Darwin on Eugenics

It is oft-repeated amongst creationists that evolution = evil, because evolution = eugenics. When Tom Short came to UF and regurgitated this faulty line of reasoning, applying it to the effect that evolution = Hitler = genocide, I called him on it. I also called D. James Kennedy, a creationist pastor whose fraudulent claims are only exceeded by his hubris in delivering them, to the carpet for lying about Darwin and eugenics, all the while ignoring the clear link between Nazi Germany and the Lutheran and Catholic anti-Semitic philosophies.

I examined the non sequiturs in jumping from a description of the way that the natural world operates to a moral 'ought' about how we should or will operate in society. Simple parallels exist to show the fallacy of the logic:

1. Science describes gravity
   
2. Gravity causes things to fall down
3. Therefore, we ought to cause things to fall down

Is not substantially different from:

1. Science describes natural selection
2. Natural selection causes organisms to survive which are more 'fit' and weaker ones to go extinct
   
3. Therefore, we ought to cause organisms/humans to go extinct whom we deem are weaker [even though we have now started artificially selecting since our criteria for 'fitness' are not natural]

See the non sequitur? It is an accurate description of the world to say that all living things share common ancestors. It is not a logical conclusion to draw, a priori, that we ought thus do anything about it or to change it. End of story. To try to draw moral prescriptions from scientific descriptions is a failed leap in logic and is unsupported by the descriptions themselves.

Yet, since so many people love to do what is easy -- namely, to "defeat" evolution by throwing morally outrageous claims against it, it is useful to look at Darwin's own published thoughts on eugenics in The Descent of Man. Let's see what he said about it, although we must all always remember that just as the laws of motion are not equivalent to Newton, so evolution is not solely Charles Darwin, nor general relativity Einstein. These men founded the ideas, did the foundational work, and then died. The science of those things was not the person behind them, and the ideas have expanded and changed and developed throughout time. Nonetheless, let's see what the man thought, keeping in mind that just because the man thought it, doesn't mean evolution requires it.

In Chapter 5, he writes about the problem with vaccinations and how they allow people without natural resistances to survive to reproduce and pass on this lack of resistance:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

It sounds pretty evil, doesn't it? But at the same time, it sounds like he's not yet passing a conclusive ought in here, only saying that it seems that our actions to preserve the lineages of people with serious heredity flaws is "highly injurious to the race of man." So far, he hasn't prescribed any actions, only attempted to describe our humanistic efforts to preserve life. So...what does Darwin think of these actions? Well, the sentences directly after clarify it for us:

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil [emphasis added].

Well, you won't hear that from the mouths of the creationists. Darwin here tells us that if we try to preserve our genetic lineage without corruption, it will only be for a contingent benefit at the cost of an overwhelming present evil, and that we will deteriorate the noblest part of our nature.

His only "solution" to the "problem", then, is a very passive one, indeed:

We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.

He observes that some of the feeble/retarded/sick are unable to be married and have kids as easily as the mentally competent/healthy, and that there is thus already a natural check in place. He then says that we can just hope for this check to work, notice he says nothing here of enforcing a no-marriage policy.

Darwin's words on eugenics are not those of Hitler, not those of Stalin, not those of creationists. All three of the latter twisted science to serve their own goals and ends in an attempt to justify their immoral beliefs. All three of the latter distort science to preserve falsehoods. The immorality of creationism is its denial of truth, its fight to eradicate scientific fact from our culture, and their refusal to live in reality.
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Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

A Very, Very Important Church-State Separation Case

Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation is about to be heard before SCOTUS.

"What this case is really about is the basic question [of] whether citizens have the right to sue to keep the government from violating the First Amendment," said Richard Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

His organization, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, People for the American Way and other groups supportive of church-state separation have filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's position.

The case will mark the first time the justices deal with President Bush's faith-based initiatives -- his attempt to expand the government's ability to fund social services through churches and other religious charities.

However, Hein does not deal directly with whether the program violates the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion, as some of its critics contend. Rather, the court will consider a narrower issue -- whether a group of taxpayers has "standing," or the right to sue, over the use of general executive-branch funds to promote the faith-based plan.

ABPNews

Here's the plaintiff's summary (including all the legal docs at the bottom of the page), a blog post with lots of helpful links, and here's some great legal analysis of the case's importance.

If citizens are not allowed to use their status as taxpaying citizens in order to procure standing to challenge the federal government's use of funds to establish religion, in violation of the 1st Amendment, then we're all in for a world of hurting. All of us, on every side of every fence. I can only hope that the historically great (but hardly perfect) Supreme Court will protect our country's freedom of religion and uphold the Constitution. Keep your fingers crossed...this one really matters.
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Technorati tags: Religion, Church-state, Politics

Destroying (Yet Another) Creationist Myth, Plus Their Claims to Intellectual Honesty

**Update (11/25/07): See here for updated links for all the papers below**

Said myth being, in a very recent case, that evolution cannot "generate new information", or something of the sort involving information theory. This recently occurred (again) in my own experience when Tom Short returned to UF a week ago, and, as all creationists do, repeated this canard but was completely unable to provide for me even a suitable or technically correct definition of information.

Three random papers, representing awesome research and hundreds of citations to follow (which creationists never will, because they don't want to see the evidence they lie about not existing), shatter this myth into a million pieces:

• Understanding the recent evolution of the human genome: insights from human-chimpanzee genome comparisons, Human Mutation, 28(2):99-130, Oct 2006, Download PDF
• The origin of new genes: Glimpses from the young and old, Nature Reviews Genetics, 4(11): 865-875 Nov 2003, Download PDF
• Evolution of biological complexity, PNAS, 97(9):4463-4468, April 2000, Download PDF
  

Each of these papers has exhaustive and detailed answers to the very legitimate questions about how genetic features (and thus phenotypes) are changed such as is required by common descent. And, as usual, there are hundreds more where these came from. It's the typical blatant intellectual bankruptcy on the part of creationists to mindlessly repeat these myths without ever doing their homework. Why? Because religion teaches you to believe what people behind pulpits tell you, and not think for yourself, or go look it up and do serious study. Authority and dogma, that's what they breed. Without them, there is no religion.

And D. James Kennedy and a million other scientifically-ignorant peddlers of superstition and myth are ever willing to continue to spread these creationist canards and falsehoods that keep them in business. They have an obvious interest at stake...don't they? And their sheep (self-admittedly named) continue to baaaaaa them right back.

The funniest thing is when you ask the same detailed questions of a creationist, be they an ID-creationist or a YEC-creationist (not that those are mutually exclusive) -- "What are the mechanisms by which things are designed?" "What features, specifically, are designed and are not designed in some particular organism X?" "What chronology can you assign to the design events in said organism X?"

We offer them peer-reviewed literature with amazing empirical examples to back up our claims. What do we get in return? Blank stares and nose-picking and hand-waving. Argumentum ad ignorantium is all they have, and all they ever will.

The next time a creationist repeats a boldfaced lie to the effect that "evolution can't produce new features/information/etc.," ask them for their email, and send them the link to this blog post. Then, if they choose to lie again, they can't claim innocent ignorance of the facts. They will choose to do just that, though, and justify it in their own minds by saying that God wants them to lie because the alternative is evil...even though they now know they cannot honestly claim it isn't true.

It will stop the entire show when you ask a creationist to give you a bit, just a teeny little bit, of a definition of information that doesn't beg the question (involving intentionality). They won't be able to do it, certainly not to relate compressibility and randomness correctly to information theory. And when they try, they'll blather on mindlessly about the genetic code, and you can refer them to this article:

• The origin of the genetic code: theories and their relationships, a review, Biosystems, 80:175-184, Nov 2004 Download PDF

Not that they'll read that, either. But the point is, there are answers. They choose to ignore them, and so belie any pretense to honesty or intellectual integrity they claim. End of story.
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Technorati tags: Religion, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

More on Using "The N-Word"

A while back, I spent some time analyzing this issue, and again when CNN did a special on it. Now, Stillman College in AL is hosting an "'N'Surrection Conference" examining the use of the n-word in America. My bottom line: the word needs to go, should've gone thirty years ago, and it is up to the black community to abolish it from within for it to ever go extinct without.
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Technorati tags: Politics

A Must-read Letter in the Dixie County Advocate

A friend of mine from Dixie County is to thank for re-typing the entire text of an long open letter that appeared in the LTE section of the Dixie County Advocate this week (2A). It is beautifully articulate and wonderfully wise. It leaves the "logic" of the decision to place the monument there in a heap of smoking ruin. I'm also glad the paper allowed it to be printed.

And...so much for the, "No one from here disagrees with it!" defense:

"An Open Letter to the Citizens of Dixie County, My Birthplace"

Let us gut the old saw we all know, and stand it on its head. Let me ask not what we can do for my country, but what our county, viz., Dixie County, can do for us. Apparently this is made possible by a new twist of county commission reasoning. For I, born in Cross City and native resident there for the first 17 years of my life, have already served my country, in Tokyo and Yokohama Harbor, persuasively 9,000 miles from home.

To return to what? To return to a County Commission, a half-century later only to witness the wholesale abandonment of the U.S. Constitution, and a supposed flouting of its core principles? Do not the commission members grasp the intent of the 1^st Amendment to THE BILL OF RIGHTS of the Constitution, effecting the clear separation of church and state, or do the governing fathers of today's rural hamlet hugging the Nature Coast of Florida devise itself somehow separate and apart, and not an entity to otherwise obey our sacred foundations and way of life?

Before the county fathers would ever submit to the whim of a local major contributor, to have a semblance of the Ten Commandments monument placed literally at the courthouse steps, at its seat of power, did the commission even bother to entertain the question of its overall appropriateness, and to whether such placement would meet legal muster? Did its members plumb the learned opinions of the township's elder statesmen, or its retired education? I think not.

Back in the late Forties, my uncle served as Principal of Dixie County High School, pinchhitting as an instructor of civics, government, English and algebra. It was Uncle Marshall Davies who had as pupils the grandfathers of the kids who grew up to be today's crop of sitting commissioners. Uncle Marshall's prime intent was to see that all the children in his realm of influence would grow and learn to their educational pace, and above all become economically self-sufficient. Times and conditions were so utterly raw and hard back in those days, but he was thorough and self-motivated to exact the measure of each and every student, for that is the sole function and ambition of an educator. But now to what avail, if these children of my uncle's pupils evolved to commit today's malfeasance in elected office? Yes, malfeasance!

Another blunder and misstep of the commission is to have adopted the faulty logic of its own legal guide, the attorney advising the panel. The attorney abandoned logic, emotionally blending with the religious fervor of the crowd to tell Fox TV network that Dixie is Dixie, and the balance of the nation could go chase itself. I suspect that when this egregious abuse of judgment is said and done, that lawyer will find himself hauled before The Florida Bar and made to show cause why he should be allowed to keep his license to practice law. This stems from the fact that there is clear precedent barring such a monument in its particular location, viz., the Establishment Clause. Never in my day would I have dreamed of so callous a scenario. And here I was a half-century ago, during the military years, trying to save the country, not bury the country, as is being done in such cavalier fashion today.

This scenario, if played out, and somehow not interrupted, would see a petition filed, addressed in Federal court, and the first sitting magistrate hearing the case handing down an order mandating the effective removal of The Rock from the courthouse steps property. Should the members of the Commission self-righteously disobey, another order would be entered dispatching the United States Marshals Service, and attendant force, as deemed necessary. The commissioners would be placed in large black vans and transported to Jacksonville for detention. Should local police officials dare to intervene, they too would be stripped and transported to lockup and the lot of then cited for contempt. Google's lenses would peer from the heavens, capturing the moment, that all here is not fun and games.

This, my friends, is what you do not know, and what you should begin knowing. One simply does not set out to find himself on the muzzle end of a federal court order. And for good reason, otherwise the entire nation would splinter into chaos. A very similar situation, as relates to this case, played out just a while ago, which saw the chief justice of a state supreme court driven from office on a federal contempt citation, and finally disbarred from the practice of law itself. My Word, does not Cross City begin to get the drift of walking this thin line?

As I see it, there does exist a legal out, a plausible exit, and that too is gracious in the process. The prime mover, the major sponsor of the Big Rock project who came forward to make the
endeavor financially possible, could adopt a change of heart, and entreat the commission to reverse its efforts and remove the monolith. Mister Joe could then step in, lasso his Rock, and drag it to the far northwest quadrant of his cow pasture, for the cows to dwell upon while contemplating the Absolute Idea existing in time and space.

Within a month or two the good townsfolk would begin to savor how strangely sweeter the milk. Yes, this is the upside, and just look at the enormous amount of money the county saved in not
having to fight this legal monster, a case unwinnable on its face, a case to forever stain the legitimacy of the county, a case in effect rendered moot before it was to get off the ground. Because Mister Joe finally saw the courage to do the right thing and tacitly agree to withdraw the monument, before the authorities really noticed. But the county must go about its duty and act quickly now, if it wants to preserve its legacy.

My intent here is not to be harsh, but to be forthright.

After all, I was born 70 years ago in Cross City, less than a quarter-mile from the old courthouse's eastern steps. I and friends played as kids on and around those steps in the far distant yesteryear. I admire my little hometown, and ache for its relative simplicity and laid-back demeanor. But the way the county commission of today measures simplicity, against being downright simple, might find the two mutually exclusive. Therein lies this problem.

Page Davies
DCHS Class of 1954
Clearwater, FL

It makes me cry tears of joy. :-)

I found it interesting that in the paper's mention of the last Commission meeting, not one peep about the 10C case appeared. I've written Candace Corbin about getting a copy of the last few meetings' transcripts.

The attorney he mentioned was Joe Lander, and you can see Joe's emotive "defense" of the county's actions here on YouTube. My detailed analysis of the legal issues here, and everything I've written on this situation, including extensive local media coverage, here.
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Technorati tags: Religion, Church-state, Politics