Like the rest of the skeptical blogosphere, I've been watching the uproar around Ben Stein's new movie with a lot of amusement, but also with a lot of disgust. There's one thing that I feel compelled to comment on that I think has, for some reason, not been addressed nearly enough.
As I've mentioned before, I'm Jewish. My father knew relatives who died at the hands of the Nazis. The events of the holocaust are, thus, deeply personal to me. I've grown up with an awareness of it.
So I find Stein's attempt to link evolution to the holocaust particularly odious. The mass extermination of millions of people shouldn't be a rhetorical bargaining chip, for anyone. It should be something that we never forget, and that we use to motivate us to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. (And I'll note here that while Ben runs around cashing the checks that he receives for talking about how Darwin caused hitler, there is genocide going on, today, in several places, and Stein doesn't seem to care.)
For the most part, people have responded to Stein's argument linking Darwin with Hitler by refuting it. And that's certainly a good thing to do, because what caused the Holocaust wasn't the writings of a British naturalist, but by xenophobia and scapegoating. Darwinism was used as an excuse at various times - as were christianity, paganism, economics, and a variety of other things.
But what strikes me is that we haven't paid enough attention to something even more important than whether or not there's a link between Darwin's theory of evolution and the nazis.
Suppose that it was true that Darwin's writings about evolution were the primary thing that motivated the Nazi's genocide against the Jews, the Romany, and all the other "undesirables" that they killed. Forget, for a moment, that the linkage is a crock. Pretend that it's the truth.
What difference does it make?
Does the truth become less true because some idiot used it to justify something awful?
Science isn't morality. Science describes what is. Morality defines our understanding of right and wrong. Science doesn't tell us what's morally right and wrong. It tells us what is. It can allows us to reason from what we know, to determine the effect of an action, which can allow us to decide whether that action is morally right or wrong. But the science doesn't tell us what's moral.
What Stein and friends are doing is trying to say that it's appropriate to judge science based on what kinds of moral judgements a lunatic can derive from it - and further, they're basically trying to argue for suppressing the truth when they don't like the results of trying to infer morality from that truth.
I've heard thermodynamics summarized in an informal way as "Reality is, at best, a zero-sum game." It's not an entirely incorrect summarization: thermodynamics does, in a way, tell us that we can only build something up by tearing something else down. If you want to use science to draw moral judgements, just think of the kind of morality you can get from that!
But no one would use that to argue against the reality of thermodynamics as a correct way of describing the world. Thermodynamics is an accurate description. It lets us understand how things work, and make realistic predictions about how things work. It's not a statement of morality; it's a statement of the behavior of physical entities.
People will always find ways to justify horrible things. Just look at the headlines here in the US over the last week about torture. We'll find ways of justifying the things we want to justify. But justifications don't change facts. Evolution is a theory that does an amazing job of describing a piece of the world. Whether it's used to justify something evil doesn't change that. If it's true, it's true. And no amount of ranting about the horrible things that it supposedly motivated can change that. In the end, the truth is the truth. Evolution is true - whether Hitler, or the Janjaweed in Sudan, or eugenicists in America choose to use it to justify their actions doesn't change that. It's still true.
The whole Darwin-to-Hitler link in Stein's wretched little movie is a totally meaningless exercise. It's a line of pure and utter bullshit, and even if we were to accept it as absolute truth, it would be irrelevant. Truth and morality are two different things.
Politics
Comments
To put it another way: the fact that blowing people up is a bad thing doesn't make TNT any less explosive.
Posted by: James | April 14, 2008 4:18 PM
Posted by: sirhcton | April 14, 2008 4:58 PM
I'm not sure that a lot of the people who will be swayed by "Expelled!" and the like actually understand that truth and morality are different things. I suspect many of them haven't bothered to make the distinction.
So for them, "Darwinism means Nazism. Nazism is wrong. Therefore, Darwinism is wrong" might sound just as valid as the classic proof by contradiction scheme: "A implies B. Not B. Therefore, not A."
What's really distressing about that possibility is that it implies that the converse holds true too---if you could convince them that Darwinism really is true, and really does imply Nazism, they'd feel obligated to consider it morally acceptable. Sadly, considering how many persecutions base their justifications in similar claims about humanity (be they purportedly scientific or religious in nature), I'm not really convinced that they wouldn't.
Posted by: Matthew L. | April 14, 2008 5:02 PM
Excellent points about the importance of truth and the deliberate conflation of description and prescription. Of course, Stein has a history of not caring about genocide except as a rhetorical club against his opponents and the truth (e.g., blaming the Khmer Rouge on Mark Felt).
"Reality is, at best, a zero-sum game."
My preferred formulation of the 1st-3rd laws of thermo:
1. You can't win (conservation of energy)
2. You can't break even (2nd law)
3. You can't get out of the game (Nernst heat theorem)
Must not be true, though, 'cause I can use that to justify cheating people at cards.
Posted by: Stinky Wizzleteats | April 14, 2008 5:04 PM
might as well say that teaching a child German is wrong. Hitler learned German, then used the language to get into power and start the Holocaust. German language -> holocaust.
Posted by: Ben B | April 14, 2008 5:09 PM
Yeah... it's starting the argument at Godwin's law.
It's definitely a tactic that appears to gain some sympathy -- at least among those who were already on that side of the argument in the first place. I've seen Nazism used to attack environmentalism, vegetarianism, anti-smoking campaigns.
If you're going to go _there_, you might as ban timely trains.
Posted by: Michael R. Head | April 14, 2008 5:39 PM
I disagree - I think the point is being made, at least in blog posts discussing the movie (those who think it's rubbish, at least). Do the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima make one decide that physics is a load of nonsense? If someone discovered evidence tomorrow that Newton and Einstein were secretly serial murderers, do you stop believing in gravity?
I've also seen the point made that Hitler's killing of people he considered undesirable was the antithesis of natural selection - if they were inferior, the environment would have killed them off without his intervention. As someone pointed out, what he was doing was much more similar to intelligent design than to natural selection.
Posted by: Sarah | April 14, 2008 5:53 PM
Loathe as I am to play advocate to such a horrific devil...
Linking Darwinism to Nazism isn't necessarily an argument for the untruth of Darwinism. On the other extreme of the debate, Dawkins and Hitchens discuss at length the evils that religion has caused - the abuse of children, xenophobia, homophobia, and yes, Nazism. Richard Dawkins is not confusing morality with truth, he certainly knows better. They're saying that not only is religion false, but it is also dangerous, so lets not live and let live, lets work to minimize the damage.
I don't know exactly how Stein presents his ridiculous link, but if it is in the form of "we all know evolution is false, but more than that, it actually causes harm and should be actively opposed" then a genocide link is valid. WRONG, but valid.
Posted by: Jolly Bloger | April 14, 2008 5:54 PM
I dunno if I agree Jolly Blogger...if I understand your argument correctly, I do not think it is valid... it seems to me that no matter what is discovered, someone, somewhere is gonna use it for evil. All the way back to the discovery of stone tools, someone used them to bash their neighbors head in.
Posted by: Ben B | April 14, 2008 6:00 PM
What I find objectionable about Stein's tactic of linking evolution to genocide is what happens when people realize that evolution really IS true? Even the Creation Museum has an exhibit showing the rise of multiple species from individual pairs of common ancestors (from on board the Ark). Evolution IS a fact, so when Stein says that evolution justifies the Holocaust, what he's really claiming is that the Holocaust had a legitimate scientific justification. It's a classic case of the mud-slinger ending up dirtier than his intended target.
Posted by: Deacon Duncan | April 14, 2008 6:13 PM
Perhaps I can clarify. In the post Mark says that IF Darwinism could be shown to directly cause genocide, that wouldn't make it any less true. Fair enough, but let's also assume that evolution isn't necessarily true, as the ID crowd does. Normally, if other people believe wrong things, then no harm no foul, let them believe what they like. If you can show that their incorrect belief actually causes harm, then you have justification for actively opposing them.
It's true that most scientific ideas can be misinterpreted in a way that causes harm, but that's all the more reason for us to actively oppose the harmful actions, and the misunderstandings that lead to them.
Posted by: Jolly Bloger | April 14, 2008 6:23 PM
I can understand how many false arguments put to make excuses for holocaust , Holocaust by all means is a crime.
But I'm wondering why Zionism does not make any effort to explain their daily holocaust toward Palestinians !!! They are just killing unarmed people while world is watching them :(.
God bless the souls of Palestinian children...
Posted by: Ramy Eid | April 14, 2008 7:04 PM
Deacon,
Stein has apparently thought this through and has said if evolution is correct, Hitler was right. See here, around 20:30-21:15 for the most explicit statement (the rambling train of "thought" starts around 18:00).
Posted by: Stinky Wizzleteats | April 14, 2008 7:23 PM
I think, unfortunately for all of us, that you're giving the creationists too much credit here. You assume that they're simply missing the point by pointing out the negative implications of a thing without bothering to consider the truth of it. But I've come at this discussion with some creationists before and those who can make their way through the philosophy realize your point and aren't convinced. I've been asked to prove why knowing the truth is more important than acting morally and I haven't been able to come up with a good answer.
To put it another way, if you could prove that accepting evolution and only accepting in evolution invariably leads to genocide and only to genocide, then would it still be a boon to accept evolution? It gives a whole new meaning to the phrases "lying for Jesus," and "Santa Claus for adults."
Posted by: Jonathan | April 14, 2008 7:29 PM
Whaddya mean thermodynamics has no moral consequences? The laws of thermodynamics are what prevents us from building perpetual motion machines and having all the free energy we want! Instead we're dependent on foreign oil! Why do you hate America?
Posted by: Eamon Knight | April 14, 2008 7:37 PM
Oh my gosh Eamon, you've opened my eyes to the truth! Clearly the energy isn't lost in the form of heat, but it is stolen by the DEVIL in order to confuse us into believing the 2nd law! Place your faith in god and nothing shall rust!
Posted by: Ben B | April 14, 2008 9:27 PM
"I've been asked to prove why knowing the truth is more important than acting morally and I haven't been able to come up with a good answer."
That's because it's a false dichotomy. They're both as important as each other, and one only gets in the way of the other if one is unable to act morally without the fear of damnation.
Plenty of us act morally because it's the right thing to do and for no other reason, and plenty of us want to know things that are true, not just things that make us feel good, and we're quite capable of doing both.
Posted by: Charlie B. | April 14, 2008 10:07 PM
Very true -- my most virulent reaction (as a Jew) when I saw that Stein had the %%%ing audacity to go to Poland and visit the camps was to think "I know fundamentalists can go low but this is a low even I didn't think they'd sink to".
*Shudder*
Posted by: Michael | April 14, 2008 10:37 PM
Jewish? I thought you were atheistic... ;o/ I suppose being an atheistic Jew means you specifically get to not believe in the God of Isaac, Jacob, et. al.?
That said -- for I am a poor governor of my own acerbic thinking -- you've quite nicely and accurately put your thumb right *there* on an important point.
And those of us who value right-thinking discussion and dialogue thank you for doing so. Cheers!
Posted by: Wry Mouth | April 14, 2008 10:49 PM
Sorry to nit pick a bit but I don't quite see what you mean when you say that the murder of millions of people should never be a thetorical bargaining chip. If you are saying that your judgement is that Stein knows there is no link and is delibrately misleading us about the matter then I see your criticism but it wasn't clear that's what you meant.
I mean presumably if you had valid grounds to believe that X tends to cause mass genocide it would not only be justifiable but likely morally required to use this fact to argue against X. After all surely the most important reason to remember the holocaust is to use that lesson to ensure it never happens again. So unless you are calling Stein insencere I'm unclear what you are saying here.
This is just a small nitpick but I agree with the main thrust of your post and attitude but if we are going to be logically precisce here I figured we should go all the way.
Posted by: TruePath | April 14, 2008 11:38 PM
"I've been asked to prove why knowing the truth is more important than acting morally and I haven't been able to come up with a good answer."
Um; I might agree with Charlie B. here, but I have often asked myself, which is more important -- truth or happiness? In a narrow application, would I rather be happy believing in a nontruth, or would I rather know the truth, no matter how disappointing?
So far, I have come down on the side of wanting to know the truth -- I suppose that somewhere inside I figure that knowing the truth will make me happy, even if it doesn't go well for me, personally.
The things I have found in math and stats -- the little formulae and insights into how things like abstract numbers "run" -- always fill me with delight. I suppose, again, that my "pattern recognition" part of my brain must be wired directly into some sort of dopamine producer. ;o/
Posted by: Wry Mouth | April 14, 2008 11:42 PM
"I mean presumably if you had valid grounds to believe that X tends to cause mass genocide it would not only be justifiable but likely morally required to use this fact to argue against X. After all surely the most important reason to remember the holocaust is to use that lesson to ensure it never happens again. So unless you are calling Stein insencere I'm unclear what you are saying here."
TruePath,
Mark is, in fact, saying that even if you you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some scientific fact/theory/law X leads directly to the mass genocide of millions, you cannot use the moral value of this fact to argue against the reality of X. Boiling it down, he's saying that moral arguments have no bearing on reality. The fact of highly energetic fission of heavy atomic nuclei cannot be disproven by the repugnance of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians.
Given the popularity of various wish your way to happiness philosophies like The Secret, I tend to agree with Mark that this point hasn't been made nearly strongly enough. It's probably a stretch to hope educating people that the moral implications of a scientific theory have no bearing on its reality would carry over to their personal desires not affecting reality... but it couldn't hurt.
Posted by: KevinS | April 15, 2008 1:10 AM
Clearly the defenestrations of Prague are a serious indictment of the terrible moral consequences of gravity.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | April 15, 2008 6:37 AM
Great(?!) minds think alike...
It was only yesterday on another ScienceBlog (Respectful Insolence) that I commented:
The Nazis used algebra to calculate V2 trajectories. And this has exactly what effect on the validity of algebra as mathematics?
Misguided people in favor of eugenics have tried to analogize to natural selection and "survival of the fittest." And this has exactly what effect on the validity of natural selection as science?
Posted by: Jud | April 15, 2008 7:13 AM
As ridiculous as it is on the face of it, this "evolution leads to Nazism and is therefore wrong" story is a brilliant piece of framing. Namely, it's got two ridiculous premises backing it up, and the way it's been done arguing against one of the ridiculous premises just reinforces the other one. Burying the audience in evidence that the Nazis were not motivated by a belief in evolutionary theory implicitly accepts the argument that leading to morally reprehensible consequences would be a good argument against a scientific theory. Arguing the other direction, as Mark does here, implicitly concedes the point that Nazism may have been inspired by a belief in evolution, and that those evil evolution supporters don't care. Unfortunately, the general public is not used to processing complicated arguments; when they hear: "Assuming arguendo my opponent's point X, his conclusion still doesn't work because of Y and Z", they retain "my opponent's point X", especially when X is emotionally loaded.
So what's needed is a counter-frame, and I'm not sure how to set one up. (Either that, or a mass revival in critical thinking, but I don't know how to trigger one of those either)
Posted by: Daniel Martin | April 15, 2008 7:25 AM
Examining the other side of the coin from my previous comment: The rhetorical tactics of the pro-ID folks aren't drawn from the academic/scientific world. It's all politics as far as they're concerned. (Unfortunately, when one thinks of local school boards and state legislatures, they may have a point.)
The argumentum ad Nazium, as Orac so nicely puts it, is designed to impugn the motives of scientists in a political discussion, i.e., "These people are on the side of Godless evil. That's why they want to take God's beautiful Creation out of our schools and replace it with random chance and the 'survival of the fittest.' We all know what happens when 'survival of the fittest' becomes the creed of a nation, don't we? That's right - Nazis!" (Strange they never mention Rockefeller and his American Beauty Rose theory of capitalism here.)
BTW, I too lost family in the Holocaust and grew up knowing people with concentration camp ID numbers tattooed on their arms, and I very much share your disgust at turning such suffering into just so much rhetorical ammunition.
Posted by: Jud | April 15, 2008 7:30 AM
@25: it's not a brilliant piece of framing, it's wrong twice over. You fight it by saying, right at the outside: this idea is wrong twice over. The Nazis weren't inspired by Darwin, in fact they banned books about Darwinism (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA006_1.html). And anyway, you can't say that gravity is evil because people have been killed by hanging; facts about the world don't change because people use or misuse them.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | April 15, 2008 8:40 AM
"And I'll note here that while Ben runs around cashing the checks that he receives for talking about how Darwin caused hitler, there is genocide going on, today, in several places, and Stein doesn't seem to care."
And what, exactly, are you doing about it? Its quite easy to accuse someone of not caring when they're not acting as strongly as you think they should, but unless you have sold everything you own and are living to free these people, you may seem to not care to someone else.
Posted by: Ash | April 15, 2008 9:42 AM
Ash:
You're pulling a standard way of excusing rotten behavior. That is, no one is ever allowed to criticize the hypocrisy of an asshole like Stein unless they've sacrificed their entire
life.
Stein has a prominent public platform as a result of this movie. And he's using it to talk about a past genocide, and how horrible it was. But he doesn't take a moment, a breath, to say a single word about the genocide that's taking place today. That platform makes a difference. I could give up every cent I have and devote my life to working against, say, the genocide in Darfur. But as a not particularly telegenic geek with no public prominence, no platform, the impact of my actions would be small.
And that's the real point here. He's getting all of this publicity because of his movie, and he never fails to mention the supposed link between "Darwinism" and the holocaust. But he never spares a word for the people dying today.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | April 15, 2008 10:10 AM
Argh....you guys obviously didn't get the post modernist memo that stated that truth is a social construct.
Do I need to put a smilie on that? I hope not, but just in case...
:-)
Posted by: BAllanJ | April 15, 2008 11:32 AM
I think it's a mistake to underestimate our opponents so strongly. Waving the anti-evolutionists off as complete morons is not going to help. A lot of them are very intelligent, they just start out with a different set of assumptions.
The argument is not necessarily "belief in evolution -> genocide therefore evolution is false".
If they are saying "belief in (false) evolution -> genocide therefore we must oppose the teaching of (false) evolution" then that is a valid argument based on two false premises. Namely that evolution is false, and that belief in evolution leads to genocide.
It is not their logic we should be attacking, but their premises.
I'll say again, it's dangerous to assume your opponent is simply stupid. You'll be taken by surprise when it turns out they aren't.
Posted by: Jolly Bloger | April 15, 2008 4:18 PM
#14 Jonathon: we cannot behave morally until we know the truth about things. That is, we may have moral intent, but ignorance can lead to much misery. If birth control discourages pregnancy and abortions, then abstinence-only programs lead to more dead fetuses. If global warming is happening and is serious, then reassuring the flock that God wouldn't do that to us can lead to disaster for our children. If mainstream science understands evolution to a significant degree, then denying it can lead to plagues, starvation, and ecological disaster by ill-informed action or inaction. And if we ignore history's best understanding of the Third Reich, we risk living thru that over and again.
We will always fall short of complete knowledge, of course, but those who ignore data to maintain their comfort zone risk making disastrous decisions that could have been avoided. And it is clear what they value most.
Posted by: Freehand | April 15, 2008 5:23 PM
The whole "Stein is a hypocrite because he condemns the holocaust but doesn't mention or condemn any modern-day genocides" argument is pretty weak. He doesn't mention it because its not relevant to the discussion at hand.
So anyone with a "prominent public platform" is now obligated to throw in a reference to Darfur and Rwanda whenever they are talking about something even tangentially related?
And to the main point: the argument is not so much "belief in evolution caused the holocaust, so evolution is false." It's more like "the discussion about evolution is more than just an academic one--a world view that says people are the result of random chance can have a real impact on how we value human life."
That said, I agree with the point in your original post, that if anything, Darwinism was just being used as an excuse. Just as Christianity was being used as an excuse in the Crusades.
Posted by: BradC | April 15, 2008 5:53 PM
To me that view seems to mean humanity is rare occurance in the big biological picture, and therefore quite valuable.
Posted by: chris p | April 15, 2008 8:57 PM
"...humanity is rare occurance in the big biological picture, and therefore quite valuable..."
chris p
chris -- I am not saying you subscribe to that statement as yours, but here is what a dark little part of me thinks when he hears statements like that:
"I don't know about that. I am *unique* in the big biological picture, and therefore invaluable, especially in my own personal world-view. Compared to me, the rest of you so-called "people" (who may or may not actually be "people" in the same sense I am) pale in value comparison. And the Rule of Law? Meh. I have far too much Russian in me to value that over my own needs and wants."
This being exists, in me. He is real. And I would have no trouble giving him full and free reign if I were truly atheistic. I am NOT saying all atheists believe this way, or even most.
I AM saying that there my be a few out there who believe this way, and -- for me -- the whole "value human life because it's rare in the cosmos" thing is hogwash, based as it is on a subjective assessment of value through rarity that carries no reproductive advantage.
Why flinch?, he asks.
Luckily -- I think -- for me, there are other, less "materialistic" parts of me to resist that line of living. "Luckily for me," I think, but that part feels completely the opposite about that.
;o/ what a wretched man I am.
Posted by: Wry Mouth | April 15, 2008 9:11 PM
I certainly agree. But I don't think the prominent ID creationists really understand reductio ad absurdum (in the non-mathematical sense--though they no doubt don't understand it in the mathematical sense either, but that's neither here nor there). That's why they don't get (or pretend not to get) what scientific theories are. Scientific theories are essentially open-ended reductio ad absurdum arguments.
"What would happen if there did exist a particle like the Higgs-Boson?"
Well, this and this and this would happen. Can we find any contradictions there? Not yet, at least. Until such a time (hopefully with the Large Hadron Collider), we'll consider Higgs-Bosons to be real things that the theory predicts which we just haven't found any observational evidence for yet.
Your line of reasoning, Mark, would work equally well for evolution too. Even if it were true that there was no empirical evidence for evolution (or very little), would that make evolutionary theory false? Of course not. The scientific community largely accepted evolution well before anything was really known about genetics, before the mechanism was understood. The power of the theory is both how simplistic it is, and how beautifully and obviously it solves the problem. No such simplicity or beauty or obviousness exists for the Intelligent Design theory. It's something, as Richard Dawkins and others have said, which is infinitely more complex than the thing trying to be explained. It's this basic method of argument that the ID people reject.
Posted by: Jon | April 15, 2008 11:13 PM
After reading through these posts, I have to agree with Jolly Bloger. The anti-evolutionist arguement is a valid arguement (see Jolly Bloger posts #8 and #11), but it is based on invalid premises (see post #31).
Nice example of Critical Thinking, Jolly.
Posted by: Daithi | April 16, 2008 11:17 AM
I'd also have to +1 Jolly Bloger.
They're not *just* saying that the supposed link between evolution and genocide is reason enough to dismiss it, but they're *also* saying that, or supposing, that evolution is fundamentally flawed, and as such, it's taken as implicit that your truth argument doesn't hold water.
Take suicide cults as an example. They're not only based on falsehoods, but they're fundamentally destructive. Would you argue against suicide cults? Would you cite the link between their beliefs and death? Would you allow yourself this because of the fundamental lack of rigor and truth composing their underlying beliefs?
If yes to these, is there any difference from the point of view of a creationist who believes that evolution is a cult mentality founded on falsehood and leads to destructive mindsets?
Now, having said that, I'll cite some major differences.
First, the link to genocide, whether evolution is true or not, is a difficult one to establish to the degree required to use it as a reason to dismiss evolutionary thinking.
But second, and much more importantly, the key difference between evolutionist premises and creationist premises is that the former has scientific rigor. In order to assert that evolution lays a false foundation, you must argue against a well established framework of theoretical and experimental validation. In order to assert that creationism is false, one has only heresay and prose to deconstruct, which, scientifically, is already done by nature of never having had rigorous validity to begin with.
So you may argue that they're simply starting from different premises, but I'd argue that a) they've not taken the care to deconstruct our premise of evolution, and b) they've not taken the care to their premise of construct creationism. I believe that puts them in the red right from the start.
Posted by: Michael | April 17, 2008 11:30 AM
You're absolutely spot on, Mark. Stein ignores the fact that genocide has occured prior to Darwin's time. It's an outrage that the producers use the tragedy of the Holocaust to score points for their side.
Posted by: NP | April 17, 2008 6:20 PM
#6
If you're going to go _there_, you might as ban timely trains.
When I was in studying in Britain, I went to a sketch comedy/improv troupe's show where they imagined a thirty-second spot for UK Railways that used that exact Godwinned argument. :-D
Posted by: Nullifidian | April 17, 2008 9:39 PM
For Stein's attack on evolution to be justified, it must be the case that belief in evolution leads to genocidal behavior. If this were true then one would have a pragmatic justification to oppose the teaching of evolution (regardless of whether it were true or false).
And it can't be any old kind of "leads to"... which is to say, it cannot matter if people misinterpret evolution as supporting genocide, or irrationally infer genocidal principles from evolution. Evolution is not to blame if some nutter thinks (incorrectly) that the truth of evolution requires that he kill people; no more than Christianity is to blame when some nutter thinks that the truth of Christianity requires that he kill people he believes to be witches.
No, for Stein's attack to be justified it must be rational to conduct genocide were evolution true. In other words, the premise "evolution is true" must lead by valid inference to the principle "I ought to kill (or sterilize) people who I think are inferior".
Yet there is no such valid inference.
People who try to 'help along' evolution through genocide and forced sterilization are exactly as rational and justified in doing so as are those who try to 'help along' gravity by flinging people out of tall buildings. In short, not at all.
Hence Stein's attack on evolution is not justified.
Posted by: J.D. | April 19, 2008 6:44 PM
Haven't been around this blog since the Granville Sewell thought experiment. However, I went to see Expelled last night and I spent some time reading reviews from both sides. I come down on the Creationist side of the argument, but I also enjoy reading opposing points of view.
JD #41 repeats a common theme I have seen.
"For Stein's attack on evolution to be justified, it must be the case that belief in evolution leads to genocidal behavior."
This is not what I came away with. At several point in the movie, it was made clear that it was not the intent to associate Darwinism with Naziism as a "cause and effect."
There was however a blurring of Communism and Naziism as there were scenes from the Holocaust and from the Berlin wall. These visual associations I think were made to set up the final scene where the Berlin wall started to come down. You could almost hear the echoes of Ronald Reagan saying "Tear down this wall." The images were intended to show intolerance for opposite viewoints and dramatize the reaction from an all powerful evolution side against any questioning of Darwinian orthodoxy.
If it resonates with a certain segment, it will be because voices were unfairly silenced by harsh techniques (denial of tenure and ostracizing), by ad hominem attacks against opposing points of view, by rants by admitted aetheists like Dawkins against anyone who believes there is more than pure materialism to this world, and by theories explicitly excluding a Creator as part of the definition.
I don't think the vast majority of those who saw the movie want to see evolution banned because it causes genocide. I think all that's being asked is that the primary spokespeople for evolution show some respect for alternative theories. Dawkins himself at the end of the movie was forced by Stein to admit that he could not rule out intelligent design as a cause (going so far as to speculate on panspermia).
I saw the movie as an attempt to take people like Dawkins down a peg or two, get them off their high horses, and knock off the idiotic rhetoric about materialistic origins for life, and natural selection defended completely, totally, and unaissably as a cause for life evolving from one celled organisms to what we see today, when there is ample doubt about the evidence to support such claims.
Posted by: bh | April 20, 2008 12:08 AM
bh said:
"I think all that's being asked is that the primary spokespeople for evolution show some respect for alternative theories."
So should astronomers show more respect for geocentricism? In medical school should they give equal time to the demon-infestation 'theory' of disease as they do to the germ theory of disease? Should the proponents of the 'sexual reproduction' school show more respect to the Storkist school and other alternative theories for where babies come from?
Respect in science is something that needs to be earned -- you actually have to do the work, come up with the evidence and the compelling arguments, and actually persuade the scientific community you are right before they will accept your claims and recommend that they be taught in science classes. I guess scientists are funny that way.
Creationists (in their recent reincarnation as 'Intelligent Design proponents') haven't done the work. Hence, no matter how much they whine about the unfairness of it all, they are not entitled to the respect that only comes from actually doing the work.
The scientific establishment laughed at Wegener, the guy who came up with the idea of continental drift, and they kept laughing until he and others did the work, fleshed out the theory and came up with compelling evidence for it. If the IDists were serious about getting the scientific establishment to accept their idea then they would follow in Wegener's footsteps, buckle down, and actually do the work of science.
Of course they are not interested in actually doing the work of science, because they are not a scientific movement at all -- they are a social/political movement attempting to wrap themselves in the mantle of science in order to sneak under the radar of Supreme Court precedent.
You know how to tell that they are a social/political movement rather than a scientific movement? You can tell by where they fight their battles: Scientific movements fight their battles in the peer reviewed journals and at scientific conferences and in the daily conversations between scientists; whereas social/political movements fight their battles in the pubic arena, usually with propaganda and slogans, and often involving the legislatures and the courts and other organs of public governance (e.g. school boards).
Sound familiar?
You are not likely to see Loop Quantum Gravity proponents spending less time and money on research than on making a documentary directed at the general public about how it's so unfair that String Theory gets all the money and attention and graduate students.
Posted by: J.D. | April 20, 2008 1:32 AM
Oh, and bh, you might not have "come away" with the notion that Stein was attempting to say that evolution leads to genocide, but that is apparently what he was trying to say:
'He (Stein) said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called "From Darwin to Hitler."'
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/science/27expelled.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Posted by: J.D. | April 20, 2008 1:38 AM
Indeed? Then the title of this post is more fitting than I thought when I wrote it.
Posted by: Skemono | April 20, 2008 3:48 AM
"So should astronomers show more respect for geocentricism? In medical school should they give equal time to the demon-infestation 'theory' of disease as they do to the germ theory of disease? Should the proponents of the 'sexual reproduction' school show more respect to the Storkist school and other alternative theories for where babies come from?"
You insult my intelligence. You are equating two things that are not related. Highly intelligent and credible scientists have put their neck on the line for ID, and have been willing to sacrifice their careers to make the point. They are not crackpots.
Let me give you a better analogy. Where is the evidence for panspermia? For multiple universes? For life being born on the back of crystals? For RNA being the progenitor of life. Yet when you press "peer reviewed" scientists on the question of the origin of life, this is what they propose. And there are peer reviewed articles to support these theses. With no evidence to support them.
Dawkins himself at the end of the movie was forced by Stein to admit that he could not rule out intelligent design as a cause (going so far as to speculate that life was seeded on earth by aliens).
Finally, I love the circular reasoning. ID does not appear in peer reviewed journals because it is unfairly kept out. When it doesn't appear in peer reviewed journals it becomes evidence that ID is not serious science.
This is all a transparent, albeit futile, attempt to deny the existence of God. Folks, God will not be mocked.
The box office numbers are pretty encouraging so far. It looks like Expelled is #8 on the all time list after just one weekend, #2 in gross on opening day, and #1 in total theaters. Not bad.
Posted by: bh | April 20, 2008 8:06 PM
They are dogmatic ideologues, which is worse than being a crackpot (because at least crackpots can sometimes be charmingly funny). They are so desperate to silence something that seems (to them) to challenge and undermine their faith and its dogmas that they are willing to lie, cheat and use propaganda like 'Expelled'. You yourself are the perfect expression of the motivating force behind the ID movement when you say things like "This is all a transparent, albeit futile, attempt to deny the existence of God. Folks, God will not be mocked."
It is crystal clear that doing science is not what motivates the ID movement -- that their goal is to minimize and keep at bay scientific theories that they believe are incompatible with the existence of God.
As for your ridiculous claim that ID is kept out of peer reviewed journals (while the RNA world hypothesis etc gets in) because the scientific community wants to 'deny God'...
Ugh.
...ID is kept out of journals because the Creationists haven't even come up with a testable, falsifiable hypothesis yet. No, it's worse than that -- they haven't even come up with a conjecture that one could see as possibly being falsifiable and testable in the future, after a little fleshing out. The RNA world hypothesis, on the other hand, does meet this minimum criteria to qualify as science worthy of appearing in peer-reviewed journals.
This is because, once again, the IDists are not at all interested in actually doing science; their goal is purely social/political...theirs is an attempt to stop what they see as all the "God-mocking" and "God-denying" (to use your terms).
If you believe differently, then you are certainly welcome to state the falsifiable ID hypothesis for how life came to be right here. Go on. I am all ears.
Posted by: J.D. | April 20, 2008 9:01 PM
This is all a transparent, albeit futile, attempt to deny the existence of God. Folks, God will not be mocked.
I'm confused now. Is ID supposed to be "serious science", or is it supposed to be about god?
Posted by: Skemono | April 20, 2008 11:18 PM
Not sure I understand your logic. We seem to be talking past each other. God is not incompatible with science, and science is not incompatible with God. God is the author of creation and put in place the laws of the Universe. Science is simply the process of discovering these laws and putting them to good use as we take dominion of the world we have been entrusted with. Science means "knowledge", and the end result of science is an increase in our knowledge of how the Universe actually works.
I'm not a true IDist, actually. I'm rather biased in that I have a presuppositional belief in the existence of God, and therefore I filter what I see and read in these terms. If I read that so and so has disproven the existence of God, or that a theory purports to do so, I immediately disbelieve the author or the theory. I suspect that most atheists also approach issues with the same mindset. That is, they presuppose there is no God, and therefore any scientists who put forth evidence of intelligent design are immediately dismissed as liars and cheats.
True IDists on the other hand come from all spheres. Some are ex-atheists, some agnostics, some old earth, some new earth, some believe in common descent, some believe that the Cambrian explosion leaves a lot to be explained.
They all share a common belief that certain patterns in nature can be explained by natural causes, and some can't. If the best minds of the past century have been utterly unable to explain how the simple cell came into being, without resorting to something along the lines of "and then a miracle happened...", and if the best minds of the past century have been utterly unable to create life from inorganic material using their best hypothesis and theories, well perhaps the answer really lies in the "a miracle happened." And if a miracle happened, who might the author of that miracle be? Aliens, or perhaps God?
Science is the search for truth and knowledge, and if this leads to God as the author, so be it.
So far no-one on this blog has dared to touch my comments about Dawkins and his apparent embrace of intelligent design during the film. I think I hear crickets chirping.
Posted by: bh | April 21, 2008 12:20 AM
#45, I admit that I had a hard time getting past the url for your blog entry. However, I did read the gist of what you were saying, and my comment is that you are only looking at one side of the issue. You are ignoring those who used darwinism to explain the differences in the races as a less developed species from an evolutionary standpoint.
On the other hand, a careful reading of Genesis 1 reveals that in the beginning God created a man and a woman, who begat children, who begat children, up to today. So you see, you and I are blood relatives (well at least through Noah). Pretty scary thought. True nonetheless, we are related, which means that you are a brother or a sister somewhere down the line, no matter what your race.
What, you say, that means that Adam's sons married his daughters. Well, it's not much different today. If we're all related, we marry a relative. The problem today is that we have lost a lot of the variability that was in the original gene pool and marrying someone too close to you can lead to recessive problems.
Which only points out that information is lost, not gained as a result of Selection. I'm not sure how evolution progresses when information is continuously being lost. Does that mean we are devolving?
So where did the skin colors come from? Simple. The original man had genes for all the traits. However, due to geographic speciation, some of the genotype was lost. It's not much different from wolves and poodles actually. They look different, but they're all descended from the original dog type.
Am I a liar or a cheat or a crackpot for taking this interpretation of the facts from a creationist reading of the Bible?
Posted by: bh | April 21, 2008 1:07 AM
Am I a liar or a cheat or a crackpot for taking this interpretation of the facts from a creationist reading of the Bible?
No, you're comic relief and we are giggling!
Posted by: (bh)^2 | April 21, 2008 1:45 AM
Well that's a big relief. Whew.
Too much name calling goes on in these "debates" if you ask me.
I didn't know that crickets could giggle.
Posted by: bh | April 21, 2008 2:21 AM
It's funny how you capitalize "Jewish", but not "christianity" (sic!) - why are you so full of hate?!
Let me remind you that we Christians love the Jewish people, because the Bible tells us to. OUR hands are clean. And yet you keep defending "science", even though science has blood on its hands. Science, with scientists contradicting each other until the Bible is the only source you can believe.
Why do you reject your friends and embrace your enemies?
You are in my prayers.
Your friend,
Josh
Posted by: Josh | April 21, 2008 2:36 AM
*snicker*
Posted by: Skemono | April 21, 2008 2:54 AM
bh said:
"If I read that so and so has disproven the existence of God, or that a theory purports to do so, I immediately disbelieve the author or the theory"
Perhaps you should first be skeptical of the claim that the theory 'purports' to disprove God. Evolution is certainly a little hard to square with many conceptions of God, and the facts it is based on (such as Deep Time, etc) are inconsistent with certain so-called 'literal' interpretations of many creation myths. But millions of theists have been able to reconcile evolution with their God, and the theory itself certainly makes no claim to disprove God.
Only two sorts of people like to think God is incompatible with evolution: i) theists who are so weak in their faith or so dogmatically fixated on one and only one 'literal' interpretation that they cannot abide anything that appears to challenge those beliefs; and ii) atheists who are overjoyed that people think the truth of evolution necessitates the nonexistence of God, because then they only have to argue for the truth of evolution, which is (relatively) easy.
bh continues:
"That is, they presuppose there is no God, and therefore any scientists who put forth evidence of intelligent design are immediately dismissed as liars and cheats."
I dismiss ID proponents as liars and cheats because history has demonstrated that they are exactly that. Just read the Kitzmiller v. Dover case to see some examples of IDists lying -- literally bearing false witness.
bh continues:
"So far no-one on this blog has dared to touch my comments about Dawkins and his apparent embrace of intelligent design during the film. I think I hear crickets chirping"
It appears you have swallowed Stein's misunderstanding of Dawkin's comments hook, line and sinker. Dawkins was not 'embracing' the panspermia concept to explain the beginning of life. He was saying that evolution by natural selection was the only way he knew of to explain complex life (including intelligent beings), and thus that if one could actually prove that complex life on Earth _had_ to have been started off by an intelligent being, then of necessity those intelligent beings themselves would have to ultimately have come about through evolution. This is all part of Dawkin's point about how if complex life is something that needs explaining, then an intelligent, super-powered being cannot be the ultimate explanation, because such a being would itself be just as complex (or more so) than the things it is supposed to explain (complexity which demands an explanation).
By the way, I am still waiting for you to describe the falsifiable hypothesis of ID.
Posted by: J.D. | April 21, 2008 7:38 AM
bh said:
"True IDists on the other hand come from all spheres. Some are ex-atheists, some agnostics, some old earth, some new earth, SOME BELIEVE IN COMMON DESCENT...."
OK, now, I'm *really* keen to see this incredible ID theory, since it is perfectly compatible with what I had thought was the main point of issue people had with evolution, and perfectly compatible with a totally contradictory biblical creation story.
Maybe the ID scientists could then use that theory to find whether common descent or biblical literalism are true, and educate ID supporters on the matter?
Posted by: FireWalk | April 21, 2008 10:44 AM
"By the way, I am still waiting for you to describe the falsifiable hypothesis of ID."
I think this is what sets the ID proponents apart from the evolution proponents.
bh asked "Where is the evidence for panspermia? For multiple universes? For life being born on the back of crystals? For RNA being the progenitor of life." Evolution, like most theories in science, does not always have ALL the answers. In fact, new questions routinely arise as a consequence to theories. The great thing about science is that theories are either confirmed or falsified all the time. We may not have the technology to confirm or falsify a theory today, but the concept that a theory can be confirmed/falsified at some point is vital. Any theory that cannot be confirmed or falsified is simply not a scienitific theory.
I do not begrudge people who incorporate faith into their lives. However, the ID proponents are trying to masquerade their faith as science and I do have a problem with that, but if the ID proponents can provide a scientific theory then I am more than willing to listen.
Posted by: Daithi | April 21, 2008 10:58 AM
I wonder if bh would care to comment on the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans at the hands of invading Christians commencing in the 1500s?
And no, with many Christians there is no possibility of debate. Christians often do not want a debate, unfortunately just plain ol' bait will do just fine in most cases in the blogosphere. Plaintively asking if one is a crackpot or a liar, is appealing for sympathy. This is a logical fallacy.
The debate between science and religion will not end any time soon: each side makes arguments using their own set of rules. Interesting that the Christians make such a showing on a math blog, one wonders how many mathematicians post on Christian blogs.
Posted by: (bh)^2 | April 21, 2008 2:03 PM
Can this be true? Suppose what you start with 'knowing' isn't enough, and you then use science to reason forwards, even consistently, to see the effect. How can you be sure that you started with enough knowledge to derive the correct moral action?
Posted by: Kailden | April 21, 2008 3:04 PM
JD,
You may be right. It probably is impossible to falsify ID. I suppose if you were to attempt to falsify it you would start by showing step by step how life formed from inorganic matter. You could demonstrate how nucleotides were formed and joined together to form DNA/RNA, how amino acids joined together to make proteins, how they formed a cell wall, how the machinery in the cell got there and how the cell figured out how to reproduce itself. It would have to do all this before natural selection could kick in. You could provide step by step instructions for how this happened and demonstrate it in a controlled environment in such a way that others could repeat the experiment. If you did all this it would definitely falsify ID, and you would at the same time prove that evolution and abiogenis are valid theories. Because then you could say, "Here's a reasonable way we can get from A to B, and we can repeat the process." And you can't hide behind the "it took billions of years" curtain. Improbable events can be achieved by intelligent agents (humans) in a minuscule fraction of the time it would take for natural processes to do it. I have read all the comments on Talk Origins: Index to Creationist Claims, and they all are couched in phrases that begin with "it might have", "it may be that", "it is commonly accepted that", "which must have", "Such mechanisms might also have been responsible for ", ad nauseam.
Everyone I've talked to has unequivocally said they have absolutely no clue how life started, let alone moved from single cells to human beings. Including Dawkins. But he's 99% sure it wasn't God.
In fact Dawkins is now saying that panspermia can be studied scientifically. Wait a minute. Won't he need to make use of the tools of ID to do that?
Posted by: bh | April 22, 2008 12:16 AM
"Truth and morality are two different things."
I have a feeling the target audience for Ben Stein's movie will not agree with that statement. For them, morality ***IS*** Truth. Period.
Except, of course, when they've got a bad desease or something and they turn to Western medicine to fix them (while praying to god constantly).
--
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Posted by: Wyrd | April 22, 2008 2:18 AM
bh, it's clear you don't understand what "falsifiable" means. What does the theory of Intelligent Design say *can't* happen?
That can be practically observed or found through intuition?
Actually, I'd like to see an ID theory that doesn't define itself in terms of evolution: but still adequately describes the fossil record, genetic inheritance, and the origin of life as we know it.
Posted by: FireWalk | April 22, 2008 3:36 AM
That's just beautiful, bh. Thanks for making my day.
For your amusement I present the following fictional conversation between a scientist and a pseudo-scientist. Try to figure out which one is which...
A - So how would we know that your theory is correct? How can we test it?
B - Well, if my theory is true then it will be impossible to prove that an alternate theory is true.
A - Uh............huh. And how could we tell whether it is impossible to ...uh....'prove' an alternate theory?
B - Obviously! If no one ever succeeds in doing so.
A - So I guess that means you should be giving your support and all your funding to the people working on the other theories, right? I mean, you want to know that you are right, right?
B - Don't be silly, George......I need a new boat.
*fin*
Posted by: J.D. | April 22, 2008 7:15 AM
Oh, I get it! Thanks! I didn't realize it was that simple!
So a theory of evolution would say that it would be impossible for a Cambrian Explosion to occur, but that's not what the fossil record shows.
Therefore the theory of evolution has been falsified!
Cool! Thanks JD.
Posted by: bh | April 22, 2008 9:08 PM
Looks like another instance of Myers' Law: "every creationist argument will be built on false premises that expose the arguers ignorance".
Tell me, bh, what makes you think the Cambrian Explosion contradicts the theory of evolution?
Posted by: J.D. | April 22, 2008 10:19 PM
Just gotta love the way you preface every question with an insult. Typical.
-- You're ignorant.
-- Answer this question.
-- Your answer is ignorant because you're ignorant.
Sounds like ad hominem.
As you probably know, there are two theories of evolution: Micro and Macro. No-one disputes microevolution, change within a species, (daschunds, labradors, wolves, and poodles, etc). Where the argument lies is in macroevolution, from goo to you, and everything in between. As you probably know, there are two major models of macroevolution: Gradualism and Punctuated Equilibrium. Gradualism is not supported in the fossil record and most serious scientists have abandoned this idea. The Cambrian Explosion is representative of Punctuated Equilibrium. According to Gould: "We have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their appearance at that time." Gould, S.J. 1995. Of it, not above it. Nature 377: 681-682
What does punctuated equilibrium require?
1. Beneficial mutations must accumulate in a number of individuals. Since the beneficial mutation rate is very low, the species' population must be very large.
2. These mutated critters must then become isolated from the rest of the population so that the mutuations can be accumulated, and they won't be selected against or be bred back into the main population and have the mutation bred out.
If this doesn't happen, the punctuated appearance of a new species won't happen. This requires multiple beneficial mutations (a very rare event), and the simulaneous genetic isolation of these mutated critters (a very rare event). These events might occur by chance once in a billion years, but not simultaneously to all the critters that show up in the Cambrian.
It's more likely than gradualism, but still astronomically improbable. The math just doesn't add up. It's Bad Math. You're asking people to have faith in a miracle. Wait a minute. Maybe it was a miracle and there was an Intelligent Designer, or God, who....? Nah, it's not something you can mention to your peers without being called a crackpot, especially to those who have a lot of money invested in the current theory of evolution. After all, it's all about buying that new boat, right? So let's keep trying to manipulate the statistics. Maybe we can fudge the data so it's 1 in 10^50 instead of 10^51. Right.
Posted by: bh | April 23, 2008 3:14 AM
There are not "two theories of evolution", there is just one considered over the Geologic short term and the Geologic long term (well, just one if we lump natural selection, sex selection, genetic drift etc together). Saying that 'microevolution' is fundamentally different from 'macroevolution' is like saying there are two types of addition, one for small numbers like 2+2 and another for very large numbers like a million plus a million.
You appear to believe that the Cambrian 'explosion' was too quick for gradualistic evolution to have produced all the various forms that the fossil record shows that it did. This is incorrect. The Cambrian 'explosion' took millions of years to occur. Since with 'gradualism' (which you evidently misunderstand) you can get something as complex as the human eye from a patch of light sensitive skin cells in just a few hundred thousand years, your intuitions (i.e. about the possibility that plain old Neo-Darwinian evolution could explain the Cambrian 'explosion') are not well grounded in fact.
I don't really have time to correct your various misunderstandings about gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. I recommend that you read the following Wikipedia article, specifically the three sections entitled 'Common misconceptions', 'Criticism', and 'Relation to Darwin's Theories':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium#Common_misconceptions
Posted by: J.D. | April 23, 2008 7:02 AM
Worse than that, it's no math. You claim that the beneficial mutation rate is 'very low,' and so populations need to be 'very large,' but you don't quantify this. You talk of 'very rare events' which you concede might happen 'once in a billion years,' but you provide no basis for this figure. You insist that evolution is 'astronomically improbable,' even 'a miracle,' but still no calculation. In short, while you appear to be under the impression that you're making an argument, what you're actually doing is making stuff up. And you're a