Re: Evolutionary Psychology and Free Will

Just one snag. Miles cites D's Old and useless notes (Barrett et al 1987
p608)

Darwin writing in 1838 actually says "The general delusion about freewill is
obvious" It is not clear that Darwin is saying that freewill is a delusion.
The pages of the notes 25-29 do not support Miles' claims. Neither does
Darwin mention a 6000yr old earth

His quote from Sam Wilberforce is no better, as Sam was giving a long list
of things not just freewill.

Perhaps he did a course at ICR in quote-mining.

It always pays to follow up the sources!!

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@lists.calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 6:23 PM
Subject: Evolutionary Psychology and Free Will

> The most recent issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science
> Education (May-Aug 2005) contains an essay by British evolutionary
> theorist James Miles entitled, "The Accidental Creationists: Why
> Evolutionary Psychology is Bad for the Teaching of Evolution." Among
> other things, here is what Dr Miles says:
>
> ***
>
> As Darwin lay dying in March 1882, the last words he wrote to zoologist
> Thomas Huxley, his disciple of 30 years, were: "I wish to God there were
> more automata in the world like you" (Desmond 1997: 519). "Darwin's
> bulldog" as Huxley was known, had fought for Darwin in public for a
> quarter of a century while the reclusive Darwin stayed silent. Huxley
> fought to combat the idea that we were not animals, and the idea that we
> were not biochemical machines, the "automata" of nature. Darwinism has no
> room for free will; it is what Darwin called a "delusion" (see Barrett and
> others 1987: 608), wishful thinking akin to the belief that God made the
> world in 6 days and the earth is just 6000 years old.
>
> But a century and a quarter after Darwin penned these final words to
> Huxley, evolutionary psychology appears to have resurrected free will.
> Despite professing to be a passionate evolutionist, Cronin is careful to
> delineate the Darwinian kingdom: "we should not look on free will and
> biological 'constraints' as pulling in opposite directions" (1991: 377).
> Vocal evolutionary psychologist Matt Ridley is keen to tell us there is
> nothing inconsistent with free will within EP (1994). Free will, says
> David Barash, is a "useful inconsistency" (2003: 222; see also Pinker
> 1997b). In Miles (2004) I described using belief in free will as the
> litmus test of a true Darwinian, as the litmus test to see who will cut
> and run from the implications of evolutionary theory. There is no room for
> free will in a theory which connects us in an unbroken four-billion*year
> chain of evolution. Even Darwin's greatest 19th-century critics, like
> "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, accepted this truth: "man's free-will!
> * [is] utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of the brute
> origin of him who was created in the image of God" (Wilberforce 1860:
> 258).
>
> ***
>
> The entire essay is well written and provocative. I recommend that
> interested parties read it and comment here. Dr Miles is not saying
> anything new or unusual--I know of highly similar statements going back to
> at least the 1920s if not further--but his application to the current
> controversy is illuminating and stimulating. With his permission, I have
> made available a copy of the essay on my webpage:
>
> http://home.messiah.edu/~tdavis/James%20Miles%20Essay.htm
>
> I invite us to discuss it!
>
> Ted
>
>
>
Received on Mon May 1 15:21:51 2006