Here at Winds, we've addressed topics like Intelligent Design, and Creationism, and especially science as a pillar of free socieites. These controversies won't go away. Or will they? What if they could be reconciled?
Frederick Turner has a post on Tech Central Station called Divine Evolution, which looks at what a bridge between evolution and theologies of divine creation might look like in light of everything we know. Modes of creation, strange attractors, multiple universes, freedom of choice in creation... it's all there.
It's pretty close to where I come out on the whole thing, and I recommend it. I'll also throw in one additional piece of the puzzle. An important one.
Spiritual progress can be made very complicated, but at its core it's very simple: "be and become more like G-d."
This is an insight found in many Hasidic Jewish teachings, and in many schools of Islamic Sufiism which stress mystical unity with the divine as a way of achieving this goal. Buddhism doesn't state its philosophy in those terms, but in the end it comes to the same concept and Thich Nhat Hanh is one of many who have recognized this.
So humanity doesn't just advance technically. We can also advance spiritually - and voluntary assumption of responsibility is a big piece of that. Just as it is in our individual lives.
There's a quip that looks at humanity's growing ability to influence our world, and the ways in which the fate of other species is tied to our decisions, and says "if we're becoming gods, we might as well learn to be good at it."
There's a big kernel of truth there, but it has something missing. That something is the question of what learning to be "good at it" means. Knowledge and understanding of how creation works, by itself, aren't enough.
G-d reminds us all that there is a spiritual dimension, that it's real, and that it has rules just like the physical world. We grow our understanding of it by drawing closer to the divine and cultivating a direct relationship with G-d, by cultivating certain types of experience, by creating tools and methods that reliably assist in this quest, and by making sure the tools we're using don't obscure the objective of the quest or cut us off from the true source.
When we harness its power, we understand the real costs and value of our actions, and improve our understanding of how to be in the universe.
There's also a physical, creationary dimension to our universe. We grow our understanding of it by learning how creation works and the pinciples embedded within it, by cultivating certain modes of thought, and by creating tools and methods that reliably assist in this quest.
When we harness its power, we improve our understanding of the universe's workings. Some would also say that the quest itself teaches us another critical divine virtue: honesty. We also gain the power to become more effective in acting on our understanding of how to be in the universe and participate in a creation that is good.
That participation matters. A lot. It means taking action, and seeing the results, and evaluating them in light of our spiritual knowledge. That, in turn, teaches us more about responsibility, and what it means to be a responsible creator.
For G-d is not just ultimate love. G-d is also ultimate responsibility. Responsibility requires knowledge, even experience. You know how your parents' decisions start to look smarter as you get older?
So connection with love, removal of ego, humility, clear perception, giving... these are all aspects of the divine.
Understanding, responsibility, learning about creation and what it means to be a creator - these, too, are aspects of the divine.
We are learning that we need both wings to fly.
If we renounce the spiritual side or pledge worship to our fellow man, we get hell on earth. The 20th century was one long, eloquent demonstration. As one Jewish scholar put it "The Holocaust may make faith in G-d difficult, but it makes faith in man impossible."
If we don't grow our understanding of how that creation is put together and how to discharge our responsibilities as co-creators within G-d's design, however, we remain the whiny kid who never grows up. You know, the one who either endlessly begs his parent for stuff, or seethes and blubbers when things don't go well. If you think about it, the religious parallels are obious - Rabi'a understood. It's a massive spiritual ripoff, as well as a recipe for immense and unnecessary physical suffering.
Guess what - I'm pretty sure G-d doesn't want that for his children, either.
Onward - and upward!
UPDATE: Perhaps you'd rather listen to an illustrative parable. A true one. Meet Dr. Mordecai Haffkine, The Holy Scientist.
Important and fascinating thoughts. But (always a but), i think its important to remember that these are ideas and ideals that Science is utterly unequipped to deal with. Every time a new theory in physics comes out, there will be a new ager or creationist latching onto it as proof of this or that. So what happens when that theory is proven wrong, or (historically almost inevitably) proven only partially true? Science is not the horse you want to hitch your spiritual wagon to, because it is constantly being refined, and occasionally changes radically. Tyeing universal ideals and truths to something so malleable is decidedly bad for both philosophy and science. And it works both ways, Social Darwinism was terrible philosophy.
"Some would also say that the quest itself teaches us another critical divine virtue: honesty."
I found this to be curious. Is god really honest? The bible, if that is what you embrace, is repleat with divine deception. From the first moments in the Garden of Eden (to paraphrase Douglas Adams, if you live in a universe where god puts a tree in the garden and demands you not eat from it, you are doomed because he knows full well you will eat from it and someone with that mentality will never give up until he 'gets' you), to Abraham and Isaac, to the rerisen Christ hiding his identity.
Personally the lesson i draw from this is humility. We cannot understand God's plan. Not remotely. And to return to the subject at hand, I believe that our human evolution must be most firmly grounded in that least adhered to virtue of humility.
And it works both ways, Social Darwinism was terrible philosophy.
might i point out that
a) social "darwinism" was not actually derived from darwinian theories of evolution via natural selection (it was probably drawn more from the manchester school of economists, who in some way might have been the 'common parent' of both 'theories').
b) spencer himself favored a lamarckian evolutionary theory, not a darwinian one.
c) many of the racial theories were also derived from peculiar non-darwinian theories of evolution (ie; haeckel's ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny was more mysticism than darwinism).
You're correct about science having limits, David. I never claimed anything else. It's an intertwined track in the sense that the virtues associated with it are part of real spiritual development, but the two aren't the same thing. I used the Lorenz strange attractor diagram up top as my symbol quite deliberately.
When a mother has a child,
as the child grows, the onus upon the child
is become "more like Mom".
Not too sure about your theory.
Great topic of conversation, but I don't know about the whole "process theology" idea, the idea that "God is becoming" or that we are moving, as a universe, towards Godhood.
A bunch of hairless monkeys make it to the moon and start comtemplating their Godnissity: eh. Sounds more like satanic Pride than anything else.
Not a dig at any of the authors of the site, but I always think it's kinda funny, how in the litany of spiritualities (Buddhism, Sufiism, Kabbalah, Gnosticism etc) Christianity never makes the list.
In my experience people who are doing well think they're becoming more like God, which gives them plenty of license to conclude that those who aren't doing as well are less like God than they. And people who aren't doing so well spend most of their time looking for where they went wrong. Plus, of course, there are lots of people seemingly committed to something that looks pretty Satanic who are doing just fine, thank you very much. Does this really make sense, in terms of either ethics or morals?
Joe, the main flaw in your theory is that it's neither verifiable nor falsifiable. It seems to me that the conclusion that man is imperfectable, which was the conclusion of both Malthus and Hobbes, is about the most robust conclusion philosophers have ever arrived at. And that to conclude anything else lays one open to a totalitarian Ur myth of some sort.
Of course, strictly speaking becomig "more like God" doesn't require that we believe in perfectability. But the ethic combined with the notion of imperfectability leads to an unavoidable conclusion: that there's at least one final step that's a doozie, and that we don't actually take ourselves. And that last stepping-off point may not look very much like any of our conceptions of Godlikeness, at all. In fact, you know where it leads...
Oh, and I super heartily reccommend Finding Darwin's God by Ken Miller.
It pretty much rips a hole in the "Intelligent Design" movement, while at the same time offering several theories as to how God might interact with the universe.
This discussion points out the obvious fact that "WE JUST DON'T KNOW!" The arrogance of both creationists and evolutionists is sorely misplaced.
The human brain is not sophisticated enough to determine the origin of things. We can try to hypothesize mechanisms of origin and adaptation. There are too many unanswered questions, but more to the point, there are too many unasked questions. The questions remain unasked because the human brain cannot imagine the context in which the questions would ever come to mind.
Hirsutally challenged apes are in no position to dictate terms to the universe.
Mark Buehner:
To follow up Razib's point on the "non-Darwinian-ness" of social darwinism, I'll now put in a word of exculpation for Herbert Spencer and his original concept of "evolutionary sociology".
This started as an attempt (probably misguided) to apply "evolutionary" concepts of cultural/social/economic organisation emerging from competion.
This was naturally "lamarckian" as culture does transmit acquired capabilities.
And to some extent create an overarching "evolutionary" framework for bio/social science; which was definitely stretching interesting analogies beyond any systermatic explanatory value.
Spencer was essentially in the broad mainstream of 18th/19th Century liberalism, if more anti-statist than most. Later social darwinism was a very different beastie.
This idea that Social Darwinism isn't really from Darwinism because it has Lamarckian patterns is pretty silly.
Social Darwinism the fruit of Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest thinking as (mis)applied to human social structure, and had the wild approval of all sorts of "progressive" scientific types.
Just call it what it is.
I guess it's a good thing for "Science" that it doesn't have a Church and a Pope, cause then there would actually be an accountable body that would have to apologize for its wrongdoings.
As it is "Science" can just say, "Oh well-uh that was actually Lamarckianism which is of course totally unrelated to Darwinianism and furthermore it was a philosophical idea and it had nothing to do with Holy Mother Science anyway, ahem."
'Science' cant do anything wrong. Its a tool, not a movement, and certainly not a person. It can be used properly, or improperly.
This reminds me of a great scene from the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Every week a mad scientist opens the show with some horrific new invention that inevtiably runs amuck. In one episode he creates a giant robot rabbit (Rabbot) that promptly bashes through the wall and goes on a rampage in the city. The scientist screams after him, "WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE?!?"
This idea that Social Darwinism isn't really from Darwinism because it has Lamarckian patterns is pretty silly.
look, obviously scientific racists drew from science, and darwinism was a big part of it. if you want to be a know-nothing, go ahead, but as a point of fact since the core of spencer's ideas predate the origin of species it seems rather ludicrous to posit a causal relationship, isn't it? FYI, the term "survival of the fittest" was used by spencer in 1851 8 years before the publication of the origin of species. but i'm sure you knew that.
and my point here is obviously not to exculpate social darwinism from the opprobrium it deserves. it is simply to infuse the discourse with some facts which tend to fly in the face of the established "conventional wisdom." i could assume that of course everyone knows that spencer's ideas predated the publication of origin, that the term 'survival of the fittest'* predate origin, that spencer didn't even adhere to the darwinian theory of evolution via natural selection (the natural selection part was the big deal, there had been evolutionary theories floated around for centuries). but as it is, i'm skeptical that this is common knowledge. instead, what i tend to see is that many people have a preconception that social darwinism is the natural child of darwin's ideas, when in fact it borrowed a great deal of prestige from the general form of his ideas, if not following the details in the specifics, and had been on the scene prior to darwin's theory.
razib: many of the racial theories were also derived from peculiar non-darwinian theories of evolution (ie; haeckel's ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny was more mysticism than darwinism).
But Haeckel was a Darwinist, not a mystic. He was the foremost 19th Century popularizer of Darwin.
Recapitulation Theory was just a false conclusion drawn from incomplete science - such as the fact that the developing organs of the inner ear resemble gills in embyro. Especially when Haeckel drew a picture of it, which is how he got a rep for doctoring evidence.
spencer himself favored a lamarckian evolutionary theory, not a darwinian one.
Lamarckianism and Darwinism were not mutually exclusive schools of thought in Spencer's time. Many "Darwinists" accepted some of Lamarck's ideas, and vice versa. The war of Orthodoxy vs. Heretics was still in the future.
glenn, your points are correct. my general contention is that the public get's the incorrect impression from the term "social darwinism," as if the various thinkers, from spencer all the way to marx, had models that are clearly contingent upon origin of species. darwinism really one of the few (aside from classical liberalism) still standing after 150 years, so it can be an easy target to stick associations with.
razib: get's the incorrect impression from the term "social darwinism," as if the various thinkers, from spencer all the way to marx, had models that are clearly contingent upon origin of species.
"Social Darwinism" is a horribly abused term with no real contemporary meaning. I remember it as being a favorite trope of Democrats during the Reagan Administration. I think it meant "Tax Cut".
Of course it had a real meaning in 19th and early-20th century Europe, but I agree that no serious person blames Darwin for it.
So Darwin's fame was a double-edged deal. On the one hand, it's not fair that his name got stuck on "Social Darwinism". On the other hand, it's not really fair that all respectable evolutionary theory got grouped together under the term "Darwinism", is it?
"Social Darwinism" is a horribly abused term with no real contemporary meaning. I remember it as being a favorite trope of Democrats during the Reagan Administration. I think it meant "Tax Cut".
yes, and one little known fact (by the cultural mainstream, evangelicals like to point this out!) is that william jennings bryan's crusade against evolution was driven in large part by concern by concerns about "social darwinism" (jennings was a two time democratic candidate, and generally considered 'populist').
On the one hand, it's not fair that his name got stuck on "Social Darwinism". On the other hand, it's not really fair that all respectable evolutionary theory got grouped together under the term "Darwinism", is it?
well, how do you mean? there are many technical shades of meaning, but the main strand in darwinism, which distinguished it from other evolutionary theory, was natural selection upon heritable variation. there have been a few somewhat non-darwinian theories out there, starting with bateson's mutationism, goldschmidt's saltationism and later on some of the arguments between neutralism vs. selectionism. i would say that neo-darwininism is the majority consensus, but there are dissenters (s.j. gould was the most famous of these) who argue for a more 'pluralist' interpretation of evolutionary theory, by which they meant less driven by natural selection operating on the level of the individual.
but back to ben's point, i am not asserting an apologia for darwinism, or evolutionary theory, here, i am simply suggesting that there is no necessary normative implication of a scientific theory. liberals, like peter singer, tend to emphasize the cooperative aspects of the evolutionary process (tit-for-tat, kin selection, group selection and symbiogenesis), while libertarians tend to emphasize competition, and conservatives often look toward the organically and empirically grounded truths that emerge out of the algorithmic process. ultimately, science can offer some constraints as to plausibilities of any normative vision, but most likely the inferences from science will be more likely determined by the values of the day. in the same way, in christianity was once used to argue for slavery, and the separation of the races (the tower of babel), beginning around in 1800 it was used to argue for the ending of slavery (though southern planters obviously held to the older views), and today fundamentalist evangeical christians use the thesis of recent common descent from adam and eve to burnish their anti-racist creds.
razib: most likely the inferences from science will be more likely determined by the values of the day. in the same way, in christianity was once used to argue for slavery, and the separation of the races (the tower of babel), beginning around in 1800 it was used to argue for the ending of slavery (though southern planters obviously held to the older views)
I don't know when Christianity was ever used to argue for slavery before 1800. Early Christian kingdoms were unique in doing away with the slavery that had been the entire economic basis of the ancient world.
Southerners rarely rationalized slavery in terms of Christianity, either. They appealed to tradition and legalism instead. Whenever possible they turned the argument around and made the fanaticism of the abolitionist the issue instead.
In fact, in the 19th century, Christianity was supplying the only popular argument against slavery, beginning with the English Nonconformists and the Anglican Evangelicals.
Science, which at the time was heavily informed by Haeckel's racist interpretations of Darwin, didn't have any arguments to offer against slavery. Neither did the Humanism of the time, which was heavily informed by classical scholarship that took slavery for granted. That's why Thomas Jefferson was not an abolitionist.
BTW, as an addendum to this discussion: last year the uber-atheist philosopher Anthony Flew announced that he believes in God, in the Deist sense. Not only that, but he now believes that the universe is the result of intelligent design or a "First Cause".
There goes the damn neighborhood.
Some quotes that seem relevant.
From a devout Anglican acquaintance on creationist literalists: "What presumption. To assert that the works of the creator must accord with their understanding of His message."
St. Augustine: "If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken; for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation; not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there."
St. Augustine: "Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn."
St. Augustine: "It is one thing to build and to govern creatures from within and from the summit of the whole causal nexus — and only G_d, the Creator, does this; it is another thing to apply externally forces and capacities bestowed by Him in order to bring forth at such and such a time, or in such and such a shape, what has been created. For all things were created at the beginning, being primordially woven into the texture of the world; but they await the proper opportunity for their existence."
Martin Luther: "G_d writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars."
Albert Einstein: "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is."
I don't know when Christianity was ever used to argue for slavery before 1800. Early Christian kingdoms were unique in doing away with the slavery that had been the entire economic basis of the ancient world.
there is more nuance to this. in fact, slavery as an institution was in sharp decline in the 3rd century, before christianization. by the 4th century, when the emperors accepted christianity, slavery was no longer the widespread institution it once was. the rise of chrisitanity and the decline of slavery were concomitant, not causal (there were specific acts like the banning of gladitorial games that were attributed to christianity). the institution of slavery in northern europe was very different than the latifundia culture of sicily for example, so the semantics gets complicated. slavery was certianly practiced in anglo-saxon england, the normans basically eliminated the practice by full feudalizing the whole nation. additionally, the teutonic knights regularly enslaved pagan balts, in fact, the last of the balts to be christianized were slave-serfs on the lands of particular knights in estonia, who knew very well that if their property became christian they would be granted particular rights and be brought under scrutiny.
also, there are plenty of ancient cultures were slavery was rare-the greco-roman culture was at one end of the antipode. in china for example slavery was generally a condition of foreign prisoners of war and criminals. the confucian tradition tended to favor free peasantry.
Southerners rarely rationalized slavery in terms of Christianity, either.
slavery was one of the main reasons that the southern and american baptists split.
In fact, in the 19th century, Christianity was supplying the only popular argument against slavery, beginning with the English Nonconformists and the Anglican Evangelicals.
see Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution, and you will see a powerful strand of french (white) freethinkers opposed the "aristocracy of the skin" and echoed sentiments that were in keeping with the civil rights movement than even abolitionism. this was in the late 18th century, but in any case, comparing the non-religious to the evangelicals, who were responsible for the destruction of the slave trade, is not really illustrative of a general trend because the former were numerically not significant in comparison to the latter.
Science, which at the time was heavily informed by Haeckel's racist interpretations of Darwin, didn't have any arguments to offer against slavery. Neither did the Humanism of the time, which was heavily informed by classical scholarship that took slavery for granted. That's why Thomas Jefferson was not an abolitionist.
you make a causal implication here. the adams family were from the same intellectual movement as jefferson (enlightenment) and they opposed slavery. emerson, thoureau and the transcendentalists came out of the unitarian post-christian new england milieu, and they opposed slavery. thomas paine, an anti-christian deist, opposed slavery in 1774.
look, i am well aware of the importance of christianity to justifying the abolishment of slavery. but the other counter-assertions you make don't seem to have a strong historical foundation.
ah, one more thing, the corpus juris civilis was the revision of the roman legal code authorized and underwritten by the emperor justinian in the 6th century. one of the reasons it was done was that a lot of old junk had accumulated, another reason was to bring some customs and mores into line with christian morality (justinian was the emperor who abolished the pagan academy in athens). here is what the code revised as regards to slavery: Justinian, too, permitted the punishment of slaves. However, he also prohibited "unrestrained violence toward slaves," except when permission had been granted by the court for a particular reason. in short, christianity humanized the institution of slavery, but it did not abolish it (though again, it was probably limited in the dark ages mostly for foreigners, criminals, etc.).
Glen Wishard:
Haeckel was certainly an evolutionist; and thought of himself as a Darwinian one.
(Incidentally, his Art Forms in Nature is a remarkably beautiful book)
Unfortunately, he decided to make speculations about human races that, while in accord with popular prejudice, were wholly unwarranted by any biological evidence. Namely: there were a dozen distinct human species, evolving from an ancestor from the submerged continent of Lemuria!
And the "germanic" race was "obviously" the superior one.
Even at the time this was ludicrous; a species implies biological differentiation with separations of breeding populations. That there is is no such division in humans was obvious. There is simply no way this is a Darwinian explanation.
Unfortunately Haeckelian racism, combined with a vulgarised version of Spencer's liberal (N.B. nothing like modern American "liberal") concept of social development from free competition of individuals, AND Hegelian pseudo-mystic state worship, AND European reactionary "conservatism" (N.B. nothing like modern American conservatism), produced the "struggle between racial nations" concepts, with dire consequences.
razib: you make a causal implication here. the adams family were from the same intellectual movement as jefferson ...
I agree with most of your points here, but I was talking about moral arguments against slavery. There was great political sentiment for and against slavery, which had nothing to do with whether or not slavery had any transcendental justification.
John Adams, for example, came to identify support for slavery with treason, long before the Civil War. He was outraged at people like Calhoun who said they would rather ally themselves with England than submit to abolition.
Likewise in England there was a great deal of non-religious opposition to slavery in the Royal Navy and the Colonial Office. The popular domestic movement, though, was led by religious abolitionists. Not scientists or scholars.
So I think my point still holds somewhat, though you are right to say I put it too broadly.
And I've spent so much time arguing about slavery in recent threads, I'm getting all argued out.
On slavery and Christianity, I'll disagree with both razib and Glen Wishard.
It was neither a influential source of justification for, nor a strong force against, slavery. At least until the emergence of organised abolitionism in late 18th century Britain. At more or less at the same time as some Enlightenment figures condemned it on philsophical grounds. It would be interesting to see if there was any intellectual influences running between these two groups; but certainly the Evangelicals were the ones with political clout. Though a significant political campaigner for anti-slavery in Britain was Charles James Fox; IIRC he was considerably influenced by Enlightenment ideas.
Early to Medieval Christianity was, to a considerable extent, neutral on slavery. It might be morally reprehensible, but it was of the "realm of Caesar", the "earthly city". In context of the Roman Empire the Church had simply HAD to accept slavery as a legal fact.
In Medieval times the economic disadvantages of slavery for intensive cultivation in an increasingly market-based economy, and perhaps the influence of Christianity and Germanic legal tradititons, led to a decline in chattel slavery as an institution.
But this did not exclude enslavement and exploitation of people outside the pale of Christendom and/or the legal nation. Hence the revival of slavery on a mass scale when plantation colonies made it profitable again, and African traders provided a supply.
John Farren: In Medieval times the economic disadvantages of slavery for intensive cultivation in an increasingly market-based economy, and perhaps the influence of Christianity and Germanic legal tradititons, led to a decline in chattel slavery as an institution.
The specific way in which Christianity undermined slavery was by providing a workable economic alternative, and this was mainly accomplished by the monastic orders, especially the early Benedictines.
It worked in two ways:
1. Close study of agriculture and continual innovation, with this knowledge being passed on to the lay community. Such communities began to produce large surpluses for the first time, without employing slaves.
2. Promoting the "dignity of labor". The Benedictine's motto (from Paul) was "Idle hands are the enemy of the soul." Work that was previously thought to be fit only for slaves was made spiritually respectable, even noble.
Contempt for work and workers, incidentally, is typical of slave economies. Consider the predicament of Robert E. Lee early in the war, ordering his troops to entrench and being told "White men don't dig ditches." It took a while to learn 'em better.
On Darwinism, Lamarckianism and other "schools" of evolutionary theory.
A BIG problem with the basis of contemporary debate is the concept Darwinism = evolution.
It might be better if the conventions of terminology allowed it to be called Darwin's Theory ABOUT Evolution, rather than OF Evolution.
Perhaps it was Darwin's willingness to openly state the obvious possible application of evolution to human origins that led to his becoming thought of as the originator of evolution per se in the public conciousness.
Evolution was already a widespread idea well before Darwin. It had become so due to the overwhelming evidence of differntiated geological strata by William Smith in the 1790's, the calculations of the immense time-scales involved assuming geological uniformitarianism after Lyell, the increasing weight of evidence of time-distributed differences (and similarities) in fossils, evidence from comparative anatomy and botany of systematic patterns in the similarities and divergences between species, and Cuvier's extension of comparative anatomy and Linnaean relationships to fossils in the 1800's.
Once that was done, the pattern of time/strata relationships considered, and Occam's razor applied, the evidence shrieked evolution!
What remained was HOW? rather than IF.
Lamarck was an earlier attempt at explanation. Darwin's account was more coherent (and Wallace hit upon the same basic explanation independently) based on the differential survival and reproductive success of heritable natural variations.
Some alternative theories OF evolution remained sustainable due to lack of knowledge of the mechanism, though evidence FOR evolution accumulated in comparative biology, geology and palaentology.
However, the (re)discovery of Mendelian heritability, thence genetics and the DNA mechanism, and laboratory breeding experiments, fitted with Darwin's concepts perfectly. Thence the modern "neo-Darwinian synthesis" of Darwin + genetics + mathematical population biology.
Glen Wishard:
Monasteries as economic examples and innovators, literate storers and disseminators of technique, and exemplars of philosopy-in-action.
Great point.
Come on people stay on point. Evolution is a theory about how something works and is proven by its repetition. Like everything in our world something is an exception to it. Intelligent design has none of these characteristics. It is a way of deciding that any other world view that does not conform to certain people's view of Christianity is false. It is self contradictory if you believe in the Genesis' books and follow the time line.
Katzman's post is false not because of his discussion of a multitude of manners in which one "knows" "GOD" or becomes like "GOD" but because it does not address the failure of Intelligent Design as a way of becoming like "GOD". Evolution makes no such claim.
John Farren: A BIG problem with the basis of contemporary debate is the concept Darwinism = evolution.
Robert M: Evolution is a theory about how something works ...
Darwinism is actually a theory about how evolution works, and Darwin's main contribution was proposing the mechanism of Natural Selection. Not the application of evolution to the origin of man - Darwin himself credited that to Lamarck.
What makes for strange intellectual history after that is the fact that so many prominent "Darwinists" seem to have all kinds of problems with Natural Selection. Ernst Haeckel, recognized today as Darwin's greatest contemporary champion, never accepted the idea of Natural Selection. Richard Dawkins has messed with it beyond all recognition. The saltationists want to throw in all kinds of extra stuff to turbo-charge it. And all of these people would still insist that they are good Darwinists or neo-Darwinists.
I guess if you're not a Darwinist, then you're a Lamarckian or a Creationist, and you're going to burn in Hell for all eternity. Or whatever the equivalent punishment is at the British Museum of Natural History.
I'm not a scientist, but I say it's not a Chevy if you put a Ford engine in it.
..."be and become more like G-d."
That's a bit difficult considering that God doesn't exist. :)
G-d reminds us all that there is a spiritual dimension, that it's real, and that it has rules just like the physical world.
Oh really? Care to tell me something that resembles the say, I dunno, f = ma of the "spiritual dimension?" :)
Ben,
They aren't theories; they are hypotheses.
Bill Funt,
How are evolutionists arrogant? Maybe we should just ignore the large mass of collected data in front of us and pretend that it doesn't substantiate evolutionary theory. :)
Glen Wishard,
He was the foremost 19th Century popularizer of Darwin.
In Germany.
razib,
I don't know when Christianity was ever used to argue for slavery before 1800.
Then you aren't very familiar with Christian history. For example, African slavery was advocated by the Catholic Church in the 16th century as a means to preserve "Native Americans."
John Farren,
In Medieval times the economic disadvantages of slavery for intensive cultivation in an increasingly market-based economy, and perhaps the influence of Christianity and Germanic legal tradititons, led to a decline in chattel slavery as an institution.
Not really. In medeival Europe slavery was robust in many areas, particularly in places where sugar was under cultivation (e.g., Sicily, Cyprus, southern Spain, etc.). Furthermore, you also ignore the robust trade in northern Europe that went on well into the 12th century. There were also institutions (especially in areas like mining) that were slave regimes in everything but name well into the 18th century (indeed, there existance was a major argument of slave owners in the Americas against abolitionists).
Finally found a moment to step into the discussion. Ben (#5) says:
I write what I know, and I leave deep Christian spritual commentary here to guys like Dan Darling and Rev. Sensing.
But re: my point about "Be more like G-d", your comment did jog my memory. I think the Christian expression is "WWJD?" (for non-christians, that's "What would Jesus Do?"
A clearer expression of the concept could hardly be imagined.
On to the rest...
castillon, just for the record, you misattributed assertions to me that were made by glen wishard. i think the same happened with john farren. i tend to agree with your points, though i think glenn has backed off on some of the more manichaean dualities, so no point in following that angle....
Next...
John Farren (#20). Excellent set of quotes - thanks!
Had to say that, because it was such a fine contribution. Now...
RE: Social Darwinism. It is not, to my knowledge, a spiritual practice. Nor is it a scientific discipline. Or even an example of how one has influenced the other. Its relevance to this discussion is therefore zero. Probably wasn't a good example of what Mark was trying to say, and continuing with that example just extends the train wreck.
To bring things back to what I think Mark's point was, I don't advocate basing one's spiritual beliefs on science. I do say that giving science its proper space and acknowledging the domains in which its credibility is trump, offers spiritual as well as material benefits. Science is about correction, not perfection, that that's its ultimate strength. I'll point out that the very mentality that insists on testing Social Darwinism against its practical consequences, and then accepting or rejecting it, is a scientific legacy.
That's not enough by itself, as I point out. It's not a substitute for ethical religion and spritual practice - but it sure ain't nothin', either.
RE: European codas and practices of slavery. Tres interessant, but probably better discussed in Callimachus' awesome French Slavery post, where they would be highly relevant.
Right, on to the discussions of evolution specifically.
The discussions re: the history and variants of evolutionary theory are interesting, but not especially relevant. The scentific method moves onward, and so do its theories. That they might change over time is normal. After relativity came along, the discipline of astrophysics was still called... astrophysics. And we still spoke of "gravity,' even though Einstein's ideas changed the way we saw it.
Ben (#10) clearly doesn't understand:
Uh, Ben, that's ALL science has. That's what the practice of science IS. You are always accountable to the truth, and every one of your fellow scientists is empowered to hold you accountable by following the rules and either invalidating your work or demonstrating a better theory.
The reasons it's a good thing for science that it doesn't have a Church or a Pope is because those kinds of structures are utterly foreign to the very nature of its practice. Google the term "Lysenkoism" some time.
Bill Funt (#8) has a more watered down approach but it amounts to the same thing. Literal biblical creationism, evolution, it's all alike because (in shouting caps, yet), WE JUST DON'T KNOW - and he sees evolutionists as "arrogant."
No, Bill, they're scientists, practicing the scientific method. Which (as I noted re: Ben's comment), actually demands a certain level of humility in practice. They're kind of like some guy named Galileo, who was also seen as pretty "arrogant" by the religious of his day.
If you doubt that this method produces real knowledge despite the uncertainty woven into the method itself, I suggest you take up one of those TV reality challenges that has you trying to live the way your 16th century ancestors did. We can talk when your 4-month experience is over, and after you've received appropriate remedial medical treatments... brought to you by the same methods used by the scientists who advocate evolution.
I use the medical treatment shot very deliberately. As National Geographic pointed out in in recent feature on Evolution, our current practice of immunology and medical research and treatment all owe a great deal to evolution - indeed, given the life-cycle of pathogens, evolution is critical to devising treatments:
Read the whole thing. It's worth it.
Then consider the impact of substituting a non-testable, non-falsifiable (and hence non-scientific) theory and having it taught as science. Where one explains the mutability patterns of bacteria by going "see, back when G-d made man on the 6th Day..."
Yikes. Double yikes.
We're talking about the way the world physically works here, compadres. That means science, not religion. The Bible is an inappropriate place to go for answers to such questions. Just as your Grade 10 science text is an inappropriate place to go for answers to "does G-d exist?" or "what does goodness consist of?"
We can't afford to dispose of either.
Bill's sort of 'know-nothing' response also worries me for another reason - as I've pointed out before, the structure of our free society owes at least as much to the needs of science as it does to our ethical heritage. So the health of our body politics is on the line, as well as the health of our bodies.
Freedom. Science. An ethical society. Those who would protect any one of the 3 one must also understand the others. As I've discussed before in Freedom, Faith, Virtue.
Castillon: Then you aren't very familiar with Christian history. For example, African slavery was advocated by the Catholic Church in the 16th century as a means to preserve "Native Americans."
Sorry to continue this, but this statement is totally bizarre. Not being a Catholic myself, here is a Catholic response. Here is the most complete text I could find of the 16th century papal bull on slavery, Sublimis Deus. People who give a damn can make up their own minds.
[Spam. Deleted. --NM]