Let us reason/not reason together, saith Wilson

E.O. Wilson writes in USA Today:

Modern biology has arrived at two major principles that are supported by so much interlocking evidence as to rank as virtual laws of nature. The first is that all biological elements and processes are ultimately obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry. The second principle is that all life has evolved by random mutation and natural selection.

Although as many as half of Americans choose not to believe it, evolution, including the origin of species, is an undeniable fact. Furthermore, the evidence supporting the principle of natural selection has improved year by year, and it is accepted with virtual unanimity by the biologists who have put it to the test.

Though Wilson says that Darwinian evolution by random mutation and natural selection is an undeniable fact (well, excuse me, I thought it was just a theory), and that any belief to the contrary is based in nothing but faith, he is not a bigot. He acknowledges that this profound difference of opinion exists. He rationally accepts the fact that half of Americans irrationally reject the factual truth of Darwinism. Unlike the charming crew of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, et al. he’s not calling for the non-Darwinians to be expelled from society. He wants the faith-based and the fact-based to get along—for example, in helping save the environment.

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Laura W. writes:

E.O. is very magnanimous. Anyone who sees evidence of a creative intelligence in biology is a nincompoop, but he generously extends the olive branch of reconciliation.

There is no positive evidence for intelligent design, Wilson says, failing to mention what positive evidence there is for random mutations. “The great question remaining is whether the human mind originated the same way [randomly]. Many scientists, I among them, believe it did so evolve.” He permits himself a freedom to leap to conclusions he denies to religious barbarians.

In his increasing nature mysticism, disguised as scientific environmentalism, Wilson is yet another glaring example of a Darwinian who is simply unable to live up to his own beliefs. He was once asked by an interviewer how he manages to live with the disturbing knowledge that the human mind is the product of a random and meaningless process. Wilson responded, “Well, that’s when you turn to Stoicism.”

If he had any integrity, he would have said, “Well, that’s when you turn to nihilism.” He couldn’t possibly live by the Stoics and be an honest man. Said the famous Stoic Marcus Aurelius, ” As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do thou have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest, with a reconciliation of the bond which unites the divine and human to one another.”

LA replies:

Yes. The Stoics believe in a divine order of the universe, and in the need of man to conform himself to it. Wilson probably thinks that Stoicism simply means being tough and bearing it out. “I am the master of my fate. / I am the captain of my soul.”

Chris B. writes:

“The great question remaining is whether the human mind originated the same way”

I had this conversation with my sister the other night. She said that the mind creates and overlays order onto natural chaos as a means of survival. I said it is strange that random nature has selected in favour of those who randomly “believe” in a natural order (for instance, gravity), and who then act according to it and so survive (by not falling off cliffs). I said “How can random nature select those who believe in order? Is it because nature is itself ordered?” She didn’t reply.

LA replies:

Yes. And even more fundamentally, why should random nature produce life, produce the fanatical desire of living things to reproduce themselves? Obviously there is a drive for life. Life itself is that drive. Yet according to the Darwinians, there is no drive for life that is inherent in life. There are only random chance mutations which result in the possessors living longer and having more offspring. What the Darwinians seem to be saying is that the drive for life originates by a chance random mutation. But even that is overstating their true position, because Darwinism does not allow for any internal intention or direction or will or drive aiming at some result. Darwinism says that living things including humans are machines, the functioning of which is determined by random mutations in the past that were selected. All the organism’s behaviors are determined by the past, not oriented toward the future. At the most profound level, Darwinism says that there is no intentionality in life. So there is no drive of life to reproduce itself. There is only behavior mechanistically determined by past mutations and natural selection.

LA writes:

This is from a recent interview with Wilson:

Speaking of neuroscience, do you believe that consciousness itself is also an evolutionary adaptation?

Yes. Proof will require a lot more information about, for example, neuro-circuitry and the nature of memory and emotional inputs in reasoning. Once we get a grip on that, I believe it will become evident that consciousness is a Darwinian adaptation.

What does that do to the notion of the soul? Does that mean you believe there is no such thing?

Yes, in the religious sense. I think the Cartesian notion of dualism between body and soul is dead forever. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Which is another reason for having deep thinking about human values and where we want the human species to go.

George R. writes:

Edward O. Wilson wrote:

“What then are we to do? Put the differences aside, I say. Meet on common ground where we can find it.”

As far as I’m concerned, Wilson can take his olive branch and eat it. This is war.

The obvious goal of the materialists, including Wilson , is the eradication of every non-materialist from every magisterial and official position in the country. It has to be. Otherwise, there will always remain the chance that their precious theory will be shown to have been baseless; and they themselves will be shown to have been damned fools for having propagated such irrational rubbish in the first place. Therefore, Wilson and his cohorts intend to condemn us to living under their big lie.

The first thing we cannot let them get away with is defining the debate as being between “science and religion.” This is similar to describing, say, the distinction between men and women as being between “men” and “human beings.”

LA replies:

But Wilson is calling for tolerance in the old sense of the word: he thinks religious believers are wrong, but he suffers their existence as fellow citizens in the same society. That is vastly better than the new war of religion (or rather war against religion) declared by Dawkins.

Chris L. writes:

You write: “Yet according to the Darwinians, there is no drive for life that is inherent in life.”

Well they do say this. They might say that all life, from the simplest virus and onwards, produces copies of itself. This is the selfish gene idea, it reduces life to a chemical reaction. Note: I didn’t use the phrase ‘exists to’ because that would broach the teleology argument.

Also, I’ve had a thought about not being able show positive evidence for intelligent design. If we take Alan Roebuck’s argument about consciousness and thought being extra-empirical—not verifiable through material senses—then it follows that intelligent design cannot be verified, as it is (I believe) made out of the same “stuff” (if we’ll suffer that word) as consciousness.

LA replies:

Yes, life produces copies of itself, but not out of any drive (purpose, intentionality) to produce copies of itself. It produces copies of itself because of a random accidental chemical change or a random accidental genetic mutation that made it behave that way. Because the behavior to produce copies of itself kept the species in existence, the behavior to produce copies of itself was continued. But the fact that living things have this behavior does not come from a drive to have that behavior. It does not come from a drive to live and reproduce, any more than a mousetrap has the drive or intentinality to trap a mouse.

In fact, it has even less intentionality than a mousetrap, since the mousetrap, while having no intention of its own, experesses the intention of its designer, while living things according to Darwinism have no designer and do not express any intention at all. Natural selection makes life appear to have intentionality, but in reality, according to Darwinism, it has none.

Thus, according to Darwinism, living organisms are on a lower level than manmade machines. Manmade machines reflect and carry out a purpose. Living organisms have no purpose.

All purpose, intentionality, drive, that Darwinians attribute to living things is a lie that the Darwinians have no right to assert according to their own theory.

MJF writes from Portugal:

One thing I don’t understand about “evolution” is, why does it always take the same direction: from less to more complex. Is there anything that makes more complex organisms intrinsically more adaptable than less complex organisms?

I realize that, at the meta-level, that’s the reason why this purposeless process is called, well, evolution—otherwise, the designation would be senseless.

But I mean, at the reality level. Why is it not (or is it?) a question of more complex evolving to less complex? Why don’t men evolve into flies, which I bet have less problematic lives than we do—and so better chances of survival, I suppose.

I’m pretty sure it’s a dumb question with a very simple answer, but I’ve only recently started to read about evolution.

LA replies:

It’s not a dumb question at all but goes to the heart of the Big Darwinian Lie. Darwin’s supporters think he pulled off the greatest intellectual feat in the history of science by showing how the apparently purposive processes of life, including the progressive appearance of new life forms of ever greater complexity and mental powers (all of which suggest an ordering and directing intelligence), happened as a result of mindless material processes. But in reality this brilliant “solution” is an absurd contradiction that cannot stand. Given mindless purposeless mutations plus natural selection, there is no reason why life should exhibit its evident drive toward greater complexity. Gould himself said that from the point of view of Darwinism, bacteria are superior to man, since they survive better. Why then the evolution, out of one-celled organisms that had existed on earth for two billion years, of marine invertebrates, marine vertebrates, deciduous trees, and eagles? Gould says that all this is nothing other than a random oscillation of degrees of complexity, a “bush” rather than “tree.” Which is just begging the question and repeating the Big Darwinian Lie.

So the short answer is: there is no reason in Darwinism for the evolution of more complex species. The most that Darwinian random mutation and natural selection can plausibly explain is slight improvements within an existing species.

Laura W. writes:

I think Wilson fits the definition of a mad scientist. Did you notice in that interview he said that “most of the natural environment, and the animal and plant species in it” will be gone by the end of the century? If, on the other hand, we see things his way and stop “over-reproducing,” there may be hope. How could we possibly stop over-reproducing when our genes are nothing but self-replicating machines? It’s the old Darwinian scenario: human evolution was mindless and random until a few very smart individuals evolved who can now take over the show for the rest of us and direct that random process. Hallelujah! Evolution has created God. His name is E.O. Wilson.

George R. writes:

You say Wilson is tolerant. But he praised the Dover, PA decision, which ruled (on the basis of nothing) that it was illegal for a school to offer an alterernative to Darwinism. You say that he “suffers our existence.” But how can you know this before he and his ilk actually have the power not to suffer it? And this power, believe me, they presume to deserve, being the “enlightened ones.”

And so what if he really does want to find common ground with non-materialists? As a materialist, I say he is propagating a lie as enormously soul-destroying as has ever been spread. Proof of Wilson’s goodwill cannot be found in his tolerance, but only in recanting his errors.

LA replies:

I was only pointing to the significant difference in tone and approach between him and the Dawkins school.

John B. writes:

Just for the record:

MJF is probably misinformed that evolution “always takes the same direction: from less to more complex.” There are, I think, so-called degenerate organisms—i.e., living things who are less complex than some of their ancestors. Their ancestry is a kind of bell curve that reached a height from which it eventually descended.

This does not affect your critique of natural selection.

P.S. You may see degeneracy discussed at Wikipedia’s article entitled Devolution (biological fallacy) and at Claim CB932 of The Talk Origins Archive. At both places, it is discussed as a (failed) challenge to natural selection. The Wikipedia article is a “See also” at Wikipedia’s Degeneracy entry, which begins with a helpful etymology of degeneracy.

LA replies:

Yes, I meant to say that of course evolution does not always go to greater complexity. But when we think about the main line of development seen in the most important animals, the vertebrates, the progress is striking and undeniable: from fish, to amphibians, to reptiles, to birds and mammals, with each order not just more complex but clearly on a higher level than the previous. Think of a fish, which has no pelvis, compared to a frog which has a pelvis and can hop around on the land. Think of warm-bloodedness in birds and mammals which gives them an independence of the environment not possessed by fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Think of the cuddliness of baby mammal compared with a freshly hatched, scale-covered snake. Not to take anything away from each stage of evolution, as each one is marvelous, but there is a clear movement toward greater and greater fullness of being.

George R. writes (posted April 2):

Yes, that’s true. Wilson’s tone and approach are not offensive per se, as are those of Hitchens and Dawkins. In general, the materialist intellegentia is made up of men like Wilson, I believe. The abrasiveness of Hitchens and Dawkins is probably rare.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 27, 2008 12:15 AM | Send