Evolutionism: It's the Stupidist Thing
Recently, we posted on Evolutionism, arguing that it was not genuinely believed by anyone anymore. You can read the original post here.
One “David W” was sufficiently generous to spend time seeking to bring us out of the Dark Ages into the realm of Enlightenment. We thought that the interchange might be both interesting and instructive.
David W: Opening Rebuttal...
Congratulations, I think this might be the single stupidist thing I've read about Evolution. Let's see how much ignorance you've crammed into your few hundred words shall we.
But for the rest of mankind, evolution is profoundly disbelieved.
Nope, of New Zealanders are on the side of reason (sic) and even in the very protestant USA it's nearly half.
Evolutionism functions as a warranting concept akin to the social contract
I'm tempted to quote Steve Jones "Evolution is to the social sciences as statues are to birds: a convenient platform upon which to deposit badly digested ideas." The modern evolutionary synthesis is a scientific theory - the framework by which all biology makes sense.
It places man at the top of the tree of being
Nope, the great chain of being is a pre-evolutionary idea. It survived into early evolutionary thinking but modern evolutionary biology has no place for it - after all every species has been evolving for as long as every other.
It removes the idea of sin and judgment in the hands of an angry God
Except most people that support evolution are theists...
But no-one really believes it. Even the academic and scientific propagators and defenders of evolutionism are just going through the motions
Repeating something doesn’t make it true. Evidence?
We know that no-one really believes the theory, because no-one is prepared to stand up and advocate, much less live out, evolutionism as an ethic. No-one is prepared to be evolutionistic
Because evolution is a scientific theory. Not a warranting concept. I'm developing a sinking suspicion that this whole essay can be put to rest by paraphrasing Hume "is doesn't mean ought". Evolution is a scientific fact and the modern synthesis the theoretical frame work we use to understand it. The very fact we could choose to live an evolutionary life means we shouldn't to it.
"survival of the fittest" is a tautology - something that is true by definition. But let's not get side tracked on technicalities.
Oh but lets (sic), since you've again shown how little you understand about the theory you would dam. (sic) The phrase "survival of the fittest" doesn't adequately describe evolution by natural selection. Evolution only works on heritable traits - the similar (less snappy) phrase might be something "The fittest survive and reproduce, and therefore pass on those heritable traits that have allowed them to survive and reproduce" Which isn't true by definition.
Evolutionists at the very least should be expected to ensure the survival of the species
The phrase "The survival of the species" has no place in evolutionary biology.
John Tertullian and Contra Celsum First Reply
Hi, David
Appreciate your sarcasm. It brightened up what might have been an otherwise dull day.
Some ripostes:
1."Evolution is profoundly disbelieved": you appear to have missed the point of the argument. However, thankfully truth is not a question of opinion polls or numbers who believe or disbelieve. The vast majority of scientists, illuminati, nobility, and peasantry in late medieval Spain believed the world to be flat. That did not make it so.
2. If evolutionism is to be taken seriously as a scientific theory, perhaps you would do us the service of specifying under what terms, conditions, experimental results, and evidence it would be falsified. We, for our part, suspect that it is impossible to falsify evolutionism. But maybe you could put us straight.
3."All other species have been evolving together". That's cosy for all of us species--except presumably those which have become extinct. Not such a collegial outcome for them. Further, most greenists argue that man is the most rapacious, destructive, and deadly creature on the planet with respect to other species. Within the frame of evolutionism, would not this qualify him to be the highest on the chain of being? Apparently he is the best at surviving, and therefore, "fitter" than all other species on the planet.
Further, we think it is a reasonable proposition that within evolutionist terms, those creatures which eat other species for dinner, would be regarded as being "higher" species than those they eat, would they not? At least those they eat did not survive, so were less fit. Those that were eaten apparently lacked certain key heritable traits that were crucial to survival as they were hunted down and killed.
Within evolutionism's world-view, we believe that masticating on a mutton chop entitles us to conclude that man is a higher creature because he has overcome any threats to his survival that have been posed by sheep, but, regrettably the poor sheep has not been able to develop heritable traits that have enabled him to survive man.
And to think that we breed sheep for the purpose of killing them to eat. Not only have they been unable to survive the threats posed to them by man, but are denigrated to the point of being enslaved by man to do his bidding, his will, and to feed his belly and to clothe his back. Sounds a lower order animal to us.
4.You may want to be cautious citing Hume. His scepticism might prove too much for you. You surely cannot move from the "is" to the "ought" if you are a materialistic empiricist. You cannot even prove cause and effect, as Hume himself so courageously admitted. There's a bit of a challenge for the good old materialist empiricist scientists. Moreover, evolutionism is not entitled to employ language that indicates a moral imperative or obligation (e.g. "ought", "should") Evolutionism as a theory of being and existence only recognises the "is"; "ought" is a meaningless concept within its frame.
5."The very fact that we could choose to live an evolutionary life means we shouldn't do it" See, we told you so. You don't really believe evolutionism either. "Should" has no meaning in an evolutionist cosmogony. You are engaged in precisely the kind of equivocation and double dealing that our original post was pointing out.
6.Adding more words to the phrase "survival of the fittest" does not avoid the tautology. It only obfuscates and obscures it. But maybe camouflage is your real intent.
Finally, we wonder whether its a bit elitist of you to allege that bird excreta is badly digested. After all, the bird has been evolving as long as you. Who are you to hold such low opinion of your fellow evolutionary creature?
Have a good one.
David W: Second Rebuttal ...
Ok, please read this slowly. Evolutionary biology is a Scientific Theory. Scientific theories are frameworks that let us understand how the natural world works. They are not guides for how would should live. Of course you are right in your trivial point that "ought" has no meaning in the "evolutionist" frame. That's the point. There is no Copernican ethics, nor a quantum or a special relativistic one because these simply aren't tools for running a society. Instead we acknowledge the uncontroversial fact that evolution has happened and look to other spheres (religion for most evolutionists, secular ethics for others) for our moral guidance. But let's look at a few of your specific points...
If evolutionism is to be taken seriously as a scientific theory, perhaps you would do us the service of specifying under what terms, conditions, experimental results, and evidence it would be falsified.
Sure. If we take confirmation of novel predictions as the sine qua non of a scientific theory then Evolution by Natural Selection has passed one of the greatest tests in the history of science. Darwin's theory, published before we knew about genes let alone DNA, argued that life arose by splitting of lineages (the 'tree of life') and so should fit into a nested hierarchy. Morphological evidence was available to Darwin's generation and supported this prediction. But more than 100 years later we had a completely new set of information that we could use to test this prediction - DNA. A generation of scientists (lead by a Kiwi in Alan Wilson) went out and tested the predictions of evolution and confirmed them. If DNA had revealed a completely different hierarchy then evolution would have been falsified. Similarly biogeography and the fossil record provide potential falsifications (if they revealed different stories that the morphological and molecular evidence).
As far as mechanisms the modern evolutionary synthesis argues adaptation happens thanks to the accumulation of beneficial mutations. If you put generation of E. coli through a new environment and couldn't find beneficial mutations you start to pretty (sic) suspicious. There are experiments than can show adaptive mutations are random too. (BTW it’s very hard to think of a single observation that would falsify any theory within science cf this thesis.)
"All other species have been evolving together". That's cosy for all of us species--except presumably those which have become extinct. Not such a collegial outcome for them.
Not really want I meant. It's that in evolutionary terms every organism on earth is the current culmination of a series of 4 billions years of ancestor-descendant relationships borne from contingency, selection and good old stochastity. Clearly all those ancestor reproduced, and since that’s the only criterion that one could use to argue a species is 'higher' than another it’s hard to see the great chain as meaning anything. Most people would place mammals 'above' insects but ants produce societies many million times bigger than themselves, farm fungus, forge complex relationships other insects, wage war on other colonies and construct their environment to suit their needs. Whereas anteaters have quite long noses. Even an ant being eaten by an anteater might be doing better for itself evolutionarily - ants or more closely related to their sisters than their offspring so can benefit from laying down their life for the queen. (BTW that's another novel prediction of modern evolutionary biology...)
Adding more words to the phrase "survival of the fittest" does not avoid the tautology. Define tautology. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't describe all of Natural Selection, just one bit. The bit that makes it interesting is something of things (sic) that make an organism fit are heritible (sic) and thus those traits that are both heritiable (sic) and fit will propergate (sic). There is no tautology there.
John Tertullian and Contra Celsum: Second Reply
Hi, David. We have read your latest post very, very slowly. Unfortunately, it does not improve the slower you get.
Nevertheless we will attempt one last herculean effort to work through the issues with you.
Our debate is over evolutionism. Our contention has been that no-one really believes it. Your contention is that evolutionism is both true and is a fact and that you for one most certainly do believe it to be true.
Evolutionism is a cosmogony that can be defined (to use your terminology) as 4 billion years of contingency, randomness and irregularity during which ancestor-descendant developed to the point the natural world is now.
As a cosmogony, evolutionism seeks to explain all that has come into existence. It seeks to explain how the natural world works. (The natural world, of course, is not restricted just to sentient life. Within the frame of evolutionism, it includes all that is.) It offers a causal explanation for being itself--all matter and life. Therefore evolutionism explains what the world is, how the natural order or the universe came to be the way that it is, where we humans came from and how we came to be the way that we are, what we are like, and how the natural order works. That is what a cosmogony does. That is clearly the truth claim of evolutionism.
So far so good. We move on. Either evolutionism as a cosmogony is true or not. If true, then it correctly and truthfully explains all there is. It explains all there is about you, since you are part of the totality of the natural order, all of which has been produced by evolutionism.
Scientific theories may fail to act as guides for how we should live, but cosmogonies do act as guides. They also determine the truth of all scientific theories. If a scientific theory is not congruent with the cosmogony, assuming the cosmogony is true, the theory has to be wrong.
Now, if evolutionism is true your statement, "it is not a guide for how we should live" has no meaning whatsoever. There is no "should" in evolutionism, and evolutionism, as a cosmogony accounts for all there is. This is to say there is no "should" in being and the natural world. To pretend that there are such things as "morals" "ethics" or to believe that there is a right way that "society should be run" has absolutely no meaning within the cosmogony of evolutionism. Such language and such concepts are inconsistent with the way the natural order actually is. They are falsehoods or myths or fairy tales. You, as the representative and exponent of evolutionism, cannot be allowed to use such language without recognising that you are implicitly denying the very cosmogony you are trying to espouse.
Now we realise that this may be a bit painful, but thems the facts.
Nor is it reasonable to imply that evolutionism partially accounts for everything there is, such that we must look elsewhere for things like ethics.
If such language does have meaning, if words like "ethics", "morals", "ought", "right" "wrong", "fair", "just" do have meaning, it proves philosophically and rationally that evolutionism as a cosmogony cannot be true. So which is it to be? You cannot have it both ways, unless of course fundamental contradictions are of no concern to you. That might possibly be the case. In a random world anything is possible, except meaning, in the final analysis. But, then again, if you really believed that, why would you waste your time and ours attempting to argue a point of view. So, you both want to assert that the world is the product of 4 billion years of randomness, and you want to argue for it at the same time. If your assertion were true, your argument would be a nullity. Universal randomness cannot be argued for.
We can go further. You state that we need to look elsewhere than the natural order to find guides as to how we ought to live. Upon the sea of randomness posited by evolutionism--that sea of randomness which you claim explains how the "natural world works"--there can be no guide to anything. "Guides" and "randomness" are mutually contradictory.
Moreover, you make mention of looking to other "spheres" such as religion or secular ethics to supply what evolutionism "lacks". There can be no other spheres. Evolutionism as a cosmogony either explains all there is, or in the end it explains nothing.
These other spheres, whatever they may be, must also be products of the billions of years of the randomness of evolution. These other spheres can no more tell us right, wrong, ethics--whatever--for they too are part of the natural order, and are subject to the same randomness. That's what a cosmogony is, after all.
As someone once said, if evolutionism were true, it could never be described. If it has been described, it cannot possibly be true. Since you have made a good fist of describing it, and arguing for it, by your very doing so, you have proven that it cannot be true. Which is to say that you, if you really sat down and thought about it critically, don't believe it either.
And that is the whole point.
5 comments:
Interesting post JT.
When I've read Dawkins, Hawking, Hayek and others, they are very much into Evolutionism.
The way I understand it, intelligence is just an evolutionary trait that survived, and its intelligence that generates ethics etc, so effectively it remains random from an evolutionary perspective.
In the area of human evolution, mores, ethics and social organisation are all just the product of evolutionary forces that happen to work best.
Read Hayek, for example, and it is clear he credits Christianity with huge leaps in social and technological advancement (and here the fundamentalist atheists such as Dawkins show their blinkers) but again, he sees religion as a product of its times, one that will die in evolutions onward 'progress'.
How do you explain this line of thinking?
Hey, Zen. I understand the claim which evolutionists make regarding the "current" being the latest, and (by evolutionism's definition) the greatest. This is the fruit of the naive tautology of the system: whatever is the latest by definition is the best because it survived whatever went before.
Evolutionism has no standard to test whether something "works best" beyond the fact that it exists, or survives. And even then, "best" is temporary only, within the theory.
Imagine tomorrow that nuclear annihilation eventuated. Evolutionism would be bound to say that the resultant state of devastation was the best or fittest because it "survived"--that is, it outlasted or superseded the prior state--assuming that someone was left to say it, which is a dubious proposition! We expect that were any evolutionists to survive the holocaust they would probably lament the passing of the world which they have known. But that (from the evolutionist frame) would be mere cant and hypocrisy. Actually cant is commonly found within evolutionism: it is a theory which both justifies and glorifies the present as the biggest and brightest because it is the latest product of fittest surviving.
Thus, evolutionism central metaphysical principle of progress through the survival of the fittest is a meaningless tautology. It explains nothing; it cannot be disproved. Whatever exists or happens to eventuate is the fittest and best by definition because it has "survived."
The claims made by Dawkins, et al. which you refer to are simply restatements of the theory; they do not constitute explanations or proofs. Of course one would expect them to say that intelligence is a trait that survived, and all it produces is superior etc, etc. but that is a mere restating of the theory, which is rendered meaningless by the tautology it holds within its vitals. The tautology "survival of the fittest" explains everything, and therefore, nothing.
It is viciously circular.
But there is something far more sinister--a gigantic skeleton in the evolutionist closet, if you will. Evolutionism proposes that the ultimate reality of the universe is randomness: raw, brute, blind, chance. Chance and randomness accounts for all there is. There is nothing else. If there is, let the evolutionists declare it. Evolutionism wants to build a city of sand upon a sea of chance. The more it builds, the more it dissolves away into the ceaseless flux of the ocean. This is the skeleton. Folk like Dawkins are desperately wanting to ignore or forget the random flux of the ocean of their world of radical chance, while they build their speculative cities of sand, but it is both deceitful and contradictory. They cannot have it both ways.
But can the overall theory of being through randomness be falsified? Yes. Anything that represents meaning is an adequate falsification, because in a random world, meaning is excluded as a possibility from the very outset. Clearly, Dawkins, et al describe the theory meaningfully--thereby in that every act they falsify it. They would never be able to do that if evolutionism were true and randomness was the ultimate universal reality.
Language is not value free, of course, but requires an authoritative tradition of meaning. As Polanyi argues, any attempt categorically and systematically to reject tradition must be logically incompatible with knowing. Evolutionists must reject authoritative tradition, since it contradicts the all conditioning reality of chance. But, no human mind can function without using language and therefore accepting and utilising authority, custom and tradition; it must rely on them for the mere use of language. Thought is language dependant. But language is dependant in its turn upon rules of grammar and syntax, and upon continuity of meaning through time and across individuals. Such phenomena cannot be expected to occur or exist in a random world. So, either the evolutionists claim to speak meaningfully (employing rules, conventions, authoritative traditions, and continuity) about evolution or they do not. Clearly they do claim to speak meaningfully. But in making such a claim they thereby deny the existence of the very randomness of the universe they purport to represent. And to be fair, they do speak meaningfully, since we can understand, evaluate, argue, reason, dispute etc what they are saying. But that very condition falsifies the theory finally and completely. It is neither true nor scientific. The more evolutionists argue for their theory, the more they disprove it. It is a classic case of what Paul refers to when he says, "professing to be wise, they became fools."
JT
Thanks for the detailed response.
I've been reading a bit on this topic recently, and philosophically, I think your points are good.
I've been trying to form my thoughts into something coherent to make a post about evolution in general, which will touch on some of this.
We'll see how it goes....
Evolutionism proposes that the ultimate reality of the universe is randomness: raw, brute, blind, chance.
No, evolutiuon proposes that the ultimate realitity of the universe is randomness over time.
There is nothing else.
No, there is time - constant and for the data involved unchanging.
Folk like Dawkins are desperately wanting to ignore or forget the random flux of the ocean of their world of radical chance, while they build their speculative cities of sand, but it is both deceitful and contradictory. They cannot have it both ways.
Sure they can, they acknowledge that time past has occured and in this data set there is no further randomness possible - these sands do not shift, as it were. By the theory randomness has occured and results can be observed after the fact. The future is uncertain because time has not occured and no results can yet be observed.
This is to say there is no "should" in being and the natural world. To pretend that there are such things as "morals" "ethics" or to believe that there is a right way that "society should be run" has absolutely no meaning within the cosmogony of evolutionism. Such language and such concepts are inconsistent with the way the natural order actually is. They are falsehoods or myths or fairy tales. You, as the representative and exponent of evolutionism, cannot be allowed to use such language without recognising that you are implicitly denying the very cosmogony you are trying to espouse.
That would apply if we were to hold morals as unchangeable. If however we accept that these are indeed subject to change over time then we can express moral thoughts of should/should not in coinsistent agreement with evolution.
We as humans are products of evolution and proceeding onwards in this world, we are not unconcerned observers. Our morals are subservient to our self-interests and not governed by the wider world (which you have correctly noted, evolution says is random and doesn't care).
What you have attempted to do is confer that because the world does not care, that no human should care. An expression of some hubris to suggest that some mere creature should adopt the morals (or in this case the non-morals) of all existance.
Short version: Evolutionary theory is an explanation of all life over all time that predicts there is no moral judgement involved. Humanity is a small subsection of all life existing in a small timespan of all time. Believing in evolutionary theory does not prevent evolutionists taking a moral stance within humanity, because man does not play a central role in the universe.
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