Reply
Fri 7 Jan, 2011 12:42 pm
I recently became aware of the implications of what a pure Darwinist philosophy entails. This is not to say that all Darwinists believe this to be true, but if someone claims to be a Darwinist and does NOT believe these things, then they are not true Darwinists.
Princeton Professor and Darwinist Peter Singer wrote "the life of a newborn(human, that is) is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee."
He believes parents should be allowed to kill their newborn any time up to 28 days after he/she is born. But there is no objective reason to stop at 28 days. You could cite moral reasons, but firstly, this is a question of infanticide. If you are defending it, you've thrown absolute morals out the door. I will say again, there is NO objective reason to stop at 28 days. If you have a pure Darwinist philosophy that only the strongest are worthy of survival, then there is NOTHING wrong with this or murder in any other sense.
Or rape. Darwinists Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer wrote in their book "A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases and Sexual Coercion" that rape is "a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage, just like the leopard's spots and the giraffe's elongated neck."
The implication is that not only is rape NOT wrong, it is in fact an evolutionary trait that is inherited, evidently as a means of survival. That is what the giraffe's neck is for, so it can eat and therefore survive.
Don't get me wrong. I know many Darwinists out there are taken aback by such thoughts as these. Unfortunately, these Darwinists are not Darwinists. They believe in evolution, but also in moral absolutes. Because if they did not believe in moral absolutes, then these claims would be fine with them. Yet something in their gut says this is all wrong.
Another example. Hitler. Some may think this is unfair, but an objective look at this will show that Hitler is as pure a Darwinist as they come. He justified his Holocaust with Darwinist philosophy, saying in Mein Kampf
"If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.
But such a preservation goes hand-in-hand with the inexorable law that it is the strongest and the best who must triumph and that they have the right to endure. He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist."
Did you catch the start of the second paragraph? He claims his holocaust goes HAND IN HAND with natural selection. What's worse? He's right. By a pure Darwinist philosophy, there is nothing wrong with genocide. He is eliminating those that nature would have eliminated. If the Jews could not defeat the Germans, they are the weaker and do not deserve survival.
Let me go ahead and define just what I mean by a 'pure Darwinist philosophy'.
A pure Darwinist philosophy believes that only the natural, material world exists. There is nothing supernatural. Everything we can sense regularly is what is real.
Natural Selection is true and only the strongest of a species - humans included - survive.
There are no Moral Laws, because there is no Moral Law Giver and moral laws cannot be from nature as Moral Laws frequently are in conflict with instincts. Additionally, Moral Laws are not material, and since Darwinism is a materialistic philosophy, Moral Laws do not exist.
The natural outcome of such a philosophy is firstly, selfishness. I am stronger than you and therefore am above you in evolution.
secondly, hate. I am stronger, you are therefore worthless.
thirdly, murder and genocide. I(or we) are stronger than these others. We, therefore, deserve survival. If they cannot beat us in the struggle for survival, they do not deserve survival.
Based on this, there are very few who would consider themselves whole-hearted, pure Darwinists. They also borrow from other philosophies. Which forces the question, if you have to borrow from another philosophy to justify your own, why do you believe in your philosophy?
@HeroicOvenmitt,
oh dear... have you ever heard about different layers and levels of competition, this is not reptilian age...today extinction happens when someone cannot find a partner or the right compatible genes in the long term...we are not going berserk down the streets smashing heads...we are a social species and our rules of competition are a bit less linear then that...
I said it earlier and I will repeat it, people like you are nothing but pseudo parrots who spend half of your time distorting and corrupting others words...
@Fil Albuquerque,
I made no assertion that you would go berserk down the street smashing heads.
But such an action is entirely acceptable in a Darwinian philosophy. Your hesitance to agree with this shows me that you are not a pure Darwinist, as Hitler and those others I quoted were.
Let me rephrase a bit. If Darwinian philosophy is TRUE. Why SHOULDN'T we go down the street smashing heads? Rounding up those that are polluting our gene pools with inferior traits and doing away with them. At the very least we should exile them to a remote place where they will haunt us no more.
Using a Darwinian argument, what is right or wrong with doing this?
@HeroicOvenmitt,
HeroicOvenmitt wrote:This is not to say that all Darwinists believe this to be true, but if someone claims to be a Darwinist and does NOT believe these things, then they are not true Darwinists.
There is no such thing as a "Darwinist," except in the minds of deluded religionists. You're going around this site puking up your anti-science bigotry and ignorance in thread after thread. Why don't you get a hobby?
@HeroicOvenmitt,
That's absolutely ridiculous. All that glitters is not gold.
As demonstrated by hitlers defeat, strength is not about shallow minded crackpot ideas.
@wayne,
strength is not, but his philosophy is untarnished by his loss. He was wrong about Aryan supremacy, but if Darwinism is true, why did we - the Allies - not then crush and kill every Nazi? If Darwinism were true then we would have been completely in the right to eliminate - that is exterminate - the lesser Germans, who proved an inferior race. The only thing holding the Allies back from doing that is that they saw the genocide that Hitler carried out and considered it morally wrong. Again, in Darwinism, morals don't really exist. It's all preference and genocide would be merely 'distasteful', but not wrong.
You guys are missing the point of Natural Selection altogether. Darwinism says only the material world exists. In the material world - as Hitler so eloquently points out - there is a constant struggle for survival. The strong live, the weak die. Hitler was merely following these guidelines and trying to make the world a better place without the weaker, lesser races tarnishing its glory. Unless you accept some kind of moral absolute(thereby eliminating a materialistic worldview as morals are not material), you cannot argue that there was anything wrong with Hitler's genocide, the infanticide I mentioned, or rape. They are merely 'distasteful' to you at their worst, or if you're a pure darwinist, you would simply call it 'nature'.
@HeroicOvenmitt,
Ridiculously simplistic take you have on evolution in action. We are the most successful species because of brains not brawn.
Morals are of social benefit, therefore selected.
LMFAO
@wayne,
"Ridiculously simplistic take you have on evolution in action. We are the most successful species because of brains not brawn.
Morals are of social benefit, therefore selected."
You assume that morals can exist in a materialistic philosophy. They cannot. Morals are immaterial and no amount of stirring of the primordial ooze will bring them about.
But I'm glad you get the point. Darwinism at its core is repugnant even to those that defend it.
Also, I'm curious. How are morals of social benefit?
@HeroicOvenmitt,
You make less sense with every post.
Quote:But I'm glad you get the point. Darwinism at its core is repugnant even to those that defend it.
It's called evolutionary theory, not darwinism.
If you wanna make it up as you go, fine, but don't put words in my mouth. The only point I get is that you are willing to set aside all intelligence to suit your end.
What I can't figure out is whether you're that ignorant, or you just think everyone else is.
@wayne,
I have been showing what the Darwinist/Evolutionist/whatever 'label' you want to put on it's philosophy says at its core. I am not arguing for such beliefs, but I am showing what is at the core of real Darwinism/Evolutionism.
I am not even arguing against evolution itself right now, but the associated philosophy that fits logically with the evolutionary theory(thank you for not saying evolutionary fact).
Perhaps we are having a misunderstanding of the terms. You seem to be defending evolution itself. Okay, fine. I'm not attacking that in this thread. All I am doing is making a logical case of what Darwinist philosophy leads to.
@Setanta,
Okay, I chose darwinist as a term to describe those who believe in the evolutionary theory, originally submitted by Darwin. I apologize if this term is somehow offensive or misleading.
My point in the quote you used is that to follow with the philosophical implications of the evolutionary theory, this is what will happen.
You accuse me of being anti-science, yet if you read my posts you will find that my statements are BASED on science. Not cutting edge theories, but the well-documented the forensically detected and the empirically observed. If it is not based on science, it is based on simple logic and philosophy. I apologize if these concepts elude you, but do not call me anti-science or bigoted or ignorant. Such personal and subjective accusations are unbecoming, unfounded, and inappropriate for such a cute puppy to be making.
As for a hobby, writing this interrupted my practicing Glasgow Kiss by John Petrucci on the guitar. Excellent song, btw.
An appropriate rebuttal at this point would include logical philosophical arguments
and probably not have as many sleights against my character. Is it really that unfair for me to ask for that?
But that's just an ignorant bigot's suggestion, I suppose.
@HeroicOvenmitt,
HeroicOvenmitt wrote:
An appropriate rebuttal at this point would include logical philosophical arguments
and probably not have as many sleights against my character. Is it really that unfair for me to ask for that?
But that's just an ignorant bigot's suggestion, I suppose.
Darwin was not a philosopher.
@wandeljw,
I'm not arguing he was. nor am I arguing the theory of evolution that he suggested. I am arguing that if macroevolution is true, then this is a logical philosophy to adopt. Do you disagree?
@HeroicOvenmitt,
HeroicOvenmitt wrote:
I'm not arguing he was. nor am I arguing the theory of evolution that he suggested. I am arguing that if macroevolution is true, then this is a logical philosophy to adopt. Do you disagree?
It makes no sense to convert biological science into a philosophy.
@wandeljw,
I am not converting. I am saying that if macroevolution is the case, there is no god, there is no absolute moral code, there is only the material world, and in it what is stronger and what is weaker.
If that is the world we live in, what is wrong with any of the things I mentioned in the original post? I tell you that none of them would be wrong. Without the absolute moral code, there could not be a wrong.
@HeroicOvenmitt,
You should not let macroevolution, a subtopic of a subtopic, discourage you in your faith.
@HeroicOvenmitt,
The term
is misleading, and it is willfully misleading, with the intention of politicizing the acceptance of a theory of evolution as the best available explanation for the diversity of life on this planet. You have not even remotely demonstrated that "to follow with the philosophical implications of the evolutionary theory, this is what will happen." Your analysis is shallow and naïve. Many reproductive advantages in nature which lead to evolution through natural selection do not involve the willful destruction of competetion for resources. You're just offering a variation on the theme of "nature, red in tooth and claw." I have never seen any evidence that any post of yours is based on science. Your are being snide and arrogant, though--neither logic nor philosophy "escape" me. As Wandel has pointed out, Mr. Darwin was not a philosopher, and to carry that further, the theory he offered was not a philosophical proposition. I consider you to be anti-science, because the tenor of your remarks appears to be to morally undermine a theory of evolution. I assume that you make this attempt because you lack a logical or philosophical basis with which to dispute the theory. Remarks about my avatar photo are ridiculous, and beside the point. As it happens, the photograph from which it is taken is of a old dog, many, many years past being a puppy.
I've now seen your postings here for several days. They almost invariably rely upon
ipse dixit, and rather than providing any evidence, or even a good logical argument for them, you simply insist that someone disprove your statements. Furthermore, your remarks about evolution show that you completely fail to understand the mechanism entailed. Your argument is similar to that used by religionists who attempted to discredit a theory of evolution by associating it with nazism. I consider this to be the end to which you are driving here--to morally discredit the theory, and i suspect that this is because you lack sufficient detailed knowledge of the science behind the theory.
An example of your lack of understanding of evolutionary theory can be provided by the mammoth. Mammoths existed from more than four million years ago until about 5000 years ago. At some point in their evolution, some mammoths developed a long, shaggy fur coat. This allowed them to exploit much colder environments. The mammoths who did not have this long, shaggy coat were not killed off by the new mammoths, and in fact, because of the adaptive trait of the long coat, the new version of the mammoth, the wooly mammoth, was able to exploit resources in climates in which the original mammoth could not survive.
It is false to assume that evolution demands that new species succeed by destroying older species, or older versions of their own species.
@Setanta,
I never said evolution demands that this happen
I argued that in the philosophy that would apply if the theory of macroevolution holds true, there would be nothing WRONG with killing off the old 'versions'.
Do you agree?
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace