Life  =  Survival of the Fittest

2010.02.18   prev     next

“scordova” has a new Uncommon Descent article in which he(?) wonders whether the “Evolution Weekend” speakers will bring up the then-two-day-old, University of Alabama at Huntsville massacre, in which three faculty members were killed and a few others wounded, allegedly by Dr. Amy Bishop, a neurobiology professor and Darwinist who was recently denied tenure by UAH.

This is representative of one of the fundamental confusions that is routinely promoted by Uncommon Descent. Let’s throw a little clarity on that confusion:

• “Survival of the fittest,” as so eloquently explained by ID founder Phillip Johnson on pp. 20-23 of Darwin On Trial, is a self-evident truth that doesn’t necessarily explain the origin of species or their complex features. Whether they evolved or were designed, all species on Earth today must be capable of survival, or they wouldn’t be here for us to examine. (Even fossil species had to survive for many generations to leave fossils that we would be at all likely to find.)

• The need for society to deal with individuals such as Amy Bishop (assuming she did it) does not disappear or even slightly diminish if Darwinism is false.

• Arguments over whether belief in Darwinism makes a person more or less likely to murder, although certainly interesting, have nothing whatsoever to do with determining scientifically whether or not Darwinism is true.

Just as Darwinists are happy to presume linkage (sans logical explanation) of the self-evident “survival of the fittest” with the non-self-evident claim that mutation-selection evolution can devise the machines we find in our biosphere — and thus be able to cite the undeniability of the former as powerful evidence for the latter — so most anti-Darwinists today happily accept the very same, unexplained linkage, in the hopes that the public’s general distaste at deadly attacks will translate into social rejection (if not actual disbelief) of Darwinism.

We live in a universe which, by design, supports the existence of constantly regenerating armies of organisms that fight against each other for the limited resources that can satisfy their individual preferences. The UAH shooter certainly exemplifies that fact — irrespective of whether her biology evolved or had to be designed.

Infatuation

But don’t try to tell the folks at Uncommon Descent. They’re simply infatuated with this mode of argument. Their founding and most influential contributor, William Dembski, posted an article just yesterday in which he cites Jeff Dahmer on the subject of naturalism and morality, asserting that “Dahmer’s logic is compelling.”

Common-sense answers to Dahmer abound:

• If we and our universe were created, then we need our creators so that we may exist at all. But that doesn’t mean our creators have set any societal rules for us.

• Humans do set their own rules — nations do it all the time, and even individuals decide what actions they each will take in their particular circumstances.

• And although each person owns their own decisions, a prison can very easily own you. Believe it. Dahmer made his above-quoted statement from behind bars.

Don’t look for Dembski to invoke obvious logic like that. (Or even respond to it.) He promotes the idea that a humanity without belief in God-commanded morality is doomed to Dahmer-times-a-billion, for the same reason that many a Darwinist promotes the idea that a humanity without belief in Darwinian evolution is doomed to theocratic totalitarianism — he’s simply in love with that idea.

Dembski and others in the UD crowd, I think, are representative of the large majority of religious moralists, who say they love their God and their God’s commandments, and say they hate evil and destruction — but who really love the thought that society will crumble into mass destruction without God-commanded moral dictates, and hate the thought that it might not.