Why do so many writers who insist on emphasizing the consequences of radical Muslim belief tend to ignore the social consequences of other belief systems -- for example, Darwinism?
My question is prompted by reflections that are being published about the Fort Hood massacre. Darwinist blogger PZ Myers is among many voices to be raised in protest that shooter Nidal Hasan's Islamic beliefs are getting too little attention: "Unfortunately, there's [a] factor that seems to be getting minimized in the press accounts: [Hasan] was also a member of an Abrahamic death cult" (i.e., Islam).
PZ quotes Ibn Warraq's comment on Hasan's crime, "To leave Islam out of the equation means to forever misinterpret events," before broadening the scope of the discussion with a concluding line about religion as a whole. "Too often," notes PZ, "[religion] has a complex causal relationship to evil."
My own view is that when you are taking the measure of an idea -- let's say Islam, or Darwinism -- it's a good rule of thumb at least to consider the relationship between it and its consequences, judged by the behavior of people who espouse the idea and publicly proclaim themselves as acting upon it. Sure, an idea could be ugly or dangerous, yet true. But I like David Berlinski's point, citing Keats, that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." At the very least, you might think, an idea that has a record of persistently inspiring evil is worth a second, skeptical look, rather than your simply swallowing it because the prestige authorities around you say you should.
Or perhaps when someone claims to be acting on the basis of an idea and then does something monstrous, would you say we should assume that it was really some other factor, personal and psychological, that drove him to the wicked deed? That's our culture's general approach when considering the motivations of mass killers in other contexts. When there's a slaughter at a shopping mall, a university, a church, a post office, or some other workplace -- alas, in our country, none of these is an infrequent occurrence -- nobody much asks about what motivated the murderer.
I've expressed frustration about this in the past, as when the Darwinian musings of Columbine killer Eric Harris, or Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn, were studiously ignored.
There's a whole community of professional Islam-bashers out there, writing online and in books that sell pretty well, who have been riding the Hasan story full time since it broke, hammering home their habitual point that Islam is an evil religion and always has been, going back to the days when it original source texts were composed.
Islam doesn't particularly interest me -- any religion can be made to look inherently wicked by a selective quoting of sources -- but this angle does. PZ Myers is among those who can be relied on to dismiss every attempt to point out the social consequences of Darwin's famous idea. So too biologist and blogger Jerry Coyne, who mocks what is actually a pretty interesting article in the London Sunday Times by Dennis Sewell on the theme. Sewell writes:
In America, where Darwin's writings on morality and race have come under particularly intense critical scrutiny because of the enduring creationist debate, he has been accused of fostering moral nihilism and scientific racism, and even of promoting an ethic that found its ultimate expression in the Holocaust. Most startling of all, a connection has now been drawn between Darwin's theories and a rash of school shootings.
The piece is worth reading, even though Sewell singles me out for criticism:
The connection between Darwin's ideas and the Holocaust remains hugely controversial, not least because many creationists try to reduce it to a crude blame game. The writer David Klinghoffer, an advocate of intelligent design, which many regard as creationism in disguise, claims: "The key elements in the ideology that produced Auschwitz are moral relativism aligned with a rejection of the sacredness of human life, a belief that violent competition in nature creates greater and lesser races, that the greater will inevitably exterminate the lesser, and finally that the lesser race most in need of extermination is the Jews. All but the last of these ideas may be found in Darwin's writing."
"Crude"? I don't see what's crude about what I wrote. On the contrary, it seems transparently, obviously true. Anyway, the simple point bears repeating. Either ideas have consequences or they don't. If they do, then ideas you happen to feel favorably disposed to shouldn't get a free pass.
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David Klinghoffer, you really are a silly person. You really don’t have a clue about this do you? Here, let me help you out and explain it for you: There are dozens of web pages that list and explain the many kinds of formal fallacies of logic. Among the best known are the Naturalistic Fallacy, the No True Scotsman Fallacy, and the Fallacy of Arguing from Consequences. But no matter what the fallacy is called, or what it consists of, the important thing for you to understand is this – none of these fallacies are fallacies when PZ Myers uses them; they are only fallacies when you use them.
Ima shelach.
"Your Name" - The chapter of Mein Kampf you link to is very specifically about "the cultural evolution of mankind" [emphasis added]. Hitler very explicitly disavowed the notion of species becoming other species (as I directly quoted), which was sort of Darwin's whole point. As "cnocspeireag" points out, Hitler was only talking about selective breeding - or, in the creationist's terms, 'microevolution'.
Dan
November 13, 2009 12:43 PM
WHOA!!!!!
Just because someone thinks Darwinian evolution (descent with modification over time from common ancestry through the mechanism of natural selection) justifies human killing does not mean the fact of evolution is wrong.
While this subject is open for discussion, I would like to see conclusive evidence demonstrating that evolution did not occur, more specifically, provide evidence that Darwinian evolution (see def. above) is wrong.
Reply:
Actually it is the other way around. After 150 years of research it is time evolutionists actually came up with some scientific evidence in support of evolution.
How could life come about, considering the complexity required for the simpliest replicating organism? Chemical evolution has been well researched and proved impossible.
How can the information in the DNA come into existance, since the instructions for making the reading and processing equipment is in the DNA, and cannot be read unless the reading mechanism was in existance before the DNA had to be read. Also the reading and copying mechanism has to be bassed on the same encoding as the DNA, otherwise encoding for proteins etc wouldn't be processed correctly. So how did all this complexity get organised on the same codes, correct instructione for proteins etc and also the machinery to make it all work?
Evolutionists love telling "just so" stories, but never get down to exacting science in support of evolution. Many scientists do exacting research, but this is about what exists, and is deliberately twisted to support hopeful theories about evolution, but actually shows the lack of evidence.
Ray:
Here's q quote from the chapter. It sounds like pretty conventional evolutinary theory to me.
"The first step which visibly brought mankind away from the animal world was that which led to the first invention. The invention itself owes its origin to the ruses and stratagems which man employed to assist him in the struggle with other creatures for his existence and often to provide him with the only means he could adopt to achieve success in the struggle. Those first very crude inventions cannot be attributed to the individual; for the subsequent observer, that is to say the modern observer, recognizes them only as collective phenomena. Certain tricks and skilful tactics which can be observed in use among the animals strike the eye of the observer as established facts which may be seen everywhere; and man is no longer in a position to discover or explain their primary cause and so he contents himself with calling such phenomena 'instinctive.'
In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as 'instinct.'
This is more easily understood and more easy to believe in the case of man. His first skilled tactics in the struggle with the rest of the animals undoubtedly originated in his management of creatures which possessed special capabilities.
There can be no doubt that personality was then the sole factor in all decisions and achievements, which were afterwards taken over by the whole of humanity as a matter of course. An exact exemplification of this may be found in those fundamental military principles which have now become the basis of all strategy in war. Originally they sprang from the brain of a single individual and in the course of many years, maybe even thousands of years, they were accepted all round as a matter of course and this gained universal validity.
Man completed his first discovery by making a second. Among other things he learned how to master other living beings and make them serve him in his struggle for existence. And thus began the real inventive activity of mankind, as it is now visible before our eyes. Those material inventions, beginning with the use of stones as weapons, which led to the domestication of animals, the production of fire by artificial means, down to the marvellous inventions of our own days, show clearly that an individual was the originator in each case. The nearer we come to our own time and the more important and revolutionary the inventions become, the more clearly do we recognize the truth of that statement. All the material inventions which we see around us have been produced by the creative powers and capabilities of individuals. And all these inventions help man to raise himself higher and higher above the animal world and to separate himself from that world in an absolutely definite way. Hence they serve to elevate the human species and continually to promote its progress. And what the most primitive artifice once did for man in his struggle for existence, as he went hunting through the primeval forest, that same sort of assistance is rendered him today in the form of marvellous scientific inventions which help him in the present day struggle for life and to forge weapons for future struggles. In their final consequences all human thought and invention help man in his life-struggle on this planet, even though the so-called practical utility of an invention, a discovery or a profound scientific theory, may not be evident at first sight. Everything contributes to raise man higher and higher above the level of all the other creatures that surround him, thereby strengthening and consolidating his position; so that he develops more and more in every direction as the ruling being on this earth.
Hence all inventions are the result of the creative faculty of the individual. And all such individuals, whether they have willed it or not, are the benefactors of mankind, both great and small. Through their work millions and indeed billions of human beings have been provided with means and resources which facilitate their struggle for existence.
Thus at the origin of the material civilization which flourishes today we always see individual persons. They supplement one another and one of them bases his work on that of the other. The same is true in regard to the practical application of those inventions and discoveries. For all the various methods of production are in their turn inventions also and consequently dependent on the creative faculty of the individual. Even the purely theoretical work, which cannot be measured by a definite rule and is preliminary to all subsequent technical discoveries, is exclusively the product of the individual brain. The broad masses do not invent, nor does the majority organize or think; but always and in every case the individual man, the person.
Accordingly a human community is well organized only when it facilitates to the highest possible degree individual creative forces and utilizes their work for the benefit of the community. The most valuable factor of an invention, whether it be in the world of material realities or in the world of abstract ideas, is the personality of the inventor himself. The first and supreme duty of an organized folk community is to place the inventor in a position where he can be of the greatest benefit to all. Indeed the very purpose of the organization is to put this principle into practice. Only by so doing can it ward off the curse of mechanization and remain a living thing. In itself it must personify the effort to place men of brains above the multitude and to make the latter obey the former.\
Notice that he says "evolution of higher animals" in the second paragraph. Not just culture.
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