share Darwin's assumption that literacy and high technology make
western Europeans more obviously distinct from nonhuman apes than are
stone-age tribesmen in remote areas of the world.
>
> Furthermore, natural selection functions not only between races, but
> also among individuals within races. Here, oddly enough, Darwin
> maintained that savage man has an advantage over civilized man. In
> savage man, the intellectual and moral qualities are not as developed,
> but such lack actually works to weed out the unfit: "With savages, the
> weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive
> commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health." Unfortunately, the very
> development of human compassion which serves to mark the Europeans as
> more civilized also works against the principle of survival of the
> fittest.
>
What makes Europeans more civilized is that they live in cities (and
have advanced agricultural techniques, and can support more people who
don't work directly to produce or gather food). Note that even Wiker
will not claim that Darwin advocated eliminating the kindnesses that
wealth and civilization made possible, and restoring the primitive
hostility of nature that killed off the weak and slow.
Again, modern evolutionists generally differ from Darwin's assessment
that civilization has allowed the "unfit" to flourish. Darwin, here,
was failing to follow through on the logic of his own position: if the
environment changes, then the criteria for "fitness" change as well;
what is "unfit" in a stone-age tribe may be quite "fit" in a high-tech
civilized society. And, of course, "fitness" is not itself a moral
imperative, nor of course is it the goal of goal-less evolution to
have more "fit" people. At the risk of wearying any readers I have
left, I must point out, again, that evolutionary theory was not
complete and perfect when Darwin stopped writing.
>
> We civilized men . . . do our utmost to check the process of
> elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
> sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
> skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. . . . Thus the
> weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who
> has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this
> must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon
> a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of
> a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly
> anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
>
> What could be done to prevent the European race from devolving under
> the influence of the weak and the sick? Let the principles of natural
> selection be applied without obstruction. "Man, like every other
> animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a
> struggle for existence," Darwin reminded the reader, "and if he is to
> advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle."
> Turning to the wisdom of animal breeders, Darwin proclaimed that
> "there should be open competition for all men; and the most able
> should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and
> rearing the largest number of offspring." The worst, of course, should
> not be allowed to breed at all.
>
How odd, again, that Wiker nowhere can find Darwin asserting that "the
worst should not be allowed to breed at all." Darwin argues that
society ought not limit opportunities to the hereditary aristocracy,
but that all positions ought to be open to merit no matter the class
in which it arises. He argues that a man should be allowed, if he has
the ability, to rise from poverty and attain great wealth. I don't
think (for reasons stated below) that this is actually a necessary
implication of evolutionary theory, but what problem does Wiker have
with it?
Incidentally, to return to a point I made above, it is not possible
for "the principles of natural selection to be applied without
obstruction." Or, conversely, it is inevitable that they will be.
Whatever choices a society might make about how to structure itself or
what social programs to maintain will affect selective pressures on
individuals and become part of the selective regime on them. The
standards of "fitness" will vary according to whatever selective
forces are at work (and some always will be, whatever we do or refrain
from doing), and evolution, of course, has no preferences for one
standard of "fitness" over another. Wiker cannot get over his initial
assumption that evolutionary theory is prescriptive rather than
descriptive.
>
> How forcefully ought this program to be carried out? Darwin was vague,
> but ended with the remark: "All do good service who aid toward this
> end."
>
> What may we gather from Darwin's evolutionary account of morality? To
> begin with, Darwin rightly understood that bare sociality allowed for
> a startling variety of moralities. In contrast to the very determinate
> list of requisite virtues, definite commands, and established ends in
> the traditional natural law account, evolution brings forth many
> different modes of group survival. Just as male lions, when taking
> over a pride, kill the young that were fathered by the ousted dominant
> male, so also human societies have flourished quite well with the
> murder of rivals to regal authority. And just as many female animals
> will let the runt of the litter die by refusing it nourishment, so
> also many human societies have survived for hundreds of years by
> exposing their unwanted and deformed babies. Merely having "social
> instincts" includes so much that it excludes almost nothing considered
> morally reprehensible.
>
> Although many today would shudder at Darwin's racism, we must concede
> that Darwin's conclusions were correctly drawn from his evolutionary
> principles. If evolution is true, and the races themselves are the
> result of the struggle to survive, then how could intellectual and
> moral qualities not be diversely acquired by different races?
>
Since Wiker has failed to correctly identify either Darwin's
conclusions or his evolutionary principles, one might think that he is
in a poor position to decide whether Darwin has reasoned correctly
from his principles or not. If different environments nontheless
reward the same mental and moral processes, then different races might
indeed reasonably acquire, on average, the same "intellectual or moral
qualities." Of course, there's a point to be made here: what Darwin
actually argued was that within any "race" or society, there were
going to be persons of different intellectual and moral qualities.
This actual conclusion of Darwin's seems to be pretty well confirmed.
What political or moral implications does Wiker draw from the fact
that not all members of any given "race" or society have the same
intellectual gifts, or the same temperment, or the same capacity for
moral judgment and reasoning?
Or, more concisely, he's a paid rationalizer for bad ideas.
>
> Copyright/Reproduction Limitations:
>
> This data file is the sole property of FIRST THINGS. It may not be
> altered or edited in any way. It may be reproduced only in its
> entirety for circulation as "freeware," without charge. All
> reproductions of this data file must contain the copyright notice
> (i.e., "Copyright (c) 1991-2001 by First Things") and this Copyright/
> Reproduction Limitations notice.
-- Steven J.
hhya...@gmail.com
wrote:
>
> read more »
Son.of.a.gun,
The Europeans will not be a dinstintive human beings as projected by
you.
The evidence that they are fooled for many many centuries by the fairy
tales story book they called it "bible" means they are not that smart/
intelligent.
The transitionals such as the negro may be more likely to survive.
Sorry, and oops, pouring cold water on you.
brique
James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote in message
news:vppsc3pb045ikhdvb...@4ax.com...
> "Denis Loubet"
> > There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>
> On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
> morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
> Sound of Trumpet does.
>
> >Just like there's no Newtonian
> > morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's
> > no gravitic morality or electrical morality. Basing a
> > morality on gross physical processes is simply stupid.
> > Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our
> > friend!
>
> Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
> result of evolution. Einsteinian physics does not tell
> us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
> much about our nature.
Apparently, your dog also tells you about 'human nature', doesn't it James?
Denis Loubet
>> There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>
> On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
> morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
> Sound of Trumpet does.
No. There is no such thing as Darwinian morality. Evolution says nothing at
all about how we should behave.
>>Just like there's no Newtonian
>> morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's
>> no gravitic morality or electrical morality. Basing a
>> morality on gross physical processes is simply stupid.
>> Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our
>> friend!
>
> Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
> result of evolution.
No. Evolution and our natures say absolutely nothing about how we SHOULD
behave. They simply describe how we DO behave.
> Einsteinian physics does not tell
> us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
> much about our nature.
Which tells us nothing about morality.
les_on_usenet
<soundof...@mailcan.com> wrote:
>http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
>
>Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
>By: Benjamin Wiker
<long silly polemic snipped>
I think I am beginning to understand Trumpets motivation.
He is not posting these quotes because he approves of them,
he simply posts them without comment of any kind.
I suspect he is posting them so we can see for ourselves
how much stupidity there is out there and wants to give us
an opportunity to show the world why it is nonesense.
Think about it. What is there to be gained by exposing
this kind of rubbish here? If he really believed all this crap,
would he not be better keeping quiet about it rather than
exposing it to deserved ridicule?
Les Hellawell
Greetings from
YORKSHIRE - The White Rose County
raven1
<soundof...@mailcan.com> wrote:
>An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
>status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
News flash, you fucking idiot: whatever moral implications one wishes
to derive from a scientific theory are irrelevant to the truth or
falsity of said theory.
--
"O Sybilli, si ergo
Fortibus es in ero
O Nobili! Themis trux
Sivat sinem? Causen Dux"
Davej
wrote:
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
> By: Benjamin Wiker
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
Yes, every scientific theory should be judged on its moral
implications. The theories of gravity and electrostatics should
certainly be thrown out. Attraction between two physical bodies is
clearly immoral and the idea of discussing these topics in a mixed-sex
classroom is grossly offensive.
James A. Donald
> > Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
> > result of evolution. Einsteinian physics does not tell
> > us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
> > much about our nature.
"brique"
> Apparently, your dog also tells you about 'human nature', doesn't it James?
Yes indeed - dogs being more social than humans, and thus more
innately virtuous.
Hatter
wrote:
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
Red herring thing. It is called an appeal to emotion.
There is a reason people called it a fallicious argument 10
generations before you were born.
Hatter
Mike Painter
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
> evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support
> it?
And yet science has just announced the discovery of "mirror" cells in the
brain. They give us the ability to see ourselves in the shoes of others and
feel compassion.
They are most likely the reason "Do unto others..." is so common among the
worlds religions and they show that religion and gods are not needed for
such feelings.
Mark K. Bilbo
> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:56:05 -0700, Sound of Trumpet wrote:
>
>> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>>
>>
>> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>>
>> By: Benjamin Wiker
>>
>> First Things
>>
>>
>> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
>> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
>
>
> Why would the "moral implications" of a scientific theory have ANY
> bearing on its validity?
Why would there *be* "moral implications" of a scientific theory?
Theories are, essentially, observation based descriptions of reality.
"Moral" is what people do, reality can't be "moral" or "immoral". Is
gravity wrong? Is the sky being blue because it's corrupt? If a tree
falls in the woods and nobody hears it, is it virtuous?
The whole idea is silly...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
"Arrogance has to be earned. Tell me what you've done to earn yours."
- Dr. House
Jon Schild
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
> evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support
> it?
Neither. The world does not revolve around your fanatical 10-century
brand of christianity. Scientific theories, facts, and beliefs are about
themselves, not about whether they agree with or disagree with some
pronouncement out of the past.
> Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker
> asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis
> Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil
> (as Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a
> new foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?
Infanticide existed long before Darwin. Before Jesus, for that matter.
brique
> James A. Donald
> > > Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
> > > result of evolution. Einsteinian physics does not tell
> > > us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
> > > much about our nature.
>
> "brique"
> > Apparently, your dog also tells you about 'human nature', doesn't it
James?
>
> Yes indeed - dogs being more social than humans, and thus more
> innately virtuous.
>
Well, no doubt you would find the social organisation of a pack of canines
'virtuous'.
Al Klein
Since when did STrumpet acquire a sense of morality?
Al Klein
<gm...@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 23:04:06 -0400, MarkA wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:56:05 -0700, Sound of Trumpet wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>>>
>>>
>>> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>>>
>>> By: Benjamin Wiker
>>>
>>> First Things
>>>
>>>
>>> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
>>> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
>>
>>
>> Why would the "moral implications" of a scientific theory have ANY
>> bearing on its validity?
>
>Why would there *be* "moral implications" of a scientific theory?
>
>Theories are, essentially, observation based descriptions of reality.
>"Moral" is what people do, reality can't be "moral" or "immoral". Is
>gravity wrong? Is the sky being blue because it's corrupt? If a tree
>falls in the woods and nobody hears it, is it virtuous?
>
>The whole idea is silly...
It's a construct of those who, being amoral, have no idea what
"morality" means.
Al Klein
wrote:
He'd probably also find that the "social" organization of a pack of
molecules had a virtue value.
Al Klein
wrote:
>Infanticide existed long before Darwin. Before Jesus, for that matter.
Probably, when needed, before civilization. Maybe before our
ancestors evolved past the Australopithecine level.
ghost writer
James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
> "Denis Loubet"
>> There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>
>On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
>morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
>Sound of Trumpet does.
Fine, tell us what is it. What "Darwinist Morality" means in
practice here and now?
What does Darwin wants from us?
Could you look at some moral dilemmas, for example here
and tell us what would Darwin do?
>
>>Just like there's no Newtonian
>> morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's
>> no gravitic morality or electrical morality. Basing a
>> morality on gross physical processes is simply stupid.
>> Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our
>> friend!
>
>Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
>result of evolution.
And since our evolution took place in the African savanna,
an environment far differnet from our current one, how is it
relevant here and now?
brique
Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
news:knduc3lpnabis6u22...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:03:07 -0700, Jon Schild <j...@xmission.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Infanticide existed long before Darwin. Before Jesus, for that matter.
Apparently, it was favored by the Big Yin himself too, slaughtering the
first born, demanding believers sacrifice their sons, destroying entire
cities with their populations, which must have included infants, topped off,
it would seem, by engineering the torture and death of his own son... but
one assumes those are the bits of the infallible literal Bible that we
shouldn't take too seriously.....
brique
Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
Depends, they would have to be anglo-saxon molecules.....
brique
Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
Local church jumble-sale, it was very cheap, box fresh and guaranteed
unused....
*Anarcissie*
> ...
> Evolutionary theory does not rest on Darwin's personal authority, it
> is not limited to (nor does it encompass) his personal views, and his
> is not the final word on either the contents or the implications of
> evolutionary theory. Wiker here falsely assumes that "Darwinism" is a
> basically religious doctrine with dogma and scriptures, in which
> questions can be settled by appeals to the prophet and his holy
> writings. Again, one cannot expect a very sound analysis by a man so
> addicted to bad reasoning.
This is an interesting phenomenon which keeps
cropping up in anti-Evolutionist thought -- conviction
that science, or at least that part of science which
deals with Evolution, is an authoritarian, faith-based
system of thought, no doubt resembling in this regard
that which the anti-Evolutionist believes in. Apparently
such people do not really disagree with science, they
are basically incapable of understanding it in the first
place. I wonder why that is -- we observe practices
of skepticism, criticism and reality testing at a fairly
early age in humans; how does it get turned off?
John Reiher
*Anarcissie* <anarc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting phenomenon which keeps
> cropping up in anti-Evolutionist thought -- conviction
> that science, or at least that part of science which
> deals with Evolution, is an authoritarian, faith-based
> system of thought, no doubt resembling in this regard
> that which the anti-Evolutionist believes in. Apparently
> such people do not really disagree with science, they
> are basically incapable of understanding it in the first
> place. I wonder why that is -- we observe practices
> of skepticism, criticism and reality testing at a fairly
> early age in humans; how does it get turned off?
Daily beatings, being told not to question God, being forced to only
read certain books and only those books that don't deviate from a
certain world view... You know, indoctrination. Man has a lot of
practice in suppressing dissenting points of view.
--
The Kedamono Dragon
Pull Pinky's favorite words to email me.
http://www.ahtg.net
Have Mac, will Compute
Check out the PowerPointers Shop at:
http://www.cafeshops.com/PowerPointers
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Al Klein
wrote:
>Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:knduc3lpnabis6u22...@4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:03:07 -0700, Jon Schild <j...@xmission.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Infanticide existed long before Darwin. Before Jesus, for that matter.
>
>Apparently, it was favored by the Big Yin himself too, slaughtering the
>first born, demanding believers sacrifice their sons, destroying entire
>cities with their populations, which must have included infants, topped off,
>it would seem, by engineering the torture and death of his own son... but
>one assumes those are the bits of the infallible literal Bible that we
>shouldn't take too seriously.....
No, they were the Hebrew parts, the parts Jebus did away with - except
for the Hebrew parts that they like, such as killing homosexuals.
Al Klein
wrote:
But unused for so long that it was rotten to the core.
Al Klein
<anarc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>This is an interesting phenomenon which keeps
>cropping up in anti-Evolutionist thought -- conviction
>that science, or at least that part of science which
>deals with Evolution, is an authoritarian, faith-based
>system of thought, no doubt resembling in this regard
>that which the anti-Evolutionist believes in. Apparently
>such people do not really disagree with science, they
>are basically incapable of understanding it in the first
>place. I wonder why that is -- we observe practices
>of skepticism, criticism and reality testing at a fairly
>early age in humans; how does it get turned off?
Religious indoctrination.
hhya...@gmail.com
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:21:24 +0100, "brique" <briquen...@freeuk.c0m>
Can some one with truth and conscious post and list all the evil
things advocated by the bible, for the benefits of all to see.....and
the bigots to judge/defend.....!
TimK
"brique" <briqu...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
news:11879373...@proxy00.news.clara.net...
>
> James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote in message
> news:vppsc3pb045ikhdvb...@4ax.com...
>> "Denis Loubet"
>> > There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>>
>> On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
>> morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
>> Sound of Trumpet does.
>>
>> >Just like there's no Newtonian
>> > morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's
>> > no gravitic morality or electrical morality. Basing a
>> > morality on gross physical processes is simply stupid.
>> > Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our
>> > friend!
>>
>> Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
>> result of evolution. Einsteinian physics does not tell
>> us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
>> much about our nature.
>
> Apparently, your dog also tells you about 'human nature', doesn't it
> James?
So there's no evolutionary component to human behavior?
Is that really what you mean to say...
Immortalist
> In article <vppsc3pb045ikhdvb5lf0ant7nn8qr0...@4ax.com>
> James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>
> > "Denis Loubet"
> >> There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>
> >On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
> >morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
> >Sound of Trumpet does.
>
> Fine, tell us what is it. What "Darwinist Morality" means in
> practice here and now?
> What does Darwin wants from us?
>
Are you asking about social interpretations of Darwins ideas or a
quote, scripture and verse, from some of his writtings?
Currently the coolest theory, inmy opinion, of Darwinian morals is the
theory of "evolutionary psychology" That theory might conclude that
morality is just a modual or scattered group of brain areas in action;
"The Swiss Army knife is a flexible tool. Its flexibility is not the
result of having just one tool that is applied to all problems.
Instead, it is a bundle of tools, each well-designed for solving a
different problem - scissors for cutting paper, corkscrew for opening
wine, toothpick for cleaning teeth. Each solves a different problem
well, thereby providing flexible problem solving ability. Similarly,
the human mind does not have just one blunt tool for solving all
problems - and if it did, we would be very limited indeed. Each human
mind contains a large number of programs, each well-designed for
solving a different adaptive problem: choosing a good mate, caring for
children, foraging for food, avoiding predators, navigating a
landscape, forming coalitions, trading, defending one's family against
aggression, and so on. We are flexible problem solvers in part because
our minds contain so many well-engineered tools."
- - Leda Cosmides
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/ledainterview.htm
The mind is composed of a large number of mental modules each designed
to solve a specific problem. For example, there is one mechanism for
perceiving three dimensions, another for anger, another for falling in
love. The mind is like a Swiss Army knife; i.e., it has lots of
specialized tools. There is no such thing as general intelligence,
general learning, or any other general ability to solve problems.
http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/463evolpsyIQ.html
...Rather than regarding the mind at birth as a content-free, blank
slate on which are inscribed the skills and values of the culture of
an individual, evolutionary psychology posits the existence of innate
interests, capacities, and tastes, laid down through processes of
natural and sexual selection. Evolutionary psychology replaces the
blank slate as a metaphor for mind with the Swiss army knife: the mind
is a set of tools and capacities specifically adapted to important
tasks and interests.
These acquisitions are adaptations to life in the small hunter-
gatherer bands in which our ancestors lived for 100,000 generations
before civilization as we now understand it began. They include a long
list of universal features of the Stone Age, hunter-gatherer mind: for
example language use according to syntactic rules; kinship systems
with incest avoidance; phobias, e.g. fear of snakes and spiders; child-
nurturing interests; nepotism, the favouring of blood relations; a
sense of justice, fairness, and obligations associated with emotions
of anger and revenge; the capacity to make and use hand tools; status
and rank ordering in human relations; a sense of food purity and
contamination; and so forth (Pinker 1997).
Some of these features are uniform across the human species; others
are statistically related to sex; for instance, females are more
inclined towards an interest in child nurturing and have a greater
ability to remember details in visual experience, while males are more
physically aggressive, and better able to determine directionality and
engage in "map reading."
http://www.denisdutton.com/aesthetics_&_evolutionary_psychology.htm
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_p/d_05_p_her/d_05_p_her.html
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n01_here_to_stay.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular
> Could you look at some moral dilemmas, for example here
>
> http://www.moralbliss.com
>
> and tell us what would Darwin do?
>
>
>
> >>Just like there's no Newtonian
> >> morality, or Einsteinian morality. Just like there's
> >> no gravitic morality or electrical morality. Basing a
> >> morality on gross physical processes is simply stupid.
> >> Why would one do that? Evolution is certainly not our
> >> friend!
>
> >Morality is a result of our natures, and our nature the
> >result of evolution.
>
> And since our evolution took place in the African savanna,
> an environment far differnet from our current one, how is it
> relevant here and now?
>
> Einsteinian physics does not tell
>
>
>
> >us anything about our nature, but Darwinism tells us
> >much about our nature.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
kevirwin
> In article <vppsc3pb045ikhdvb5lf0ant7nn8qr0...@4ax.com>
>
> - Show quoted text -
Oh boy, have I got a book for you!!!!! "The God Delusion" by Richard
Dawkins, a biologist who would probably suck Darwin's dick if he were
still alive.....oops, that's not the point...Several of the middle
chapters in the book address just the issues you bring forth (from an
editorial point of view, this guy Dawkins ascribes virtually **every**
attribute to Darwinian evolutionary theory, but hey, morality is one
of them)...
glad to help,
K e v
Sean
"Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1188011184.2...@r23g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 24, 3:15 pm, ghost writer <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>> In article <vppsc3pb045ikhdvb5lf0ant7nn8qr0...@4ax.com>
>> James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>>
>> > "Denis Loubet"
>> >> There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>>
>> >On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
>> >morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
>> >Sound of Trumpet does.
>>
>> Fine, tell us what is it. What "Darwinist Morality" means in
>> practice here and now?
>> What does Darwin wants from us?
>>
>
> Are you asking about social interpretations of Darwins ideas or a
> quote, scripture and verse, from some of his writtings?
>
> Currently the coolest theory, inmy opinion, of Darwinian morals is the
> theory of "evolutionary psychology" That theory might conclude that
> morality is just a modual or scattered group of brain areas in action;
>
Are you talking the brain, or the mind? They are mutually exclusive things.
Martin Phipps
Be Wise As Serpents
"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye
therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
Comment
This verse instructs the apostles to act "wise as serpents." Since
Christians hold that the serpent in the Bible represents Satan, one
might wonder about this. In Genesis 3:1 the Bible describes the
serpent as "more subtil than any beast..." Some early Gnostic heretics
believed that Satan and Jesus were the same. They may have used
sayings such as this to support their belief.
It seems odd that Jesus would resort to the metaphorical "sheep"
instead of sheep-dogs or some other noble animal. The awkward fact
remains: people raise sheep to either fleece them or kill them for
food. To send them as prey in the midst of marauders hardly seems
advisable.
Note also that doves actually act just the opposite of "harmless."
Doves sometimes act viciously against other birds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beat That Slave
"And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes." (Luke 12:47)
Comment
Note, the word "servant" here means slave. The Biblical Jesus lived in
a time when slavery flourished, yet He never spoke or fought against
it.
"English North Americans embraced slavery because they were
Christians, not in spite of it... It was Christianity that perverted
the African's way of life. Not leaving them alone was the real
tragedy."
--Forrest G. Wood
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Burn Them!
"Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from the
violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my goings." (Psalms 140:4)
"Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire;
into deep pits, that they rise not up again." (Psalms 140:10)
Comment
Such wicked words can justify to the religious person any atrocity
including holocausts. Ironically, the words "Keep me, O Lord, from the
hands of the wicked" and which verse 10 calls for horrible acts
against their enemies, hardly imparts a message of love of thine
enemies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creation Contradiction, 1
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw
the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the
darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called
Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." (Genesis
1: 3-5)
"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and
the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God
set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the
earth." (Genesis 1:16-17)
Comment
God creates day and night on the first day and then makes the stars
and the two great lights (sun and moon) on the fourth day (Genesis
1:19). How can you have day and night on the first day without a star?
This describes a dramatic contradiction to the way the actual universe
works. To have a day you must have a rotating planet and a sun.
Genesis proves that God (or more accurately, the authors of Genesis)
could not have known about the structure of the universe, or even the
difference between stars and planets.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creation Contradiction, 2
"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after
their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his
kind: and God saw that is was good. And God said, Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness..." (Genesis 1:25-26)
"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I
will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God
formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the
air..." (Genesis 2:18-19)
Comment
In the first account, man gets created after the beasts, the second
account has man created before the beasts . Only a person who
exercised warped logic or blind faith could believe this outright
contradiction. Yet to the fundamentalist reader, the many hundreds of
contradictions and discrepancies in the Bible go by unseen, regardless
of how many honest scholars and theologians have discovered otherwise.
In fact there occurs two stories of Genesis, the second story starts
at Genesis 2:4. The first story uses Elohim (God in the plural form)
and the second story uses the LORD God (Yahweh Elohim, sometimes
incorrectly termed Jehovah). Both stories appear markedly different,
yet somehow in history the stories got annexed together. This shows
the allegorical intent of Genesis rather than a factual account.
Even the belief among non-fundamentalists, that the Bible has kept its
original form despite minor changes, has led many theologians to think
otherwise. One of the most highly respected theologians, Bruce
Metzger, has written extensively on the errors in the Bible. For
example, in his book "The text of the New Testament- Its Transmission,
Corruption, and Restoration," Metzger asserts errors due to:
Errors arising from faulty eyesight
Errors arising from faulty hearing
Errors of the mind
Errors of judgment
Difficulties historical and geographical
Alterations from doctrinal considerations
Addition of miscellaneous details.
Many times whole belief systems and vast changes to a society can
change from a simple mistranslation of a single word. (For example
"virgin" got confused in Isaiah 7:14 for young woman "almah")
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creation Contradiction, 3
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27)
"And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept:
and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman,
and brought her unto the man." (Genesis 2:21-22)
Comment
In the first account, God created a man and female simultaneously, in
God's image. In the second account Adam gets created from the dust
(Genesis 2:7), and then later, a woman came from one of Adam's ribs.
Again, this shows another difference between the two Genesis story
accounts, each contradicting the other.
There occurs a plethora of contradictions in the Bible, far too many
for the scope of the Dark Bible. For those who wish further
edification, consult "The Bible Handbook for Free-Thinkers and
Inquiring Christians," edited by G. W. Foote and W. P. Ball (Pioneer
Press, London)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curse The Children
"And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and
bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.
After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty
days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty
years, and ye shall know my breach of promise." (Numbers 14:33-34)
Comment
This cruel curse on children attributed to God, for the sins of their
parents, bears the typical harsh vengeful evil spirit that permeates
the Old Testament.
How can one not conclude that these verses give the greatest insult to
a loving God?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eat Your Children
"And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons
and of thy daughters, which the LORD they God hath given thee, in the
siege, and in the straightness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress
thee:" (Deuteronomy 28:53)
"And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and
toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for
want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith
thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates." (Deuteronomy 28:57)
Comment
Here we have the horrific calling for cannibalism. It comes even more
barbaric considering it calls for the devouring of their own sons and
daughters.
Hardly anyone today accepts cannibalism, yet many fundamentalist
Christians would have us believe that cannibalism or some other
depravity will result if we choose not to believe in God or to choose
another god.
(See also II Kings 6:28-29)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God Accepts Slavery
"And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and
my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him
unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door
post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he
shall serve him for ever." (Exodus 21:5-6)
Comment
The Bible bears witness to the fact that God accepts not only slavery
but violence against such slaves (in this case a awl driven through
the ear) for the innocent statement of love for their master, wife and
children.
It came from precisely these verses that justified, in many peoples
minds, the tortures inflicted on African slaves when they tried to
leave their cruel masters in the American colonies. "Good" Christians
of the day would drive nails and spikes through the ears of
defenseless slaves whose only offense came from the will to no longer
serve as slaves.
Not until after the Civil War did federal laws become enacted to
protect African Americans from gross physical abuse. Even today, the
KKK and "the Aryan Race" use the Bible as justification for their
attacks against "Negroes."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God Condones Slavery
"Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be
of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen
and bondmaids." (Leviticus 25:44 , KJV)
"As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the
nations around you that you may aquire male and female
slaves." (Leviticus 25:44, NRSV)
Comment
The Biblical meaning rings clear: God not only condones slavery, but
gives permission to buy and own slaves. The Southern United States
fought The Civil War over such Scriptural teachings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Gods creation
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness..." (Genesis 1:26) [Bold caps mind, Ed.]
Comment
The Bible has a crisis from the very beginning in that Biblical
translators have chosen to use the word "God" for the Hebrew term
'Elohim.' The problem, here lies in the fact that Elohim represents
the plural form of 'El.' Elohim literally means 'gods.' A more honest
translation of Verse 1 should read, "In the beginning Gods created the
heaven and the earth," and in Verse 26: "And the Gods said..."
The idea of Genesis and the Creation story did not come originally
from the Hebrews, but rather from various cultures in the area. For
example, excavations in Mesopotamia uncovered small cylinder seals
depicting the creation stories. Of course these early people believed
in many gods and goddesses, just as did the first Hebrews. The Enuma
Elish, the Mesopotamian creation story which predates Genesis and
which believers recited in every Mesopotamian temple every year for
some 4000 years and more, parallels the Biblical stories to such an
extent that it even makes abundant use of the "magical" number seven.
[Romer, p.35-36]
Although as the Hebrew belief system grew, and the word Elohim came to
mean the singular God, the fact still remains: The original meaning
meant the plural form. Any honest translation of Elohim, therefore
should reflect this plurality. In the name of honesty, we should ask
why our Church fathers would allow the dishonest singular forms of the
word God in the Bible.
Note, when anyone questioned this plurality, Christian priests tried
to resolve this sticky problem by using the concept of the Trinity
(Father, Son and the Holy Ghost) or the heavenly angels to explain the
plurality. The problem here comes that if they truly believed this,
then why not use the proper plural translation in the first place?
Substituting a singular term for the plurality of the Trinity or other
heavenly agents amounts to dishonesty or subterfuge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God Orders Adultery
"This said the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of
thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give
them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight
of this sun." (II Samuel 12:11)
Comment
Here describes God, not only condoning adultery, but literally causes
it to happen!
Note also, the strange assertion that God raises up evil, supposedly
an act reserved for Satan. In fact, nowhere does the Bible accuse
Satan of raising evil. Little do most faithful realize that they
worship a raiser and creator of evil (for God's creation of evil, see
Isaiah 45:7).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God's OK On Abortion
"And when he hath made her drink the water, then it shall come to
pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her
husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her,
and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot:
and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be
not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive
seed." (Numbers 5:27-28)
Comment
This nonsensical ritual, prescribed by God, to a woman suspected of
infidelity, must undergo the drinking of a vile concoction made of
bitter water and dust from the floor of a tabernacle. A priest calls a
curse upon the woman's head to insure that if she has acted in
adultery the drinking of the liquid will cause her to have a
miscarriage. If she comes out clean, then she shall conceive.
Regardless of how ridiculous this procedure seems, any person who
believes every word of the Bible must come to terms with the
realization that the quoted God here sometimes authorizes abortion.
(also see Num. 5:1-25)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Golden Rule
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them
likewise." (Luke 6:31)
Comment
>From this verse we have the Jesus formulation: Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you. Also known as the Golden Rule. This gives
an example of perhaps the most admired and quoted saying by Jesus, not
only from Christians, but from unbelievers alike.
Most people do not realize that Jesus did not originate this saying.
K'ung-Tzu (also known as Confucius) also expressed a similar idea,
ironically called the Silver Rule. However, does this seemingly worthy
Golden Rule live up to its billing?
At first glance, the rule appears justified. Who wouldn't want to
receive treatment the way we wish? And who wouldn't want to give the
same treatment to others? However, upon further reflection we quickly
come upon problems. Who says that the receiving person wishes to
always get treated the way "we" wish? Would most people like to get
treated like a masochist from a masochist? Would an atheist like to
get treated like a Christian? Would a Christian like to get treated as
an atheist? Clearly, the Golden rule can cause severe
incompatibilities with the other person involved. The Golden Rule only
seems commendable because we impart our own individual concepts
without realizing that "doing unto others" has various meanings to
other people. The Golden Rule reflects upon selfish motives instead of
incorporating a system that can work for a diverse society. Therefore,
when Jesus uses this incomplete and illusory command, he deceives the
believer into a false sense of morality. Consider that in some cases,
treating people the way they would like to get treated works better
than the way you would like to get treated. Think about it.
Note: many studies of rule based systems (including ethics, game
theory, and computer simulations) reveal two rules that always lose:
the Golden Rule and the Iron Rule. The systems that work best involve
Tit-For-Tat strategies that include many situational rules.
[For more information on game theories, refer to the works of Robert
Axelrod (for example: 'The Evolution of Cooperation,' and 'The
evolution of strategies in the iterated prisoner's dilemma') and
Douglas R. Hofstadter's, Metamagical Themas)]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy To Kill Children
"Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against
the stones." (Psalms 137:9, KJV)
"How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock." (Psalms 137:9, New American Bible)
"Happy the man who shall seize and smash your little ones against the
rock!" (Psalms 137:9, New American Bible)
"a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against
a rock!" (Psalms 137:9, Jerusalem Bible)
Comment
Ask a Christian friend whether he or she should feel happy to dash a
child against the rocks. Your friend will most likely stare at you in
horror, much less believe this idea exists in their sacred Bible.
Many Churches have found this verse quite embarrassing. It gives no
wonder why priests, Jews, and Christians alike, who quote from Psalms
137, always leave out this last verse.
(See also Isaiah 13:16; Hosea 13-16)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hate Them!
"Surely thou will slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye
bloody men. For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies
take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and
am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them
with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies." (Psalms 139:19-22)
Comment
A message of hate from the, supposed, inspired words of God against
anyone who takes God's name in vain or who goes against God.
Faith in one's belief produces a barrier to further investigation.
Religious groups that differ in beliefs from other societies cannot
see past their own barriers. When hate enters into the prison of their
beliefs, the seeds for violence to act out against other societies
come to full bloom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hate Your Family!
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,
he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26)
Comment
This remarkable statement of hate by Jesus directly contradicts the
idea of a loving Christ. If one must hate their father, mother, wife,
children, brethren and sisters and even themselves, in order to become
a disciple of Jesus, one must question Christ's idea love, family, and
decency.
(See also Luke 12:51-53, Matthew 10:34-37.)
Note: A few desperate apologists attempt to dismiss this verse
claiming that the word 'hate' here really doesn't mean what it says.
The problem with this approach boarders on complete deception and the
ironic dismissal of the Bible and Biblical scholarship. The word
'hate' here comes from the ancient Greek word 'miseo' which means hate
(from the primary 'misos' [hatred]). If any synonym could substitute
for this word, it would come from a word like 'detest,' 'loath,' or
'despise.' Moreover, virtually all Bibles translate the term as hate.
To deny this intent means to deny the Bible and the alleged word of
Jesus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He Must Increase But I Must Decrease
"He must increase but I must decrease." (John 3:30)
Comment
The dubious Old Testament concept of declaring the entire human
population as depraved and sinful goes far to insure an inferiority
complex, but this verse takes it to a lower level. One of the
distinctive features of the Dark Ages showed how the faithful would
publicly display their lower status by prostrating and punishing
themselves before crosses, priests, and churches. Monastic disciplines
adopted flagellation and scourging in the fifth and following
centuries. Self-flagellation served as a discipline as a measure of
mortification and penance as exemplified in the lives of St. Dominic
Loricatus and St. Peter Damian. Damian wrote a special treatise in
praise of self-flagellation. In the 13th century a sect developed
called the Flagellants where its members would whip themselves in
public which aroused much excitement among the populace. [Catholic
Encyclopedia]
To decrease one's earthly life for promoting an increase of a
superstitious idea, in effect, declares humans as unworthy and
valueless. Belief in universal sin and increasing the myth of Jesus
above all human concerns must put this kind of worship as among the
most insidious and depraved forms of human thought known to man.
"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as The
Dark Ages."
-Ruth Hurmence Green (The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Human Sacrifice
"Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of
thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto
me." (Exodus 22:29)
Comment
This verse refers to human sacrifice which many primitive cultures
practiced.
In the Canaanite world the Molech cult practiced human sacrifice and
many scholars equate Yahweh with the Molech god. Explicit references
to Molech appear in Lev. 18:21, 20:2-5; Jer. 32:35 and II Kings 23:10.
Fortunately, few people believe in sacrificing humans directly to gods
these days (but Christian leaders still sacrifice soldiers and
innocent men, women, and children in the name of "freedom" and God).
(See also Gen. 22:1-19 for Abraham's will to sacrifice his son Isaac,
and Judges 11)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make Weapons
"Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty
men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your
plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the
weak say, I am strong." (Joel 3:9-10)
Comment
Peace loving Jews and Christians love to quote the biblical passage
about beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruninghooks,
(Micah 4:3) but here we have just the opposite.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More Than One God
"Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the thing
wherein they dealt proudly he was above them." (Exodus 18:11)
Comment
Here we have the Bible alluding to the existence of more than one god.
Note that it does not say "the Lord is the only god" but rather that
he "is greater than all gods."
History records that the ancient people in the area of the Middle
East, including the Hebrews, believed in many goddesses and gods.
Yahweh served only as their god, a god among many others.
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no
God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pray in the Closet
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for
they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the
streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They
have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in
secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee
openly." (Matthew 6:5-6)
Comment
The Religious Right wishes to put into law public prayer. How many
Christians realize that the Biblical Jesus strongly opposed public
prayer?
The wall of separation between Church and State, actually protects the
religious liberties for all of us in the United States and here we
have Biblical justification for keeping prayer private.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Serpent Jews
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation
of hell?" (Matthew 23:33)
Comment
Chapter 23 describes the famous diatribe of Jesus against the Jewish
leaders. Such biblical words has, for centuries, given believers
justification for Jewish hatred. This verse, spoken by the alleged
Jesus himself, compares the unbelieving Jews with the serpent devil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slay Enemies
"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over
them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (Luke 19:27)
Comment
Although Jesus in one instance calls for the love of enemies, at the
end of the parable of ten pounds, he orders to slay his enemies that
would deny his reign (Luke 19:12-27). Despite the commandment not to
kill, Jesus accepts the killing of humans here.
Believers try to escape this problem by claiming, "Well, it's just a
parable." Of course when Jesus gives a parable about love or living,
then the parable serves as an important lesson which the faithful
should take seriously. So also must any of Jesus' parables. Nor can
one escape by route of metaphorical excuse. The parable clearly
connects the "nobleman" with Jesus (see verse 12) , and there occurs
no other meaning for a metaphorical "slay" other than words like
"kill," "slaughter," "massacre," etc.
Although there occurs scholarly debate as to whether Jesus meant verse
27 as part of the parable or as a non-parable conclusion, it has far
more serious consequences if believed as a parable. Why? Because a
parable instructs beyond the life-time of the parable's author. If the
author of these words meant it only as an example during Jesus'
alleged life on earth, then it would serve only as a request of Jesus
during his life time. But as a parable, it lives through the followers
of Jesus who believe that he still lives (in Heaven) and that they
might follow his commands, even after his death-and-resurrection. As a
parable then, slaying of enemies "before me" (in Jesus' spirit)
instructs believers well past the alleged life of Jesus.
If any one need Biblical justification to kill anyone who denies
Jesus, or whom you believe acts as an enemy, you need only to believe
this verse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Synagogues Of Satan
"But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes,
which I also hate." (Revelation 2:6)
"I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich)
and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not,
but are the synagogue of Satan." (Revelation 2:9)
"So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes,
which the thing I hate." (Revelation 2:15)
"Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they
are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come
and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved
thee." (Revelation 3:9)
Comment
These verses by Jesus has fueled the engine of anti-Semitism
throughout Europe and the rest of the world for centuries.
Unfortunately many believers today still justify their hatred of Jews
based on Scripture.
Note that we have here in Rev 2:6 the words of Jesus admitting to
hate, contrary to the belief by many Christians that Jesus holds only
to the principle of love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Talking Donkey
"And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under
Balaam: and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a
staff. And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto
Balaam, 'What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these
three times?' And Balaam said unto the ass, 'Because thou hast mocked
me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill
thee.' And the ass said unto Balaam, 'Am not I thine ass, upon which
thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont
to do so unto thee?' And he said, 'Nay.'" (Numbers 22:27-30)
Comment
Here we have, as absurd as it may seem, a talking donkey. If we came
across a talking animal, would we not feel amazed? Yet, oddly, Balaam
here seems not the least bit concerned and converses with the ass as
if nothing unusual had happened!
Given that millions of fundamentalists believe every world in the
Bible, they would have us also believe that the Bible has its own
version of Mr. Ed.
Notice that Balaam's cruel behavior to the donkey seems to have
mimicked God's jealous behavior towards His people. Yet God responds
to Balaam: "thy way is perverse before me." (Num. 22:32)
"If the bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe
it."
--William Jennings Bryan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Gods"
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3)
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the
LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me;" (Exodus 20:5)
Comment
Note this does not mean "I am the only god," but rather, that one
shall not believe in other gods above the God of the Chosen People.
Scholars and archeologists know that the early Hebrews practiced
polytheism.
Not only does the Bible describe the polytheism of the Hebrews but
digs from archeological sites give evidence that these early people
believed in many gods, or more accurately, goddesses. They have found
many statuette goddesses among their living dwellings.
Monotheism appears later in the Bible. Historically, monotheism got
taught by many Greek philosophers. Judaism later separated itself from
the Hellenistic world with its belief in only one supreme deity.
In verse 20:5 we have here a god so jealous that he holds a grudge
against the children of the fathers who hated him. Hardly a concept of
a forgiving and loving God. And if not against the other gods, just
who could God claim for his jealousy?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sun Stands Still
"Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up
the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight
of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the
valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until
the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this
written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of
heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." (Joshua
10:12-13)
Comment
These verses imply that the sun moves around the earth. If the Bible
actually represents the words or inspired words of God, then why
didn't the Great Creator inspire them to tell the truth about the
universe and our solar system?
Also, the Bible asks us to believe that a supposedly loving God made
the sun stand still for the sole purpose of helping the Israelites
slaughter the Amorites. How can one not see that these verses would
insult the intelligence of any person who believes God possess wisdom,
knowledge and love?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn Thy Cheek
"But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Matthew
5:39)
Comment
This nonviolent principle does not originate with Jesus. Lao-tse and
the Buddha taught this five or six hundred years before Jesus, but
does this represent a good rule to follow?
Ironically, few Christians hold to this principle. In fact, the
Religious Right preach just the opposite as Christians throughout the
centuries have violently attacked anyone who dared threaten them.
Although one should not overly react if smacked on the cheek, it might
prove prudent to raise your hand in defense or at least leave the
scene of trouble to avoid conflict. If you turn your other cheek to
get smacked again, your enemy may just break your jaw or beat you to a
pulp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wars must be
"And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not
troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and
there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be
famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows." (Mark
13:7-8)
Comment
Belief in these words can justify any war and atrocity against
nations. Yet Jesus here tells us that we should not feel troubled by
it as long as we have belief in Him.
When Jesus prophesies about the future, he gives the message that we
have no control over our lives other than to choose or not choose a
belief in the Lord. With such a message, it should not surprise anyone
why the Religious Right does little to strive against war.
Martin
Thurisaz, Germanic barbarian
--
"To his friend a man a friend shall prove, and gifts with gifts requite;
But men shall mocking with mockery answer, and fraud with falsehood meet."
(The Poetic Edda)
Must have been written with fundies in mind...
My personal judgment of monotheism:
http://www.carcosa.de/nojebus
Dave Oldridge
news:1187920565.0...@l22g2000prc.googlegroups.com:
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
Bzzzt! Wrong! It concerns the propensity of anti-evolutionist cultists
for using logical fallacies, such as argumentum ad baculum.
Whatever the theory's moral implications, they have no bearing on the
truth or falsehood of the proposition itself. The fact that you THINK
that it implies something awful is totally and irrevocably irrelevant to
whether or not it is true. You have been tricked by cunning tricksters
who use their self-proclaimed position as spokespeople for God to deceive
you.
Does gravity tell us we should throw people off cliffs because it will
make them fall? No, it does not.
Neither does evolution's occurring tell us that evolution is always
desirable.
> evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support
> it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker
> asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis
> Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil
> (as Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a
> new foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?
Actually, it can only be used to tell us how biological populations
diversify. But that, in itself, can help us create now and better seed
crops and new and better medicines.
> The obvious place to go in the debate is to the source. Darwin himself
> considered morality of whatever stripe to be a byproduct of evolution,
> one more effect of natural selection working upon the raw material of
> variations in the individual. Nature did not "intend" to create any
> particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create
> one certain length of finch beak. Nor does nature "judge" any
> particular type of morality as long as it does not violate the
> principle of natural selection. That, as we shall see, allows for such
> moral leeway that it creates insuperable problems for conservatives
> who might solicit Darwin's help in their cause.
That may be. We certainly cannot see any intention on the part of
"nature" to create a morality. However, as social primates, we HAVE a
genetic propensity to morality for the simple reason that our genes
depend heavily on our social nature for their success. Whether (or not)
that nature is the result of divine intervention at some point is not
directly demonstrable. But the fact that we are social animals descended
from a long heritage of social animals is certainly demonstrable.
> We find Darwin's account of morality in his Descent of Man, a work
> published after his more famous Origin of Species. As should be no
> surprise, the arguments of the Origin provided the theoretical
> foundations for his natural history of morality in the Descent.
>
> True to his naturalist bent, Darwin's natural history of morality (or
> more properly, moralities) assumed evolution to be true and sought to
> explain how the existing moral varieties could have evolved in the
> same way that natural selection had brought about the great variety of
> existing species.
> For Darwin the "moral faculties of man" were not original and
> inherent, but evolved from "social qualities" acquired "through
> natural selection, aided by inherited habit." Just as life came from
> the nonliving, so also the moral came from the nonmoral.
Well, we do see a certain amount of our own moral behaviour echoed in our
nearest genetic relatives, the great apes.
>>From the beginning, then, Darwin rejected the Christian natural law
> argument, according to which human beings are moral by nature.
> Instead, he followed the pattern of the modern natural right reasoning
> of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which assumed
> that human beings were naturally asocial and amoral, and only became
> social and moral historically. That is why Darwin called his account a
> natural history of morality.
>
> For Darwin, in order to become moral we first had to become social.
> "In order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man,
> should have become social," Darwin reasoned, "they must have acquired
> the same instinctive feelings which impel other animals to live in a
> body." As with all animal instincts, the "social instincts" of man
> were the result of variations bringing some benefit for survival.
You're implying here that the social behaviour of humans arose lately.
It did not. We inherit whatever component is genetic from very remote
ancestors. Some of these behaviours are common to a wide variety of
mammal species. Even cats demonstrate a certain sense of morality.
Birds, even will adopt the young of others and even defend other species
on occasion.
> What we call "conscience" was also the result of natural selection.
And so what if it is?
> Darwin described it as a "feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably
> results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct." Since the "ever-enduring
> social instincts" were more primitive and hence stronger than
> instincts developed later, the social instincts were the sources of
> our feelings of unease when some action of ours violated them. Such
> feelings of unease, Darwin explained, we now call "conscience."
>
> It might seem that Darwin's arguments for human sociability and the
> moral conscience could be marshaled to support a conservative moral
> position. Yet mere "sociality," even with a conscience grounded in
> evolutionary imperatives, does not at all mean that nature has created
> a definite moral standard, such as natural law. Quite the reverse. At
> bottom, everything is variable. As Darwin writes:
>
> If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-
> bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would,
> like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers,
> and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one
> would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social
> animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some
> feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an
> inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to
> have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought
> to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other
> wrong.
It's questionable if individual bees are at all sentient. They seem to
have a hive consciousness, as do their relatives the wasps, ants and
termites. But mammals seem to have individual consciousness, the more so
the more highly developed the brain.
> The same variability holds as well within the natural history of human
> moralities as they actually evolved. So, for example, the "murder of
> infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and
> has met with no reproach." Indeed, "infanticide, especially of
> females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not
> injurious." As for suicide, in "former times" it was "not generally
> considered as a crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an
> honorable act. . . . For the loss to a nation of a single individual
> is not felt." Neither did infanticide or suicide cause the "feeling of
> dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied
> instinct." Monogamy, too, Darwin in formed the reader, was a fairly
> recent evolutionary phenomenon.
Humans reproduce relatively equal numbers of males and females. Other
mammals do not follow this ratio. If our monogamy arises from anything,
it is this FACT. However polygamy (which is a common human arrangement)
is also understandable based on the fact that one male can repopulate a
tribe, while one female doesn't stand a chance.
> Yet Darwin balked at embracing the relativism he created, and insisted
> on ranking evolved moral traits. The unhappy result, however, was his
> espousal of views we would today call racist, and his justification of
> a program of eugenics.
Perhaps, although Darwin's ideas were far less racist than some of the
crap that has been put about by self-described "Christians."
> Ranking evolved moral traits meant ranking the races accordingly. Thus
> Darwin cheerfully asserted that the "western nations of Europe
> immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the
> summit of civilization." As a member of the favored race, Darwin
> embraced a typically nineteenth-century view of moral progress.
Yes. TYPICALLY.
> "Looking to future generations," he wrote, "there is no cause to fear
> that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that
> virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by
> inheritance . . . [so that] virtue will be triumphant."
>
> But the engine of evolution, even moral evolution, is natural
> selection. Therefore, Darwin believed that the evolution of morality
> would require the extermination of "less fit" races and individuals--a
> process that could be helped along by artificial selection, or
> eugenics.
And it probably could be if we actually knew what was "fit." History has
shown that we don't actually have a clue, or if we have one are not
willing to use it. Of course we're talking here about a species that has
yet to demonstrate that it is collectively any smarter than a yeast
culture.
> This unsavory conclusion was derived directly from the principles of
> evolution. We see in animals that, "in regard to mental qualities,
> their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic
> animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence,
> courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. With
> man we see similar facts." Since different races, like different
> breeds of dogs or horses, develop different capacities, it followed
> that distinct gradations in moral capacities would be found among
> human races.
>
> Whereas St. Thomas' natural law account began from the assumption that
> all human beings belonged to the same species (and were therefore all
> subject to the same moral demands), Darwin tried to determine whether
> human races should be considered distinct species. In the end, he was
> unsure whether to rank the races "as species or sub-species" but
> finally asserted that "the latter term appears the most appropriate."
And further investigation has shown that even that term may be too much
of a division. The human gene pool is one gene pool. Yes, there are
regional variations in it, but the bleed so imperceptibly into each other
there is no way to say where one "race" begins and another "ends."
> Whether races are species or sub-species, it is easy to see how such
> reasoning allowed Darwin to rank the races on an evolutionary scale.
A "natural" mistake, especially after centuries of the clergy telling
Europeans that THEY were superior to "infidels."
> Because natural selection must be the cause of the existence of
> different races, Darwin argued that the various races would
> necessarily have varying intellectual and moral capacities. So that,
> for example, the "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ
> as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named."
> As we have seen, the Europeans came out on top.
A common type of hubris, much favoured by all chauvinists, whether of a
religious or ethnic variety. I wonder how many modern Europeans or
Americans could pass the standard Kalahari IQ test?
Anyway, this is getting boring. Are you arguing that evolution isn't
happening because it implies something you don't like, or are you arguing
that we should make it happen according to our own tastes or just what?
Yes, human social behaviour is, to at least some large degree, inherited
from our remote ancestors. That does not mean we should not exercise
decent moral choices in our dealings with one another.
--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667
J.H.Boersema
On 2007-08-24, Sound of Trumpet <soundof...@mailcan.com> wrote:
> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1122
>
> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>
> By: Benjamin Wiker
>
> First Things
>
> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
> it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker
> asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis
> Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil
> (as Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a
> new foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?
>
> considered morality of whatever stripe to be a byproduct of evolution,
> one more effect of natural selection working upon the raw material of
> variations in the individual. Nature did not "intend" to create any
> particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create
> one certain length of finch beak. Nor does nature "judge" any
> particular type of morality as long as it does not violate the
> principle of natural selection. That, as we shall see, allows for such
> moral leeway that it creates insuperable problems for conservatives
> who might solicit Darwin's help in their cause.
>
> published after his more famous Origin of Species. As should be no
> surprise, the arguments of the Origin provided the theoretical
> foundations for his natural history of morality in the Descent.
>
> True to his naturalist bent, Darwin's natural history of morality (or
> more properly, moralities) assumed evolution to be true and sought to
> explain how the existing moral varieties could have evolved in the
> same way that natural selection had brought about the great variety of
> existing species.
>
> For Darwin the "moral faculties of man" were not original and
> inherent, but evolved from "social qualities" acquired "through
> natural selection, aided by inherited habit." Just as life came from
> the nonliving, so also the moral came from the nonmoral.
>
> argument, according to which human beings are moral by nature.
> Instead, he followed the pattern of the modern natural right reasoning
> of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which assumed
> that human beings were naturally asocial and amoral, and only became
> social and moral historically. That is why Darwin called his account a
> natural history of morality.
>
> For Darwin, in order to become moral we first had to become social.
> "In order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man,
> should have become social," Darwin reasoned, "they must have acquired
> the same instinctive feelings which impel other animals to live in a
> body." As with all animal instincts, the "social instincts" of man
> were the result of variations bringing some benefit for survival.
>
> results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct." Since the "ever-enduring
> social instincts" were more primitive and hence stronger than
> instincts developed later, the social instincts were the sources of
> our feelings of unease when some action of ours violated them. Such
> feelings of unease, Darwin explained, we now call "conscience."
>
> It might seem that Darwin's arguments for human sociability and the
> moral conscience could be marshaled to support a conservative moral
> position. Yet mere "sociality," even with a conscience grounded in
> evolutionary imperatives, does not at all mean that nature has created
> a definite moral standard, such as natural law. Quite the reverse. At
> bottom, everything is variable. As Darwin writes:
>
> If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-
> bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would,
> like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers,
> and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one
> would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social
> animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some
> feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an
> inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to
> have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought
> to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other
> wrong.
>
> moralities as they actually evolved. So, for example, the "murder of
> infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and
> has met with no reproach." Indeed, "infanticide, especially of
> females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not
> injurious." As for suicide, in "former times" it was "not generally
> considered as a crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an
> honorable act. . . . For the loss to a nation of a single individual
> is not felt." Neither did infanticide or suicide cause the "feeling of
> dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied
> instinct." Monogamy, too, Darwin in formed the reader, was a fairly
> recent evolutionary phenomenon.
>
> on ranking evolved moral traits. The unhappy result, however, was his
> espousal of views we would today call racist, and his justification of
> a program of eugenics.
>
> Darwin cheerfully asserted that the "western nations of Europe
> immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the
> summit of civilization." As a member of the favored race, Darwin
> embraced a typically nineteenth-century view of moral progress.
> that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that
> virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by
> inheritance . . . [so that] virtue will be triumphant."
>
> But the engine of evolution, even moral evolution, is natural
> selection. Therefore, Darwin believed that the evolution of morality
> would require the extermination of "less fit" races and individuals--a
> process that could be helped along by artificial selection, or
> eugenics.
>
> evolution. We see in animals that, "in regard to mental qualities,
> their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic
> animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence,
> courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. With
> man we see similar facts." Since different races, like different
> breeds of dogs or horses, develop different capacities, it followed
> that distinct gradations in moral capacities would be found among
> human races.
>
> Whereas St. Thomas' natural law account began from the assumption that
> all human beings belonged to the same species (and were therefore all
> subject to the same moral demands), Darwin tried to determine whether
> human races should be considered distinct species. In the end, he was
> unsure whether to rank the races "as species or sub-species" but
> finally asserted that "the latter term appears the most appropriate."
>
> reasoning allowed Darwin to rank the races on an evolutionary scale.
> different races, Darwin argued that the various races would
> necessarily have varying intellectual and moral capacities. So that,
> for example, the "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ
> as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named."
> As we have seen, the Europeans came out on top.
>
> selection were necessarily and beneficially locked in the severest
> struggle for survival. As he put it in the Origin,
>
> It is the most closely allied forms . . . which, from having nearly
> the same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the
> severest competition with each other; consequently, each new variety
> of species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press
> hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them.
>
> This argument translated directly to his assessment of the
> evolutionary history of human races, and the necessary and beneficial
> extinction of the less favored races.
>
> The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and
> replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the
> anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break
> will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a
> more civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some ape
> as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or
> Australian and the gorilla.
>
> The European race will inevitably emerge as the distinct species
> "human being," and all the transitional forms--such as the gorilla,
> the Negro, and so on--will be extinct.
>
> Furthermore, natural selection functions not only between races, but
> also among individuals within races. Here, oddly enough, Darwin
> maintained that savage man has an advantage over civilized man. In
> savage man, the intellectual and moral qualities are not as developed,
> but such lack actually works to weed out the unfit: "With savages, the
> weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive
> commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health." Unfortunately, the very
> development of human compassion which serves to mark the Europeans as
> more civilized also works against the principle of survival of the
> fittest.
>
> We civilized men . . . do our utmost to check the process of
> elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
> sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
> skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. . . . Thus the
> weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who
> has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this
> must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon
> a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of
> a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly
> anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
>
> What could be done to prevent the European race from devolving under
> the influence of the weak and the sick? Let the principles of natural
> selection be applied without obstruction. "Man, like every other
> animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a
> struggle for existence," Darwin reminded the reader, "and if he is to
> advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle."
> Turning to the wisdom of animal breeders, Darwin proclaimed that
> "there should be open competition for all men; and the most able
> should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and
> rearing the largest number of offspring." The worst, of course, should
> not be allowed to breed at all.
>
> How forcefully ought this program to be carried out? Darwin was vague,
> but ended with the remark: "All do good service who aid toward this
> end."
>
> What may we gather from Darwin's evolutionary account of morality? To
> begin with, Darwin rightly understood that bare sociality allowed for
> a startling variety of moralities. In contrast to the very determinate
> list of requisite virtues, definite commands, and established ends in
> the traditional natural law account, evolution brings forth many
> different modes of group survival. Just as male lions, when taking
> over a pride, kill the young that were fathered by the ousted dominant
> male, so also human societies have flourished quite well with the
> murder of rivals to regal authority. And just as many female animals
> will let the runt of the litter die by refusing it nourishment, so
> also many human societies have survived for hundreds of years by
> exposing their unwanted and deformed babies. Merely having "social
> instincts" includes so much that it excludes almost nothing considered
> morally reprehensible.
>
> Although many today would shudder at Darwin's racism, we must concede
> that Darwin's conclusions were correctly drawn from his evolutionary
> principles.
No! Allmost all his conclusions on humanity are false, because he
misses the bigger picture. He thinks humanity is `just another large
mammel,' but it is not, humanity is technical unlike any other species.
> If evolution is true, and the races themselves are the
> result of the struggle to survive, then how could intellectual and
> moral qualities not be diversely acquired by different races?
>
> As for the survival of the fittest, contemporary liberals have
> attempted to separate Darwin from Social Darwinism, but Darwin's own
> words advocating severe struggle show us quite clearly that he was the
> first Social Darwinist. Conservatives (who are often early modern
> liberals in outlook and temperament) sometimes look fondly at the
> purifying effects of "severe struggle," substituting economic for
> natural battle. Such fondness is not rooted in the natural law of
> Aquinas, but, as Leo Strauss argued, in the modern natural right
> theory of John Locke (as filtered through Adam Smith). But modern
> natural right theory has led to the world according to Pinker and
> Dawkins.
>
> Larry Arnhart, in particular, seems to have blurred this fundamental
> distinction, for he quotes Aquinas ("Conservatives, Darwin & Design:
> An Exchange," FT, November 2000) as saying that "natural right
> [emphasis added] is that which nature has taught all animals," when
> Thomas actually said that "those things are said to belong to the
> natural law [lex naturalis] which nature has taught to all animals."
> In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas does not mean to say that natural law
> is shared by all animals including human beings--the natural law, as
> the "participation of the eternal law in the rational creature,"
> pertains only to human beings (I-II, 91.2)--but that natural law
> includes natural inclinations shared by other animals, "such as sexual
> intercourse, education of offspring, and so forth." But for Darwin, we
> don't just share some aspects of our nature with animals. We are
> ultimately indistinguishable from other animals, and therefore subject
> to the very same laws of evolution.
>
> The effort of Arnhart and others to affirm the premises of evolution,
> and to affirm at the same time a morality grounded in natural law,
> inevitably fails. Natural law doctrine only makes sense in a universe
> governed by a benevolent Creator. Nor will it do to affirm both
> Darwinian evolution and a vague theism, for the engine of such
> evolution is, on principle, incompatible with any design or direction
> from above--and that includes moral design and direction. The
> Darwinism of Pinker and Dawkins, one must conclude, is much more
> coherent than that of Fukuyama and Arnhart.
>
> Benjamin Wiker teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the
> Franciscan University of Steubenville and is a fellow of the Discovery
> Institute.
>
> Copyright/Reproduction Limitations:
>
> This data file is the sole property of FIRST THINGS. It may not be
> altered or edited in any way. It may be reproduced only in its
> entirety for circulation as "freeware," without charge. All
> reproductions of this data file must contain the copyright notice
> (i.e., "Copyright (c) 1991-2001 by First Things") and this Copyright/
> Reproduction Limitations notice.
The face value morality of Darwinism is: what survives is good, and what
goes extinct is bad. This does not yet fill in a-priori what is good
or bad behavior.
Conscience is the fear of getting punished later by a crime you know
you did commit. It could result from a long period in which crime
is being punished later, so that people who develop a fear for crime
live longer then those who don't, because if they commit less crime
they survive more for not enduring the punishment.
Monogamy is good for children, it means children have a more stable
home environment. When they have that, they are in a better position to
learn more complex skills then mere day to day survival in a chaotic
social environment. Hence, when there is monogamy, there is more
likelihood of stronger technical capabilities and intelligence. That
is beneficial for human survival, hence there are some reasons for
monogamy to evolve.
When Darwin supports eugenics, he also supports violence against those
he judges inferior. It is this violence which is detrimental to human
survival, therefore Darwin violated Darwinist morality concerning what
is `good' for humanity (survival.) Eugenics is artificially interfering
with natural selection, and therefore superfluous as the proof of being
good lies in survival/existence. Eugenics is also itself subject to natural
selection, as in going extinct for its violent and therefore `bad'
quality. Eugenics does not work if it does not exactly replicate the
conditions of survival in the real world. Since these conditions may
change, artificial conditions are not real conditions, and because
eugenics is violent/aggressive/arrogant, eugenics does not seem to get
firm support from the theory of natural selection.
All species of man use a fair amount of technology which is reasonably
consistent with each other and all well beyond what any other animal
is capable. `Naturally' there are regional differences, possibly induced
by the demands of the environment, or cultural differences. Though
the spread of technology in the world was diverse, it is all very much
on the same path toward more technology. By this definition of
`humanity,' even if chickens build fortresses and drinking cups they
would have to be considered human. If one wanted to rate humanity,
one would probably rate it according to its technology. That would
probably put Europe and China on top. However this is could be primarily
a factor of location only and not breeding/race. Europe and China
are places where the yearly winter cold forces development of additional
technologies. The tropics in turn have their own problems, but these
regions have about the same climate all year. In the tropics is it
so hot that working hard becomes difficult, whereas in the high north
it gets so cold that development of technology is hampered similarly.
Hence technology on Earth seems more likely to develop in the temperate
zones, where the need, access to resources and climate are most favorable.
China and Europe are in that zone. North America and South America lie
in this zone also, but have been populated later, perhaps that set them
back (??). [Isn't thinking also easier below 25 degrees Celsius, the
amount of air-conditioning in offices seems to vote yes.]
Darwin seems to make a mistake if he thinks the different human
`races' (sub-species?) have to fight it out, and the winner is
best. The problem is that this selects for the human sub-species that
is best in fighting. Here Darwin implicitly assumes that being good
in fighting is a desirable trait. But is it ? Rather what humanity
needs is peace, because violence may blow up the whole world, and
extinct humanity, which is `bad' in natural evolution. Hence the
extinction or conversion (preferably) of the most violent is the
`good' direction of natural selection.
Darwin's laments that the sick or weak are cared for. The problem with
Darwin is that he does not understand natural evolution when it comes
to humanity. Humanity is a technical species, and hence has no use
for mutual violence which only exists to weed out the weak-fighters,
so that the species will be strong in fighting off wolves and bears,
subdue deer and such. Fight with crocodiles, when one has to cross
a river to get some berries. Humanity however does not need to rely
on muscle or body strength to win from other animals. To fight
crocodiles, we build a bridge or a boat, and to fight lions we carry
an AK-47, or a rocket launcher, or whatever. These technical
capabilities do not require athletic ability to operate, and in the
near future that will be even less the case. The entire reason for
humanity to murder each other and to kill the weak fighters is gone.
Darwin thinks like an "uncivilized animal." Is setting himself up to
be murdered for his own violent and uncaring remarks. He is exhibiting
violence to his fellow technical specie-members. In the new rules of
natural evolution for a technical species, that means he would be on
the losing end, because violence always leads to death. It is just
that for non-technical species, that loss is compensated sufficiently
in a stronger fighting species because it is confronted with other
species that fight it. Darwin really only talks about non-human
evolution, not technical-species-evolution, he didn't notice the
difference (though it is a rather obvious difference, when you think
about it ... which animal writes letters on computers screens.)
The human breeding, as the breeding of many other species, is
consciously self-directed, because of freedom of choice for whom to
marry and have children with. Therefore there is no problem, and those
specimen that are ill adapted will tend to breed less well and get
killed for some reason. Natural evolution is just continuing as
it did before, it needs no artificial help. According to Darwin's own
rules, he might have to be marked as violent to his fellow man, which
means he exhibits obsolete and undesirable traits, and should therefore
not be allowed to reproduce himself. [Darwin is basically a fascist?]
Darwin fails to notice that `the weak and sick' are often the least
violent specimen, and therefore actually the pride and future of
humanity, if it wants to have any future at all. The strong and the
powerful fighters are the dread of humanity, who continue to murder
member specimen for no evolutionary beneficial reason, and who in
the end are going to destroy the whole world once technology has
become capable of that. In case humanity is capable of containing
its internal violence and not destroy itself, the world is nevertheless
likely to descend into some kind of hell hole because of all the
mutual personal violence. In the end it might even threaten life
on other planets, until it meets a species that is more capable and
that would judge humanity as being a galactic weed, wage war and
destroy it. There is no future for Darwin's `violent man' (not that
I see it.)
Law is a cultural/technical creation to enhance peace and therefore
prosperity and survival of a group or even entire species. In the
end it may prove to be essential, and there might be no long term
human (technical-species) survival without it, until all specimen
have become sufficiently peaceful and constructive. Obviously, if
technology is the driving factor behind moral development, the
technology precedes the morality. It is the technology that changes
the natural environment, and then it is up to the species to adapt
to that new environment. In our case, the technical case, that means
non-mutual-violence. For all animals holds that infighting is a cost
factor, for many animals may hold that working in groups in beneficial,
certainly for humanity where technical constructions require group
effort. Therefore `Law' as such is natural, on the one hand an
adaptation to dealing with the obsolete violent elements, on the
other hand creating a technical structure for a technical and complex
living species. The first role may eventually dissipate, not in the
least because of the results of the law itself, while the second role
may persist and become part of the technical capabilities or our
species.
(C)opyright Jos Boersema. This file is in the public domain, do what
you want with it. Isn't that peaceful ...
PS
If you want to investigate a real threat to humanity, look into
Capitalism, it stimulates the bad and the violent in the economy.
Moses had some laws against that, and he spread the use of natural
resources to all. If the human species needs laws, it is laws to
remove Capitalism and distribute economic opportunity. The solution
is not violence, the solution is not unfettered competition. A
solution has to reward the peaceful, constructive and social, which
is something you can do with law (justice/police).
http://www.xs4all.nl/~joshb/constitution.html
--
http://www.xs4all.nl/~joshb
Al Klein
>Can some one with truth and conscious post and list all the evil
>things advocated by the bible, for the benefits of all to see.....and
>the bigots to judge/defend.....!
Just start reading at Leviticus 1.
brique
TimK <tim...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:46cf9ab2$0$16453$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
James has a tendency to confuse Darwins comments on sociological concerns
of Darwins day with Darwins theories of the processes that govern evolution.
It is comparable to dismissing the Theory of Relativity on the basis that
Einstein was a crap violinist, or, indeed, suggesting that Einsteins
theories of violin playing must be considered as valid as the Theory of
Relativity.
He also seems to have decided that a certain form of human behaviour and
social organisation is the pinnacle of human achievement and thus
'evolution' must inevitable direct humanity towards it and, furthermore,
imbue that humanity with a natural moral compass which finds such social
organisation to be desirable and 'natural'. Thus those traits which might
promote such developments are 'natural' and those which don't are
inherently 'immoral' and recognised as such even by his dog.
Does the environment humanity finds itself in also govern how it develops
its social interaction? That is likely. Does the social organisation thus
developed become part of the physical genetic structure of humanity? Why
should it? Could it affect the process of natural selection? Indeed it
could. But then, so would slaughtering all the first born. But if such be
the case, we are not discussing Darwins Theory of Natural Selection at all.
brique
Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
The most common question asked by a child is 'Why?'. it can be rather
irksome when each attempt to explain something is followed by the same
question yet again.'Why?'. I would suggest the 'turn-off' point arrives when
the adult responds with 'It just is!' followed by 'Why?' followed by
'Because I say so!'.... Religious indoctrination short-cuts the series of
inital 'Why?'s by introducing the evils of the 'sin ' of 'doubt' then
saying 'Because I say so!'.
brique
Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
Of course! It _is_ the literal infallible Bible, after all......
pico
> Are you talking the brain, or the mind? They are mutually exclusive things.
Mutually exclusive?
And Sean, is that your brain writing above or it is your mind?
Mark K. Bilbo
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:16:38 -0500, "Mark K. Bilbo" <gm...@com.mkbilbo>
> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 23:04:06 -0400, MarkA wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:56:05 -0700, Sound of Trumpet wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?
command=view&id=1122
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Darwin and the Descent of Morality
>>>>
>>>> By: Benjamin Wiker
>>>>
>>>> First Things
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
>>>> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
>>>
>>>
>>> Why would the "moral implications" of a scientific theory have ANY
>>> bearing on its validity?
>>
>>Why would there *be* "moral implications" of a scientific theory?
>>
>>Theories are, essentially, observation based descriptions of reality.
>>"Moral" is what people do, reality can't be "moral" or "immoral". Is
>>gravity wrong? Is the sky being blue because it's corrupt? If a tree
>>falls in the woods and nobody hears it, is it virtuous?
>>
>>The whole idea is silly...
>
> It's a construct of those who, being amoral, have no idea what
> "morality" means.
Fiddling with the quotes, I ran across one (I'm blanking on the author
right now) in which the atheist commented, condensing here: "you mean you
need a book to tell you not to kill your neighbors?" And ending with,
"you people scare me."
It's too long for a sig. Too bad that, it's good.
And it *is* disturbing there are people who have such a defective moral
center they need "morality" to be something external to them. That's one
"crisis of faith" away from being a psychopath...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
"You know, I'd get it if people were just looking for a
way to fill the holes. But they want the holes. They wanna
live in the holes. And they go nuts when someone else
pours dirt in their holes.
"Climb out of your holes people!"
- Dr. House, on faith
Sean
"pico" <pi...@pico.pico> wrote in message
news:13d0e6n...@news.supernews.com...
You tell me mate.
loua...@yahoo.com
> Could you look at some moral dilemmas, for example here
>
> http://www.moralbliss.com
>
> and tell us what would Darwin do?
He was quite a nice man, so I doubt those answers would be
controversial. He was not only an abolitionist by family upbringing,
but wrote with real feeling about how horrible it would feel to be a
slave after seeing slavery first hand in South America. Took it for
granted that black people felt the same way about being enslaved that
white people would, too. Over all, slightly more liberal than his age-
mate Abraham Lincoln.
Jim07D7
TimK
"brique" <briqu...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
Are you dodging the question, or did you not understand the question?
Is there a generic component to human behavior?
Al Klein
wrote:
Breeders like that shouldn't be allowed to abuse children like that -
even their own. If you're not prepared to be a parent for at least 18
years, don't have kids. It's not like we're about to run out of
people.
Al Klein
<gm...@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
>And it *is* disturbing there are people who have such a defective moral
>center they need "morality" to be something external to them. That's one
>"crisis of faith" away from being a psychopath...
It's not a choice, any more than blind cave fish choose to not have
vision. Some people are just born without the ability to know what's
right and wrong without being told. I'm not saying that a moral
person always does what's right, but he knows whether what he's doing
is right or wrong.
veritas
> "brique" <briquen...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
>
> news:118805012...@damia.uk.clara.net...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > TimK <timk...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
> >news:46cf9ab2$0$16453$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>
> >> "brique" <briquen...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
>
> - Show quoted text -
As it seems like no one likes Sound of Trumpet's ideas. Here is one
that Darwin had no way of knowing, and neither did anyone else until
Cambridge released their study on May 8th of this year. Darwin
assumed that we had evolved like everything else on this planet. He
had no reason to believe otherwise. On May the 8th, Cambridge
Univerisity finally released the report everyone had waited on. It
states with conclusive facts that we are all, all living humans
related to apporox. 10,000 adult DNA combinations that came out of
Africa about 55-50,000 years ago. There is not a trace of any similar
species in us. When you think about it, think about this, in 47,000
years we spread around the world, killing everything that was
dangerous in our path. None of the other similar species could begin
to do that. We looked exactly how we look now, except for climate and
survivial changes and we were every bit as intelligent. In 47,000
years we landed a man on the moon. The species that resembled us
didn't change the way they made a flint tool in a 100,000 years. We
change clothing styles every year.
Giant Cave Bears, gone, Saber-Tooths, gone, Cave Lions, gone.
Anything that stood in our way. Why are we so different? We are the
only species that kill each other in mass quanities.
veritas
>
> - Show quoted text -
I actually was not done. Perhaps there is good reason for no other
civilizations on other planets to contact us? Self-perservation
perhaps? We are completely different from the others that have been
claimed to be our ancestors. We need to understand the difference
between them and us. Violence clearly is one, art, literature,
societies, everything that makes us human is different from those
species. Take humans out of the picture and Darwin's theory fits
perfectly, put humans back in, and it simply doesn't work. I'm
agnostic, so I don't look to a God, or a supernatural being. But the
answer is somewhere. Ken
--
"Truth does not give a damn what we conceive. We survive or perish
according to our ability to discern the truth correctly and act upon
it." - Ken www.veritasnovel.com
Michael Gray
Sean's stupid assertion is like saying that 'running' and 'legs' are
mutually exclusive!
Brain is a thing, mind is a process of the brain.
Howard Brazee
>> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
>> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
>
>
>Why would the "moral implications" of a scientific theory have ANY bearing
>on its validity? Scientific theories are based on EVIDENCE. If they
>inconvenience your sense of morality, that's YOUR problem, not the
>Universe's.
What are the moral implications of evolutionary theory?
TimK
"veritas" <khog...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1188090672....@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> As it seems like no one likes Sound of Trumpet's ideas.
They aren't original and they're stupid. Apart from that they're great.
>Here is one
> that Darwin had no way of knowing, and neither did anyone else until
> Cambridge released their study on May 8th of this year. Darwin
> assumed that we had evolved like everything else on this planet.
We did.
>...There is not a trace of any similar
> species in us.
I have no idea what you mean by that.
veritas
> "veritas" <khogan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
Go to the Cambridge of University website news. Pull up May 8th and it
will give you all the details that some of us have been waiting for.
They held up because they were not sure th Austrailians and New
Guineans DNA would match, turns out because they had been seperated
from the rest of us for 8,000 years, it was harder to match. But they
did match, we all came from the same bunch. all out of Africa. No
hint of Erectus or Hablis. Ken
TimK
veritas
> "veritas" <khogan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1188094004....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> >...There is not a trace of any similar species in us.
>
> I have no idea what you mean by that.
Did you look up the news from Cambridge University on May the 8th of
this year, and read the report they released on the DNA world wide
studies they did? Has it ever occurred to you that all DNA matter for
living beings in this galaxy is put together in a similar fashion, our
world is nothing special? Ken
Bill Snyder
No problem. Neither does he.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Sean
"Jim07D7" <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:bss0d3poiqcejhf8i...@4ax.com...
From what you have said above, it would follow that that - The brain is the
"brain's at work" platform.
Somehow that doesn't seem to say much. Is this what you meant? can you
clarify pls?
veritas
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:19:05 -0400, "TimK" <timk...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >"veritas" <khogan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >news:1188094004....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> >>> >...There is not a trace of any similar species in us.
>
> >I have no idea what you mean by that.
>
> No problem. Neither does he.
>
> --
> Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Thanks for all your help Bill, it is always appriciated as I'm sure
you know. But what other species acts like us? Really? Nothing
here, never has. Cambridge doesn't lie do they? Ken
TimK
> On Aug 25, 9:19 pm, "TimK" <timk...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>> "veritas" <khogan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:1188094004....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> >> >...There is not a trace of any similar species in us.
>>
>> I have no idea what you mean by that.
>
> Did you look up the news from Cambridge University on May the 8th of
> this year, and read the report they released on the DNA world wide
> studies they did? Has it ever occurred to you that all DNA matter for
> living beings in this galaxy is put together in a similar fashion, our
> world is nothing special? Ken
I have no idea what YOU mean by that - what is so hard for you to understand
about that?
I'm sure the Cambridge report doesn't say anything as absurd as "There is
not a trace of any similar species in us" so I don't understand why you keep
pointing me to it.
TimK
"Bill Snyder" <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:haq1d3lukph3oi8b5...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:19:05 -0400, "TimK" <tim...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>"veritas" <khog...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>news:1188094004....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>
>>>> >...There is not a trace of any similar species in us.
>>
>>I have no idea what you mean by that.
>
> No problem. Neither does he.
Apparently not - I don't think he has any idea what that report says.
veritas
> "Bill Snyder" <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote in message
>
> news:haq1d3lukph3oi8b5...@4ax.com...
>
> > On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:19:05 -0400, "TimK" <timk...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >>"veritas" <khogan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >>news:1188094004....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> >>>> >...There is not a trace of any similar species in us.
>
> >>I have no idea what you mean by that.
>
> > No problem. Neither does he.
>
> Apparently not - I don't think he has any idea what that report says.
>
>
>
> > --
>
> - Show quoted text -
Just that we are a unique species that does not seem to fit in. Bill
S. has been through this. Ken
Sean
"Michael Gray" <mike...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:6dl1d3p4jk3ltdouc...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:12:39 -0500, pico <pi...@pico.pico> wrote:
>
>>Sean wrote:
>>
>>> Are you talking the brain, or the mind? They are mutually exclusive
>>> things.
>>
>>Mutually exclusive?
>>
>>And Sean, is that your brain writing above or it is your mind?
>
> Sean's stupid assertion is like saying that 'running' and 'legs' are
> mutually exclusive!
Not so, firstly it isn't a stupid assertion, that's just your judgement that
may or may not be accurate according to what is.
Secondly .. you have misrepresented my assertion totally by using the notion
of 'running' and 'legs'.
That representation would be true, if i said " the mind and thinking are
mutually exclusive things ".. but, I did not say that. So you are putting
words into my mouth which is an argumentative fallacy.
So I repeat what I stated and I'll stand by it, and by what I meant by it ..
Are you talking the brain, or the mind? They are mutually exclusive things.
> Brain is a thing, mind is a process of the brain.
Are you sure you know that, and if so, how do you know that it is actually
true? Did your brain tell you that, or your mind? Can you tell the
difference, if so how do you know the difference between the thing itself
and the process ... when you are using the very thing and the process to
tell you that's what's happening?
I'd suggest that the brain is a thing, and the mind is a thing, and thinking
is a process or activity of both the mind and the brain together to varying
degrees ... but they are still mutually exclusive in that regard.
EG The concious mind does not get involved in subconscious bodily functions
like heart rate, digestion, nervous system, and temperature control, but the
brain does.
But I understand if you do not understand that or reject it, and more
besides.
Free Lunch
veritas <khog...@yahoo.com> wrote in
<1188097212....@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>:
We're just another species of chimpanzee. We fit in fine.
Gene Ward Smith
@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com:
> Did you look up the news from Cambridge University on May the 8th of
> this year, and read the report they released on the DNA world wide
> studies they did?
If you've got a cite, and in particular a url, then give it.
veritas
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:00:12 -0700, in alt.atheism
> <1188097212.426252.46...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>:
>
>
>
>
>
> >On Aug 25, 9:54 pm, "TimK" <timk...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
> >> "Bill Snyder" <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote in message
>
> >>news:haq1d3lukph3oi8b5...@4ax.com...
>
> >> > On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:19:05 -0400, "TimK" <timk...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >> >>"veritas" <khogan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >> >>news:1188094004....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> >>>> >...There is not a trace of any similar species in us.
>
> >> >>I have no idea what you mean by that.
>
> >> > No problem. Neither does he.
>
> >> Apparently not - I don't think he has any idea what that report says.
>
> >> > --
> >> > Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> >Just that we are a unique species that does not seem to fit in. Bill
> >S. has been through this. Ken
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
We know to much to be just another species of chimpanzees. Do you
think they would be "smart" enough to invent something to write back
and forth to people you don't want to write back and forth to? Or to
crash land landers on Mars? No, they just eat, breed, and try to mind
their own business. Call that smart? Ken
Al Klein
<reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Aug 24, 3:15 pm, ghost writer <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>> In article <vppsc3pb045ikhdvb5lf0ant7nn8qr0...@4ax.com>
>> James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>>
>> > "Denis Loubet"
>> >> There's no such thing as Darwinian morality.
>>
>> >On the contrary, there is such a thing as Darwinian
>> >morality - it is just you don't like it any more than
>> >Sound of Trumpet does.
>>
>> Fine, tell us what is it. What "Darwinist Morality" means in
>> practice here and now?
>> What does Darwin wants from us?
>>
>
>Are you asking about social interpretations of Darwins ideas or a
>quote, scripture and verse, from some of his writtings?
No, we're asking what Darwinism (and that word has a very specific
meaning) has to do with morality?
>Currently the coolest theory, inmy opinion, of Darwinian morals is the
>theory of "evolutionary psychology" That theory might conclude that
>morality is just a modual or scattered group of brain areas in action;
And your evidence that morality isn't just another heritable trait
is?
<quotes not from Darwin snipped>
The ideas of people who aren't Darwin isn't "Darwinism" - which is
simply common descent through natural selection. What has that to do
with what's right and what's wrong?
Free Lunch
veritas <khog...@yahoo.com> wrote in
<1188097980.1...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>:
The physical and genetic differences are trivial. The outcome of the
change is surprising.
TimK
They can live for decades in a place you wouldn't last a single fucking
night. Call that smart?
Jon Schild
I am sure I have read of ant colonies making war on one another, and
killing millions in the process. It was a while ago, and I can't give a
reference. But I keep seeing these "We are the only ones who ... "
claims, and so far there have been counterexamples to all of them.
--
Sufficiently advanced spam is indistinguishable from content.
Mike Painter
>
> Are you sure you know that, and if so, how do you know that it is
> actually true? Did your brain tell you that, or your mind? Can you
> tell the difference, if so how do you know the difference between the
> thing itself and the process ... when you are using the very thing
> and the process to tell you that's what's happening?
How do you tell them apart?
What right do you have to make such a statement if you can't
>
> I'd suggest that the brain is a thing, and the mind is a thing, and
> thinking is a process or activity of both the mind and the brain
> together to varying degrees ... but they are still mutually exclusive
> in that regard.
First something can not, by definition, be "mutually exclusive" if they are
"together to varying degrees ", whatever that means.
>
> EG The concious mind does not get involved in subconscious bodily
> functions like heart rate, digestion, nervous system, and temperature
> control, but the brain does.
All those things can be controlled by the conscious mind. Navy divers have
been taught to increase blood flow to their hands for working in cold water.
James A. Donald
> Why would there *be* "moral implications" of a
> scientific theory?
Because, unlike Maxwell's equations or General
Relativity, Darwinism describes *us*, makes predictions
about *us*.
Morality follows from our nature, and Darwinism tells us
about our nature.
Now if you define morality to be something other than
morality - for example a mere command, such as political
correctness, then indeed a scientific theory cannot have
moral implications, but this really is not what morality
in fact is, however popular that definition of morality
is among those who desire to command us.
--
----------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/ James A. Donald
veritas
>
> - Show quoted text -
Bet I would last a LOT longer than a night, my friend, I call that
smart. What I don't call smart is being there in the first place. Ken
veritas
>
> - Show quoted text -
Yeah, well, let's see them. And I want to see their little machine
guns and hand grenades as well. Ken
James A. Donald
> Fine, tell us what is it. What "Darwinist Morality"
> means in practice here and now? What does Darwin wants
> from us?
Your question presupposes that morality is merely a
command, that morality is what someone wants from us.
Which obviously it is not.
Aristotle explained that morality was the pursuit of a
particular kind of excellence, that one should be
virtuous for one's own sake and the sake of one's own
good name, and to hell with everyone else. Ayn Rand
similarly argued that morality is the enlightened
pursuit of self interest.
And what our evolution has programmed us to pursue is
enlightened self interest - that is to say, our self
interest given that cooperating with other people is
necessary to accomplish our own desires, programmed us
for fitness in an environment where the reactions of
others to our deeds is part of that environment to which
we are to fit.
veritas
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:13:00 -0700, in alt.atheism
> <1188097980.154323.281...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>:
>
> - Show quoted text -
Yes, the outcome of the small changes is very surprising isn't it. Ken
James A. Donald
<huc...@blah.com> wrote:
> Are you talking the brain, or the mind? They are
> mutually exclusive things.
The mind is merely the function of the brain, as running
is the function of the legs - thus mind and brain are
just to different ways of looking at the same phenomena.
We can perceive the world at is really is in itself,
because it physically impinges on our brains, and thus
on our minds. Walk around with your eyes closed, and
you will bang your head into something soon enough.
veritas
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 13:51:32 +1000, "Sean"
>
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because people
get killed over my life and property. And the policemen can't stay
with me all the time. Ken
veritas
>
> - Show quoted text -
They'll just have to take other people's stuff I guess, 'cause it
won't be mine! Ken
James A. Donald
> > the theoretical status of evolutionary theory
> > concerns its moral implications. Does evolutionary
> > theory undermine traditional morality, or does it
> > support it?
On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:03:07 -0700, Jon Schild
<j...@xmission.com> wrote:
> Neither. The world does not revolve around your
> fanatical 10-century brand of christianity.
Both: Evolutionary theory supports some aspects of
traditional morality that traditional moralists do not
want to acknowledge, such as the double standard - men
that bang lots of women are admirable, women that bang
lots of men are contemptible, male homosexuals are apt
to embezzle your funds and sell your secrets, while
seriously undermining the Christian concept of virtue in
favor of the more muscular Greek concept of virtue -
where a virtuous man, does not imitate Christ by turning
the other cheek and laying down his life for others, but
rather more resembles Ayn Rand's egotist, competently
looking out for number one, and pursuing his own good,
by honorable rather than dishonorable means. Also
evolutionary theory tells us charity begins at home -
that ones first duty is to look after kin and friends,
not far away strangers located in places one has
difficulty finding on a map.
Wombat
Have you never seen film of a gang of Common Chimps beating another
Chimp almost to death because he had strayed into their territory.
How do you explain the GULO gene in primates and retroviral
insertions, a dead give away to common ancestry.
Wombat
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>
>
Yes, ants have both war and slavery. Online searches are hampered a
bit just now by the existence of a popular game called "Ant Wars," but
you can find plenty of references if you're patient enough. From
Wikipedia:
"The pavement ant is famous for its urge to increase its territory. In
early spring, colonies attempt to conquer new areas and often attack
the nearest enemy colony. These result in huge sidewalk battles,
sometimes leaving thousands of ants dead."
and
"Some ants, such as the Amazon ants, are incapable of feeding
themselves, and must rely on captured worker ants to care for them."
<http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2001.tb01296.x>
Don Martin
wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 23:04:06 -0400, MarkA <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>>> An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical
>>> status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications.
>>
>>
>>Why would the "moral implications" of a scientific theory have ANY bearing
>>on its validity? Scientific theories are based on EVIDENCE. If they
>>inconvenience your sense of morality, that's YOUR problem, not the
>>Universe's.
>
>What are the moral implications of evolutionary theory?
Apart from the trivial aspect that believers insist upon (no god = no
morals), I would suggest that the moral implications of evolutionary
theory lie in whether moral behaviors confer some advantage to a
population that allows their wider dispersal over a competing
population lacking such behaviors. This topic is not easy to deal with
in any space short enough to be read on an electronic forum because
most morals are taught and only a few seem hard wired (such as dogs
being apparently inhibited from biting bitches--Lorenz), but a general
example might be this:
We are social animals. Our societies vary greatly in terms of "rules",
loosely called morality, and greatly in terms of aggression (to name
but one of several attitudes toward others). Given two competing
societies within the same general area, it is possible, perhaps
likely, that the one in which the people more generally felt more
justly dealt with by their government and their neighbors would enjoy
the greater support of its population than the one where the sense of
justice was weaker. In a conflict between the two, the people of the
"just" society have more to lose and might fight harder. (Apparently
quite a few V-2 rockets, built by slave labor, did not fly quite as
accurately as they might have done if the people putting the pieces
together were interested in doing a good job of it--sabotage is a
common element of slavery, a notably unjust situation.) In a few
generations, it would not be surprising to find that the "just"
society had either absorbed or driven out the unjust one.
Aggressive societies are a special case: they seem to be strikingly
successful at conquest (think Mongols), but suck at governing. Their
"morals" tend to evaporate over time as does their significance (think
Mongols again--what have they managed in the past few centuries?).
WOA* #2278
If you can't be a dirty old man, what is the point of being an old man?
Through a jaundiced eye darkly--rheum with a view.
The Squeeky Wheel
http://home.comcast.net/~drdonmartin/
__________
*Wicked Old Atheist
TimK
You would be *prey*.
TimK
I hope that's a joke.
Howard Brazee
<jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>> Why would there *be* "moral implications" of a
>> scientific theory?
>
>Because, unlike Maxwell's equations or General
>Relativity, Darwinism describes *us*, makes predictions
>about *us*.
Medicine, including psychiatric medicine makes predictions on about
*us*, and there are moral questions about medicine. And certainly
they predict things about us.
What are the moral implications resulting from one person believing
that we evolved, and another person believing that Brahma created us
as is?
brique
TimK <tim...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:46d09fd9$0$6399$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>
> "brique" <briqu...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
> news:118805012...@damia.uk.clara.net...
> >
> > TimK <tim...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
> > news:46cf9ab2$0$16453$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
> >>
> >> "brique" <briqu...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
Well, which question are you asking? The question that : 'Does human
behaviour evolve?' or the question: 'Does human behaviour evolve
genetically?' or the question: 'Do genetics control human behaviour?' or
the question: 'Is human behaviour genetically determined and is that genetic
determination subject to evolutionary pressures?': or the question:' if
human behaviour is genetically determined, is it subject to the same process
of natural selection as determines physical characteristics within a
species?'. and so on. In other words, do you under stand what question you
are asking?
We will assume your question is _now_ : 'Is there a generic component to
human behaviour?'. Maybe it is rash to assume you meant 'genetic' rather
than 'generic' but what the hey, let's live dangerously.
There do seem to be some forms of behaviour 'hard-wired' into the human
system. 'Fight or flight', for example. I have seen claims for other forms
of behaviour : incest avoidance, for example which are, frankly, idiotic and
proved so quite easily by the prevalence of incest within human societies.
Likewise the cannabalism taboo. To my mind both are learned behaviours which
societies presume to be benefical to the society as a whole.. No genetic or
physical evolution required at all.
Howard Brazee
>>...There is not a trace of any similar
>> species in us.
>
>I have no idea what you mean by that.
Obviously he meant that all the characteristics and genes that we
share with other animals don't count. What matters it that virtuous
dogs aren't atheists, and they also don't believe in all of those
wrong religions.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>I am sure I have read of ant colonies making war on one another, and
>killing millions in the process. It was a while ago, and I can't give a
>reference. But I keep seeing these "We are the only ones who ... "
>claims, and so far there have been counterexamples to all of them.
It's common to find "evidence" that we are special, and thus allowed
to disobey the Biblical command to take care of our planet. It used
to be that this trait or that trait was cited, but now it is "crashing
a space ship on Mars".
But these are all "we are special because we are more like us than any
other species".
Or "we are more like us than any other
religion/country/family/race/culture is".
Mike Schilling
>
> Both: Evolutionary theory supports some aspects of
> traditional morality that traditional moralists do not
> want to acknowledge, such as the double standard - men
> that bang lots of women are admirable, women that bang
> lots of men are contemptible,
You're not current on your just-so stories. The latest one is that the
cleverest women are unfaithful with alpha males, while convincing a beta
male to raise her alpha-fathered progeny.
The problem with sociobiology is that none of its conclusions are
falsifiable. New facts, like the ones that show that women aren't much more
monogamous than men, simply lead to new rationalizations.
Mark K. Bilbo
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:16:38 -0500, "Mark K. Bilbo"
>> Why would there *be* "moral implications" of a scientific theory?
>
> Because, unlike Maxwell's equations or General Relativity, Darwinism
> describes *us*, makes predictions about *us*.
>
> Morality follows from our nature, and Darwinism tells us about our
> nature.
>
> Now if you define morality to be something other than morality - for
> example a mere command, such as political correctness, then indeed a
> scientific theory cannot have moral implications, but this really is not
> what morality in fact is, however popular that definition of morality is
> among those who desire to command us.
A description of behavior cannot be "moral" nor "immoral". It's just a
description. The behavior may be "moral" or "immoral" but a description?
When a cop writes a report about the behavior of a suspect, is the cop
being "moral" or "immoral" in doing a description? If the cop doesn't
describe the behavior, does it not happen? If the cop describes it in
positive, glowing words, does it change?
We're talking theory here. A construct attempting to explain observed
data in a useful, valid way. How can that have "moral implications"?
That's rather like accusing news anchors of causing the news...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
"Behold the foul stench of Skeletor's breakfast burrito!"
James A. Donald
> > Both: Evolutionary theory supports some aspects of
> > traditional morality that traditional moralists do
> > not want to acknowledge, such as the double standard
> > - men that bang lots of women are admirable, women
> > that bang lots of men are contemptible,
"Mike Schilling"
> You're not current on your just-so stories. The
> latest one is that the cleverest women are unfaithful
> with alpha males, while convincing a beta male to
> raise her alpha-fathered progeny.
Sounds like what I said.
> The problem with sociobiology is that none of its
> conclusions are falsifiable.
You are deluded. Sociobiology was falsifiable when
Darwin proposed it. People proceeded to check it out,
found it accurate.
Mike Schilling
> James A. Donald wrote:
>>> Both: Evolutionary theory supports some aspects of
>>> traditional morality that traditional moralists do
>>> not want to acknowledge, such as the double standard
>>> - men that bang lots of women are admirable, women
>>> that bang lots of men are contemptible,
>
> "Mike Schilling"
>> You're not current on your just-so stories. The
>> latest one is that the cleverest women are unfaithful
>> with alpha males, while convincing a beta male to
>> raise her alpha-fathered progeny.
>
> Sounds like what I said.
You meant that "clever" = "comtemptible"? I can see why you'd think that.
>
>> The problem with sociobiology is that none of its
>> conclusions are falsifiable.
>
> You are deluded. Sociobiology was falsifiable when
> Darwin proposed it. People proceeded to check it out,
> found it accurate.
Give an example of a prediction sociobiology made that was later verified.
TimK
"brique" <briqu...@freeuk.c0m> wrote in message
>
>> Are you dodging the question, or did you not understand the question?
>> Is there a generic component to human behavior?
>
> Well, which question are you asking?
Is there a generic component to human behavior?
Is there a generic component to human behavior?
Is there a generic component to human behavior?
Is there a generic component to human behavior?
Is there a generic component to human behavior?
moron
Gene Ward Smith
> Both: Evolutionary theory supports some aspects of
> traditional morality that traditional moralists do not
> want to acknowledge, such as the double standard - men
> that bang lots of women are admirable, women that bang
> lots of men are contemptible, male homosexuals are apt
> to embezzle your funds and sell your secrets, while
> seriously undermining the Christian concept of virtue in
> favor of the more muscular Greek concept of virtue -
> where a virtuous man, does not imitate Christ by turning
> the other cheek and laying down his life for others, but
> rather more resembles Ayn Rand's egotist, competently
> looking out for number one, and pursuing his own good,
> by honorable rather than dishonorable means.
Evolutionary theory supports none of these claims, you drooling moron.
Immortalist
> "Jim07D7" <Jim0...@nospam.net> wrote in message
>
> news:bss0d3poiqcejhf8i...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Sean" <huca...@blah.com> said:
>
> >>"pico" <p...@pico.pico> wrote in message
> >>news:13d0e6n...@news.supernews.com...
> >>> Sean wrote:
>
> >>>> Are you talking the brain, or the mind? They are mutually exclusive
> >>>> things.
>
>
> >>> And Sean, is that your brain writing above or it is your mind?
>
> >>You tell me mate.
>
> > The mind is the brain at work. The brain is the mind's platform.
>
> From what you have said above, it would follow that that - The brain is the
> "brain's at work" platform.
>
> Somehow that doesn't seem to say much. Is this what you meant? can you
> clarify pls?-
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
...the token-token identity theory. The latter holds that each
instance or token of a mental entity (e.g., the particular twinge of
pain that a person feels at a certain moment) is identical with an
instance or token of a material entity (e.g., a particular neural
event in the person's brain). The differences between these two
identity theories will emerge later when functionalism is discussed.
For now we need only note that the type-type theory implies the token-
token theory, but that the converse implication does not hold. The
token-token theory is compatible with the falsity of reductive
materialism. The type-type identity theory, however, has often been
supposed to imply reductive materialism.
2) Back To Dualism?
Now we do seem forced to retreat to dualistic interactionism, because
all of the major alternative theories of the mind have fallen victim
to one objection or another. In a sense, we shall conclude that
dualism is correct after all; however, the dualistic theory we finally
adopt will differ in important ways from the interactionist version
discussed earlier.
We have already noted a distinction between the type-type identity
theory and the token-token identity theory. We found that the species
chauvinism objection refutes the type-type theory, but has no effect
on the token-token theory. The token identity theory can be stated in
two ways, wide and narrow.
Wide Token Identity = The thesis that each mental state token is
identical to some physical state token or other.
Narrow Token Identity = The thesis that each mental state token is
identical to some neural state token or other.
The difference between these two theses should be clear: wide token
identity requires only that each mental state token be the same as
some physical state token, which need not be a neural state. So wide
token identity is quite compatible with the thesis that some complex
robots have mental states. Narrow token identity, by contrast, rules
this out: robots have no neural states and so have no mental states.
Of course, the narrow thesis implies the wide one, since neural states
are physical states. It is the converse implication that fails.
Different animals have quite different neural systems. The neural
system of a human, for instance, is quite different from that of a
frog or a cat in many respects, and still more different from that of
a lobster. So the narrow token identity theory should not be
understood to assert that a specific neural configuration is pain,
say, in all entities that have neural systems. The neural state token
that is a token of pain in a human can be quite different from the
neural state token which is a token of pain in a lobster. The narrow
token identity theory implies only that each pain token is some kind
of neural state token or other.
The narrow token identity does not say that each mental state is only
a physical neural state, nor that a mental state is the same type of
state as a purely material neural state. On the contrary, the narrow
token identity theory can allow that mental states have some purely
mental properties, such as (in the case of pain) those of being sharp,
throbbing, and aching. In that case, some neural state tokens-namely,
those that are identical with mental state tokens-would have both some
purely mental properties and some purely material, neural properties.
Not all neural state tokens would have mental properties, of course,
only those that are identical with mental state tokens. We shall think
of the narrow token identity theory as accepting the claim that mental
states have both some purely mental properties and some purely
material neural properties. In this way the theory escapes the mam
problem facing eliminative materialism, which implausibly denies that
anything has mental properties, and also avoids the main problem
facing reductive materialism, which claims that mental states have
only purely material and some topic-neutral properties.
So construed, the narrow token identity theory is a form of dualism,
namely property dualism. It differs from an interactionist form of
dualism, because the latter holds that each mental entity is wholly
distinct and different in kind from a material entity such as a neural
event. For the interactionist, no mental state would have any material
properties. By contrast, property dualism endorses the idea that
mental states have both purely mental and purely material (neural)
properties.
For all we now know, the narrow token identity theory is quite
plausible. First, the thesis that mental states, and especially
sensations, have some purely mental properties is supported by the
introspective and observational evidence which we noted in our
discussion of eliminative materialism. That is, it is supported by the
fact that people certainly seem to be immediately aware of such
properties of their own sensations. Next, consider how everything we
regard as mental is dependent upon the neural. People who have strokes
and lose certain brain functions also lose various mental functions as
well. They may become aphasic, for example, and lose not only speech
but thought and some memory in addition. Or consider how various drugs
or alcohol produce changes in one's sensations, not to mention how
they affect one's thoughts, emotions, and even beliefs. This sort of
systematic dependence of the mental on the neural is just what one
would expect if the narrow token identity theory were correct. Or, put
another way, the theory nicely explains why we find the sort of
dependence described above.
Note, too, that this dependence argument works for animals other than
humans. If a dog or horse is anesthetized, for example, then it can
have surgery performed upon it safely, just as a human can. We think
that the anesthesia prevents the dog or horse from feeling pain from
the surgeon's knife, just as humans feel no pain during surgery. The
same would hold for any other creature with a nervous system; mental
states in such creatures as lobsters and squid are also dependent upon
the neural states of those creatures.
These facts about neural dependence make up a good piece of evidence
for the narrow token identity theory. It might be objected, however,
that this same sort of dependence is evidence in favor of dualistic
interactionism. For suppose that theory is correct; then the mental
and the material causally interact all the time, and do so via causal
interaction between events in the mind and events in the brain. Given
such a theory, we would expect that a dysfunction at the neural level
will produce significant changes in one's mental life. So why should
we say that the dependence argument favors the narrow token identity
theory? The answer is that the latter theory faces considerably fewer
problems than does dualistic interactionism. Let us see why this is
so.
The problem of deciding where interaction takes place plagues the
dualist interactionist, as we saw earlier. But this is no problem for
the narrow token identity theory. On the latter theory, the problem is
solved by finding where those brain processes that are identical to
mental states occur. This poses no insurmountable problem. Neither is
there any mystery about where mental events occur, given the narrow
token identity theory, nor about how the mental and neural can
causally interact. If it is granted that brain events are spatially
located and interact with other bodily events-something we all concede-
then there should be no worry about mental events, because they are
identical with brain processes. The same point, furthermore, dispels
the mystery of how the mental affects the body without violating any
scientific principles. Each mental event affects bodily events in just
the way any physiological event affects others. On all three points,
then, the narrow token identity theory is superior to dualistic
interactionism.
Further, the objections we found against parallelism are no threat to
the narrow token identity theory. The crushing objection to
parallelism is that it requires a deus ex machina to explain mind-body
regularities. Also, by denying mind-body interaction, it denies what
seems plainly true. The narrow token identity theory easily avoids
both of these objections. Because mental events are identical with
brain events and because brain events causally interact with other
parts of the body, it follows that mental events causally interact
with other parts of the body. And obviously no deus ex machina is
needed to explain mind-body regularities, because they are completely
explained by pointing out that underlying the regularities are
identities.
The most important problem facing epiphenomenalism is that it denies
what seems most certainly to be true, namely, mind and body interact.
We have already seen above, in the discussion of parallelism, that the
narrow token identity theory does not endorse such a denial. So the
narrow token identity theory is certainly superior to
epiphenomenalism.
However, before we conclude that the narrow token identity theory is
the most plausible of those we have considered, we should ask whether
this theory faces problems of its own, problems that may be quite
distinct from those confronting alternative theories.
3) Objection: The Narrow Identity
Theory Makes No Clear Sense
Many philosophers have argued that any identity theory of mind, and
thus by implication the narrow token identity theory, must be
incorrect because there are things which we can quite meaningfully say
about mental states that we cannot meaningfully say about neural
states, and conversely. We ascribe mental properties to mental states.
To a pain we might ascribe properties such as being intense, sharp,
aching, and unbearable. We also ascribe material properties to neural
states, properties such as being located in the brain, conducting
neural impulses, being publicly observable, and being constituted of
molecules. Consequently, if each mental state token is identical to a
neural state token, then sensations such as pains are located in the
brain, are constituted of molecules, conduct nerve impulses, and are
publicly observable. Also, we could conclude that some neural states
are intense, throbbing, sharp, aching and unbearable.
The objection is that these attributions of properties are
meaningless. The sentences, "My pain conducts nerve impulses" and "My
nerve fibers are aching unbearably" seem to be like the sentence
"Saturday is asleep in bed." This third sentence seems to be clearly
meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false, because it makes no
sense to say such a thing about Saturday. Hence, the first two
sentences are also without meaning. But if the narrow token identity
theory is correct, these sentences ought to be quite meaningful. So,
the objection goes, we should reject this and any other identity
theory of mind.
The best reply to this objection is to compare a sentence such as "My
nerve fibers are aching unbearably" to a sentence such as "Would you
please pass me the sodium chloride? I want to put some on my French
fries." There was a time when a sentence such as this would have been
considered quite odd and unusual; doubtless it would have been branded
as meaningless. Nevertheless, we have by now become used to sentences
of this type, and we now know that they are not at all meaningless.
The point is that when a theory is in the initial stages of its
development, many of its sentences will seem odd at first, and one
will be tempted to suppose that they lack meaning. The passage of
time, however, often shows that this would be mistaken. The analogy
with the narrow token identity theory should be clear. These sentences
concerned with pains and nerve fibers seem unusual to us now, when the
theory has only recently been proposed. But it is reasonable to think
that they will seem less odd as time passes. Indeed, to many people
who have thought about such sentences, they do not seem at all odd or
unusual, even now.
4) Conclusion about the Mind-Body Problem
With the rejection of the one objection we found to the narrow token
identity theory, it is easy to see that it is the most plausible of
the many proposed solutions to the mind-body problem. It avoids the
problems unique to each of the alternative theories and faces none
uniquely its own. We have, then, reason to reject the theory that our
description of a person at the beginning of the chapter seemed to
support, namely, dualistic interactionism. Nevertheless, that theory
is correct about there being interaction, although it is wrong about
the entities which interact. It is also correct about theie being a
dualism, although it is wrong about the two sorts of entities
involved. There are no purely mental entities, because each mental
entity token is identical to a neural state token. It is these neural
state tokens that interact with bodily processes. Human beings, then,
are different from purely material bodies, but not because they have
minds or spirits in addition to their bodies. They are different
because some of their material (neural) states have some nonreducible
mental properties.
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/