Darwin and Hitler

The Expelled movie has roused evolutionists to fury because it links Darwinism with Nazism. Put this down as another reservation I have about this film. Not that there wasn't a link. It's really funny to watch the materialists tie themselves into knots trying to deny and explain away the obvious. I was just at the National Holocaust Museum's traveling exhibit titled "Nazi Medicine." One of the first pictures you see when you enter is a big picture of Darwin. One of the last things you read as you leave is about Dr. Mengele's later writings while in Brazilian exile. They concerned Darwinism. It's not a great leap to connect the stuff in between with Darwinism.

That said, I question the strategy here. No Darwinist today advocates genocide (euthanasia is a trickier question). More importantly neither of the following are true:

* Without Darwinism, the Holocaust would not have happened.
* Given Darwinism, the Holocaust was inevitable.

So what's the point? It's a variety of the genetic fallacy (the cousin of your theory undergirded Nazism!). Again, I wish a high profile vehicle for education and communication like this one would stick to more straightforward arguments in favor of design in science.

DNA=Sum Total of Biological Information?

Reading this informative post on recent research into Tuatara genetics, I came across this startling claim:

The authors do not discuss the more fundamental question of how far DNA information is responsible for the form of organisms, or whether the form of organisms is determined by other information embodied in embryonic cells. This question is not being asked by Darwinists, who insist that all biological information must be traced back to the genome. However, some biologists (including those advocating Intelligent Design) are actively exploring alternatives.

I don't necessarily believe the part about Darwinists insisting that all biological information comes from the genome. To me, it's always been obvious that the cell contains a lot more information than just that found in DNA. To say other wise is tantamount to saying all the information needed to build a house can be found in the bill of materials. I find it hard to credit that evolutionists deny something so obvious.

Of course, when you tote up all the information in a cell outside the nucleus, it just moves the goalposts for abiogenesis that much further back.

Dennett's Dangerous Device

I'm reading Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett's exploration of religion's evolutionary origins. In the middle of his baroque speculation, this sentence stopped my progress:

Put these two ideas together - a hyperactive agent-seeking bias and a weakness for certain sorts of memorable combos - and you get a kind of fiction-generation contraption.

Fiction-generation contraption! What a happy phrase. I wonder how many iterations of Dawkins' weasel would suffice to turn that sentence into a perfect description of Darwinism.

Shocking Brutality

The story describes "brutal attacks," horrific injuries, murders and experts unable to discern a motive. Thankfully, the article is not about human perfidy, but dolphin-on-dolphin violence.

The curious thing about this is how moral language suffuses the entire discussion. The author means us to be alarmed and disturbed at animal behavior, but assures us that said behavior is the result of "evolutionary pressures." So why should we care?

We are at a disorienting juncture in history at which the basis for objective, transcendant morality is simply gone while at the same time sentimental anthropomorphism of nature has no limits.

Pinker's Moral Direction

One staple of cartoons is the hapless character who saws off a branch he is sitting on, only to discover that he was on the wrong end of the branch as he hurtles to the ground.

Such is the dilemna of the materialist who argues for a completely non-transcendant (i.e. purely physical) basis for morality. Once you convince people that moral choices are merely chemical reactions in the brain, dictated by genes, which are the result of purely impersonal evolutionary forces, how do you ever get them to put change in give-a-penny-take-a-penny dishes at the cash register again?

Steven Pinker* wrestles with this question in the New York Times. He claims there is hope! Morality does have a basis outside of our brains and it is...reason. Because everyone would be better off if everyone was nice. Here is how he sums it up:

Any neutral observer, and you and I if we could talk it over rationally, would have to conclude that the state we should aim for is the one in which we both are unselfish. These spreadsheet projections are not quirks of brain wiring, nor are they dictated by a supernatural power; they are in the nature of things.

A couple of problems here. First, he dismisses God as a source of morality because of an old argument of Plato's. I won't go into the details, but his appeal to reason is just as vulnerable to Plato's argument as my appeal to supernatural power.

Second, it is blindingly obvious that everyone would not be better off if everyone were nice. And that is in the nature of things. The following people would be a lot worse off: Kim Jong-il, Nigerian e-mail scammers, Robert Mugabe, and Simon Cowell. Trust me, there are many, many more. I wish Pinker well if he ever finds himself under the power of some ruthless monster. Good luck explaining game theory then.

*Steven Pinker is a hotshot evolutionary psychologist at Harvard. His job is to make up stories that explain human nature from an evolutionary viewpoint.