Davescot on Darwin and eugenics

In a post at the Uncommon Descent blog, Davescot has an excellent summary of the connection between Darwin and eugenics. The article is A complete Darwin quote with a brief translation (20 April, 2008). Davescot's article is simple, accurate, and straight to the point.

For those who follow these debates, this may come as a surprise. Normally I find little of value at Uncommon Descent, and I'm very surprised to see this one. But credit where it is due; Davescot's post is excellent, and needs no modication or qualification to get my full recommendation.

The article has a full quote from Descent of Man, including the second paragraph traditionally omitted by those who want to link Darwin to the holocaust. He follows this with a couple of very simple and straightforward observations.

Paraphrasing briefly, Darwin notes that we humans are animals in the body, and that the same selective breeding applied to farm animals for generations would work in the same way if it was applied to humans. Immediately after this, Darwin also notes that the attempt would degrade the noblest part of our nature, the very part which distinguishes humans from other animal species.

Quoting Davescot's concluding paragraph.

If there’s any real case to be made for Darwin and the holocaust it’s the opposite of what’s messaged in Expelled. The holocaust resulted from a failure to heed Darwin’s warning that eugenics could only be practiced by sacrificing the noblest part of our nature, the very part and only part that separates us from other animals. Those responsible for the holocaust, beginning with the eugenics movement in America, were the true animals. Those opposed were nobler than the animals.

Hat tip to Wes Elsberry at the Austringer for alerting me to Davescot's post. Flunked, Not Expelled: Not Even David Springer Buys the Darwin-Leads-to-Hitler Rhetoric.
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Mike Argento scoops everyone on ID Pleasurian Philosophy

The immediately preceding post gives the background as to why ID Pleasurian philosophy is getting so much attention right now. So far, the following blogs have taken William Dembski's suggestion that we check out the ICON-RIDS blog: Stranger Fruit, Pandas Thumb, Afarensis, Duae Quartunciae, 忘却からの帰還 (Japanese), Clever Beyond Measure, Thinking for Free, Pharyngula, Amused Muse, Red State Rabble, Scientia Natura, paralepsis, paralepsis.

But it turns out we are all more than a year late. We were scooped on this story by Mike Argento, in April 2006, with Talk about strange bedfellows.... Mike has picked up all the essential details of this story, and his account is the usual rollicking fun filled ride.
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The Wedge.

This is too good to be true! William Dembski, at his "Uncommon Descent" blog, ponders the following:

It will be interesting to see how the National Center for Science Education Selling Evolution deals with the growing number of non-religious ID proponents. Check out the following link: icon-rids.blogspot.com.

I have three predictions.

• The NCSE will do nothing.
  
• Bloggers all over the blogsphere are going to trumpet this link with unbridled and raucous hilarity.
  
• William Dembski will delete his blog entry, and the guy he is linking to will be dropped from the ISCID.

Here's the link to Dembski's blog article. Let's see how long it remains a live link matching what I have quoted above.

My second prediction is a bit unfair. The story has already been picked up at Stranger Fruit, paralepsis, Afarensis, …

The ID proponent that William Dembski asks us to check out is William Brookfield. The chance that Dembski actually checked this out himself first is about nil. Why I am so sure? Is it because I've noticed that Brookfield fails to say anything remotely useful about ID? That's true enough; but that's never bothered ID folks before. No, the problem is going to be a little bit less "safe for work" than that…

This is solid gold ad hominem. Brookfield provides links to his own home page, the Brookfield Institute of Transparadigmic Science. Read, enjoy. It looks plausibly like just another random crank, but it gets better… so much better that one suspects a parody and sting operation.

From his page:

ID Pleasurian philosophy is a non-religious amalgam of ID science and Hefnerian Playboy philosophy. It serves as a strategically unified and archetypal counter proposal to orthodox ascetic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. It is also somewhat resonant with Wiccan and “mother nature”- based pagan cults (in the west) and Tantric Buddhism (in the east). Pleasurian-ism is an earthy, sensuous and physically celebratory form of “monistic idealism” or infocognitive monism.” Pleasurian science is naturally driven by the "pleasure of finding things out."

ID and Hefnerian Playboy philosophy? Can it get any better than this? Incredibly; yes. Brookfield also describes his position as an ID scientist in Pleasuria. Here is an extract; probably from Brookfield's partner Steve Saba. I'm not kidding. Caution. The first link in this extract may not be safe for work…

As an Intelligent Design Scientist I naturally support the WEDGE :-)

See amazon.com for more (mis)information on the "Wedge" :-)

Links are as in the original. The first link goes to the wedge that is illustrated at the top of this article. Really; I'm not kidding. I carefully sorted through all the pictures of "the wedge" available at that site to pick the one least likely to make my blog lose family appeal. The second link goes to pages for Barbara Forrest's book Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design.

The point of this is not to be critical of Brookfield himself. His proposals for an "ID Pleasurian philosophy" sound quite fascinating; and I'm sure he'll get a big boost in recognition as a result of Dembski's blog article. He's got a wicked sense of humour; I love it! My main interest is to see how long Dembski maintains the link with Brookfield's research.
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Is D'Souza really redefining evolution?

Conservative USA blogger and writer Dinesh D'Souza isn't afraid of Darwin. According to D'Souza, this is not because Darwin can be easily refuted; but because actually Darwin is perfectly compatible with Christian belief in design. He says:

I know many on the right, especially the Christian right, are scared of Darwin. Even intellectual magazines like Commentary seem to have adopted an anti-Darwin position. This has enabled many on the left, as well as the professional atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, to portray conservative Christians as yahoos. Sometimes we do come across that way.

In my forthcoming book "What's So Great About Christianity" I will show why, contrary to the claims of Dawkins and company, Darwinian evolution does not undermine the design argument for God. On the contrary, the latest findings of modern science have greatly strengthened that argument. Paley was right and Dawkins is wrong.

This has been picked up by a number of prominent bloggers. Pharyngula is unimpressed, at The rebranding of Intelligent Design. He says:

The new strategy is to embrace the word "evolution". Ask them if they believe in evolution, and they will happily declare that "Yes, I believe in 'evolution'!" Unfortunately, what they call "evolution" is not evolution as evolutionary biologists understand it. If they're willing to redefine science, what's to stop them from redefining mere evolution to suit them?

Pharyngula's title got it right. D'Souza is trying to rebrand design, but without letting on that this is what he is doing. But is D'Souza actually redefining evolution? Not that I can see.

Paley's notion of design

D'Souza is playing fast and loose with the notion of design. Paley's arguments on natural theology dealt specifically with the forms of living things. His famous book, first published in 1802, is Natural Theology, Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. This includes the notorious "watchmaker" argument, which is the argument that has been picked up by the modern intelligent design movement. Put simply, anything that complex needs a designer. This argument was exploded by Darwin's insights on the origin of species.

The modern Intelligent Design movement picked up the shreds of this now useless argument, and by virtue of reeking incompetence at elementary science they tried to prop up the corpse with a lot of claims about new scientific theories. No science was actually involved, of course; just lots of bafflegab, and repackaging of conventional creationist arguments. This charade has been thoroughly exposed for anyone with the wit to see it.

D'Souza thinks Paley got it right. But Paley does much more than propose design. He gives an actual argument for design, and he speaks specifically of design of the forms of living things themselves. And in this, Paley got it wrong.

For instance, on page 468 (12 ed) of his book, Paley considers some difficulties with his view.

The TWO CASES which appear to me to have the most of difficulty in them, as forming the most of the appearance of exception to the representation here given, are those of venomous animals, and of animals preying upon one another. These properties of animals, wherever they are found, must, I think, be referred to design; because there is, in all cases of the first, and in most cases of the second, an express and distinct organization provided for the producing of them. Under the first head, the fangs of vipers, the stings of wasps and scorpions, are as clearly intended for their purpose, as any animal structure is for any purpose the most incontestably beneficial. ...

The remainder of the chapter makes fascinating reading. Paley gives some mitigating considerations, and a look at the whole problem of evil, and also, interestingly, a consideration of a role for chance and contingency along with design.

The critical point to bear in mind is this: Paley is looking at the specific organs and adaptions of living things. In Paley's view, the form of such organs can only be explained by design. Darwin showed that this is wrong; finely adapted organs can also be explained by natural selection.

The modern intelligent design movement is perfectly correct to see evolution and design as being two radically different explanations for the finely adapted forms of living complexity. They can't both be right, and this design argument is most certainly wrong.

Another view of design

At this point, we come to a subtle distinction. Darwin certainly exploded the line of reasoning used by Paley, but he did not explode the conclusion that the natural world is established by the design of a deity. Darwin left in smoking ruins the best positive argument from the natural world to a deity. He did not actually proceed to refute the deity itself.

It seems hard for many atheists to get their head around this point: but there are many Christians actively at work in scientific research into the natural world, and who accept without quibble or distortion all the basic empirical facts of evolutionary biology as conventionally understood by mainstream science. Christians are a minority amongst working scientists, but there are still a substantial number.

Christians invariably have some kind of notion whereby the natural world is God's creation. For Christians active in conventional science, this usually means that evolution itself is an intended consequence of how the designer set up the cosmos. An interesting example of this perspective is the famous evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Dobzhansky's well known essay,
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution is actually about science and religion, and it expresses basically a kind of theistic evolution. He says:

The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world not by caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection. It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

This is a variant of a common theme amongst Christians who are active in science. They hold that the entire natural world is established by design, and that any study of natural processes is study of that design.

This perspective is, of course, not provable and (usually) not falsifiable. It is not a scientific model. This is invariably recognized by its advocates. It may not be a good fit with popular religion, but Christianity is extremely diverse in any case. Dobzhansky, for example, was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, but he was by no means conventional in his beliefs.

Whether this perspective is a fit with traditional religion is debatable. My own feeling is that we can see this much, at least... it has been a traditional belief all down the centuries that all natural processes are established by God. This foundational belief has been maintained many many Christians even as our understanding of those processes has developed.

Don't Redefine Evolution

We don't have to agree with Dobzhansky. But it would be rash to say that his view was inconsistent with evolution, or that he redefined evolution! As one of the major developers of the "New Synthesis" of evolutionary biology with genetics in the 1960s, Dobzhansky has an excellent claim to being one of those who established the definitions of evolution that we use today!

D'Souza recognizes that taking an explicit anti-Darwin position makes you look like a yahoo. As far as I can tell he's recognizing Darwinian evolution as it is conventionally defined. I see no flagrant errors in the details of evolutionary biology involved; and no redefinition.

The explicitly anti-Darwin position of the modern Intelligent Design movement so popular with D'Souza's fellow religious conservatives is a position of breathtaking inanity, fostered by culpable ignorance and calculated dishonesty in its public defenders. The real risk from attempts to rebadge intelligent design is the problem of the big tent. The risk is that they'll say one thing to one audience and another for a different audience, and try slide anti-Darwinian design of specific forms into the arena under the cover of a vague belief in a creative design underlying the whole cosmos.

D'Souza is, as far as I can tell, recognizing the validity of evolution, but arguing that it's a part of the whole design. That's a position that can and should be argued. But let's not argue it by redefining evolution ourselves!

This has nothing to do with wanting atheists to keep silence, or with rolling over and accepting the validity of religion, or with avoiding offense to believers who happen to be allies in the fight against creationist pseudoscience.

Evolutionary biology makes no mention of plans, or designs, or Gods. We have no need of that hypothesis. The same is true of meteorology, geology, physics, chemistry or any other science. There is not even an additional clause to say "there's no God who set this up". To argue for or against God's existence can use arguments relating to empirical science, but they have to go further than this and into some metaphysics.

Distorting science to insert our own metaphysics is bad because it distorts science. It is bad when done by believers, and it is bad when done by unbelievers.
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