From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Mon Sep 22 2003 - 12:24:26 EDT
Bob Schneider wrote:
> The arguments used by German generals in WWI that evolution shows the
> superiority of the white (i.e., Germanic) race and justifies declaring war
> on inferior races is a perversion of a perservion. It had nothing to do
> with Darwin's theory and was a taking of Social Darwinism, for which Darwin
> was not responsible, far beyond what I believe Herbert Spencer would have
> countenanced. Whatever arguments the Nazis might have used based on this
> false concept, they did not base it on the science of evolution. Let us be
> clear that the Nazi hatred of the Jews was based on 2000 years of
> anti-Semitism, to which, sadly, Christianity contributed a great deal. To
> lay the blame on belief in evolution is to greatly distort the situation. A
> scientific theory is not responsible for the misunderstandings and
> perversions that people subject it to.
>
If I am not misunderstanding G.E. Moore point, it would also be committing
a naturalistic fallacy. The arguments are lengthy and difficult to quote
well,
but Moore does write:
But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named
those other properties they were actually defining good; that these
properties, in fact, were simply not "other," but absolutely and
entirely
the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the
"naturalistic fallacy"
and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose."
......
And the second reason why we should settle first of all this
question "What good means?" is a reason of method. It is this,
that we can never know on what evidence an ethical proposition
rests,
until we know the nature of the notion which makes the proposition
ethical. We cannot tell what is possible, by way of proof, in
favour of
one judgment that "This or that is good," or against another
judgment
"That this or that is bad," until we have recognised what the nature
of such
propositions must always be. In fact, it follows from the meaning
of good
and bad, that such propositions are all of them, in Kant's phrase,
"synthetic":
they all must rest in the end upon some proposition which must be
simply
accepted or rejected, which cannot be logically deduced from any
other
proposition.
(Taken from G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, London,
Cambridge University Press, 1903)
So the claim that our laws are merely manifestations of survivalist nature
of our genes is committing a naturalistic fallacy. By the way, to his
credit,
in his "Selfish Gene", Dawkins does astutely observe that nature is not
likely
to produce any excess of altruism and if we want to see good qualities, we
need
to make efforts to teach them.
In my experience, when I look beyond the fair weather atheist, the ones who
have really made a personal choice are typically quite consciously moral, but
aside
from a personal choice to follow some set of ethics, I still wonder how
anything
can be called "good" or why we should care or want to do this so-called
"good"
if we are not accountable to something or someone to be that so-called
"good".
In some places 2+2 == 5 is "good", and if we want to get ahead there, we must
believe it. For what reason should we oppose this kind of so-called "good"
unless there is a truth that really does matter? And if all that is now will
eventually
dissolve into a vast oblivion of nothingness, why _should_ we actually care
about
the truth?
Actually, to justify committing atrocities on the grounds of evolution
strikes me
as more than a mere fallacy. It's more like a "crooked excuse" where any
warped
bent and twisted notion would suffice.
By Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
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