Auster’s Folly

Here I’m just responding to Mr. Jobling’s initial point about my agreement with the “see people as less than human” comment. I will respond to the rest of his article later.

Mea culpa. I did not real carefully enough what the commenter was saying when I said that I agreed with him. I do not at all believe that having a Darwinian view of the evolution of races “inevitably leads to viewing those races who are considered to be less ‘evolved’ as something less than fully human.” I should have said that there is a tendency for the first to lead to the second, and this is something I’ve seen, but it is certainly not inevitable and probably does not even characterize most cases. But it does exist.

I of course do not believe that Mr. Jobling views people of “less evolved” races as less than human.

Again my apologies. And I look forward to replying to the rest of Ian’s argument later.

By on 1/17/08 at 8:27 pm

To Ian Jobling and All, regarding:

“And here we lay our finger the silliness of creationism: creationists prefer a theory that explains nothing at all about the world to a theory that doesn’t explain everything. They prefer complete ignorance to partial and imperfect knowledge. They prefer a theory that answers all our questions about nature with the same leaden phrase—‘Because that’s how God wanted it’—to a theory that can illuminate, albeit partially and imperfectly, the complex causal network that gave rise to the organisms we see around us.”

While I think you may have kicked a hornets’ nest, I also do think that you are addressing a very important and worthy topic here. I myself, hold a deep and unshakable belief in God; I do believe that there was a divine and supremely intelligent hand in creating not just humanity, but the entire universe. However, this does not and cannot exclude evolutionary theory and the scientifically quantifiable evidence that points to it, as being fully plausible and not exclusionary to a creationist or intelligent design position. Or put another way, I am not threatened in my creationist beliefs by the idea or scientifically measured evidence pointing to it, that evolution and other provable temporal phenomena are how: mankind, the earth, the sun, the moon, the solar system, the galaxies, and the universe came into being.

Who is to say, just exactly what God wants us to “understand” or “how” he wants us to understand it? In some ways, he gives us tools and examples by allowing us to cognitively grasp what he created and to “master” it, in dare I say, through our “evolving” steps of understanding of the laws of physics and natural science, but that we are arguably also limited by them as well? Is that not, the hand of intelligence in one sense also? This is particularly true, if everything to be fully “understood” is meant to coincide with beliefs and (dare I say with a gasp) faith?

Reversing the endless faith versus science inquisition, how is it that some sects of belief are so violent? How are some so “allowably” godless and others so questionably “devout” in eradicating not just some “infidels” but whole civilizations because they are not of a “pure” faith that is “true?”

Why the competition, why the almost “irrational” freedom?

Is that not, sort of a merging of both positions, that allows for responsibility and self evaluation?

If not, God help us all!

By John PM on 1/17/08 at 9:44 pm

Here’s an email that I passed along to Lawrence Auster this afternoon. He agreed with many of my examples and fairly pointed out his criticism of John Paul II.

As a Darwinian racialist, I take offense at the idea that I cannot defend the West because of my belief in evolution. I find myself wondering where Christians get such ideas. I’m not impressed by their religion.

• The Catholic Church is one of the biggest supporters of amnesty for illegal aliens and third world immigration in the USA. Pope John Paul II repeatedly described third world immigration as a “human right.”

• The Anglican Communion now accepts female and homosexual bishops. It has meekly submitted to the Islamization of Britain.

• Evangelical Protestants like the Promise Keepers encourage anti-racism and disgusting public displays of white self-hatred. The creationist movement in America, in particular Ken Ham’s Answers In Genesis (these people believe dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark), demonizes racialism.

• The various Protestant sects are all fully committed to anti-racism and multiculturalism.

The only major branch of Christianity that has shown any considerable resistance to these ideas is Eastern Orthodoxy. It would be more accurate to say that Christianity was the incubator of the humanist and universalist values which have undermined racialism and now the West itself.

The rank decay of the West smells of Christian theology: holier-than-thou moralizing, demonization of heretics, extreme universalism, radical egalitarianism, the disconnect between morality and kinship, stress upon the unity of humanity, treating “racism” as a sin, third world immigration as racial “penance,” millenarian nonsense about a colorblind utopia, etc. New wine has been poured into old jars. In the United States, the clergy (with their Unitarian sympathies) was part of the vanguard that rejected racialism during the early twentieth century. It is probably significant that non-Christian nations like Japan, China, Vietnam don’t seem to have this problem. The existence of race is taken for granted in East Asia.

Aside from that, modern racialism is based upon naturalism, and is unintelligible in a theological context. To the extent that theology has infected racialism, through the importation of the chain of being concept, the result has been disastrous. This straw man concept of race (search for a vertical racial hierarchy and neat racial divisions) was one of the major reasons that racialism came into scientific disrepute. We are only now beginning to dig ourselves out of that hole.

I object to the idea that racialism can ever be based on Christianity. The biblical view of race was already succumbing to rational criticism in Jefferson’s time. It is now utterly implausible from a scientific perspective. It explains nothing. The only reason we still show it any respect at all is because of the strange religious demographics of the USA, which are unique and have no parallel elsewhere in the West outside of Ireland and Poland.

Trevor H. argues that Darwinian racialism is “abhorrent” because it “denies the humanity” of non-white races. Obviously, he is not making a biological argument here; Darwinian racialists would agree that blacks and whites are interfertile and belong to the same species. Rather, he is saying that we deny the moral equality of different races, which in turn stems from the theory that the human species was somehow “created” in the image of God.

As a Darwinist, I reject creationism. Humans evolved from more primitive species like every other form of life on this planet. I also reject the Christian theological concept of moral equality. Morality is based on kinship and reciprocity. It is natural to feel more altruistic towards friends and family than strangers. That is not a rational argument for doing so, true, but irrelevant if morality is grounded in our emotions (which have been shaped by our evolution, like our sense of taste).

This returns us to the question of how Christianity is a better foundation for racialism than Darwinism. The former undermines the importance of kinship and inclines towards universalism. The latter affirms kinship and inclines towards particularism. The former has been completely discredited in the biological sciences. The latter is the only model that can explain the origin and significance of race.

Jesus clearly elevated salvation over and above kinship:

“And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”

Luke 14:25-27

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.”

Luke 12: 51-53

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

Matthew 10: 35-39

From a Christian perspective, doesn’t it make more sense for a white Christian woman to marry a black Christian man than a white male atheist? Christians are committed to defending “the West” as a theological concept. How can they object to millions of their non-white co-religionists from Asia, Africa, and Latin America settling in Europe and America? Again, from the Christian perspective, shouldn’t “Christendom” as opposed to “the West” be the more important moral community? Doesn’t Christendom encompass all of Latin America, much of sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia - while excluding half of Northern Europe? As Christians, why should you be so concerned about this world anyway?

Traditional Christians like to think only they are capable of defending the West from the cultural and racial degeneracy of liberal democracy. History shows otherwise. Everywhere in the West, Christians have collaborated with liberals and propped up the status quo. In the USA, Christians have propped up the conservative movement and the Republican Party which is 100% committed to anti-racism, multiculturalism, and liberal capitalist democracy for 40 years now. In Central Europe, Christian Democrats are a powerful force in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Nothing good seems to be coming out of there. Gay marriage is legal in Christian Spain. In Northern Europe, Christians have folded completely before the advance of liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy in the West has only fought off four serious challenges over the past hundred years: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and Islam. 4/4 were secular, atheist, or non-Christian. Does that not tell you something? Christians will keep rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s until we all expire in sea of liberalism and white guilt. An enormous number of American evangelicals are smug in their confidence that Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes; that they will be raptured up to Heaven while the rest of us are cast down into hellfire. This is the guiding assumption behind their politics.

The West is the Camp of the Saints because of Christianity, not Darwinism. A thorough detox of nihilism could actually be a good prescription for the masochistic Victorians and the holy rollers amongst us. It seems to be a prerequisite for clear thinking.

By on 1/17/08 at 11:15 pm

Larry,

OK. I know you get through a lot of material in a day, and you’re inevitably going to get careless sometimes. It’s probably a good thing that your comment made me delve into this issue, as I need to sort out my position on it.

By on 1/17/08 at 11:20 pm

Stephen Jay Gould is probably the worst authority you could cite to refute creationism.

His “Mismeasure of Man” has been used as a soporific to allow white intellectuals to go back to sleep after “The Bell Curve” nearly woke them up. It includes all the canards of the Left, particularly about race and IQ.

Steve Sailer (who is a race realist but not pro-white) has done heroic work refuting him and puncturing his inflated reputation.

By Irish on 1/17/08 at 11:38 pm

Sure, Gould was the enemy of race realism and sociobiology, and his positions on both of those fields have been rightly discredited by any number of scholars, including J. P. Rushton, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. However, I think that the essay of his that I linked to, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” is a wonderfully compact treatment of the philosophical issues at stake in the evolution/creationism debate and summary of the evidence for evolution.

By on 1/18/08 at 12:16 am

Irish - Mismeasure of Man was written 10 years before the Bell Curve, and just because you disagree with Gould on IQ tests doesn’t mean he is wrong on every issue. I happen to disagree with his punctuated equilibrium theorem which is Marxist derived.

Question for creationists like Lawrence Auster: Aren’t there parallels between creationism and denying differences between intelligence? Creationists are blinded by their religion into believing in creationism, which has no scientific basis, and leftists are blinded by their liberalism into believing there are no heritable differences in intelligence among different races. In both cases, ideology or religion influences scientific conclusions. Also, if God created people by breathing into dust, why didn’t He create every race with the same intellectual abilities and avoid all the problems we have today?

Also, one should read Gould on how belief in the Bible’s divinity is compatible with belief in evolution.

By ajo on 1/18/08 at 12:29 am

Jobling - I wouldn’t think Dawkins’ views on race coincides with yours, based on this article. Hatred of Christianity (and religion in general) and denial of the existence of race are often both agendas of the left as well as those of Dawkins.

By ajo on 1/18/08 at 12:37 am

I sent an e-mail to Auster, but he declined to post it, so I will reproduce it here.

Subject: Darwinism, racialism and religion

I’m not a racialist, but I am a self-described “human biodiversity realist” and a non-believer. I agree that Western Christianity built our civilization and that rejecting it rarely led to good things (see Jacobin France or Bolshevist Russia). It is for that reason I am not a secularist and hope merely to free-ride off the religious folks who sustain our society. Right now many atheists are feeling triumphant over the long, losing battle religion has been fighting since its peak in the Middle Ages, but if they took their Darwin seriously they would recognize that the future is going to look like Phillip Longman’s Return of Patriarchy. Some may ask why I do not abandon Darwinist reductionist materialism and accept religion, and the answer is that I cannot. I do not believe the latter is true and/or the former is false and could not force myself otherwise, regardless of any argumentum ad consequentiam.

In response to Trevor, it is silly to think we must believe other races are “less than human”. Are we to believe certain breeds of dog are “less than canine”? It is merely the case for us that “human” doesn’t imply what it might for his hypothetical racist. The notion of something being “less evolved” (which I ascribe to the hypothetical racist rather than Trevor) betrays an ignorance of evolution common among racists. Selection acts constantly and it does not have any ultimate goal, only favoring that which creates more copies of some gene. Plants, dogs and all races of people are evolved for their own different historical circumstances.

By on 1/18/08 at 2:40 am

I didn’t “decline” to post TCCP’s e-mail, I’m dealing with a lot of discussions at my website, or maybe he hasn’t noticed. If a commenter has sent a good e-mail and I haven’t posted it after a day or two, a friendly query/reminder should suffice, rather than going to another website and telling people that I “declined” to post his entirely unobjectionable e-mail.

By on 1/18/08 at 11:01 am

Auster just e-mailed me about my note that he had “declined” (a better way to put it is just that it isn’t up at VFR presently) to post my above e-mail. It may have mislead people into believing Auster found it in some way objectionable, which he says is not the case.

By on 1/18/08 at 11:17 am

Darwinism has its own amusing form of good cop / bad cop. We might call it non-teleological Darwin / teleological Darwin. And we see it at work in TGGP reply to Trevor H., the original commenter at the VFR discussion. On one hand, faced with the charge of racism, the Darwinians tell us that they believe that there is absolutely no purpose in evolution, no direction , it’s simply about variations producing organisms that can better survive and produce more offspring. So there can be no notion of superiority or racial supremacism. On the other hand, central to Darwinian belief and rhetoric is the notion of a grand teleological project leading to better organisms and species, as reflected in the full title of Darwin’s book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” Favored races.

And indeed how could the inference of teleology and thus of superiority be avoided, given the actual fact that life on earth has become steadily more complex and higher? A mammal, for example, maintaining its own body temperature, mating with the opposite sex, carrying its young within it, raising and nurturing its young to adulthood, does not just live longer than a fish, it represents vastly higher order of existence than a fish. And of course the whole appeal of Darwinism was that it supposedly supplies a naturalistic explanation for this grand progress of life, culminating in the progress from ape to man. (Look at the cover of this edition of Origin of Species at Amazon.) Yet the contradiction within Darwinism is seen in the way the Darwinists simultaneously evoke the sense of wonder over the fact that mere random mutation and natural selection could have produced the higher and higher forms of life, while at the same time, faced with the liberal charge that they are racists, they deny that there is such a thing as purpose and “higher.”

The teleological side of the Darwinian movement does most certainly value the superiority of the more “highly evolved,” the favored races, over the backwardness of the less evolved, the disfavored races. And it is further the case, as Trevor argues, that in the absence of Christianity or Christian-based belief, the notion of “more evolved,” more favored races easily gets connected—and has repeatedly been connected—with the idea that the favored races of man are more human, the less favored less human.

By on 1/18/08 at 12:01 pm

With respect for Ian Jobling, I’m surprised at the weakness of his article, surprised that he would advance such lame arguments and think they were persuasive.

I’m not going to go into all of it now, but just for starters take the way he misrepresents my position. First, he calls my position “creationism,” a view I have never supported or identitied myself with (in fact I’m unfamiliar with creationism except in the most general way and have never read creationist literature).

But that’s a triviality. What’s amazing is that, after I have written, over and over, that we DO NOT KNOW HOW LIFE ORIGINATED AND HOW NEW SPECIES APPEARED, his main argument against my position is that I have no “proof” for my “theory,” and therefore his theory is better.

So it’s as though he hasn’t read or understood me at all.

And what do his arguments for Darwinism add up to? Read again his argument for the Darwinian creation of the cilium. The individual parts of the cilium “could” have evolved by random mutation and natural selection one by one in separate organisms, before the cilium was brought together in its final form. That’s it, folks! That’s not even a “story.” It’s just a “coulda.” But his “coulda,” he says, is more plausible and explains more than my supposed creationist theory, and therefore his “coulda” is true.

By on 1/18/08 at 2:31 pm

My reply to Auster is already up at the original VFR page, but I will reproduce it here for readers, along with his comments and my reply to them.

Me: The purpose or direction is evolution (as far as there can be said to be one) is that which creates more copies of the vehicle of replication, the gene. As Darwinism and racism are somewhat orthogonal, so that one can be a racist or non-racist Darwinian and vice-versa (I would say that the majority of people who lived before Darwin were racist, and it is not surprising people would latch onto it as a justification for a belief they would have had anyway), though more education tends to be associated with Darwinism and against racism. A Darwinian would certainly not espouse racial essentialism though. Any notion of superiority or inferiority (in general, though one could say cheetahs have a superior speed over tortoises) would be a normative one and thus outside the bounds of any science at all.

It is a bit misleading to say that life on earth has steadily gotten more and more “complex.” Most life is exceedingly simple. LA: Yes, and “most” of the matter in the universe is hydrogen atoms. Which means—what? That complexity is a myth? And the human genome is 35 percent identical to the orchid. Which means—what? That humans are 35 percent the same as orchids? Me: One scientist quipped that what nature reveals about God is that he has an extraordinary fondness for beetles. It is true that a complex lifeform is extremely unlikely to come together by chance and so the first one was extremely simple. Since then life has expanded in all sorts of directions and exploited many different niches which includes avenues of complexity. LA: “Avenues of complexity”? You mean something moving in a direction? Me: There is something of a limit to the complexity though due to mutation. Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses that here. At any rate, scientists do not view homo sapiens as any sort of culmination of evolution and to say we are the “most evolved” or “highest” would get a laugh. LA: Yes, you and your fellow Darwinians are so superior to the idea that man is superior. Me:As Charles Murray said regarding “Who wants to be an elephant?,” we are prone to thinking that certain things about us are special (like intelligence), but if some other species could contemplate evolution they would consider their own traits to be more so (in the Ancestor’s Tale Dawkins says elephants would be focused on proboscitude).

Darwin did indeed use the term “favored races.” What is a favored race? One that is not extinct! LA: So then all existing species and races are equally favored? As people of European descent are having below-replacement birth-rates it would seem that it is not we who are favored in a Darwinian sense, but the people of the Third World! I happen to like European civilization and I don’t think that’s only because I’m of Scots-Irish descent, LA: Why do you like European civilization? why do you like anything? How do you value anything? Given your idea that complexity is overstated, given your view of life that there is nothing better or higher than anything else, given attitude that the idea of man being higher than animals is laughable, given your view that beetles express the true meaning of the universe and are more typical of the universe than man, on what basis do you say that one thing is better than another? The fact is, given your beliefs, you have no right to like anything more than anything else. You certainly have no right to speak of your fondness for civilization, the product of man, whose very value, his “highness,” you just scoffed at. You have no right to be a parasite on a civilization the very basis of which you mock. Me: the revealed preference of much of humanity is that living here is preferable to their homes. However, that is again a subjective preference and not a matter of objective science and has little to do with Darwinism. Genes are selfish things that care for our enjoyment only to the extent that it encourages their reproduction. LA: Amazing how you, having denied any purpose or meaning in existence, refer to genes as selfish things that have an intention. Again, more spiritual parasitism. Your ideology denies all meaning and purpose, but you keep appealing to things that involve meaning and purpose. The fact is, you have no right to do that. Given your beliefs, you have no right to any moral preferences or civilizational values. You don’t even have the right to use human language, another “higher” human attribute that you sneer at. The only thing you have right to do is reproduce and die. Me: If we were happy all the time we would not bother to do so. Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses that in a number of posts, but this one is a good example.

Now answering Auster’s comments in order:

Complexity exists, it is just not the case that evolution selects for complexity at the sake of complexity. Complexity actually comes with costs so if some complexity ceased to give any advantage, it would be selected against. There are fish that somehow wound up in extremely dark caves. The fish started out with eyes (which would be more complex than no eyes) but after many generations they evolved back to sightlessness. Are the sightless fish “less evolved” than their ancestors? No, they are just differently adapted. I don’t know what it means to be “35 percent the same as orchids”. There can be very large changes in phenotype due to small changes in genotype, so it can be misleading to talk of shared percentages of DNA.

Think of avenues of complexity as an area in probability space. Evolution has created organisms that inhabit many different areas of that space with varying degrees of complexity.

I like human beings more than other species. If you asked me how many members of any non-human species I’d be willing to kill to prevent the death of a single human, it would be a mighty large number. That, however, is merely my subjective preference and not any reflection of a preference for humanity on the part of evolution, nature, the universe or whatever.

We could say that the existing species and races growing the fastest are the most favored. I don’t like to speak of species or races as the unit of selection as it is really genes that are being selected for and the outcome of that process of selection are the species/races we see.

The second Eliezer Yudkowsky post above explains where our preferences come from. You have to remember the distinction between the objective, which is what scientists study, and the subjective which an individual like myself merely feels. I don’t believe in rights at all, though I may speak of them in a positivist legal sense. If there was a God who disapproved of my actions, I would like Stirner disregard his opinion in favor of my own as after all he does the same for himself. I do not rely on being handed some “right” to do something, I seize it for myself. The civilization I am a parasite on may dislike my free-riding, but I enjoy free-riding and will continue to do so. That being said, I recognize that there will be limitations imposed on me and I don’t expect for others to co-operate or tolerate my egoism. I am open to a sort of contractarian resolution of our disparate interests, but that is merely a limitation of what I can get away with and not any sort of duty I will impose on myself if I can help it.

I explained my use of the term “selfish” applied to genes in another e-mail*. I discussed rights above, but you are flat wrong that I have any right to reproduce, and if the transhumanists are successful I may not have any right to die. It is precisely because organisms do not have the right to reproduce that many do not and their genes are removed from the pool. Also, remember the is-ought distinction and try to avoid the naturalistic fallacy. Rape exists in nature, but nobody infers from that any right to rape.

*The relevant portion of the other e-mail goes as follows: I tried to acknowledge at the beginning of my response that evolution doesn’t really have any intent or purpose but we can speak of it metaphorically. Similarly, the universe does not “want” to become more disorderly as per the second law of thermodynamics, fire does not “want” to spread and electrically charged objects do not “want” to become neutral, but we can think of them as if they do. A physics teacher of mine used to say that electrons “like” a positive charge and reaching one makes them “happy”, though of course not in any literal sense! If you would like me to avoid speaking in anthropomorphic metaphors, I could do so, but because our brains evolved to think about other people we are prone to doing that and it is an easy way to think.

By on 1/18/08 at 4:43 pm

Behe’s argument that the bacterial cilium and flagellum are “irreducibly complex” has been discredited for years now. Ken Miller takes out this claim below in a video presentation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

More here:

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design1/article.html http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html

Behe was embarrassed at the Dover trial when he was confronted with 58 peer-reviewed articles on the evolution of the immune system. Judge Jones mentioned it in his opinion:

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2006/ZZ/968immunologyinthespotlightat4212006.asp

“In fact, on cross-examination, Professor Behe was questioned concerning his 1996 claim that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. He was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not ‘good enough.’ We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution.”

Intelligent Design Creationism is dead. It has made no progress on the scientific front. Pro-ID candidates lost in Kansas and Ohio in the 2006 elections. Legally, it has been all downhill for ID since Dover.

As for Darwinism being teleological, that’s clearly not true; Darwinists do not argue that species or races have “final causes.” The fact that a given species might enjoy a competitive advantage relative to another in some specific environment and some point in history does not imply any higher purpose or divine plan at work in nature. Environmental conditions can easily change and scramble this. See the rise of mammals after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

By on 1/18/08 at 5:03 pm

The notion that a bunch of molecules suddenly appeared out of nowhere; from nothing; in what we call the infinite universe; then somehow got together; evolved on their own; and over time through mutation and random selection…out sprung mankind??? Ridiculous! Laughable! Something, or some entity that is beyond our finite human comprehension (a supernatural creator of who we do not understand the nature of) had to design, create, and set in motion the complex evolving universe we live in. For a lack of better terms: There is no plausible scientific explanation of how something can be created then evolve out of nothingness.

By Taryton on 1/18/08 at 8:06 pm

LA replies: Why do you like European civilization? why do you like anything? How do you value anything?

These are good questions. If you don’t mind, I would like to ask some of my own.

1.) Why do I like European civilization? Answer: I honestly don’t know. I simply feel attached to my ancestors and obligated to my descendants. The experience is intuitive. Most humans throughout history - the vast majority of whom were non-Christians - have felt the same way. This strongly suggests a natural, biological process is at work - kinship.

• Here’s my question. Why do you feel attached to European civilization? Europe is not identical with Christianity. Let’s review the number of atheists and agnostics in Europe.

http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html

Sweden: 46-85%
Denmark: 43-80% Norway: 31-72%
Czech Republic: 54-61% Finland: 28-60% France: 43-54% Estonia: 49% Germany: 41-49% Russia: 24-48% Hungary: 32-46% Netherlands: 39-44%
Britain: 31-44% Belgium: 42-43% Bulgaria: 34-40% Slovenia: 35-38% Latvia: 20-29% Slovakia: 10-28% Switzerland: 17-27% Austria: 18-26% Spain: 15-24% Iceland: 16-23% Ukraine: 20% Belarus: 17% Greece: 16% Italy: 6-15% Portugal: 4-9%
Croatia: 7%

• Why do you feel attached to people, on the basis of your religion, who do not share your religion, as opposed to your fellow non-white Catholics? That makes no sense.

2.) Why do you like anything? Why do you value anything?

Answer: These are silly questions. It’s exactly like asking: why does food taste good? Why do you think a woman is attractive? Why do you enjoy fresh air? You just do.

All human beings, irrespective of their religion, have such preferences and prejudices. We couldn’t function in this world otherwise. Again, this is a natural process at work. Non-Christians have values. They enjoy meaningful, purposeful lives. Values, meaning, and purpose do not come from Christianity.

• How have you derived your values from Christianity? Christ’s message was aracial. Nowhere did he single out “Europeans,” “the West,” or “the white race” for praise. There is no racial or ethnic litmus test to being a Christian. There never was. As you know, the highest authorities in the Catholic Church have condemned racial prejudice and now insist that “migration” is a “human right.” If your values are derived from Catholicism, why are you bucking the Catholic Church on this issue? European Catholics have not “traditionally” attached importance to their racial identity either. This is an American national custom.

Given your idea that complexity is overstated, given your view of life that there is nothing better or higher than anything else, given attitude that the idea of man being higher than animals is laughable, given your view that beetles express the true meaning of the universe and are more typical of the universe than man, on what basis do you say that one thing is better than another?

He is only saying that humans are not “objectively” or “transcendentally” better than beetles. This in no way implies that he is indifferent to the two. Values are subjective. They are part of us - like our sense of taste, the colors that we see, consciousness, emotions, etc.

Which do you prefer? A sports car or an SUV? The color red or the color blue? You probably have definite tastes on any number of issues where your religion provides you with no guidance. The ultimate basis of all this is subjective aesthetic preference. That’s just as true for Christians as it is of atheists.

The fact is, given your beliefs, you have no right to like anything more than anything else.

According to the Bible, the earth is surrounded by a solid firmament and rests on pillars which God shakes when he gets angry (the cause of earthquakes). The entire universe is several thousand years old. Most life on our planet was destroyed in a catastrophic deluge sometime during the Egyptian Old Kingdom. All extraterrestrial bodies - the sun, the planets, the stars - are in orbit of a fixed earth (which was created before the sun).

The Bible is full of such wonderful Iron Age insights - the origin of the sexes for example. Women were magically created from the rib of a man. Animal and plant life were created for the “purpose” of serving our needs. I’m not sure exactly what the “purpose” of viruses are, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. We still don’t know the “purpose” of the 99%+ of species which are now extinct.

Christians would have us believe that Genesis is a natural history text divinely inspired by the creator of the universe. Yet the authors of the Bible were ignorant of the most elementary facts about the natural world - things that most of us learn in 6th grade.

^^ This is the “foundation” Christianity rests on. The ability to discriminate is clearly not derived from that religion.

You certainly have no right to speak of your fondness for civilization, the product of man, whose very value, his “highness,” you just scoffed at.

Isn’t that exactly what St. Augustine did? Didn’t he write a book - one of the most important texts in the history of Western Christendom - scoffing at the civilization of man? I’m referring to Rome which had recently been sacked by the Visigoths in his day. A true Christian would argue that this world doesn’t matter; that it will soon expire, and that we should direct our lives towards attaining salvation in the Kingdom of Heaven. Indeed, that is exactly what the early Christians did, especially the desert fanatics like Anthony or Simeon Stylites. Monasticism was based on the REJECTION of European civilization.

You have no right to be a parasite on a civilization the very basis of which you mock.

Christianity is not the basis of our civilization. The earliest Christians arrived in a Europe that was already civilized and flourishing under Augustus. Paul describes his furious arguments with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in his letters. Judea was a backwater province of the Roman Empire.

The triumph of Christianity under Justinian and Theodosius was a catastrophe for European civilization. It was immediately followed by the Dark Ages. Charles Freeman does a good job of describing this in his book The Closing of the Western Mind. Southern Europe didn’t recover to its Roman level of economic development for over a thousand years.

Speaking of parasites, the natural sciences in Europe and North America are dominated by atheists and agnostics. Is there any major branch of science - biology, geology, astronomy, physics - that still takes its cues from Christianity?

By on 1/19/08 at 12:44 pm

In response to Lawrence Auster, I intended the term “creationism” to include “intelligent design” theory, which you do agree with (see the links to your work in the body of this entry). I’ve now clarified this by adding to the entry:

By “creationism” I mean any biological theory that asserts that supernatural intervention into nature was required for life to develop into its current form. Creationism thus includes “intelligent design” theory, which posits that evolution was guided by a supernatural hand.

Intelligent design theory and classical creationism possess the same basic weakness: they are untestable theories, and thus cannot hope to have any scientific validity.

In your remarks on the evolution of the cilium, you suggest that since Darwinists don’t know exactly how the cilium evolved, Darwinism must be an invalid theory. The assumption behind that statement is that, unless a theory can give a certain and complete explanation of every aspect of its subject matter, then the theory is invalid. I doubt there is any scientific theory that can meet this standard. Your principles then would require you to reject not merely Darwinism, but the whole of scientific knowledge.

The laws of physics determine the movement of molecules, but no physicist would be able to deduce where a molecule of water in the ocean was located a week ago from its position today. That a physicist cannot tell us this does not invalidate the laws of physics. Rather, it merely indicates that you need more than a good theory to explain any given state of affairs: you need a lot of empirical information that may be absent. Even if you have all the information, the problem may still be too complex for humans to solve. In this case, the physicist would need to know the exact movement of all the other molecules in the ocean over the past week, and a computer more powerful than any in existence to calculate the path of our molecule.

That some mysteries are insoluble thus does not invalidate a scientific theory. A theory can be invalidated, however, by showing that phenomena that would be impossible if the theory were true do in fact occur. If objects started disappearing and reappearing immediately miles from their current location, then that might well invalidate the current laws of physics. Similarly, if we saw complex life forms appearing suddenly out of nothingness, that would invalidate Darwinism. But we don’t see either of these things.

If Behe is to make his case that irreducible complexity disproves Darwinism, he must prove that irreducible complexity would be impossible, or so unlikely as to be effectively impossible, if Darwinism were true. All Darwinists have to do to refute this attack is to show that natural and sexual selection could plausibly result in irreducibly complex mechanisms. I showed there were plausible theories of the evolution of the cilium in my post.

The criterion for scientific acceptance of a theory is that it explains more than any other theory, not that it explains everything. And Darwinism explains more about how life developed than any other theory: the fossil record and the similarities among organisms are evidence in favor of Darwinism, as are direct observations of evolutionary change. Perhaps the best piece of evidence though is non-functional traits of organisms that are clearly throwbacks to earlier evolutionary forms. This page from the TalkOrigins website gives scads of examples of such traits. Baleen whale calves have teeth that are retracted by the time they reach adulthood. These whales eat plankton, so they have no need for teeth. Rather, teeth briefly develop because the whale evolved from an animal that does have teeth in its adult form. Natural selection never entirely weeded out the genes that cause teeth to develop because this was unnecessary. Despite these useless temporary teeth, baleen whales are perfectly able to survive and reproduce, so the calves keep on growing teeth for generation after generation. Similarly, many snakes have the bone structures of legs beneath their skin because snakes evolved from lizards. Once again, these vestigial legs are useless. It is very easy to explain such phenomena from a Darwinian perspective, but difficult from a creationist perspective. Why would God burden animals with useless traits?

Given that Darwinism explains so much about living things, scientists give it the benefit of the doubt, and there is a heavy onus of proof on challenger theories like intelligent design that they clearly do not meet. It is rational to prefer a theory that explains some things over a theory that explains nothing. As I say in the article:

And here we lay our finger the silliness of creationism: creationists prefer a theory that explains nothing at all about the world to a theory that doesn’t explain everything. They prefer complete ignorance to partial and imperfect knowledge. They prefer a theory that answers all our questions about nature with the same leaden phrase—“Because that’s how God wanted it”—to a theory that can illuminate, albeit partially and imperfectly, the complex causal network that gave rise to the organisms we see around us.

Taryton’s contention that Darwinists believe that life originated “out of nothingness” is very far from the mark. Darwinists life originated from primitive organic molecules. Once again, although biologists are not certain how life originated, there are plausible theories of the origin of life summarized here. I warn you, though, this article is much harder to understand than Genesis!

Today Auster has been developing a theme that will be familiar to all readers of View from the Right: Darwinism is a form of materialism, and materialism provides no basis for value judgments. Darwinists, in Auster’s words, “deny the existence of morality, deny the basis of civilization, put man on the level of beetles.” This a very different type of argument, however, and will have to be dealt with in a new post.

By on 1/19/08 at 2:20 pm

I replied to Mr. Nock that he didn’t have the right to mock and sneer at the idea of humanity, deny complexity, deny the higher, deny the existence of morality, deny the basis of civilization, put man on the level of beetles, and then speak of his “liking” European civilization.

Why does Auster, a Roman Catholic, continue to use the term “European civilization” as opposed to “Christendom”? If we were to take his definition seriously, then obviously Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines are more a part of his “civilization” than Norway, Sweden, or England.

Auster claims that a universal religion is the “basis” of our civilization. Let’s grant his premise. It follows that sub-Saharan Africans or South Asians could have created European civilization if they had the proper religious tutelage.

He replied he didn’t believe that there is such a thing as rights. I said of course there are. If I believe that a person doesn’t have the right to say certain things, I stop conversing with him and posting his comments at my site.

Dispensing with the commentator is certainly easier than making a persuasive metaphysical argument for “human rights” or creationism.

I think it is time for conservatives and traditionalists to call the bluff of liberals, post-modernists, and material reductionists.

I would be happy to debate the merits of “conservatism” with you. From my perspective, “conservatives” have accomplished nothing over the past fifty years. Our situation has gone from bad to worse - even though “conservatives” have been empowered throughout much of this period.

It is telling that the vast majority of “conservatives” exclude racialists from their websites, but nevertheless continue to engage liberals, neocons, and multiculturalists. Whose side are you really on? It takes a conservative to believe that a flake like Mitt Romney will save us all.

For example, if a deconstructionist tells us that there is no truth and that words do not correspond with things, then he should be informed that by his own testimony nothing he says corresponds with reality and there’s no reason to go on listening to him.

Likewise, there is no point in arguing with people who dispense with rational argument and assume their conclusions on the basis of faith. X is true because Jesus, the Bible, or the Pope says so is not a valid argument.

Liberals, post-modernists, and material reductionists undercut the very basis of morality and civilization, yet at the same time want to keep getting the benefits of morality and civilization.

Civilization had existed for thousands of years before the birth of Christianity. The earliest Christians arrived in a Europe that was already highly civilized - and proceeded to wreck it - literally. Christianity wasn’t the basis of Egyptian, Persian, Classical, Indian, Islamic, Chinese, or Japanese civilization. Civilization does not come from Christianity. The rise of cities and urban culture is largely based on economic factors like trade, technology, and agriculture.

Morality does not come from Christianity either. All human populations throughout history have had moral beliefs. Atheists and agnostics who reject the supernatural still have moral beliefs. The basis of morality in every culture, in every society, at every point in history are custom and innate moral sentiment. That’s just as true of Christians as it is of atheists. The “morality” that Christians subscribe to has changed radically over the past five centuries; over the past five decades, in fact.

Are Christians really the best exemplars of morality? The demographics of America’s prisons suggest otherwise. Murderers, rapists, and thieves are far more likely to be Christians than atheists. Christians are more likely to live in poverty, have higher infant mortality, suffer from disease, live shorter lives, abuse their spouses and children, etc. Religiosity is negatively correlated with human development. The most secular, agnostic, atheist nations - most of them are in Northern Europe - simultaneously enjoy the highest standard of living in the world.

How is that if we are living off the morality and civilization of the faithful? Why are atheists and agnostics so overrepresented amongst the wealthy, the educated, the productive law-abiding citizens, the great scientists - the people who push our civilization forward?

They have no right to do that, and they need to be told this. We need to tell them that we will not continue allowing them to enjoy their unprincipled exceptions.

Why do you identify “European civilization” with Christianity? 1/2 of Northern Europeans are atheists or agnostics. Still more are secularists. As a Christian, why are you so concerned about race? Why are you so concerned with this world? The object of your attention should be the salvation of your immortal soul - in the next world. All humans have souls and are capable of being saved (in the context of Catholicism). God doesn’t have a racial litmus test.

Please reflect upon your own principles. What would the Church Fathers say about your emphasis upon “European civilization,” as opposed to the Kingdom of Heaven? You write almost exclusively about the former, not the latter. This is Christian? I don’t think so.

By on 1/19/08 at 2:25 pm

It was my impression that Auster was an Episcopalian, not a Catholic. That is funny to me, because as John Derbyshire has remarked, being an Anglican/Episcopalian means barely being a Christian at all. I’ve still got enough left-over Fred Phelps ultracalvinism in me to be disturbed by their lack of faith.

Christianity was not immediately followed by the Dark Ages. Rome had been declining for some time (Julius Caesar was destroying the Republic well before Christ) and though the religion was much more popular in urban areas (“pagan” originally meant a person from a rural area) the tribes that sacked Rome were themselves Christian (albeit of the Arian rather than Catholic variety)! The thoroughly Orthodox Byzantine Empire lasted quite a long time, preserving Roman civilization and serving as a bulwark against enemies outside Europe. Furthermore, most historians today do not refer to a “Dark Age” except perhaps in reference to post-Odyssey pre-Homer Greece.

If objects started disappearing and reappearing immediately miles from their current location, then that might well invalidate the current laws of physics. Similarly, if we saw complex life forms appearing suddenly out of nothingness, that would invalidate Darwinism. Both of those things are technically possible according to quantum physics, just incredibly unlikely. Evolution itself depends on unlikely events, but not quite that unlikely!

When I was talking about belief in rights, I assumed we were talking metaphysics (which to a positivist like me is all meaningless) rather than whether my comments would appear at his site (which matters less than otherwise given that I can post freely here).

Christianity may not be the basis for every civilization, but none of those civilizations was reductionist materialist either. Greece had folks like Epicurus who was nearly that, but it was a minority school of thought and they still had Socrates killed for blasphemy. Europe today is not reductionist materialist or really “atheist”. See Post-Christian but not secular Europe with Part 2 here.

Vox Day has different stats on atheists in prison. The blogger known as “agnostic” backs up what Vox says about charitability here. I discussed the moral behavior of atheists here.

By on 1/19/08 at 4:32 pm

There has been some confusion over at VFR and I would like to explain myself further. Since this site has a working comment feature and updates more easily, I will make use of it:

I am reading the thread at your site about me, and it seems what I have said is not being represented correctly, perhaps because I did a poor jobs of elaborating it.

While I do believe that there is no such thing as something “more evolved” or “higher”, I do believe in objective complexity, whose measurement is given to us by Kolmogorov. I just don’t think more complex things are “more evolved” or “higher”. I gave the example of the sightless cave-fish earlier. They are less complex. Are they “less evolved” or “lower” than their ancestors?

When I said I did not believe in rights, I thought we were discussing natural rights. I certainly do believe that legal rights exist in the positivist sense, and being distrustful of government unconstrained by law I am glad they exist. I recognize that as administrator of VFR you can choose what to post and you may also choose to ignore me.

I have never claimed not to believe in truth. I am not a post-modernist, but a modernist. I believe in a very sharp distinction between the objective or positive and the subjective or normative. The post-modernist assault on that distinction is a revolt against modernism.

By on 1/19/08 at 10:58 pm

Yes, TGGP, Auster is totally unable to look at this issue objectively and is mindlessly abusing you. I’ve thought a lot about comment moderation policies in my time, but it never occurred to me to not to post comments because someone didn’t have the right to make them!

See the thread here.

By on 1/19/08 at 11:27 pm

I don’t think Auster is actually asserting that he will stop posting comments he disagrees with, just that he has the authority to do so if he wishes. When I said I didn’t recognize his authority, I meant when it came to holding an opinion in general and not to expressing it at VFR.

By on 1/19/08 at 11:56 pm

Auster’s fellow Christians picked John McCain in the South Carolina primary. Just thought I would mention that. Good thing we have these conservatives around to save the white race. They’re doing a fantastic job!

By on 1/19/08 at 11:59 pm

Charlie Prince,

Well, I think that’s unfair to Auster, as he’s been trying to persuade Christians not to vote for McCain and to convert them to race realism. I also prefer the way Christians vote to the way atheists do!

By on 1/20/08 at 12:32 am

Darwininian evolution is a concept so elegant,simple and with such incredible explanatory power that the only reason one would disbelieve it, is a desperate desire for faith in an afterlife. A random, unfeeling, and unthinking universe is a scary thing and it is not surprising that people the world over all seem to have some form of religious instinct developed to varying degrees.

All this talk of ‘irreducible’ complexity is of course a complete nonsense. Complex organisms can arise from random processes, and I believe this can be demonstrated by computer simulation. A virtual environment can be produced and very simple virtual organisms introduced into this environment. The organisms randomly change form and shape, and produce ‘offspring.’ Over ‘generations’ morphological changes can be observed with organisms ‘evolving’ into creatures increasingly more complex and more suited to their environment. I believe Dawkins has done some work in this area - I wonder if anyone else here has heard of this type of research?

By Sam on 1/20/08 at 3:31 am

I gave Ian Jobling a pass on the hostile title he gave this thread, “Auster’s folly.” I thought he used such language because he was momentarily upset over his misimpression that I had said that he saw “less evolved” people as less human. But now I see that language inconsistent with debate has continued.

Thus Mr. Jobling writes: “Yes, TGGP, Auster is totally unable to look at this issue objectively and is mindlessly abusing you.”

How strange that Mr. Jobling would seek a debate with me, and simultaneously use language that makes continued debate impossible.

I’m disappointed by that, and I’m also disappointed that Ian Jobling has so badly misunderstood the point I made to “Albert Nock” at my site. If Mr. Nock (who posts here as TGGP) and Mr. Jobling think that I was saying that I would not post comments merely because I disagree with them, then they not only have not been reading VFR for the last several years, but they lack the ability to understand what they are reading. It is not possible to have a discussion with people who cannot understand, and who woefully distort, the plain meaning of written words. I suggest that people read again what I said to Mr. Nock at my site.

As for Charlie Prince’s comment, touché. However, it’s not so much an embarrassment to the South Carolina Republicans as Christians, but to them as conservatives. Supposedly the conservative have been more riled up about illegal immigration than any other issue; yet now they go ahead and vote for the ultimate champion of open borders and smearer of open borders opponents.

By on 1/20/08 at 3:36 am

Lawrence Auster,

You say in your post that TGGP (going by the name of Albert Jay Nock on View from the Right), “didn’t have the right to mock and sneer at the idea of humanity, deny complexity, deny the higher, deny the existence of morality, deny the basis of civilization, put man on the level of beetles…”

Since TGGP was doing none of these things, I think your rant can fairly be called mindless abuse.

Then there’s this gem:

“[Nock] replied he didn’t believe that there is such a thing as rights. I said of course there are.”

And that’s that! Auster says, “Let there be rights!” And there were rights!

It is your shameless distortions of the positions of your opponents and your furious browbeating of them that makes debate impossible. What a performance!

By on 1/20/08 at 9:46 am

The most infuriating aspect of Auster’s performance is this: I spend hours constructing a carefully reasoned defense of Darwinism both in my original post and in my long comment of yesterday; other commenters construct admirably reasoned defenses of Darwinism as well. Rather than confronting this work, Auster scans the page for an excuse to feel insulted, and stomps off in indignation, while accusing us of being incapable of ethical debate.

Also, Auster proves himself incapable of ethical treatment of Darwinists by retracting the appropriate apology he made to me for the libel that was the immediate cause of this entry. He apologized for agreeing with a commenter that Darwinism inevitably leads people to see some races as less than human. Subsequently, he retracted his apology by means of the following piece of extremely subtle reasoning: he said he was right all along that Darwinism leads to dehumanization of some races, although some Darwinists themselves might not fall prey to this error because they aren’t really Darwinists, even though they think they are. Or something like that.

Auster’s abhorrence of Darwinism drives his fancy off into remote regions of unreality. Today’s Darwinists are virtually all liberals, which means that their attitude towards non-whites is the very opposite of callous dehumanization; rather, liberals’ sin is that they glorify non-whites and apologize for their failings and vices. Auster’s willingness to invert reality shows that he will clutch at any excuse to vilify Darwinism.

By on 1/20/08 at 11:26 am

I think it should be clear from my earlier comments that I did not think Auster had or was going to adopt an echo-chamber policy at VFR, only that it is his site and if he chose to do he could.

To me it seems obvious that rather than Darwinism, it is racialism that seems most likely to cause one to view other races as “less than human”. At the same time I recognize this is not necessarily the case. Charles Lindbergh made race an important part of his world-view and so could be described as a “racialist”, but even as he feared the “yellow menace” of Japan and flew combat missions against them he deplored the violence inflicted on them and attitude taken by of his comrades in arms that they were sub-human. I discuss that at my blog here.

By on 1/20/08 at 3:40 pm

I’ll just add that, despite this spat we’re having, I still respect and admire Lawrence Auster’s work. He’s taken a leading role in formulating a mature and ethical philosophy of race realism.

By on 1/20/08 at 5:07 pm

Auster is right about 70% of the time. I don’t have any personal animosity against him. I enjoy reading his blog. If he were right on this issue, we would not be having this conversation.

Darwinism is not synonymous with nihilism. Darwinists are actually overrepresented amongst racialists (the initial point made by the commentator). The inverse is true. Darwinian materialists are more amenable to racialism/race realism than Christians are.

By on 1/20/08 at 5:35 pm

TGGP:

“That, however, is merely my subjective preference and not any reflection of a preference for humanity on the part of evolution, nature, the universe or whatever.”

Your arguments are like many I have heard before. I had to laugh, though. You outline the resounding nothingness of materialism so well. The problem with the materialist argument, which Auster is trying to point out, is an insufficient appreciation of the “subjective”. Darwinian philosophy is like behaviorism. It is obvious that mind exists, and something is happening in the mind, but behaviorism claims that the person is simply a black box. As for materialism, it is obvious that there is more than matter; there are ideas. We cannot get out of the ideal realm, because we are metaphysical beings. We cannot think or say anything without participating in the abstract realm. Thus, the object of the Darwinian materialists is to deny the existence of mind from within mind itself.

By on 1/20/08 at 5:56 pm

The mind or consciousness is what the brain does, and the brain itself is material. Ideas have material instantiation in the form of brains. Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses that here.

By on 1/20/08 at 7:00 pm

As a non-corporeal being, why don’t you dispense with your material brain? You don’t require the material brain to process information. It’s not clear why a metaphysical being like yourself should be restrained by your physical body.

Why don’t you test this theory? Just project yourself outside of your physical body. I once saw this happen on an episode of the X-Files. Prove the materialists wrong.

By on 1/20/08 at 7:29 pm

Ian Jobling,

I find your arguments careful and well thought out; I disagree, however, with the emphasis on Darwinian thought, here and in your essay on the significance of cold climate on racial difference. The problem is that, as Auster has pointed out, Darwinism and Christianity are incompatible. The Christian must believe that God had something to do with creation. Thus, all Christians are “creationists”. And since Christians are in the majority, if Darwinism is the foundation of a racial political agenda, it will not garner much support. It is hard enough to get people to accept racial difference, etc; would you try to convince them to renounce their religion as well?

By on 1/20/08 at 7:44 pm

“Just project yourself outside of your physical body. I once saw this happen on an episode of the X-Files.”

Yes, I can do that. I learned it in ‘Nam …

But I’m not saying the algorithm can be separate from the thing. But given the materialist assumptions, one could have a “brain” made from transistors, molecular machines, quantum devices, or perhaps an incredibly complex device made of pipes and valves; the brain is different, but the algorithm is the same. But what is the algorithm? Is it material? It is a thing, but not matter. That’s what I mean by “metaphysical”. From the idealist standpoint, we are in the same class of things as algorithms. This applies even at the level of the gene. What is passed from generation to generation? The nucleotides themselves? No, the pattern. But the pattern is not a material thing.

By on 1/20/08 at 9:24 pm

Hran,

Let them believe in “theistic evolution” like Ken Miller and Francis Collins.

By on 1/20/08 at 9:47 pm

An algorithm is a procedure, so it is something matter does. Of course, according to Einstein matter and energy are really one so the distinction is not that sharp.

By on 1/21/08 at 2:10 am

ajo, The Mismeasure of Man may have been written ten years before The Bell Curve, but its 1996 edition [explicitly marketed itself] (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Mismeasure.png) as “The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve”.

By Irish on 1/21/08 at 2:35 am

Auster has posted a reply to this thread at VFR. Once again, instead of seeking to understand and reply to my carefully elaborated arguments about Darwinism, and those of other posters, he complains about how offended he was by my vigorously expressed objections to his maltreatment of his Darwinian interlocutors. I think that if Auster’s case was stronger, he would focus less on feelings and etiquette and more on substance.

By on 1/22/08 at 9:28 pm

Auster’s reply was basically his personal interpretation of the Bible. It was very persuasive. I now believe Christ turned water into wine.

By Sameer on 1/22/08 at 10:52 pm

God is a concept so elegant, simple and with such incredible explanatory power that the only reason one would disbelieve it, is a desperate desire to act only according to one’s own whims. An all-knowing, all-powerful God is a scary thing and it is not surprising that people the world over all rebel against it to varying degrees.

By Anonymous on 1/23/08 at 4:25 pm

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I was under the impression you were not interested in continuing this debate. Your response has clarified several misunderstandings on my end. I now have a better idea of where you are coming from.

1.) You are not deriving racialism from Christianity.

• I share this view. Jesus Christ was not a racial theorist. Neither were the authors of the Gospels. The Old Testament is largely silent on the race question. The so-called “Curse of Ham” which was invoked to justify racial chattel slavery is based on a strained interpretation of the Bible. It had more to do with early modern economic imperatives than original intent. I am sure you would agree that the roots of racialism trace back to a peculiarly modern stream of thought; that Christianity (in the form of Genesis) is not the “foundation” of racialism.

2.) You believe that racialism is compatible with Christianity.

• I agree. The American Founders shared your view. They married racialism to their Christianity/Deism and republican political ideology. There are plenty of Christian racialists around today. Are they capable of defending the West? Absolutely. I haven’t denied this.

3.) You stress that Christianity must be understood within its proper context.

• This is an excellent point. I’m not disputing any of this.

Why then have I denied that racialism can be based on Christianity?

Last night I caught a fascinating show on The History Channel called Life After People. The encore is coming on tomorrow.

http://www.history.com/minisite.do?contenttype=MinisiteGeneric&contenttypeid=57582&displayorder=1&miniid=57517

It provides an excellent metaphor of how I understand racialism, its relationship to Christianity, and the tragic state of the West. Suppose that all humans vanished from the face of the earth. What would become of the world? What would happen to everything we leave behind?

Without regular human maintenance, nature would annihilate even the most colossal urban skyscrapers within 300 years. The landscape of New York City would quickly revert to what it must have looked like in the seventeenth century. The paint around the the steel would crack and peel off. The great steel skeleton supporting the skyscraper would corrode and begin to expand. That would crack the concrete facade - chunks of which would start to fall off. Eventually, the whole leering structure would be pulled down by its own gravity.

This is what has happened to us. Like my skyscraper, our culture required regular maintenance to remain healthy. We refused to perform these routine tasks because of our ideological commitment to “liberty” and “equality.” The old structure is now probably beyond repair. It has been devoured from within by the internal tensions of its own elements.

Christianity resembles the steel. Without that indispensable context you mention, it quickly “oxidizes” into something else: the liberalism and secular humanism which pushes against the foundations of our society. It expands until it cracks the racial and ethnic shell. The building becomes exposed to the elements and catches fire. Then comes the inevitable collapse. Left behind is a brownish residue of concentrate universalism, egalitarianism, and humanism.

Moral of the story: the original marriage of racialism to Christianity was unnatural, although not impossible. It required virtue and high maintenance. The genie is now out of the bottle. I cannot fathom (1.) how it will be put back in or (2.) why we would desire to repeat this experience.

By on 1/23/08 at 5:11 pm

Re: teleology.

We agree that Darwinism is non-teleological. I think you are misunderstanding our position though. Human behavior is naturally goal directed. This is not derived from Darwinism. It is not being imported into Darwinism. Rather, it is a subjective default human quality like our ability to see colors or the way food tastes to us. It is an illusion generated by the human mind and has no basis in objective, external reality.

You will probably argue “well, that leads to nihilism.” In practice, it doesn’t. While there is no objective purpose to life or the universe, humans still find their lives purposeful and meaningful. Objectively, there is no one true cuisine. Has anyone ever starved to death because of this? A beautiful woman is not objectively beautiful. We still enjoy beauty.

The human mind is not a blank slate. It has innate prejudices which have been shaped by our evolution as a species. The pull of these default prejudices restricts human behavior to a narrow range of actions. Such is my understanding of the matter.

By on 1/23/08 at 5:13 pm

Auster doesn’t understand science. He thinks he has all these clever ideas about why evolution can’t explain human life but he hasn’t done any of the hard work researching what the science of evolution can and cannot tell us.

A quick search on the “Talk Origins” archive finds the answer to Auster’s “absolute refutation” (his argument is the existence of men and women = evolution is impossible) of “Darwinism” (whatever that means):

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB350.html

BUT, keep in mind that for all the gaps in our knowledge, it is absurd to respond to these gaps by making the argument that gap = G-d. That is anti-intellectual and ignores the history of science which demonstrates time and time again that scientists figure out how the material world works just when sophists like Auster claim they can’t.

By Arminius on 1/24/08 at 5:29 am

Yes, Arminius, nothing better illustrates Auster’s preposterous arrogance than his latest Absolute refutation of Darwinism. Having been shown that the examples of irreducible complexity described in the works of intelligent design theorists don’t stand up to analysis, Auster simply pulls another one out of the air, confident he can succeed where biochemists like Michael Behe have failed. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that he might want to consult the work of actual biologists on sexual reproduction before declaring that it’s impossible that it evolved through Darwinian mechanisms.

Of course, Auster has stopped commenting on this site and linking to my criticisms of his work because I’m not polite enough to him.

Another thing that’s amazing about Auster’s treatment of this issue is that he portrays Darwinism as a minor intellectual fad confined to fringe intellectuals, like “9/11 truth” or Holocaust denial. He doesn’t seem aware that Darwinism is the foundation of a major branch of science, biology. If he substituted the term “the science of biology” for the term “Darwinism” in his posts, he might begin to grasp his ludicrous presumptuousness.

An absolute refutation of the science of biology.

The transparent intellectual fraud that is the science of biology.

Auster thinks that he, a pundit with no training in biology, can overturn a whole scientific discipline during a bull session with one of his friends. The term arrogance is not strong enough to describe this presumptuousness: it is megalomania.

By on 1/24/08 at 12:59 pm

A commenter pointed out a problem with an argument I made near the end of my article, concerning the change from animal to human sexual intercourse. I’ve changed that point accordingly. The main point of my article, which is the impossibility of sexual intercourse and internal fertilization appearing by Darwinian processes, stands.

By