What is Darwinism? (3) Harun Yahya - Racism and Social Darwinism

Harun Yahya in his article Racism and Social Darwinism is even more direct in linking Darwin with Hitler than Ricard Weikart is.

Yahya writes:

Racism is the most important component of fascist ideology, which was responsible for the greatest genocides, massacres and wars of the 20th century. When we look at Nazi ideology, in particular, we see that racism is the main constituent of fascism. The Nazis set out with the dream of making the German race, which they regarded as the superior race, dominant all over the world, and tried to eradicate other races, and particularly the Jews, to that end. As Wilhelm Reich put it, "The race theory is German fascism's theoretical axis."

Please hold your horses here. The most important component of fascist ideology is rather nationalism. And The Nazis did not set out with the dream of making the German (or "Aryan") race dominant all over the world, only in Europe.

The greatest influence in the sudden development of racism in the 19th century Europe was the replacement of the Christian belief that "God created all people equal" by "Darwinism".

The belief that "God created all people equal" is not really a Christian idea, but a deistic idea from the Enlightenment. Deists may count as Christians by some Christians, but certainly not by all.

By suggesting that man had evolved from more primitive creatures, and that some races had evolved further than others, it provided racism with a scientific mask.

It did? Darwin was not sure about this. And those traits that he thought might have been more evolved in the "civilized" races than in the "savage" races were the social instincts such as sympathy, even sympathy with animals!

In short, Darwin is the father of racism.

Oh, dear! In The Descent of Man, Darwin mentions that different authors operate with different numbers of species/races of humans, but he suggest that there is really only one human species/race, and he provides evidence for this. So how can Darwin be the father of racism. See also below about Gobineau.

Yahya quotes James Joll:

Charles Darwin, the English naturalist whose books On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, and The Descent of Man, which followed in 1871, launched controversies which affected many branches of European thought... The ideas of Darwin, and of some of his contemporaries such as the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, ...were rapidly applied to questions far removed from the immediate scientific ones... The element of Darwinism which appeared most applicable to the development of society was the belief that the excess of population over the means of support necessitated a constant struggle for survival in which it was the strongest or the 'fittest' who won. From this it was easy for some social thinkers to give a moral content to the notion of the fittest, so that the species or races which did survive were those morally entitled to do so.

Gobineau wrote about the superiority of the Aryan race before Darwin wrote Origin of Species, and also Herbert Spencer was out with his theory a few years before Origin of Species. And this book doesn't even mention human society. This is done in "The Descent of Man"; but here Darwin suggests that the "inferior" should refrain from marriage, not anything about any struggle - he rather wanted to avoid that. And Herbert Spencer's "social Darwinism" implied that the state should protect the weak against the strong, but not hinder social progress.

Continuing:

The doctrine of natural selection could, therefore, very easily become associated with another train of thought developed by the French writer, Count Joseph-Arthur Gobineau, who published an Essay on the Inequality of Human Races in 1853. Gobineau insisted that the most important factor in development was race; and that those races which remained superior were those which kept their racial purity intact. Of these, according to Gobineau, it was the Aryan race which had survived best.

As Yahya writes here, Gobineau's book was from 1853, six years before "Origin of Species", so how could Gobineau have based his book on Darwin's?

Apparently, racist ideas are completely independent of 'Darwinism', at least of any 'Darwinism' related to Charles Darwin.

Yahya then writes:

The evolutionist German biologist Ernst Haeckel is one of the most important of Nazism's spiritual fathers. Haeckel brought Darwin's theory to Germany, and prepared it as a program ready for the Nazis. From racists such as Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain Hitler took over a politically-centred racism, and a biological one from Haeckel. Careful inspection will reveal that the inspiration behind all these racists came from Darwinism.

Haeckel died in 1919, so how could he have prepared Darwin's theory as a program ready for the Nazis?

And again, how could 'Darwinism' have been the inspiration behind Gobineau's racism?

Yahya next writes:

Indeed, a heavy Darwinist influence can be seen in all the Nazi ideologues. When this theory, which was given form by Hitler and Alfred Rosenburg is examined, one sees concepts such as 'natural selection,' 'selective mating,' and 'the struggle for survival between the races,' which are repeated dozens of times in Darwin's The Origin of Species.

What Yahya ignores here is that Origin of Species does not mention human races. The extension from animals to humans was first to appear in The Descent of Man, and as mentioned above, in this book Darwin suggests that humans should be considered one race.

The name of Hitler's book Mein Kampf was inspired by Darwin's principle that life was a constant struggle for survival, and those who emerged victorious survived.

Not according to Wikipedia.

Yahya quotes Wilhelm Reich:

The race theory proceeds from the presupposition that the exclusive mating of every animal with its own species is an "iron law" in nature. Only exceptional circumstances, such as captivity, are capable of causing a violation of this law and to leading to racial interbreeding. When this occurs, however, nature revenges itself and uses every means at its disposal to oppose such infringements, either by making the bastard sterile or by limiting the fertility of later offspring.

True, but ask any creationist about the same. To creationists, species (or rather kinds) are closed, so why is this 'Darwinism' rather than 'Creationism'?

Yahya then writes:

As we have seen, this biological view that forms the basis of the Nazi's race theory is undiluted Darwinism. Nonsense such as that nature's aim is to 'cause superior species to evolve,' that it uses natural selection to do so, and that the weak are inevitably eliminated are really just a summary of Darwinism.

As any creationist can tell Yahua, Darwin's theory of evolution does not posit any overall purpose for evolution; that is, Darwinian evolution has no aim, so Yahua manages to get everything completely wrong here.

These evolutionist views, which have no scientific basis and are just a reworking of the superstition of 'ascribing consciousness to nature,' existing in animist cultures, finally reached their culmination in the savagery of the Nazis. The theory was put into practice in human societies, again in a manner in conformity with Darwinism.

As mentioned above, the superstition of 'ascribing consciousness to nature' is not part of Darwin's theory of evolution. It might have derived from Hitler misunderstanding Haeckel's monism.

Next Yahya mentions the "fascist National Alliance", which is a White Supremacy group with a "Darwinist, neo-pagan ideology." If they are really Darwinist, they must believe in only one human race, and then they can hardly be racist, can they?

Yahya ends with quoting the Qur'an and saying that for God race doesn't matter, and that "in God's eyes 'superiority' consists of closeness to Him, and fear of Him". This is all quite well, especially since Yahya starts with stating that anti-semitism is racism. Many prominent Muslims are proponents of anti-semitism, and since they as Muslims are subject to the commandments of the Qur'an, apparently something is wrong somewhere.

Social Matthewism

Denyse O'Leary apparently has a soft spot for Australians. Not only David Stove, but also Hiram Caton: Aussie poli sci prof: Darwin's main claim to fame was his social status.

O'Leary quotes Caton:

... Darwin's celebrated book did not deliver an earth-shaking new vision of nature, as creationists believe. The Origin of Species came nowhere close to the bestseller list. It sold about one-third as many copies as did Vestiges. Darwin's main claim to novelty, the discovery of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, was implicit in Spencer's theory and indeed had been clearly stated three decades previously by the Scot Patrick Matthew, who aptly styled it "the natural law of selection".

We have had creationists tell us that Darwin really stole all his Darwinist ideas from the creationist Edward Blyth, and now we are told that natural selection really was invented by the Scot Patrick Matthew. Who can we trust these days?

Looking up Patrick Matthew on Wikipedia proved to be very rewarding.

Matthew, who was a fruit grower and therefore knowledgeable about trees, published in 1831 a book, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, in which he made this observation:

There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every reproductive being the best possible suited to its condition that its kind, or organized matter, is susceptible of, which appears intended to model the physical and mental or instinctive powers to their highest perfection and to continue them so. This law sustains the lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his wiles. As nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing—either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence . . .

Isn't this 'Darwinism' pure and simple?

Yet Matthew was an ID proponent;

There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation . . . [The] progeny of the same parents, under great differences of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.

The Wikipedia article has this little piece of interest:

He considered the task to be of great importance, as the navy permitted the British race to advance. Matthew noted the long-term deleterious effect of dysgenic artificial selection—the culling of only the trees of highest timber quality from forests—on the quality of timber. In an appendix to the book, he elaborated on how eugenic artificial selection—the elimination of trees of poor timber quality—could be used to improve timber quality, and even create new varieties of trees.

So, to improve the quality of timber, the trees of poor quality should be eliminated.

Well, well, well. Could it be that Adolf Hitler wasn't a Darwinist but really a Matthewist?

While we are at it anyway, have a look at Arthur de Gobineau

This guy

... was a French aristocrat who became famous for advocating White Supremacy and developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855).

Please note that, since Darwin's The Origin of Species is from 1859, and his The Descent of Man is from 1871, Gobineau could not have been influenced by Darwin.

All in all, the theory that Charles Darwin is the root of all evil appears to not have much of a foundation.

What is Darwinism? (2) The Second Tablet Project

J. Budziszewski, Associate Professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, has written an interesting article, The Second Tablet Project.

According to Budziszewski, there is an ongoing project whose aim is to have us only accept the last five of The Ten Commandments, but not the first five.

What kind of people are then these Second Tabletters?

You guessed it! They are of course the irresponsible, pleasure-seeking Darwinists!

Budziszewski illustrates the theistic reasoning:

And this makes a difference. A theist who attributes the order of nature to God can say things like this: “I see that the sexual powers cause conception, and that the fact that they do so is part of the explanation of why human nature has been endowed with such powers in the first place. This tells me that conception is a purpose of the sexual powers, a part of what they are for. When I employ them, I ought to respect this fact; I ought not to use them in ways that are incompatible with their purpose.” Adding inference to inference in this fashion, he gradually works out a comprehensive account of the right use of the sexual powers and the respect that is owed to the natural institutions which direct and contain them, and he can reason similarly about the other natural powers and institutions.

So the theist moves from observed effect to purpose. Assuming Budziszewski to be correct, a male, married theist figuring out that a pregnant woman cannot be made pregnant again, until after the child is born, but that he himself still can make other women pregnant in the meantime, will therefore after have made his wife pregnant run around looking for other women to make pregnant. Yeah, we really need more theistic logic, don't we.

Next up is the atheist/Darwinist:

But an atheist might reply like this: “I use the word purpose too, and I am even willing to concede that you use it correctly. If one thing causes another, and that’s part of the explanation of why the first thing occurs, then the second thing is a purpose of the first; even a Darwinist like me can concede that much. So what? How do you get from ‘One of the purposes of the sexual powers is procreation’ to ‘I should not use the sexual powers in ways that are incompatible with procreation’? So far as I can see, the only thing that follows from the connection between procreation and sex is that when I do have intercourse, it would be prudent to watch out.” Stretching a point a bit—taking into account the entire set of things there are to “watch out” for (not only conception, but jealousy, emotional emptiness, loss of trust, and so forth)—perhaps a purely prudential justification of marriage and family and so forth could be developed. Perhaps a purely prudential justification for each of the other natural laws and institutions could be developed in the same way. And perhaps that is the sort of thing that Grotius had in mind.

This is odd, isn't it? Who more than a Darwinist would consider the "sexual powers" to serve any other purpose than procreation?`How do selfish genes do their trick?

Maybe Budziszewski does not consider Richard Dawkins to be a Darwinist? But since others do consider him to be Darwin reincarnate, that leaves the rest of us puzzled as to, what a Darwinist really is.

Francis Galton - a racist?

Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin, invented the word 'eugenics' and wrote several articles and books about how to improve the English population, or the English "race" as he called it.

Galton's vocabulary may appear ill-chosen for a modern taste; and therefore I will here attempt to figure out, what Galton actually meant.

This exposition is based on Galton's book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.

In the chapter "Variety of Human Nature", Galton writes:

The instincts and faculties of different men and races differ in a variety of ways almost as profoundly as those of animals in different cages of the Zoological Gardens; and however diverse and antagonistic they are, each may be good of its kind. It is obviously so in brutes; the monkey may have a horror at the sight of a snake, and a repugnance to its ways, but a snake is just as perfect an animal as a monkey.

In other words, translating to relations between humans, even if humans of one race (such as the English) might find the ways of another race repugnant, this does not imply a difference in quality, only that they are different. So already here we could dismiss the claim that Galton was a racist in the standard meaning of the word. But let us continue the investigation.

Galton continues:

The living world does not consist of a repetition of similar elements, but of an endless variety of them, that have grown, body and soul, through selective influences into close adaptation to their contemporaries, and to the physical circumstances of the localities they inhabit.

This is a tip with the hat to cousin Charles. In particular should be noted the phrase "repetition of similar elements". This refers to creationists of the Platonistic variety. These conjectured that the Creator had used a finite number of elements, each kind being composed of a certain subset of these elements. Some ID proponents today operate with a similar idea.

Back to Galton:

The moral and intellectual wealth of a nation largely consists in the multifarious variety of the gifts of the men who compose it, and it would be the very reverse of improvement to make all its members assimilate to a common type.

That is, Galton was certainly not into making a stereotyped "master" race.

However, in every race of domesticated animals, and especially in the rapidly-changing race of man, there are elements, some ancestral and others the result of degeneration, that are of little or no value, or are positively harmful. We may, of course, be mistaken about some few of these, and shall find in our fuller knowledge that they subserve the public good in some indirect manner; but, notwithstanding this possibility, we are justified in roundly asserting that the natural characteristics of every human race admit of large improvement in many directions easy to specify.

Note the inconsistent use of the word "race" here. First humans are considered one race, and later more than one race. A genuine racist would have been more consistent in applications of this keyword. Notice also that Galton suggests that "natural characteristics of every human race admit of large improvement[s]". The English are not perfect. A key feature is here the "natural characteristics". The way Galton sees things, each "race", that is, nationality, has certain characteristics resulting from adaptation. No indication that any nationality is superior to any other outside its habitat.

In the chapter "Selection and Race", Galton writes:

So long as the race remains radically the same, the stringent selection of the best specimens to rear and breed from, can never lead to any permanent result. The attempt to raise the standard of such a race is like the labour of Sisyphus in rolling his stone uphill; let the effort be relaxed for a moment, and the stone will roll back. Whenever a new typical centre appears, it is as though there was a facet upon the lower surface of the stone, on which it is capable of resting without rolling back. It affords a temporary sticking-point in the forward progress of evolution. The causes that check the unlimited improvement of highly-bred animals, so long as the race remains unchanged, are many and absolute.

In other words, improvement of a race requires an improvement of the entire race, selective breeding is not sufficient. Also notice the use of the word "evolution" in the meaning "improvement" rather than "adaptation". It is not based on natural selection, but rather on, what happens to be considered as desirable, and what is considered desirable may of course vary among nationalities.

Back to Galton:

In the first place there is an increasing delicacy of constitution; the growing fineness of limb and structure end, after a few generations, in fragility.

And from the next paragraph:

The next difficulty lies in the diminished fertility of highly-bred animals. It is not improbable that its cause is of the same character as that of the delicacy of their constitution.

Again, the point of these two factors is that selective breeding cannot on its own lead to a stable improvement.

Concluding, Galton writes:

Whenever a low race is preserved under conditions of life that exact a high level of efficiency, it must be subjected to rigorous selection. The few best specimens of that race can alone be allowed to become parents, and not many of their descendants can be allowed to live.

A "low" race here, of course, is relative to the conditions, not an absolute term.

On the other hand, if a higher race be substituted for the low one, all this terrible misery disappears. The most merciful form of what I ventured to call "eugenics" would consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races, and in so favouring them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that of the old one.

That is, Galton does not suggest that "inferior" people should be disallowed from marriage, merely that "superior" people should be favored; that is, encouraged to marry and have children. And again, remember that "inferior" and "superior" are not absolutes.

Ending this paragraph, Galton writes:

Such strains are of no infrequent occurrence. It is easy to specify families who are characterised by strong resemblances, and whose features and character are usually prepotent over those of their wives or husbands in their joint offspring, and who are at the same time as prolific as the average of their class. These strains can be conveniently studied in the families of exiles, which, for obvious reasons, are easy to trace in their various branches.

Exiles are emigrants, and emigrants are immigrants, so it's not as if Galton is completely against foreigners.

This is even more clear in the following paragraph:

The debt that most countries owe to the race of men whom they received from one another as immigrants, whether leaving their native country of their own free will, or as exiles on political or religious grounds, has been often pointed out, and may, I think, be accounted for as follows:--The fact of a man leaving his compatriots, or so irritating them that they compel him to go, is fair evidence that either he or they, or both, feel that his character is alien to theirs. Exiles are also on the whole men of considerable force of character; a quiet man would endure and succumb, he would not have energy to transplant himself or to become so conspicuous as to be an object of general attack. We may justly infer from this, that exiles are on the whole men of exceptional and energetic natures, and it is especially from such men as these that new strains of race are likely to proceed.

Remember that this was written in the age of free enterprise, where people of "exceptional and energetic natures" were particularly in demand.

In short, Galton is not into keeping the English race pure, rather he acknowledges that immigrants are of great value to the society.

The very next chapter, "Influence of Man upon Race" begins with this wonderful paragraph:

The influence of man upon the nature of his own race has already been very large, but it has not been intelligently directed, and has in many instances done great harm. Its action has been by invasions and migration of races, by war and massacre, by wholesale deportation of population, by emigration, and by many social customs which have a silent but widespread effect.

The influence of man upon the nature of his own race has not been INTELLIGENTLY DIRECTED!!!

Please read that sentence a couple of times - until you understand that eugenics is not "Darwinism", but "Intelligent Design".

All in all, Francis Galton is in no way suggesting any drastic measures for the improvement of races, nor any absoluteness in comparison between races, nor that racial mixture is in itself the root of all evil.

That is to say that the Nazi version of eugenics can hardly be said to have been a direct application of Galton's suggestions.

For an alternate view, se Richard Weikart's article Father of Eugenics.

Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?

Having read Read State Rabble's article Richard Weikart: Workin' in a Quote Mine, I figured that the quote-mining season was in.

And I went mining with my pick axe and spade. And in 'Rev. Dr.' Lenny Flank's talkreason article Deception by Design, I found this wonderful quote:

The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ." (D. James Kennedy, Education; Public Problems and Private Solutions, Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993)

Let's do some intelligent design to it, shall we?

Such as this:

The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army ... who can invade the ... nation ...." (D. James Kennedy, ... Problems and ... Solutions, Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993)

Which nation is James Kennedy referring to here? Well, everybody can pick their choice - that's not important. What is important is that this can be used to show that James Kennedy himself is a Darwinist, and through guilt by association, Richard Weikart is a Darwinist as well.

What is Darwinism? (1) David Stove's Decalog

The late Australian philosopher David Stove made a list of ten propositions made by Darwinians, So You Think You Are a Darwinian?

Stove writes:

Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.

If 'Darwinians' denote adherents of, whatever is denoted by 'Darwinism', it might be argued that Darwinians might be the experts on, what 'Darwinism' actually denotes.

What does Darwinism say? Darwinism says, whatever Darwinians say.

Later Stove writes:>/p>

What is needed to make someone an adherent of a certain school of thought is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar to that school, and are believed either by all of its adherents, or at least by the more thoroughgoing ones. In any large school of thought, there is always a minority who adhere more exclusively than most to the characteristic beliefs of the school: they are the ‘purists’ or ‘ultras’ of that school. What is needed and sufficient, then, to make a person a Darwinian, is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar to Darwinians, and believed either by all of them, or at least by ultra-Darwinians.

Not that simple, not at all that simple, Mr. Stove. After the discovery of Mendel's results in genetics, 'Darwinism' came to mean that an inherited trait in the offspring was a blend of the two instances of the same trait in the parents. This implies (1) that all inheritable traits are continous, and (2) that phenotype = genotype. The issue was first settled in the 1930s with the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian inheritance.

Do modern Darwinians reject Mendelian inheritance? Of course they don't. That would be extremely ultra-Darwinian. So Stove's idea that ultra-Darwinists are the real Darwinist leads to the quant problem that modern day ultra-Darwinists aren't really ultra-Darwinists.

But let us have a walk-through of those propositions, shall we?

1. The truth is, ‘the total prostitution of all animal life, including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of these minute virus-like substances’, genes.

According to Stove, this is Richard Dawkins quoting someone else while defending his book The Selfish Gene.

But this is more properly called genetic reductionism.

The main point in The Selfish Gene is to explain altruistic behavior among social animals. Animals living in large colonies, such as ants, bees and whasps, have sterile workers. These sterile workers do not abstain from having their own offspring, because they are given a religious upbringing or anything like that. No, its the chemistry, their genes.

The conclusion from this is that the unit of selection is not the individual organism, but the gene.

Taking genetic reductionism to its extremes is self-defeating, however. If your genes make you believe in genetic reductionism, anyone else with the same genes will also already believe in genetic reductionism, and anyone else without those genes cannot be persuaded, because they lack those genes.

However, let us be less extreme. In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin attempts to argue for the position that there is only one human species in existence. Here is an except from chap. VII:

He who will read Mr. Tylor's and Sir J. Lubbock's interesting works (24. Tylor's 'Early History of Mankind,' 1865: with respect to gesture-language, see p. 54. Lubbock's 'Prehistoric Times,' 2nd edit. 1869.) can hardly fail to be deeply impressed with the close similarity between the men of all races in tastes, dispositions and habits. This is shewn by the pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, acting, painting, tattooing, and otherwise decorating themselves; in their mutual comprehension of gesture-language, by the same expression in their features, and by the same inarticulate cries, when excited by the same emotions. This similarity, or rather identity, is striking, when contrasted with the different expressions and cries made by distinct species of monkeys. There is good evidence that the art of shooting with bows and arrows has not been handed down from any common progenitor of mankind, yet as Westropp and Nilsson have remarked (25. 'On Analogous Forms of Implements,' in 'Memoirs of Anthropological Society' by H.M. Westropp. 'The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' Eng. translat., edited by Sir J. Lubbock, 1868, p. 104.), the stone arrow-heads, brought from the most distant parts of the world, and manufactured at the most remote periods, are almost identical; and this fact can only be accounted for by the various races having similar inventive or mental powers.

Darwin's point here is that there are things that are not learnt, but are natural (innate) to all humans. It is our genes that are expressed through that which is common to all of us, not personal choices or social customs.

2 '…it is, after all, to [a mother’s] advantage that her child should be adopted’ by another woman.

According to Stove, this quotation is from The Selfish Gene, p. 110.

Looking again at social insects, we notice that the queen doesn't take care of her own offspring. She has workers to do that for her. If a woman (a female human) were to have as many children as she could possibly have, it would likewise be advantageous for her to have someone else to take care of the children - even if it were older siblings.

3. All communication is ‘manipulation of signal-receiver by signal-sender.’

Stove comments:

This profound communication, though it might easily have come from any used-car salesman reflecting on life, was actually sent by Dawkins, (in The Extended Phenotype, (1982), p. 57), to the readers whom he was at that point engaged in manipulating. Much as the devil, in many medieval plays, advises the audience not to take his advice.

An interesting comment considering that this is actually exactly, what the creationist Werner Gitt claims and uses to "disprove" evolution.

I would have to read The Extended Phenotype, , p. 57 to figure out, what Dawkins could have meant; but life is too short for that.

Anyway, what is in particular Darwininian in this quote? As mentioned, even creationists claim this. Are Creationists Darwinians? Are they lured by their genes to only believe that they are creationists?

4. Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism: that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters to raise more children.

According to Stove, "[t]his very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9."

In what way is this proposition Darwinian? Do homosexuals take care of the children of their siblings? Again, I would need to read the page indicated to figure out, what is really meant, and again, life is too short for that.

5. In all social mammals, the altruism (or apparent altruism) of siblings towards one another is about as strong and common as the altruism (or apparent altruism) of parents towards their offspring.

Stove somments:

This proposition is an immediate consequence, and an admitted one, of the theory of inclusive fitness, which says that the degree of altruism depends on the proportion of genes shared. This theory was first put forward by W. D. Hamilton in The Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964. Since then it has been accepted by Darwinians almost as one man and has revolutionized evolutionary theory. This acceptance has made Professor Hamilton the most influential Darwinian author of the last thirty years.

That's all Stove has to say about this proposition.

However, notice that propositions 4 and 5 both deal with altruism, which happens to be the general theme of sociobiology. How do we explain altruism, if everything is a struggle for survival? And again, the point is that the unit of selection is not the individual, but the gene. But the proposition here could also be defended by appealing to imitation: siblings learn altruism towards each other by imitating the altruism of their parents. Darwin does mention imitation as an important factor, so a Darwinian could have it either way.

6. '…no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.'

Another Hamilton quote (Italics are Stove's, however). As Stove mentions, this proposition is a consequence of the theory of inclusive fitness. So it's not really a new proposition, and Stove has nothing else to say about it. And again, this is not a necessary proposition for a Darwinian.

7. Every organism has as many descendants as it can.

Stove comments:

Compare Darwin, in The Origin of Species, p. 66: ‘every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers’; and again, pp. 78-9, ‘each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio’. These page references are to the first edition of the Origin, (1859), but both of the passages just quoted are repeated in all of the five later editions of the book which were published in Darwin’s lifetime. He also says the same thing in other places.

Now, this proposition isn't implied by the quotes, so it isn't Darwinian, but Stovian. The two Darwin quotes mention "striving to (the utmost) to increase", which is a different thing than having as many descendants as possible.

As Stove further mentions, Darwin is depending on Malthus here.

However, notice that Darwin actually mentions "every single/each organic being" - no parent/sibling altruism here. The sociobiological translation to genes rather than individuals were still in the future.

Still, this proposition isn't peculiar to Darwinians; Jews, Muslims and Christians will tell us that God has commanded us to multiply and fill up the whole earth. So is Stove asking us to go against one of God's commandments? No, couldn't be. Only a Darwinian would do such a thing.

8. In every species, child-mortality - that is, the proportion of live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high.

Stove comments:

Compare Darwin in the Origin, p. 61: ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’; or p. 5, ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, these passages, from the first edition, are both repeated unchanged in all the later editions of the Origin.

Stove's point is that this doesn't apply to humans in general. Child-mortality has occasionally been high, but not in general.

As Stove mentions, this is again based on Malthus' theory and therefore not peculiar to Darwinians. However, the current rapid increase in the world's human population is something farely new, while as far as we have evidence it is quite traditional for families to have many children.

9. The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class in a society is less exposed than another to the misery due to food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate class will have (on the average) more children than the members of the other class.

As Stove correctly mentions, historically the opposite has usually been the case. However, this proposition is actually a strawman. In times of food shortage, the privileged classes will most likely suffer less in terms of child-mortality. However, since often families of the privileged classes have fewer children, they will still not necessarily have more children.

Also, the proposition suffers from the problem that different social classes aren't different species. So it's really a pointless proposition.

10. If variations which are useful to their possessors in the struggle for life ‘do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.’

According to Stove, this is from The Origin of Species, pp. 80-81.

Again here, Darwin is taking things somewhat to their extremes. But is it necessary to follow along to these extremes in order to accept evolution? Why can't Stove handle some scaling?

The general problem with these propositions is there dependency on sociobiology and Malthus' law, and that Stove's approach relies too much on quote-mining.

Does the fact that (most) human societies today have a very low child-mortality in anyway disprove that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor around five million years ago?

It should be noted that Stove's paper addressed here was mean to be a request for comments, and not to be taken as a final result. However it still clearly shows that 'Darwinism' is a fuzzy term mostly used by quote-miners and people wo tend to read things too literal.

In short, I find that Stove has constructed himself a strawman.

Weikart update: I am confused

Yesterday I wrote a post, Richard Weikart and Darwinism, in which I critisized one of Richard Weikart's online articles, thinking that the article was representative for Weikart. Later yesterday I read Weikart's online response to critics of his book From Darwin to Hitler. And now I am confused. In the latter article Weikart writes:

Concerning the first charge (that I claim that every form of Darwinism led to Nazism), I stated quite clearly in the introduction: "Obviously, Darwin was no Hitler. The contrast between the personal lives and dispositions of these two men could hardly be greater. Darwin eschewed politics, retreating to his country home in Down for solitude to conduct biological research and to write. Hitler as a demagogue lived and breathed politics, stirring the passions of crowds through frenzied speeches. Politically Darwin was a typical English liberal, supporting laissez-faire economics and opposing slavery. Like most of his contemporaries, Darwin considered non-European races inferior to Europeans, but he never embraced Aryan racism or rabid anti-Semitism, central features of Hitler's political philosophy."

Ok, so now we know. But that still leaves us puzzled about, what 'Darwinism' is. Weikart continues:

I specifically denied that Darwinist thinkers are proto-Nazi. I also explained in my introduction: "The opposing view&emdash;that Hitler hijacked Darwinism&emdash;has significant supporting arguments, for many scholars have pointed out that Darwinism did not lead to any one particular political philosophy or practice. Social Democrats with impeccable Marxist credentials were enthusiastic about Darwinism and even considered it a corroboration of their own worldview. After reading Darwin’s Origin of Species, Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels, 'Although developed in a coarse English manner, this is the book that contains the foundation in natural history for our view.' Furthermore, many pacifists, feminists, birth control advocates, and homosexual rights activists&emdash;some of whom were persecuted and even killed by the Nazis&emdash;were enthusiastic Darwinists and used Darwinian arguments to support their political and social agendas. Eugenics discourse was commonplace all across the political spectrum, causing the historian Atina Grossmann to convincingly argue that the path from eugenics and sex reform to Nazism was 'a convoluted and highly contested route.' Nazism was not predetermined in Darwinism or eugenics, not even in racist forms of eugenics."

It gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn't it? What is 'Darwinism'? The Nazis were Darwinists, because they were against for instance homosexuals, who in turn were Darwinists themselves. Is there anybody who isn't a Darwinist? A few sentences later, Weikart writes:

No, all Darwinism didn't lead to Nazism, and I of all people know this quite well. If my critics skipped the introduction of my book, they could also have learned my views in the conclusion, where I stated: "It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself did not produce Hitler's worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different conclusions from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler."

Ok, so I will assume that Weikart disagrees with "Darwin's Deadly Legacy", because everybody back then were Darwinists, even the Jews presumably. In the next paragraph, Weikart writes:

Concerning the second charge (that Nazism depends entirely on Darwinian thought), I specifically confronted this issue in my book, too, stating: "The multivalence of Darwinism and eugenics ideology, especially when applied to ethical, political, and social thought, together with the multiple roots of Nazi ideology, should make us suspicious of monocausal arguments about the origins of the Nazi worldview."

But where is all this in Weikart's Discovery Institute article? Of course, you cannot write as detailed in an article as in a whole book. Yet, the article could certainly have spent a sentence or two on this just for sake of those of us (like me) that don't have time to read the constant stream of books from DI Fellows and their friends. A couple of sentences later:

In a class I teach at my university on the Nazi era, I discuss many factors shaping Nazi ideology: nationalism, the effects of World War I, economic problems, Christian antisemitism, etc.

This is, what the Darwinistic masses have been crying for, isn't it? But why is nothing of all this in the Discovery Institute article? Continuing, Weikart writes:

I do not believe that Nazism has one cause, and in my book I overtly reject a monocausal explanation. The reason I only discussed the role of social Darwinism and evolutionary ethics in the shaping of Nazi ideology should be obvious. My book is not primarily about Nazism. It is about evolutionary ethics. I never claimed that Darwinism or evolutionary ethics is the only cause of Nazi ideology, and I specifically denied that interpretation.

Well, well, well. So From Darwin to Hitler is about evolutionary ethics, and from the above, we can conclude that such a thing doesn't really exist. Any ethics can apparently be combined with evolution. That's, what most of us evolutionists say: no ethics can be derived from the theory of evolution just as no ethics can be derived from Newton's theory of gravity. But the Nazis weren't evolutionists. They didn't want to create a new species, but to recreate the original Germanic ("Aryan") race by weeding out the inferior genes that had come in with Jews and other "inferior" races. In the next paragraph we find these nuggets:

The reviewer in German Studies Review wrote: "This does not mean, Weikart insists, that Darwinism should be blamed for the Holocaust." In Science and Theology News the reviewer wrote: "Darwin’s ideas are not directly responsible for the Holocaust, Weikart claims, because the principles of evolution do not necessarily lead to Hitler’s destructive philosophy."

By the ever burning fires of hell, what is the whole shebang then about? Weikart agrees with just about anyone else outside of Coral Ridge Ministries, so how did he even get involved in Darwin's Deadly Legacy? The last paragraph begins thus:

What I demonstrated in detail in my book is that many leading Darwinists themselves argued overtly that Darwinism did indeed undermine the sanctity-of-life ethic, and they overtly appealed to Darwinism when they promoted infanticide, euthanasia, racial extermination, etc. I specifically noted that not all Darwinists took this position, but those who did were leading Darwinian biologists, medical professors, psychiatrists, etc. They were not some fringe group of ignorant fanatics; they were mainstream Darwinists.

But this still doesn't tell us, what 'Darwinism' is, does it? Anyway, if it hadn't been 'Darwinism', it would have been 'Christianism' or 'something-else-ism'. Politicians simply don't correlate their ideas with scientific theories - they make sure that scientific theories correlate with their ideas, if they can get away with it. And the paragraph ends thus:

They were not some fringe group of ignorant fanatics; they were mainstream Darwinists. Also, I did not simply show that leading Darwinists supported eugenics, infanticide, euthanasia, and racial extermination; I showed that they appealed overtly to Darwinism to justify their position. So, it is not Weikart who is reading Darwinism into the record. Darwinists themselves made these arguments. Therefore, critics of the position that Darwinism devalues human life should not attack me, but rather should attack those Darwinists I exposed in my work.

But what is 'Darwinism'? This is the crucial question we need answered. And wouldn't this people have referred to something else, if something else was in fashion? Is there something unique to Darwinists that make them worse than anybody else across the entire human history? A peek at Respectful Insolence John Wilkins on eugenics and Darwin is recommended. Also Pat Hayes (Red State Rabble) has some interesting posts about Weikart, such as this: Richard Weikart: Workin’ in a Quote Mine.

Richard Weikart and Darwinism

Richard Weikart is an historian. Richard Weikart has a Ph.D. in history. Richard Weikart is a professor of history. So yuo would be excused to think that Richard Weikart is a higly qualified historian, wouldn't you? However, Richard Weikart is also a Discovery Institute Fellow. So we know something must be wrong. Richard Weikart has written the book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. I haven't read the book; but I have read a couple of Weikart's online articles, and there's sufficient specified complexity in those for me to rule out that reading his book is worth the time. I'll here address one of those articles: Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?. Weikart begins with a story:

A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn't evil? How could they believe this? How could they justify such a view?

Is it the task of ah historian to pass value judgment on people? It's the task of an historian to figure out, what happened, and, if possible, why it happened. Hitler most likely considered himself to be good, and this is, what is the problem with 'good and evil' - few people do, what they do thinking it's bad, they think it's good. The question, weikart should ask, is, how can humans get the idea that killing other humans is something good in a society, where this is not supposed to be the cased. When I was studying philosophy I wrote a paper about the historian R.G. Collingwood critisizing his idea of history for its focus on individuals and their thoughts. Apparently Weikart is of Collingwood's line, believing that history is made up of a few individuals, who act on inspiration from books. This is simply too naive. But let's continue with Weikart's little story:

They did it by appealing to Darwinism. Their pronouncement on Hitler occurred while we were discussing James Rachels' book, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford University Press, 1990). Darwinism, these students informed us, undermined all morality. This was not the first time I had heard such a view. In fact, at that time I was in the beginning phases of a research project on the history of evolutionary ethics, and I had already reviewed the work of some scientists and social scientists who believed that Darwinism undermined human rights and equality.

What is this thing, 'Darwinism'? Apparently some stuff that undermines all morality, and, if Weikart is to be believed, this stuff even undermines human rights and equality. I am no historian; but I do believe to have understood that human rights were an invention of the Enlightenment, which also introduced the idea of human equality. Just for the record: Galatians 3:28 does proclaim equality in the body of Christ; but not in society. Back to Weikart:

Before reading Rachels' book, however, I hadn't thought much about whether or not Darwinism devalued human life itself. Rachels, a philosopher at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, best known for his contributions to the euthanasia debate, argues that Darwinism undermines the Judeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of human life.

It gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn't it? Weikart is an historian, who wants to play moral philosopher, and not only that; he even wants to play Judeo-Christian apologist. Is there really such a thing as the "Judeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of human life"? Well, with the appropriate definition of "human life" perhaps; for instance that only members of one's own (sub-)denomination count as proper humans. Is this really a historian writing here? A person who should know that ideas come and go with the wind. Anyway, humanism was also an invention of the Enlightenment, I believe to have understood. A paragraph and a few sentences later Weikart writes:

Darwinists were in the forefront of the eugenics movement, which often taught that disabled people and non-Europeans were inferior to healthy Europeans. They argued that Darwinism implied human inequality, since biological variation has to occur to drive the process of evolution. Haeckel even suggested that Darwinism was an "aristocratic" process, favoring an aristocracy of talent (not the traditional landed aristocracy, for which Haeckel had no sympathy).

Aha! The eye of the keen historian should have noticed that Haeckel had no sympathy for the traditional landed aristocracy - with its birthrights indpendent of personal qualifications. So we are dealing with a social change - not a focus on ownership of property, but on 'possession' of talent. Why doesn't Weikart, an historian, see this rather than going off in a quest for the stuff 'Darwinism'? Germany had no colonies, but many talented people - it had the highest level of education in Europe. How come that Weikart, an historian, is unable to see this? Weikart proceeds:

Since Darwinism provided a naturalistic explanation for the origin of ethics, many of its adherents dismissed human rights as a chimera.

They did? Maybe they did, but in what way? I live in Denmark, where a very nationalistic, Lutheran pastor (Søren Krarup) claims that we are created as the concrete individuals that we are; that is, including our nationality, our national culture. Same pastor is against international human rights, because that is imposing an international law upon nations. Could it be that we should seek the cause of any dismmissals of human rights rather in nationalism than in 'Darwinism'? Maybe 'Darwinism' was used as apolegetic for nationalism; but if hadn't been 'Darwinism', it would have been 'Blythism' or something else. Back to Weikart:

Darwin expressed incredulity when critics assailed him for undermining morality. In his Autobiography, however, Darwin rejected the idea of objective moral standards, stating that one "can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones."

Ahh; But don't forget that Darwin counted with social instincts such as sympathy between all humans. In chapter 6 of The Descent of man, Darwin writes:

Ants certainly communicate information to each other, and several unite for the same work, or for games of play. They recognise their fellow-ants after months of absence, and feel sympathy for each other.

And in Chapter 5:

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

So, indeed Darwin was right in expressing incredulity, when critics assailed him for undermining morality. In short, Weikart is barking up the wrong tree. Weikart quotes Friedrich Hellwald from the book The History of Culture (1875):

In nature only One Right rules, which is no right, the right of the stronger, or violence. But violence is also in fact the highest source of right, in that without it no legislation is thinkable. I will in the course of my portrayal easily prove that even in human history the right of the stronger has fundamentally retained its validity at all times.

Ahh; but notice that Hellwald claims that without violence no legislation is thinkable. This is good old Lutheran thinking. The sword of the emperor, king, or prince is needed to protect the innocent. Isn't Weikart an historian? And even if he isn't, is he against law enforcement? That's certainly not biblical, is it? Next Weikart writes:

This Darwinian undermining of human rights would be fateful for the Judeo-Christian vision of the sanctity of human life.

So, what Weikart really means is that US imperialism - exercised under the cover up establishing human rights - is fine; but no other imperialism should be accepted. Methinks Weikart is like a politician. Certainly not like an historian. Politician or not, Weikart proceeds:

Besides stressing human inequality, Haeckel and many of his fellow Darwinists devalued human life by criticizing Judeo-Christian conceptions of humanity as "anthropocentric." Rather than being created in the image of God, they argued, humans were descended from simian ancestors. They blurred the distinctions between humans and animals, alleging that characteristics that had been traditionally considered uniquely human--rationality, morality, religion, etc.--were also present in animals to some degree. In Darwin's own words, the difference between humans and animals is quantitative, not qualitative.

Oh, dear! Please read the above quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man. What is wrong with e.g. sympathy also existing among animals? Trying to avoid racism, Weikart ends up in speciesism, as Richard Dawkins calls it. I fail to see, what's so wrong in this recognition that there isn't an abyss of differences separating us from animals, the recognition that animals have many human traits. And why is it so much worse blurring the distinction between humans and animals than to claim that humans are nothing but dust? Proceeding, Weikart writes:

Darwin's explanation that all human characteristics that previously had been associated with the human soul were not qualitatively distinct from animals also undermined the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of body-soul dualism, which endued humans with greater moral and spiritual significance than other organisms.

Oh, dear! Could it be that Weikart hasn't heard the news? Biblical Hebrew has no distinction between body and soul; it's only in translation that this distinction appears. Wouldn't an historian know such a thing? Next paragraph, Weikart writes:

Another element of Darwinism that contributed to the devaluing of human life was its stress on the struggle for existence.

Ahh; but don't forget that Darwin also wrote about sympathy and cooperation. The struggle for existance wasn't invented by Darwin. We find it for instance in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, where the solution is a covenant between humans to cease the war of all against all; a covenant embodied in the 'Sovereign', whose duty it was to enforce the covenant upon those who broke it. Now, Leviathan was written in 1651, shortly after the English Civil war and the Thirty Years War on the continent. An appropriate situation to come up with some idea about how to prevent new wars. Wasn't the 19th century much like that? Wouldn't an historian know that? A couple of paragraphs later, weikart quotes Hitler's Mein Kampff:

by no means believes in the equality of races, but recognizes along with their differences their higher or lower value, and through this knowledge feels obliged, according to the eternal will that rules this universe, to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to demand the submission of the worse and weaker. It embraces thereby in principle the aristocratic law of nature and believes in the validity of this law down to the last individual being. It recognizes not only the different value of races, but also the different value of individuals. . . . But by no means can it approve of the right of an ethical idea existing, if this idea is a danger for the racial life of the bearer of a higher ethic.

Doesn't Weikart know the evils of beginning a quote in the middle of a sentence and of leaving out part of a quote? Anyway, notice that Hitler here refers to "the eternal will that rulkes this universe". Is that the words of a 'Darwinist', an evolutionist, who doesn't acknowledge an eternal will? Apparently it is this eternal will that embraces the aristocratic law of nature and recognizes the different value of races and of individuals. And notice the phrase "a higher ethic" in the last sentence. Apparently Hitler wasn't into undermining morals, but into improving them - according to an eternal will that rules this universe. Please, Weikart, tell us, who besides Hitler operates with "an eternal will that rules this universe". Hint: "Atheistic Darwinists" is the wrong answer. Weikart begin the next paragraph with:

Thus Hitler justified his racial views by appealing to Darwinian science.

Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! No, Hitler mixed Judeo-Christian metaphysics with various other lines of thinking - Darwinian science being only a tiny part of the mix. Next paragraph minus the last sentence:

Hitler's genocidal program was not the only adverse consequence of Darwinism's devaluing of human life, and Germany was not the only country impacted. Much work on the history of the eugenics movement in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere suggests that scientific and medical elites in many parts of the world imbibed the Darwinian devaluing of human life. Though it did not lead to genocide in these countries, it did lead to other injustices, such as the compulsory sterilization of thousands of people classified as "less fit," based on their hereditary condition (sometimes based on very tenuous evidence, leading to many cases of misdiagnosis).

Well, at least they weren't burned on the stakes as demon-possessed as they were earlier. We are dealing with old Judeo-Christian traditions, only with a different apologetics. And the last sentence of that paragraph:

Social Darwinist and eugenics ideology also played an important role in the budding movement to legalize abortion in the early twentieth century.

Maybe they did; but don't forget that abortions happened also during times of witch-hunting. Next paragraph is about euthanasia. And then Weikart writes:

Thus, historical evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries overwhelmingly supports the thesis that Darwinism devalued human life.

By the ever burning fires of hell, euthanasia is not a devaluation of human life; it is ending a life that for some reason has lost its human value. Is Christian martyr-worship also a devaluation of human life? Anyway, how does euthanasia square with struggle for survival? Next paragraph:

The question now emerges: Is this all just of historical interest? Haven't we learned a lesson from Nazism not to use social Darwinism to devalue humans? Haven't we abandoned biological racism and rabid anti-Semitism, integral components of Nazi ideology?

Yes, we have learned a lesson from Nazi ideology: not to trust religious zealots believing in an eternal will that rules this universe. But maybe some of us didn't listen. Next paragraph minus the last sentence:

Yes, indeed, we have learned much from the Nazi past, and I don't think it is fair to compare our present situation with Nazi Germany, as though they are completely the same. We don't live in a murderous dictatorship, and racism is on the defensive, at least in academic circles. For this we can be thankful. Still, in some respects, I wonder if we have learned enough, especially when I see big-name Darwinists, evolutionary psychologists, and bioethicists using Darwinism today to undermine the sanctity of human life.

Claims are that 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the latest war in Iraq; but who counts with them? During the war I read a CNN interview with a US fighter pilot. She was asked, if she wasn't afraid that her bombs might hit civilians. She answered that she was confident that God would guide her bombs so they would only hit the intended targets. Last sentence of the paragraph:

Whether Darwinism does actually devalue human life or not, there are certainly many people who think it does, and they are not intellectual featherweights.

Oh, so Weikart isn't even sure that Darwinism actually does devalue human life. What is all this about then? And concerning the people that are not intellectual featherwights and who think that Darwinism does devalue human life, what do they mean by 'Darwinism'? Has Weikart bothered to investigate that? Next up, Weikart writes:

First of all, the position that Rachels stakes out on issues of life and death are strikingly similar to that of the Australian bioethicist, Peter Singer, whose appointment a few years ago to a chair in bioethics at Princeton University stirred up vigorous controversy. Singer is renowned--or notorious, depending on one's point of view--for promoting the legitimacy of infanticide for handicapped babies and voluntary euthanasia, as well as for defending animal rights. Darwinism plays a key role in Singer's philosophy, underpinning his views on life and death. Singer claims that Darwin "undermined the foundations of the entire Western way of thinking on the place of our species in the universe."

So, defending animal rights is a sin on line with everything else? And if Singer claims that Darwin "undermined the foundations of the entire Western way of thinking on the place of our species in the universe", he must disagree with Hitler's "eternal will that rules this universe", mustn't he? Would an historian not notice such an important difference? In the next paragraphs, Weikart mentions how various 'Darwinists', among these Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins, have devalued human life. Since I would need to put the quotes into proper context, I'll leave these paragraphs alone. We'll pick up again with this:

Many biologists, of course, disagree with Singer and Dawkins. From the late nineteenth century to today they have assured us that Darwinism has no implications for morality. They allege that those trying to apply Darwinism to morality are committing the "naturalistic fallacy" by deriving "ought" from "is." Darwin's friend and defender, Thomas Henry Huxley, vigorously opposed the attempts of his contemporaries to seek ethical guidance in natural evolutionary processes. More recently, Steven Jay Gould often butted heads with evolutionary psychologists, arguing that morality was a separate realm from biology. In his view Darwinism has nothing to say about how humans should act.

And indeed, how could we conclude any particular moral from evolution? If we have a biologically based moral, and it's the only moral we can choose, there's nothing to discuss about. The mere fact that we can discuss morals shows that they are not based on biology; they are social inventions. Now, Darwin did not deny that culture was of importance, so where is the problem? Has Weikart misunderstood something, or has somebody else? Moving on to the next paragraph, Weikart writes:

Gould, However, did not really divorce science and morality as much as he claimed. While vociferously arguing that Darwinian science on the one hand and religion and morality on the other are "non-overlapping magisteria," separated as far as the east is from the west, he persisted in drawing conclusions from his Darwinian science that are suspiciously laden with religious and moral implications. In Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1989), the whole point of his book is to use the Burgess Shale--a fossil-laden outcropping of rock in Canada teeming with many extinct, ancient forms of life--as an example of the contingency of history, to demonstrate that there is no real purpose to human existence.

Well, if there is "an eternal will that rules this universe", wouldn't that eternal will have thought up some real purpose to human existance? Was Hitler really a Darwinist, or was he a Judeo-Christian? Weikart starts his ending paragrapg with:

In light of all this, does Darwinism really devalue human life? I think I have shown conclusively that historically Darwinism has indeed devalued human life, leading to ideologies that promote the destruction of human lives deemed inferior to others.

But, but, but ... The problem is that Weikart rather has bundled together under the label 'Darwinism' everything bad, not caring about much, whether it's the same thing in all contexts. Proceeding:

Those on the forefront in promoting abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and racial extermination often overtly based their views on Darwinism.

Except for Hitler, of course, since he based it on "an eternal will that rules this universe". And jumping to the last sentence:

Darwinism really is a matter of life and death.

Finally we are given the answer as to, what Darwinism is. It is really a matter of life and death. But that's a pretty broad category, isn't it? No wonder that Weikart manages to stuff everything into it. Anyway, the main conclusion is that, if Hitler was a Darwinist, every person that believes in "an eternal will that rules this universe" is a Darwinist. Maybe Weikart should have focused more on that line. But for some reason he didn't. We can only wonder why.

Some of Dembski's Favorite Quotes by Darwinists

For some day I have had an interesting discussion with 'Charlie' on an Uncommon Descent thread: Some of My Favorite Quotes by Darwinists [with new introduction] The new introduction mentions the critique by the Anti Defamation League of Coral Ridge Ministries' video and book Darwin's Deadly Legacy.

Following this, William Dembski lists his original Darwinist quotes beginning with:

To be sure, there were many other streams of thought that played into Nazi racism and the holocaust, but to say that Darwinism played no role, or even an insignificant role, is absurd. Read Richard Weikart’s FROM DARWIN TO HITLER: EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS, EUGENICS, AND RACISM IN GERMANY

But what is this thing called 'Darwinism'? Judged from the title of Weikart's book, it should be something related to Darwin, shouldn't it? Note the subtitle: "... IN GERMANY". Wasn't Darwin British? Now, if Weikart had called his book "From Haeckel to Hitler", the subtitle would have been more appropriate, so already by the title the alert reader should start wondering, if the book is worth reading.

The Nazi emphasis on proper breeding, racial purity, and weeding out defectives come from taking Darwin’s theory seriously and applying it at the level of society. Yes, Darwin himself did not take these such steps, but Galton and Haeckel, his contemporaries, saw where this was going and did.

Then it wasn't 'Darwinism', was it? The emphasis on "proper breeding, racial purity, and weeding out defectives" can be traced back as far as we have historical records. Anyway, Darwin - with some inspiration from Edward Blyth and others - simply claimed that artficial selection done by breeders also happen in nature and is the cause of new species. The Nazi idea was not to create a new species, but to re-create, what they thought to be the original Germanic ("Aryan") race. Hitler rejected the idea of common descent and thought that human races had been created separately. What is so 'Darwinistic' about this?

The outrage which says that the Nazi racial theory is a vulgarization of Darwinism is simply unmerited. The Nazis took Darwinian theory and ran with it, much as Peter Singer does these days, though Singer and his disciples are careful not to bring race into the picture - they take an equal opportunity approach in advocating the elimination of human lives they deem defective or inconvenient.

They could have gotten the very same idea from the creationist Edward Blyth, and much more appropriately, so let's call it a "vulgarization of Blythism" instead, shall we?

By the way, the American Eugenics Society was started in 1922 and dissolved not until 1994. Richard Lewontin, quoted below, belonged to it. Theodosius Dobzhansky was its chairman of the board in 1956. J.B.S. Haldane was a member. You think maybe their Darwinism had something to do with them being members?

In 1845 the Southern Baptists break of from the rest of the US Baptists over the slavery question - the southerners claiming that slavery was in accordance with the Bible. This claim was first retracted in 1995.

Anyway, we need to know something about the methods suggested by the Americam Eugenics Society to figure out, whether the members could in anyway be accused of Nazism.

After this William Dembski treats us to a list of quotes:

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world…. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” [Just so there is no doubt, the author in particular is claiming that whites will exterminate blacks.] -Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871, ch. 6.

Please, Bill, don't ever do this again. Let's have a peek at the beginning of this paragraph:

“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies--between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae --between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate ...”

As is clear here, Darwin is not looking with joy at this expected extermination, but is rather lamenting it. This tells us more about European colonialism than about 'Darwinism'.

Let's return to Dembski's list:

Evolution teaches that “we are animals” so that “sex across the species barrier ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.” [Just so there is no doubt, “sex across the species barrier” is a euphemism for bestiality.] -Peter Singer, “Heavy Petting,” 2001

Ehh, are we at all supposed to take this seriously? According to (Darwin's theory of) evolution "we are animals"; but how does that relate to "sex across the species barrier"? This is a rare occurence in nature (being mostly a corollary of the definition of 'species'), but does occur in zoos and among domesticated animals (the mule being a hybrid between a male horse and a female donkey). Since hybrids are often sterile, they are evolutionary of no relevance - two mules don't beget a mule or anything else.

And I completely fail to see the connection to anything that might reasonably called 'Darwinism'. Did Charles Darwin endorse zoophilia ("bestiality")? I very much doubt that he being a Victorian gentleman would have even been able to think the thought. Did the Nazis endorse zoophilia? They were stern endorses of traditional family values and killed off homosexuals, so it's rather doubtful.

Rape is “a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage,” akin to “the leopard’s spots and the giraffe’s elongated neck.” -Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, “Why Men Rape,” 2000

As far as I know, this book has been heavily critisized by evolutionary biologists. And again, did Charles Darwin or the Nazis endorse rape?

“As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will…. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding.” -E. O. Wilson and Michael Ruse, “The Evolution of Ethics,” 1991

Yes, this is sociobiology, and indeed Charles Darwin entertained such ideas as well. However, notice that the point is that this biologically founded ethics is supposed to make us cooperate, not kill each other, so it could have been worse, couldn't it? What do you think makes the most impact on the average US citizen: one dead US soldier or 100 dead Iraqi civilians? No, I am not saying that this is entirely biologically based; but in actual practise nationality beats the species, and kin beats the nation. It requires special circumstances to have it differently.

I am a Christian, though not a US citizen, and I therefore find the often quite nationalistic Christianity in the USA to be rather un-Christian. Is there such a thing as a Christian nation? And even if there is, why is that nation more chosen than any other Christian nation?

Nazism was a German nationalism - "Nazism" being an abbreviation of "National Socialism". The party - the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany - was started in protest aginst the two international phenomena that were seen to threaten the national state: American capitalism and Soviet communism. This is of far more importance than any link to Charles Darwin.

According to Darwin, religious belief arises from ignorance of natural causes: “The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no stranger had a right to be on his territory. The belief in spiritual agencies would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods.” -Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871, ch. 3

Oh, Bill, do you really want to send us back to the time, where thunder was considered to be the voice of God, and lightning his arrows?

According to Richard Dawkins “the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.” Moreover, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” -Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986"

That's Richard Dawkins, isn't it? His name does have a few letters in common with "Charles Darwin", but not sufficient many to raise the specified complexity alert, imho. Anyway, what is the evidence that Hitler was "an intellectually fulfilled atheist"?

“I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I’m all for that! One of the things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition.” Lest there be any doubt about what Steven Weinberg here means by “superstition,” he adds, “this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas will come to an end, that we’ll see no more of them. I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make.” [Weinberg, a Nobel laureate physicist, is well-known as an ardent evolutionist. He has debated Phillip Johnson on a number of occasions on this topic. Note that the demise of religion is for Weinberg the most important contribution of science.] -Steven Weinberg, “Free People from Superstition,” 2000

That's Steven Weinberg, isn't it? Anyway, what's the problem? Weinberg is simply speaking against the professional religious caste that is more into politics than into anything else. As you may know, Satan offered Jesus the power over all countries on earth; but Jesus rejected. Might those who claim to consider him their Lord likewise abstain from political power.

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door…. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, than miracles may happen.” -Richard Lewontin, New York Review of Books, 1997

This quote should properly be read in its context. However, the most important appears to be the last sentence. If science be at all possible, then miracles are excluded. Maybe science isn't possible; but that's sort of a self-defeating thing to teach in a science class, isn't it?

Denyse O'Leary and Darwinian Fairy Tales

Denyse O'Leary (Post-Darwinist) is a "Toronto-based journalist", and defender of Intelligent Design. She also writes for ARN (Access Research Network) and doubles for William Dembski at their common blog. She has written the following ARN article: Darwinian Fairy Tales: Aussie philosopher challenges neo-Darwinism Preface. The "Aussie philosopher" is David Stove, author of Darwinian Fairytales. I haven't read the book; but O'Leary provides us with this quote:

I do deny that natural selection is going on within our species now, and that it ever went on in our species, at any time of which anything is known.

Not a quote that should make anyone fall off their chair in surprise or jump up from it in joy. As it stands it is not easy to know exactly, what Stove could have implied. At any time of which anything is known social selection has been the norm. Human culture is of far more influence than anything we could call natural selection. So who's to disagree with this? O'Leary has the kindness to supply us with this comment:

He waives the question of how our species came to be what it is now, because he wants our species portrayed correctly in known historical time, and "not to be imposed upon by the ludicrously false portrayals which Darwinians give of the past, and even of the present, of our species." In other words he has no time for the sham psychology of "evolutionary psychology."

Hey, wait a sec here, will you? I am a Darwinian, and I am certainly not a believer in "evolutionary psychology" - or rather, I find it to have limited applicability. If it didn't, we wouldn't have problems with tyrannical parents, school teachers, and other police state enforcers. Our genes (let's just forget that Darwin knew nothing about genes, shall we?) are of no real importance. Do poor people have poor genes? And do criminals have criminal genes? Completely independent of our genes, we are born into an already existing society, and we can't really help it, can we? Isn't Stove and O'Leary shooting over the target? Not everyone who accepts the theory of evolution accepts all the bonus goodies that some evolutionists bundle into the bargain. A couple of paragraphs later O'Leary writes:

Indeed, no exhaustive list would be possible, because anyone can interpret any current social situation (a gruesome baby-killing, a demand to legalize polygamy, US-Canada relations) in the light of what supposedly happened in prehistoric times, and then make up a story about how the behavior arose among cave guys shouting rot into the stalactites of their caves ....

Sure, "anyone can interpret any current social situation" in whichever way they see fit. William Dembski manages to see applications of his design filter all over the place, so why not? Some IDists even claim that we have an in-built ability to detect design, so we can learn about the Designer that way. In what way is such a claim more scientific than evolutionary psychology? Since I haven't read Stove's book, I cannot say for sure, what Stove meant; but whatever he meant, O'Leary certainly applies it as a strawman argument against Darwinism (whatever that term might exactly mean, by the way). I am not sure that all that many evolutionists ("Darwinists") accept evolutionary psychology to its extremes; I certainly do not, and most evolutionists that I know anything about do neither. In other words, O'Leary is telling a fairy tale to counter fairy tales that not many believe in. UPDATE (sep. 6): O'Leary sports the same article here.

When astrophysicists go bad: Jason Lisle.

Jason Lisle is the new superstar at AiG. He holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics and writes articles about astronomy. One of these articles, or rather a pamphlet, is What Does The Bible Say About Astronomy? The author is given as "Dr. Jason Lisle, Ph.D. in astrophysics", so he uses his academic title, possibly to lend credibility to the pamphlet. A pamphlet about astronomy written by a doctor in astrophysics can’t possibly be wrong, can it? As I will try to show, the answer to that question is affirmative. Lisle starts by saying that

The Bible is the history book of the universe. It tells us how the universe began and how it came to be the way it is today.

Actually, the Bible doesn’t tell us anything about the history of the universe. It does have a creation story that tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. If I told you that my mother had born me, would that be my history? Of course not, so neither is a creation story for the universe a history of the universe. Two paragraphs later Lisle writes:

It has been said that the Bible is not a science textbook. This is true, of course, and it’s actually a good thing. After all, our science textbooks are based on the ideas of human beings who do not know everything and who often make mistakes. That’s why science textbooks change from time to time, as people discover new evidence and realize that they were wrong about certain things.

This is true, of course, and it’s actually a good thing. After all, why not learn from new information? Since Lisle lists his academic title, we must be excused to think that he will write as a scientist; that is, admitting that he doesn’t know the final truth. If he doesn’t want to abide by that rule, what is the significance of his title then? Lisle starts the next paragraph with this sentence:

The Bible, though, never changes because it never needs to.

What does Lisle mean by "[t]he Bible"? I own a Bible, and it’s gotten a bit worn over time, so has it changed? Well, the words in it have remained the same, and that’s most likely what Lisle refers to. But has my understanding of those words remained the same over the years I have read in that Bible? No, it hasn’t! All we ever have is an interpretation, and that’s all we can ever have. And not only that. My personal copy is a Protestant Bible; Roman Catholic Bibles, Orthodox Bibles, and Coptic Bibles contain a few extra books than Protestant Bibles do, and these Bibles themselves differ as to which books they contain. And not only that. Even when it’s the same book, the version may be different. The oldest copies we have of biblical books are from the Qumran caves, and these copies show us that there were several copies in existence of at least some of the books, and we have no way of ascertaining, which is the most original. If the word of God is never-changing, it would appear that we don’t have that word in writing. Lisle is not a biblical scholar; but he has a scientific training, and that training should enable him to not simply accept an unsubstantiated claim. Proceeding, Lisle writes:

God got it right the first time! The Bible is the infallible Word of God. So when it touches on a particular topic, it’s right.

Is this really written by a scientist? As I have indicated above, the answer to this question ought to be in the negative. Back to Lisle:

When the Bible talks about geology, it’s correct. When Scripture addresses biology or anthropology, it’s also right.

These are corollaries to the previous sentences and carry the same credibility as these. All in all, Lisle for some reason lists his academic title as an accomplished scientist and then spends his first few paragraphs to discredit science vis-à-vis the unchanging and infallible Word of God, the Bible. I will omit repeating myself and leave it to the reader to gauge the credibility of Lisle in any matter whatsoever. Next Lisle moves to astronomy, which includes the shape of the earth:

The Bible indicates that the earth is round. One verse we can look at is Isaiah 40:22, where it mentions the "circle of the earth." From space, the earth always appears as a circle since it is round. This matches perfectly with the Bible.

But, what is this all about? Let’s read a few verses back:

(Isa 40:18) To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?

The prophet is here not giving a lecture on the shape of the earth, but trying to give a description of God, rhetorically asking his audience to provide the description. In the following two verses, Isaiah mentions craftsmen; that is, Isaiah is giving images that are familiar to his audience, an audience that knew nothing about outer space. Would Isaiah illustrate God by a description that wasn’t understandable by his own audience? Let’s look at the whole verse:

(Isa 40:22) It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in

Whatever this was supposed exactly to mean, we can be pretty sure, it was something meaningful to the original audience. The word ‘upon’ should probably rather be ‘above’; that is, God is sitting above the circle of the earth, so high up that the human inhabitants look as small as grasshoppers. How far up would that be? The "circle of the earth" rather refers to the viewpoint of those grasshoppers, it’s the circumference of the earth as seen from the earth. In general, ancient cultures saw the earth as a circular disc, and up and down were definite directions. I am sure that Lisle as an astrophysicist knows that there is no up and down in the universe. Does he have AiG-USA on the upside and AiG-Australia on the downside? Or the other way around? Next up is the position of the earth:

A very interesting verse to consider is Job 26:7, which states that God "hangs the earth on nothing." This might make you think of God hanging the earth like a Christmas tree ornament, but hanging it on empty space. Although this verse is written in a poetic way, it certainly seems to suggest that the earth floats in space. And indeed the earth does float in space.

The meaning of the verse is rather that it is the power of God that keeps the earth in position. Let us look at the whole verse and the following verses:

(Job 26:7) He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. (26:8) He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent, under them. (26:9) He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it. (26:10) He hath compassed, the waters, with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.

While the imagery may be somewhat unclear to us, the intention is clear enough: God is powerful, so how could a puny human dare to speak against God? The "north" probably refers to the center of the sky that is held up by the power of God alone. The earth is held up by the power alone. The rain water is tied up in clouds by the power of God alone. The " face of his throne" might be the moon that is hidden at new moon and else may be hidden by clouds, and all that by the power of God alone. The sea water is held back at the arc of sunrise and the arc of sunset by the power of God alone. In short, Job is describing the power of God, not that the earth floats in space. Turning to that; I am quite certain that Lisle as an astrophysicist knows that indeed the earth does not float in space; not like a ball would float in water, at least. Again, the presupposition, even in Lisle’s image of the floating earth, is that up and down are definite directions, which they are not. Also Job’s imagery. While poetic, presupposes a circular, flat earth; otherwise the poetry doesn’t work. Moving on to the expansion of the universe takes us back to Isaiah 40:22. Lisle writes:

The Bible indicates in several places that the universe has been "stretched out" or expanded. For example, Isaiah 40:22 teaches that God stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. This would suggest that the universe has actually increased in size since its creation. God is stretching it out, causing it to expand.

Excuse me for asking; but in what direction is a curtain or a tent stretched/spread out? Horizontally, not vertically. I am not sure what is meant, but probably that the sky is to be seen as a cover spread out as the top piece of a tent. And fitting with that reading is that the tent doesn’t need a center pole (compare with first statement in Job 26:7). Proceeding, Lisle writes:

Now, this verse must have seemed very strange when it was first written. The universe certainly doesn’t look as if it is expanding.

As explained above, the verse most likely didn’t seem nearly as strange when it was first written as it may do now. It was meant as an illustration of the greatness of God to the audience of Isaiah, so we would need to understand it the way they must have done, and that hardly implies anything about an expanding universe. In the next paragraph, Lisle writes:

In fact, secular scientists once believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging. The idea of an expanding universe would have been considered nonsense to most scientists of the past. So it must have been tempting for Christians to reject what the Bible teaches about the expansion of the universe.

C’mon Jason, you know this is nonsense. What do you mean by "secular scientists" here? Plato has a discussion in his dialogue Timaeus dealing, among other things, with whether the universe was created or eternal; the question remaining unsettled. An expanding universe would have seemed nonsense to a conservative person as Plato – the heavens being more ideal and therefore unchanging than the ever-changing sub-lunar world. But many other ancient Greek philosophers would probably have accepted the idea, if they could have seen any evidence, which they couldn’t. Lisle’s last sentence is equally nonsense; we would need to know that Isaiah 40:22 was interpreted by any Christians prior to modern times as indicating an expanding universe, and I doubt that Lisle can procure any such evidence. But of course, I will happily grant him the chance to do so. Proceeding, Lisle writes:

I wonder if any Christians tried to "reinterpret" Isaiah 40:22 to read it in an unnatural way so that they wouldn’t have to believe in an expanding universe. When the secular world believes one thing and the Bible teaches another, it is always tempting to think that God got the details wrong. But God is never wrong.

In all honesty, isn’t it Lisle who interprets Isaiah 40:22 in an unnatural way? As Lisle shows, it’s easy to read a modern interpretation into the Bible texts; the remedy to this is to remember that the biblical texts were supposed to be understood by their contemporary audience, an audience that only had the unaided eye with which to look at the sky. Back to Lisle:

Most astronomers today believe that the universe is indeed expanding. In the 1920s, astronomers discovered that virtually all clusters of galaxies appear to be moving away from all other clusters; this indicates that the entire universe is expanding.

What Lisle refers to here is the discovery of the redshifted spectra of galaxies. One way to interpret this redshift is as a Doppler effect; that is, as an indication of a movement, in the case of a redshift (= lower frequency), away relative to the observer. Edwin Hubble found that there was a linear correlation between the amount of redshift and the distance to a galaxy. Turning things around, we get the conjecture that all galaxies might have split from an original assembly of all matter in the universe. For some reason, Lisle doesn’t mention anything about this obvious conjecture in connection with the expansion. Next up is the age of the universe. Here Lisle states that the Bible teaches a six-day creation that happened about 6,000 years ago. This is one way of reading the Bible, and I have no intention to go against that here. Lisle then writes:

Yet, this is quite different from what most schools teach. Most secular scientists believe that the universe is many billions of years old. They usually hold to the "big bang theory." The big bang is a secular speculation about the origin of the universe

Being an astrophysicist, Lisle must be familiar with the story of the Big Bang theory. The term itself was coined in 1950 by Sir Fred Hoyle to mock the theory of a universe originating in a singularity. Hoyle proposed a competing theory, the steady state theory, and by the way, he was also the originator of the tornado-in-a-junkyard analogue for abiogenesis; but that’s not of importance here. The theory that came to be know by Hoyle’s mock word was first proposed by the Belgian, Roman Catholic monk Georges Lemaître, who could hardly be called a secular scientist, in 1927. Lemaître’s theory was based on Hubble’s theory of an expanding universe. Why doesn’t Lisle mention this? It can’t possibly be because he doesn’t know, being an astrophysicist. Lisle ends the paragraph with:

The big bang attempts to explain the origin of the universe without God.

No, the Big Bang theory attempts to explain the expansion of the universe, which Lisle for some reason has nothing against. In the next paragraph, Lisle writes:

People who believe in the big bang usually interpret the evidence according to their already-existing belief in the big bang. In other words, they just assume that the big bang is true and they interpret the evidence to match their beliefs.

No, the theory of the expansion of the universe led to the Big Bang theory, not the other way around. Over the next pages, Lisle lists some evidence that is supposedly incompatible with the Big Bang theory, but not with the Bible. Since I am not an astrophysicist, astronomer or anything similar, I will leave those pages alone. In his appendix "Why the big bang is not scriptural", Lisle writes:

In an attempt to explain the origin of the universe without God, secular astronomers have come up with an idea called the big bang. This story teaches that the entire universe was once contained in a point of no size. This point supposedly expanded rapidly and formed matter, which became galaxies, stars and planets. Sadly, some Christians have been taken in by the big bang story, and have tried to add it to the Bible.

As explained above, the Big Bang theory was first proposed by a Christian, so it’s not in particular an invention of secular astronomers. In the next paragraph, Lisle writes:

But that doesn’t work because the big bang is really a secular alternative to the Bible and contradicts it in many ways. For example, the big bang teaches that the universe is billions of years old, whereas the Bible indicates that it is thousands of years old.

It’s not as simple as that. The age of the universe is estimated from the expansion rate of the universe, and since Lisle accepts that the universe is expanding, he is the one in trouble. Proceeding, Lisle writes:

The big bang also teaches that stars came before the earth, but the Bible teaches the reverse.

It’s not in particular the Big Bang theory, since it doesn’t deal directly with star or planet formation. Stars and planets were not formed at the Big Bang; however since the oldest dates obtainable via radiometric dating here on earth are around 4.55 billion years, the earth is estimated to have that age, and since we can observe galaxies that are more than twice that age, there would be stars before there was an earth. However, this is related to the theory of an expanding universe more than to the Big Bang theory as such. Lisle ends this paragraph with:

Additionally, the big bang scenario puts the creation of human beings many billions of years after the creation of the universe. However, Jesus confirmed that human beings were there at the beginning of creation (Mark 10:6).

Again, this is not directly related to the Big Bang theory as such. The point in the discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees in Mark 10:2-9 is not, whether the creation of human beings was billions of years after the creation of the universe or not; it’s about divorce. Obviously divorce between humans is of no relevance before there were any humans. Also notice that Jesus refers to Deuteronomy 24:1 and then quotes Genesis 1:27. The Pharisees were very concerned with keeping the Mosaic commandments; but had apparently forgotten that the Torah doesn’t begin with the Mosaic commandments. Jesus is here as so many other places attacking the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The pamphlet ends with a section "About the author", in whish it is stated that Dr. Lisle is not the stereotypical "egg-head" research scientist. To that I say that Dr. Lisle, judged from the pamphlet addressed here, is no scientist at all. Jason Lisle has received his Ph.D. title as an acknowledgement of scientific results and as an encouragement to keep up the good work. If he doesn’t want to do that, he should not use that title to endorse work that cannot be considered scientific. That would be simple honesty.