Workshop on Scientific Imperialism

An Abundance of Material

Don’t miss the Workshop on Scientific Imperialism in Helsinki next April where attendees will consider whether “conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields, or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline’s domain.” Keynote Speaker Stephen Downes will ask  “Is the Appeal to Evolution in Explanations of Human Behavior a Case of Scientific Imperialism?”

The answer is “yes,” but human behavior is only the beginning of a long list. Evolution is by far the most influential theory in the history of science and its influence spreads not only to other areas of science, but well outside of science as well.

One of evolution’s early moves outside of science was in historiography where Darwin’s friend and champion Thomas Huxley began the construction of the history of thought from an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary theory was motivated and mandated by religious premises, but Huxley reversed the roles and cast evolution as objective, truth-seeking science and the opposition as misguided religious believers. Thus, in this Warfare Thesis, science was opposed by religion, rather than informed and constrained by religion.

An important tool that was instrumental in spreading the Warfare Thesis far beyond evolutionary studies and into the broader culture was the play and movie Inherit the Wind. The Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee script was all that Huxley could have dreamt of, casting the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial as a conflict between the rational evolutionists and the irrational faithful.

Inherit the Wind is fictional propaganda that evolutionists continue to use to this day and remains widely influential. As Judge John Jones astonishingly explained, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.” The federal judge’s over-the-top naiveté was a manifestation of evolution’s anti-intellectualism.

Another important early evolutionary spinoff was eugenics “science” and abortion. Nietzsche proclaimed that it was the sick, the oppressed, the broken and the weak, rather than evil men, who were the greatest threat to humanity. And Margaret Sanger promoted her racism and sexual immorality in what would become the abortion movement. The American eugenics movement and both World War I and later the horrors of the German Nazis were all influenced by evolution’s pseudo science.

More recently the abortion movement has grown and eugenics continues to be advocated. Lawlessness and immorality escalated with the legalization of abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision and its inherent racism. As Roe v. Wade lawyer Ron Weddington explained to the newly elected President Bill Clinton, “You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor segment of our country,” with inexpensive abortifacients. Weddington explained that he was not advocating mass extinction of these unfortunate people because “Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and … well … so Republican.”

Likewise Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described Roe v. Wade as intended to control population growth, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” And you know what that means. And restrictions on abortion simply exacerbate the problem because “the impact of all these restrictions is on poor women,” and “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.”

It is little wonder that University of Texas evolutionist Eric Pianka receives standing ovations and awards for his advocacy of the elimination of 90% of the human population.

Eugenics, abortion and population control are, unfortunately, by no means the end of evolution’s deconstructionism. Evolution does away with law, common sense and morality. Scientific laws, as evolutionists explain, are not appropriate when explaining the creation of the world. For despite appearances and the hard scientific evidence, the world must have arisen spontaneously. It is a narrative of sheer absurdity. But we control it, and one consequence is moral relativism. Morality is seen as the result of evolutionary history. Right and wrong are determined by the haphazard configurations of molecules in our head.

Yes, there is plenty of material for Workshop on Scientific Imperialism in Helsinki next April.

That Silly Belief That Life is Sacred and Inviolable

The twentieth century’s eugenics movement was eventually discarded, but eugenics did not go away entirely. Today eugenics continues, but it is a much more diverse and technologically sophisticated. There are the so-called eugenic abortions where the unborn with higher disease risks are “terminated.” And today’s technology allows for specific embryos, and even genes, to be selected. There seems to be, as Nathaniel Comfort observed this month, a eugenic impulse that drives us to seek a better human race. Underlying such health concerns, however, are the usual less benevolent motivations. In addition to the promised health benefits, Comfort explains that eugenics offers an intellectual thrill, and the profits of genetic biomedicine. Such lures are, explains Comfort, “too great for us to do otherwise. Resistance would be ill-advised and futile.”

Nonetheless there are those who warn against this new eugenics. Will not parents face enormous pressure to adopt the new technologies and create designer babies? But for eugenics proponent Jon Entine, such complaints are “just another iteration of the anti-abortionist (and far left) belief that life is ‘sacred’ and ‘inviolable’”

“Sacred” and “inviolable”? Apparently for Entine such sentiment is old-fashioned.

Evolution gave us chance origins and led to the modern eugenics and abortion movements. Not surprisingly, life no longer is considered sacred or inviolable. After all, life arose spontaneously from a series of random events.

Ideas have consequences.

The Silent Yawn

A culture’s creation narrative is foundational, for it forms the template for everything else. One of the consequences of evolution—the belief that the world spontaneously arose by itself—is that it underwrites moral relativism, which is not to say there is no right and wrong but rather that right and wrong is something that we decide. And since evolution is true, it is to evolution that we go for our rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But with evolution there is no such endowment, for there is no such Creator. Not that evolution derives from atheism, it does not. Evolution derives from a different kind of theism, a kind where we decide what is right.

One of the rights evolutionists decided we did not have is the right to Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In the twentieth century eugenics movement evolutionary science was used to mutilate and institutionalize those whom evolutionists decided were not deserving of these rights. This was no backwater operation. It was a nationwide movement backed up by Supreme Court decisions. Next came the right to Life which evolutionists decided also is not universal, and should not be granted to the unborn. So the unborn do not have a right to life in our culture and now tens of millions have been “aborted.”

This holocaust makes no scientific sense (both eugenics and abortion are based on pseudo science), but then again our creation narrative comes from evolution. Religion drives science and it matters.

There is a Big Misconception Right Now About the Impact of Evolution

Ideas have consequences. Over the past century evolutionary thought has become dominant in much more than just the historical sciences. Other branches of science as well as education, law, history, public policy and media have increasingly been influenced by the idea that the world arose spontaneously. This tremendous influence of evolutionary thought has consequences that are largely misunderstood. The misconception is that, while there have been some missteps along the way such as in the twentieth century’s eugenics movement, those are both minor and largely behind us now and the greater and lasting consequences of evolution have been positive. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Evolution’s influence

An obvious example of evolution’s influence can be seen in the popular misconceptions held by those in positions of power. After the 2005 Dover trial, Judge John Jones, who ruled that evolution must be taught in our schools, recalled that he “was taken to school” by the evolutionists. It was, Jones recalled, “the equivalent of a degree in this area.” Unfortunately what evolutionists such as Ken Miller “taught” Jones was a series of scientific misrepresentations.

But these were not the only misrepresentations that made their way into American jurisprudence in the Dover trial. For the judge did not enter into his new training as a complete novice. As Jones later explained, “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

But the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, upon which the play is based, was a show trial used to promote evolution. The entire event was cleverly orchestrated by the ACLU to advance evolutionary thought and disparage skeptics.

For instance, the famed statesman and politician William Jennings Bryan was added to the prosecution team. Bryan had a good understanding of evolution and was concerned with the undefendable claim of evolution as fact. He was particularly concerned with evolution’s degraded view of humanity. The left-leaning pacifist was concerned with evolution’s racism, eugenics, social Darwinism and economic laissez faire implications.

Bryan’s role on the team was to deliver the final summation. That would have been important for Bryan would have provided a much needed corrective to the ACLU’s evolutionary propaganda. The ACLU needed to avoid any such exposure so they used a clever legal trick to deny any closing arguments.

But the fact that the Scopes Monkey Trial was a manipulated show trial is only the beginning of the problem with Judge Jones relying on Inherit the Wind as a source. For its authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee added yet more manipulation to the truth. In their fictionalized account of the trial they did what even the ACLU could not do—they rewrote history as evolutionists would have it. The result was a two-dimensional and grossly misleading rendition of the Scopes Monkey Trial. And yet to this day evolutionists use this play and film to misrepresent evolution. It is this script that is informing the public consciousness of the origins debate. This is an example the power of evolution’s influence.

A consequence of evolution

One of the earliest examples of evolution’s consequences is the modern eugenics movement, a term coined by Darwin’s half cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Eugenics was a natural extension of evolution, which explained that all life just happened to arise by random chance and the survival of the fittest in resource-limited environments. Nietzsche proclaimed that it was the sick, the oppressed, the broken and the weak, rather than evil men, who were the greatest threat to humanity.

From scientists such as Charles Davenport (Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) to elites such as Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes, eugenics was well accepted, and all with the best of intentions no doubt.

Evolutionist Henry Goddard identified a particular family as having inferior genetics on one side, making for a classic case study of good genes versus bad genes. According to this phony evolutionary science, those on the “bad” side were diagnosed as “feeble-minded,” a vague category into which anyone on the wrong side of an evolutionist could be cast. Their penalties included forced sterilization and a life sentence in an institution.

And the great Nikola Tesla warned of humanity’s “new sense of pity” which interfered with evolution’s law of the survival of the fittest:

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.

Evolutionist Hermann Muller wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin imploring the communist dictator to implement the “conscious control of human biological evolution.” And laws across America and even Supreme Court rulings turned against those who evolutionists pronounced to have the wrong genes. Meanwhile evolutionist’s such as Goddard enjoyed success and reputation while their victims were mutilated and imprisoned.

A big misconception

But aren’t such crude ideas as eugenics behind us now? That was then and this is now, and now we are all fixed, right? As Forbes’ Alex Knapp put it this week, “as we’ve advanced scientifically, we’ve also advanced morally.” This is a common view amongst evolutionists. They either ignore evolution’s role in the eugenics movement (Knapp puts the blame on physics), or they view it as an anomaly—the exception rather than the rule.

It would be difficult to imagine a bigger misconception. It is true that the eugenics movement has waned, but it has been replaced by something far more effective: worldwide abortion at levels the most extreme eugenicist could only have dreamed of.

No, today’s evolutionists are no different than yesterday’s evolutionists. They haven’t gotten better. Today’s evolutionists would have staunchly backed eugenics every bit as much as did Galton, Nietzsche, Davenport, Goddard, Tesla, Muller and the rest of them. Or they at least would have politely stood by in silent assent.

How do I know this? Because today they do the same with abortion. It is safe for evolutionists to look back at those who came before them and scrutinize their failings as a thing of past. Unfortunately this is a myth. Those failings are by no means a thing of past.

The theory that speaks of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life” has not set us on the path to utopia. Today infanticide and slavery are at levels never before seen in history while evolutionists pat themselves on the back for undermining science and teaching the world that humans are animals.

Evolutionists dogmatically proclaim they have the truth. They blackball and defame anyone who even so much as questions their phony science and absurd truth claims. And all the while they insist they hold the moral high ground while their world descends into yet more death and destruction.

Ideas have consequences.

What Michele Bachmann and Charles Darwin (Don’t) Have in Common

In a recent political debate presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann raised the topic of vaccines. She accused Rick Perry, governor of Texas, of abusing his authority when he imposed vaccine mandates. What does this have to do with Charles Darwin? Darwin was also concerned about vaccines. But the so-called Father of Modern Biology had a different sort of concern. Darwin erroneously worried that vaccines preserved the lives of those who otherwise would have succumbed. “Thus,” warned the Sage of Kent, “the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind.” And that, he ominously concluded:

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.

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. Hence we must bear without complaining 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 the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

It is little wonder that fifteen years later Nietzsche proclaimed that “The invalids are the great danger to humanity, not the evil men.” The rest, as they say, is history. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Matters of Health: Michael Lynch’s Reminder of Evolution’s Eugenics—Junk Science Matters

Michael Lynch’s recent finding that “novel means” of genetic intervention are required for the future genetic well-being of our species is a bit disturbing. After all, the last time evolutionists imposed “novel means” of genetic intervention we had everything from forced sterilization to institutionalization (read imprisonment). Nonetheless, Lynch informs us that the fundamental requirement for the maintenance of a species’ genetic integrity and long-term viability is that deleterious mutations must be balanced by the removal of such mutations by natural selection. And since Darwin’s dispensation of benevolence—otherwise known as death—is a less effective tool in our modern civilized society, and since our mutation load is unpredictable thus rendering genetic counseling ineffective, the result is that some “novel means” of genetic intervention are needed.

Lynch approvingly references evolutionist and eugenicist Hermann Muller from sixty years ago who “was well aware of the enormous social barriers to solving the mutation-accumulation problem, but he held out hope that ‘a rationally directed guidance of reproduction’ would eventually stabilize the situation.”

A rationally directed guidance of reproduction? This pathetically must have been the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove’s classic parody of the academic’s fantasy:

Muffley: Well, I, I would hate to have to decide...who stays up and...who goes down.

Dr. Strangelove: Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. Ha, ha. But ah, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present Gross National Product within say, twenty years.

Muffley: Wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?

Dr. Strangelove: When they go down into the mine, everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! [involuntarily gives the Nazi salute and forces it down with his other hand]Ahhh!

Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Like Kubrick’s classic character Dr. Strangelove, Muller, who once wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin imploring the communist dictator to implement the “conscious control of human biological evolution,” promoted a kindler and gentler eugenics.

Muller wanted Stalin to “guide human biological evolution along socially desirable lines” for human nature was not immutable and given the lofty advances of modern genetics such a program could bestow the gift of genius “upon practically every individual in the population” within just a few generations.

Of course “guidance” would have to be furnished to ensure the proper grouping of the most valuable genes “into as highly superior groupings as possible.”

And what type of man should be consciously selected? Well Charles Darwin, of course, would represent the perfect choice. Of course with Darwin long dead, leading evolutionists of the day would have to do. And if Stalin doubted any of this, Muller assured him that “Considering the enormous results achieved by natural biological evolution in the past, the potential value of a biological method of progression cannot be doubted.”

It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the case of evolutionists such as Muller we would have to add a generous layer of junk science. It was this dangerous combination of presumption and ignorance that led to the twentieth century’s eugenics nightmare.

Consider, for example, Sir Francis Galton who was impressed with the work of his half-cousin, a man by the name of Charles Darwin. Galton reasoned that a race of highly-gifted men could be produced by arranged, “judicious” marriages. The notion of eugenics caught on and soon the sick, infirm and botched were targeted as a public enemy.

Blessed are the poor in spirit and the meek, explained Jesus, but that was then. As Nietzsche now explained:

Sick people are the greatest danger for healthy people. …

The invalids are the great danger to humanity: not the evil men, not the “predatory animals.” Those people who are, from the outset, failures, oppressed, broken— they are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life among human beings, who in the most perilous way poison and question our trust in life, in humanity, in ourselves. Where can we escape it, that downcast glance with which people carry a deep sorrow, that reversed gaze of the man originally born to fail which betrays how such a man speaks to himself—that gaze which is a sigh. “I wish I could be someone else!”— that’s what this glance sighs. “But there is no hope here. I am who I am. How could I detach myself from myself? And yet—I’ve had enough of myself!”. . . On such a ground of contempt for oneself, a truly swampy ground, grows every weed, every poisonous growth, and all of them so small, so hidden, so dishonest, so sweet. Here the worms of angry and resentful feelings swarm; here the air stinks of secrets and duplicity; here are constantly spun the nets of the most malicious conspiracies—the plotting of suffering people against the successful and victorious; here the appearance of the victor is despised. And what dishonesty not to acknowledge this hatred as hatred! …

Take a look into the background of every family, every corporation, every community: everywhere you see the struggle of the sick against the healthy—a quiet struggle, for the most part …

From scientists such as Charles Davenport (Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) to elites such as Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes, eugenics was well accepted, and all with the best of intentions no doubt. Even Clarence Darrow at one point urged that we “chloroform unfit children.”

Evolutionist Henry Goddard identified a particular family as having inferior genetics on one side, making for a classic case study of good genes versus bad genes. According to this phony evolutionary science, those on the “bad” side were diagnosed as “feeble-minded,” a vague category into which anyone on the wrong side of an evolutionist could be cast. Their penalties included forced sterilization and a life sentence in an institution.

Laws across America and even Supreme Court rulings turned against those who evolutionists pronounced to have the wrong genes. And evolutionist’s such as Goddard enjoyed success and reputation while their victims were mutilated and imprisoned.

Evolution is not just a silly idea advocated by academics. It is junk science at its worst. Religion drives science, and it matters.