Consequences Of Darwinian Morality
It seems that Darwinian fundamentalism is on the verge of spilling over from biology into almost every sphere of life. If your are into politics there is “Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom”. Is economics your thing? Then you might want to consult, “Economics as an Evolutionary Science”. Lawyers, you are also covered with titles such as, “Evolutionary Jurisprudence” or “Law, Biology and Culture: The Evolution of Law”. Today, Darwin’s disciples are touting evolution as all-encompassing. Culture can no longer be separated from biology they tell us, for culture itself is merely the product of evolutionary forces. If that is true of culture, it is also true of morality. If any society embraces this all-encompassing evolutionary system of thought, the results will be devastating. Especially in the area of morality. Hear what some of the most “learned” Darwinists think about certain moral issues.
First up is Steven Pinker of MIT, considered by many to be one of the leading thinkers in the field of cognitive science. He wrote an article in the New York Times applying his brand of evolutionary psychology to the issue of infanticide. This was around the time the story broke in New York about a teenage girl, who delivered her baby at a school dance and then dumped it in the trash. He began talking about how, “we must understand teenagers who kill their newborns”, because infanticide “has been practiced and accepted in most cultures throughout history”. His reasoning was that since it was so ubiquitous, it must have been preserved by natural selection, which therefore means it must have an adaptive function. He went on, “if a newborn is sickly, or if its survival is not promising, they may cut their losses and favour the healthiest in the litter or try again later on”. Lest the reader be misled, Mr. Pinker is still speaking about human babies, not cats. Because of natural selection he goes on, “a capacity for neonanticide is built into the biological design of our parental emotions”. These remarks should not come as a total surprise though. At a symposium studying infanticide among animals, many of the participants agreed that “infanticide can no longer be called ‘abnormal’. Instead it is as ‘normal’ as parenting instincts, sex-drives and self-defense,” and may even be a beneficial evolutionary adaptation.
First up is Steven Pinker of MIT, considered by many to be one of the leading thinkers in the field of cognitive science. He wrote an article in the New York Times applying his brand of evolutionary psychology to the issue of infanticide. This was around the time the story broke in New York about a teenage girl, who delivered her baby at a school dance and then dumped it in the trash. He began talking about how, “we must understand teenagers who kill their newborns”, because infanticide “has been practiced and accepted in most cultures throughout history”. His reasoning was that since it was so ubiquitous, it must have been preserved by natural selection, which therefore means it must have an adaptive function. He went on, “if a newborn is sickly, or if its survival is not promising, they may cut their losses and favour the healthiest in the litter or try again later on”. Lest the reader be misled, Mr. Pinker is still speaking about human babies, not cats. Because of natural selection he goes on, “a capacity for neonanticide is built into the biological design of our parental emotions”. These remarks should not come as a total surprise though. At a symposium studying infanticide among animals, many of the participants agreed that “infanticide can no longer be called ‘abnormal’. Instead it is as ‘normal’ as parenting instincts, sex-drives and self-defense,” and may even be a beneficial evolutionary adaptation.
On the matter of rape, it gets even worse. In a book titled, “The Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion”, the authors (two university professors), made the claim that rape is not a pathology, biologically speaking. Instead they “reassured” us it is an evolutionary adaptation for maximizing reproductive success. The book even goes so far as to call rape, “a natural biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage”. At this point, the dangers of higher “education” become glaringly obvious. It is quite possible to be highly educated, but yet still be a fool. One of the biggest problems in the world today is that the educated fools are so sure of themselves whilst the wiser people are so full of doubt (but that is another story).
A local writer commenting on the issue of homosexuality asked what would be next. Would people be soon arguing to remove the taboo on sex with animals? Well, if Princeton University professor Peter Singer gets his way, the answer to that question is yes. In his article titled “Heavy Petting”, he makes it clear from the get go that he is attacking biblical morality (at least give him points for barking up the right tree). He writes, “in the West, we have a Judeo-Christian tradition” which teaches “humans alone are made in the image of God”. “In Genesis, God gives humans dominion over the animals”. He however maintains that, “we are animals” therefore “sex across the species ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings”. This sick mentality is not restricted to academia. In 2002 a play opened on Broadway called “The Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia?”. It featured a successful architect who confesses with his wife that he has fallen in love with someone else. The someone else is, you guessed it, a goat named Sylvia. With a culture already desensitized to adultery, the playwrights apparently decided to probe the waters of beastiality.
Picture for a moment a culture driven by this kind of Darwinian logic. Even though this way of thinking is fatuous, it is still very popular, why? Because it promises some kind of morality based on science instead of religion. The logical flaw in such a system of morality however, is that it cuts its own throat, philosophically speaking. Philosophically speaking, it is a self-defeatist or self-referentially absurd (or quite simply, it is dumb). For if all of our ideas are products of evolution, then so is the idea of evolution itself. At the pinnacle of this fatuity, is the presumption that only other people’s views have evolved, and are not objectively true or right, whilst the evolutionary view, somehow magically immune from this same process, alone remains true and objective. God help us all, if Darwinian fundamentalism spills over from the biology lab into other areas of public life.
