Kevin Shapiro, a neuroscientist from Harvard, has an interesting op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about ID and the neo-conservatives that is very much worth reading. And by neo-conservative, he doesn't mean the casual, everyday political slur (where "neo-con" has become as much an empty buzzword for the left as "liberal" is for the right, a word whose only meaning is "Them"); he means the movement of former leftists who became conservatives, led by folks like Irving Kristol and his wife, Gertrude Himmelfarb. And as Shapiro points out, the relationship between conservatism and evolution has never been as simple as one might think based on the political divide today. I'll include some excerpts below the fold.
If the collapse of ID represents a defeat for the Religious Right, it has been something of a relief for many nonreligious conservatives, who have wanted nothing more than for the issue to go away. Charles Krauthammer, for instance, complained that the Dover episode was "anachronistic," "retrograde" and "a national embarrassment."But the relationship of the conservative movement to evolution has never been simple. Religious conservatives have opposed the entrenchment of Darwinism in biology curricula; other conservatives, including mainline Christians, have embraced it. Curiously, the neoconservatives--a term that refers to the rightward shift of former leftists, many of them Jewish--have often felt discomfort with Darwinism, although not on religious grounds.
Their skepticism is epitomized by Gertrude Himmelfarb and her husband, Irving Kristol, who have tilted at natural selection for decades. Ms. Himmelfarb's 1959 book "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution" dwelt on the intellectual failings of the theory's initial incarnation in the 1860s. Mr. Kristol, for his part, seems to believe that little progress has been made since then, having declared in 1990 that natural selection "tells us nothing credible about the origin of species." In 1996 Commentary published "The Deniable Darwin," the first of several attacks on natural selection by the mathematician David Berlinski.
In addition to Krauthammer, conservative icon George Will also has written scathingly against conservative attempts to attack evolution. And perhaps most prominently, there is conservative philosopher Larry Arnhart, author of Darwinian Conservatism. But Shapiro makes some connections here that echo Ronald Bailey's arguments in an earlier article in Reason about the Straussians and evolution, that they may in part be motivated by both a broad political coalition that includes conservative Christians and by their view of the importance of maintaining the religious basis of morality:
But part of the neoconservative position has to do less with particular intellectual claims than with the special sensitivities of a broadly conservative coalition. The writer David Frum has said that, though he himself believes in evolution, he doesn't "believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle." And indeed, Christian principle helps to arm the traditionalist side of the culture war, a side that nonreligious and non-Christian conservatives very much support. The bioethicist Leon Kass has echoed the worry that "Western moral teaching, so closely tied to Scripture, is also in peril if any major part of Scripture can be shown to be false."
The idea has antecedents stretching back to the Victorian era. Benjamin Disraeli summed up the problem memorably: Given the choice between viewing man as an ape or an angel, he was "on the side of the angels." Today, neoconservatives see the side of religious conservatives as the side of the angels. The two groups share a profound distaste for materialism, a philosophy of knowledge that leaves no room for phenomena--like God, the human soul and transcendent morality--that can't be explained by an appeal to physical principles.
The distaste is understandable. Materialism in science is one thing; the scientific method is by definition materialistic, admirably so. But materialism can also be a worldview, one that has lately not been content to co-exist with other belief systems. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, for example, has compared faith to a "virus" that enfeebles the mind. This kind of notion is no longer science--it's scientism, and from the neoconservative perspective it lies at the root of various evils based on similarly totalizing systems of thought, like communism.
It was a preoccupation with defeating materialism that inspired many of Darwin's contemporary detractors. Richard Owen, a 19th-century English anatomist, privately conceded that "The Origin of Species" was the best explanation "ever published of the manner of formation of species"--but because he thought that natural selection denied the possibility of human uniqueness, he savaged the book in public. Ms. Himmelfarb made a related argument in a recent review of two new editions of Darwin's works, decrying the "mechanistic and reductivist interpretation of all human life, including its emotional and intellectual dimensions, in the name of Darwinism."
This is a familiar critique not only of evolution, but of science in general. It is echoed by the character of Palmer Joss in Contact, who complains that science, while explaining so much about the world, has left us grasping for meaning in a mechanical world. This has always seemed to me to be a hollow complaint that is based, quite simply, on looking for meaning in the wrong places. Science makes no attempt to provide meaning in the sense that people want it, nor should it. Science provides information and explanation, but not meaning. Meaning, I would say, must come not from our understanding of the natural world (though it certainly should be informed by it) but from our interaction with the other sentient beings we share that world with.
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"Meaning, I would say, must come not from our understanding of the natural world (though it certainly should be informed by it) but from our interaction with the other sentient beings we share that world with."
amen. (oops! I mean, yeah, right!)
If people feel God can be threatened by understanding how speciation works or how the toaster works, their God is entirely too puny.
You can't get meaning from the details of speciation or the mechanics of your toaster. It's stupid to try. It's equally stupid to think that ignorance about how your toaster works gives your life meaning. You put the bread in, you push the lever down and a couple of minutes later God gives you toast. Then comes this cold-hearted atheistic scientist who says "well, no, actually it's gears, levers electricity and conduction of heat and stuff." Damn! God has been removed from the toaster! If God isn't in the toaster, life has no meaning!
Ok, I'm being silly.
You need to derive that meaning from your life, your work and your relationships. Or God, if you insist. You shouldn't try to make your toaster do something it can't do. It isn't nice.
This looks to me like more proof that public criticism against evolution and "Darwinism" is political in nature, not scientific.
Berlinski has a doctorate in philosophy, but apparently prefers to style himself a mathematician. Mark Chu Carroll does a nice dissection of Berlinski's Bad Math at his Good Math, Bad Math blog. And I had a few words to say about Berlinski in David Berlinski vs. Goliath.
Berlinski has a doctorate in philosophy, but apparently prefers to style himself a mathematician. Mark Chu Carroll does a nice dissection of Berlinski's Bad Math at his Good Math, Bad Math blog. And I had a few words to say about Berlinski in David Berlinski vs. Goliath.
Science is hurt by its own success. It is so successful (or at least appears so) in explaining the world that people began to expect from it things it cannot deliver.
I would say that the problem is that science is so successful that competing worldviews become fearful, convinced that they will become obsolete and outdated.
And you know what? They're absolutely correct.
I don't think science will ever give answer to many political questions which divide people in our times.
The writer David Frum has said that, though he himself believes in evolution, he doesn't "believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle."
As in "the Earth is not the centre of the universe"?
Dawkins is correct in describing faith as a virus. I'll add that the faith virus is akin to the flu virus. There are so many strains that it's difficult to discover a fool-proof vaccine. Currently, I see eductaion as the only vaccine that's available. I guess the religious consevatives know this, too. Hence their assault on the academia in general and the public schools in particular.
I think that the comments on this thread themselves illustrate the problem. We begin with Ed correctly pointing out that "Science provides information and explanation, but not meaning." Then, as the thread continues, scince and religion are pitched into battle, to the statement by Caledonian that science has been so successful that competing worldviews ...will become obsolete and outdated." If by worldview we restrict ourselves to "how things work," then the statement might be OK, but worldviews tend to have a strong "what things mean" component. In other words, although we all know that scientific methodological materialsm is not the same as a worldview of materialism, somehow this distinction does not hold firm, and science is taken outside its proper boundaries and used to attack the other spheres of value. How can we keep things clean?
I'm glad you brought up Contact. It's such an amazing look at a head-on collision of science and religion that it should be required reading - or at least watching - for anyone who wants to get in on the discussion.
rik said,
Will (s)he explain what are science's proper boundaries, if any? I reckon, from the rest of his/her comments, that these boundaries derive from the "what things mean" component. This presupposes the existence of a meaning to things. For example, the question "what does life mean" presupposes a meaning for life outside the physical life. There is no basis for this presupposition, just as there is no basis for the presupposition of god and soul.
Ed,
I'm sure we agree on many things, but I must take strong exception to this:
"...neo-con" has become as much an empty buzzword for the left as "liberal" is for the right"
In reality, there is not even a rough equivalence. Liberals are regularly described as traitors, Stalinist thugs, lunatics and so on in widely distributed American media and high government officials. You will be hard-pressed to find ad hominem assaults of a similar level of vitriol and stupidity against neo-conservatives published in the major media or uttered by prominent officials.
Absolutely. The real question between theism and atheism is not about evolution, but whether one of those sentient beings with whom we may/must interact is transcendent. If not, then the only meaning is what we find among each other; if so, then a major part of the meaning of our lives is (or at least can be) transcendent as well.
It's not about whether science is effective at describing the way the world works (of course it is), but whether we can have access to something more.
I think I'm officially sick and tired of the word "scientism." It is used to portray someone as irrationally deriving their meaning of life from science, when in fact it invariably seems to make clear that the accuser's concept of meaning is actually being threatened by the science presented by the one they are accusing. "Scientism" is the epithet hurled by mysterians whose meaning lies in the margins.
I'm glad you brought up Contact. It's such an amazing look at a head-on collision of science and religion that it should be required reading - or at least watching - for anyone who wants to get in on the discussion.
Hmm. The film is poor. I can't really say anything about the book, because I read only a part of it, but the part which I did, was not awesome. Sagan as a writer is weak compared to Lem, for example (whom you should be reading if interested in serious sci-fi, anyway).
Asking science to explain the meaning of life is like expecting your car to contain vitamins and taste good. That's just not what it's for.
Speaking of Contact, I thought Sagan raised an interesting challenge to ID by showing what it might take for scientists to consider the design conjecture, after all. I was disappointed that the Pi-scenario didn't make it into the movie.
I must have deja vu, because this is at least the second time i've heard this story. This one I like better though because of its focus on motivation. I hate stuff like this though:
No its not!!!! american protestantism is. that's such a ethnocentric thing to say.
Let the person speaking this explain how the Sermon on the Mount will be in peril if the parts of the Bible condemning onanism and homosexual relationships are rejected, or the idea of the world created in 6 days shown (as it was already) to be false.
The whole point of moral teachings is that, in their deep core, they are independent of weather, mass of the electron or age of the Universe.
In commenting on my comment, therationalfool states: Will (s)he explain what are science's proper boundaries, if any? I reckon, from the rest of his/her comments, that these boundaries derive from the "what things mean" component. This presupposes the existence of a meaning to things. For example, the question "what does life mean" presupposes a meaning for life outside the physical life. There is no basis for this presupposition, just as there is no basis for the presupposition of god and soul.
Regarding the proper boundaries of science, I was referring back to what Ed said in the original post on this thread: "Science makes no attempt to provide meaning in the sense that people want it, nor should it. Science provides information and explanation, but not meaning."
Regarding the assertion that the question "what do things mean" presupposes a meaning for life outside the physical life -- well, that does not follow. The question presupposes nothing, and the answer to it could be (a) something or (b)nothing. But science is, not capable of providing the answer, either way. And while I agree with therationalfool that "there is no basis for the presupposition of god and soul," this language comes perilously close to making my point, because it has the emotional spin of seeming to claim that that god or soul do not exist.
Oh, I would appreciate it if someone could show or point me to the proper way of quoting used here -- I am just an old coot who doesn't know how to use the right HTML code stuff. Thanx.
I'm a neo-con. I never believed in evolution. Not in grade school, where that's all that was taught; not in church where "long days" were acceptable; not when I was a humanist; not when I was a Democrat.
Now I'm a 6 day creationist. Makes a lot more sense. Today I was reading Dr. Timothy Johnson's explanation of 15 billion years. Last week I was reading Dava Sobel's account of the planets. Really. Talk about mythology! ID is such a hybrid it doesn't even have any appeal.
tristero wrote:
I think you're missing my point. What makes them comparable is that they have lost their meaning and simply become epithets to hurl at the other side, regardless of whether they actually apply or what the words actually might mean. "Neo-con" is now used so often by those who don't have a clue what it actually means or who it applies to, used simply to mean anyone they disagree with politically, that it has little colloquial meaning other than "them". And yes, I've heard lots of people compare neo-cons to Hitler, so that sort of simplistic demonization goes on on both sides of the aisle. The right is just better at it.
Peachy-
If you think young earth creationism "makes more sense", I can only suggest that you aren't going to like it here at all.
There is no basis for this presupposition, just as there is no basis for the presupposition of god and soul.
Then scientists have no business discussing such issues on "company time," one way or the other. It's not a scientific issue.
I'm with rik and Roman on this: I'm sick of hearing such pointless blather about how "science" is such a dire threat to "religion." It's not "competing worldviews" that are endangered by science; it's the dishonesty that has poisoned these worldviews, and the people and interests who profit from such dishonesty, that are endangered.
Setting aside the vagueness or even emptiness of terms like "meaning", is it true that meaning "must" come from interpersonal interactions? That's an empirical issue; if it's true, it will be shown through scientific research into natural phenomena like reward systems. Personally, I don't feel I can say where meaning must or must not come from for other people. Plenty of loners who don't share much with other sentient beings nevertheless get meaning for their lives directly out of their understanding of the natural world. Scientific knowledge is appreciated just like beautiful art; it is what gets some people up in the morning.
I always thought that neoconservative oposition to evolution is more motivated by their alliance withe evangelicals and fundamentalists since the 80´s...
rik,
You say that the answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" could be (a) something or (b) nothing, and therefore, the question does not presuppose anything. Fair enough. Then, you follow it up with the claim that, I quote, "But science is, not capable of providing the answer, either way" . Why cannot science answer that question as "nothing"?
Whenever we talk of a boundary, we assume that there exists an "interior" and an "exterior". Talking in mathematical terms, a boundary (or a bounded or closed set) implies a neighborhood, arbirarily small, in which some points lie inside and others outside the boundary. If we are talking about a set of phenomena and science, a subset of phenomena is claimed to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry (outside the boundary). Because all natural phenomena are within the scope of scientific inquiry, what are those that lie beyond science's scope? Supernatural phenomena? Doesn't that presuppose the existence of such phenomena?
Meaning of life, god, soul, satan, etc., belong to same category - non-existant. There is no boundary for science. The set of phenomena science can inquire into, and some day provide an explantion, is an open set. Defining boundaries for science is a dangerously slippery slope.
Btw, if you would like to quote something, just put it between the HTML tags, <blockquote>...</blockquote>.
therationalfool wrote:
Talking in mathematical terms, a boundary (or a bounded or closed set) implies a neighborhood, arbirarily small, in which some points lie inside and others outside the boundary...
What about a line drawn across a flat plane? The plane may be finite or infinite; but either way, neither side of that line is more "arbitrarily small" than the other.
Your argument against "defining boundaries for science" sounds like a complaint that religious fundamentalists make against science: "You're trying to place limits on [our] God! Thas' sacrilege!"
I see 29 comments on a posting on the general relationship of Darwinism and various schools of political thought and I don't see the phrase "Social Darwinism" even once.
Ever see the bumper art with the little Darwin fish being eaten by the larger Jesus fish? Basically that is someone who believes in Social Darwinism and disbelieves in biological Darwinism. I think you need to consider the role of Social Darwinism in current political thought before you can even begin to understand what is going on.
James Killus wrote:
Totally disagree. I know lots of people who have Darwin fish on their cars. Every one of them accepts evolutionary theory and rejects social Darwinism. Empirically, this is just false.
Uh... Ed? The description wasn't a lone Darwin fish - it was the Jesus fish approvingly eating its perceived/alleged competition. Social Darwin-istically.
Not just false, but a total non-sequitur. This post isn't about social Darwinism. And no, those fish-eat-fish bumper-stickers don't have anything to do with social Darwinism, either.
Foggg wrote:
I've seen every variation of it. None of them have anything to do with social Darwinism. It's just a sarcastic way to mock creationists (and I don't have any of them because, frankly, I think they're juvenile and not terribly clever). But they don't have anything to do with one's belief in social Darwinism; I know lots of people who have stickers like that and none of them are social Darwinists. And all of them accept evolutionary theory.
Roman: I don't think the problem is science being "too successful;" I think it has more to do with the fact that nearly ALL branches of specialized knowledge used to be more or less united: math, all sciences, history, law, medicine, and theology were all bundled together since ancient times (before there was simply too much knowledge in each branch to permit this), and one result of this was that the religious establishment had some measure of control over the pursuit of knowledge. What we've been seeing since the Enlightenment is the inevitable growth and branching of the sciences on their own steam, in their own directions, and now there's a reaction aimed at trying to return to the old pattern of religious control over the pursuit of knowledge.
I think James Killus and foggg are confusing social Darwinism with memetic selection & survival. The bumper sticker Killus described tries to show that a particular religious meme is more popular than belief in evolution. That doesn't improve his comment:
This entire blog is about memetic selection & survival in current political thought.
(BTW, I still think Ed is picturing different bumper stickers than the one Killus described, which does not mock creationism and would never be displayed by someone who accepts evolutionary theory. An opposite sticker, one with Darwin-fish eating Jesus-fish, would be on a [juvenile] anti-creationist's car -- though it would still have nothing to do with social Darwinism.)
Hmmm. Perhaps I did misread him. I've never seen a sticker of a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish, but I've seen the opposite.
It's usually a TRUTH fish doing the eating. Here's a picture of it:
http://static.flickr.com/27/56670638_ddd3208e91_o.jpg
You're full of it, Raging Bee. Science addresses everything that can interact with us -- the only way souls could be outside the bounds of science is if they could have no influence on us directly or on anything else in our universe. In other words, if they didn't exist.
The issue of whether something is within the bounds of science or not is a perfectly valid topic for scientists to examine.
It follows that your assertion is wrong in all possible contingencies.
Caledonian: before you go whole-hog into saying I'm "full of it" and "wrong in all possible contingencies," you may want to take a more careful look at what I'm actually asserting. The statement you quote was in response to therationalfool's assertion that "there is no basis for a presupposition" of god, the soul, or any "meaning" to life; and I had said that such "presuppositions" were philosophical, not scientific matters. I will add here that such "basis" does indeed exist, but not in the realm of the sciences. If you wish to refute that statement, then show me a peer-reviewed paper proving, or disproving, the existence of gods, souls, and/or the meaning of life.
...the only way souls could be outside the bounds of science is if they could have no influence on us directly or on anything else in our universe. In other words, if they didn't exist.
Or if they are presumed to exist for the moral or ethical purpose of seeing and treating humans as creatures with rights and duties, instead of as mere animals, organic robots, or resources to be exploited. Or if words like "god," "soul" and "meaning" are used to explain or duscuss subjective phenomena among non-scientists, such as visions of dead relatives, feelings of ghostly or godly presences, or a gut feeling of an imperative in one's life. Which, in fact, they are so used in everyday life.
Raging Bee:
Question: Do unicorns exist?
Assertion: Whether unicorns exist or not is a metaphysical question that's beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.
Proof (rhetorical): Show me a peer-reviewed paper proving, or disproving, that unicorns exit.
I disagree with the idea that science cannot provide meaning, only facts. Maybe it's just how my brain works, but to me the details of how the universe works are the deepest level of meaning I see in the world. I do not believe that my life has some externally granted "purpose" like many religious people clearly do, the sense of purpose comes from my own motivation to achieve a state of maximum understanding of the world and simultaneously a reasonably happy existence. Therefore I would say that there is "meaning" in the way synapses within the brain communicate, or in the manner in which cells divide, in the sense that it provides an explanation for why we exist as we do.