The Delusion of Darwinian Natural Law

In a short, inconspicuous paragraph in the conclusion to the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin speculates that "in the distant future … psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." One hundred and forty years later, Darwin's eerie prediction about the revolutionary effect of his work on human beings' self-understanding seems all too prophetic. After a century of dissemination, the once-novel theory of evolution is widely accepted as established scientific fact. Given the quasi-religious hold of evolutionary theory over the modern mind, it is not surprising that it should serve as the spiritual inspiration for developments within the field of psychology. First popularized in the 1970s by Harvard's Edward O. Wilson, evolutionary psychology, originally called sociobiology, interprets all human behavior in light of the evolutionary process. Evolutionary psychology aims to be a comprehensive science, explaining the origins and ends of every human behavior and institution.

Not wanting to be left behind, a number of conservative thinkers have let themselves be caught up in this movement. Conservatism initially identified evolution exclusively with Darwinian materialism and, therefore, viewed it as a fundamental threat to human dignity. But, recently, conservatives such as James Q. Wilson, Francis Fukuyama, and Charles Murray have used evolutionary psychology to show that morality is rooted in human biology. Fukuyama's The Great Disruption goes so far as to claim that "a great deal of social behavior is not learned but part of the genetic inheritance of man and his great ape forbears." Drawing on categories borrowed from evolutionary psychology, Fukuyama argues that human beings are drawn to the kind of moral order provided by traditional rules of trust and honesty.

Evolution's most ambitious and vocal conservative advocate, however, is political scientist Larry Arnhart. But where Wilson and Fukuyama speak of evolution generally, Arnhart appeals directly to Darwin himself. In Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature, Arnhart argues that conservative thought has fundamentally misunderstood Darwin. For Arnhart, Darwin is not a biological materialist but a modern disciple of Aristotle. Properly understood, Darwinism proves that morality is rooted in human biology. Indeed, Arnhart claims that Darwinism can identify twenty biological desires that are common to all human societies. The fulfillment or frustration of these desires provides universal standards for judging the morality of human social behavior. Darwinian natural right consists of the "right" to have these biological desires satisfied. Arnhart recently argued in the conservative religious journal First Things that both secular and religious conservatives currently "need Charles Darwin." By "adopting a Darwinian view of human nature," both groups would be able to give a rational, non-sectarian response to the prevailing dogma of moral relativism. For Arnhart, the attraction of Darwinism is essentially practical: It provides a "scientific"–not "metaphysical" or "sectarian"–basis for "conservative moral and political thought."

One has to question, however, the wisdom of evaluating any account of human nature primarily in terms of its political utility. But this does explain why, on every critical point, Arnhart lets his political concerns shape his theoretical defense of Darwinism. Consequently, Arnhart never really confronts conservatism's original charge that Darwinism reduces human beings to clever, biologically determined animals. But he does present natural lawyers with an intriguing and, by no means, inconsequential choice: Should they embrace Darwinism and give natural law conclusions the air of "scientific legitimacy," or should they continue to defend an unfashionable but richer account of human nature that transcends human biology?

Essential to the Darwinian defense of morality is the belief that social behaviors are "biologically rooted" in human nature. Darwinians such as Arnhart start from the premise that human beings are "hard-wired" for specific species-preserving behaviors. Darwinism explains all human societies, ranging from families to political communities, as unintended byproducts of the evolutionary process. Social behaviors and institutions came into existence as evolutionary responses to "species-threatening" changes in man's environment. Friendships, marriages, families, and even political communities, all of which are commonly seen as vital features of a meaningful human life, have their origins outside of the moral universe. Every society came into existence in a world where "species-survival" and "species-extinction," not good and evil, were the fundamental human categories. Darwinism views sociality and morality as part of man's genetic inheritance–the adaptive means through which the species perpetuates itself. Contrary to popular belief, morality is really instrumental to the larger goal of individual and collective preservation.

Darwin's thesis that all species, including the human species, possess a biological drive for self-preservation is not novel. Arnhart, for example, frequently observes that Saint Thomas Aquinas, the natural law's classical exponent par excellence, makes a similar claim. And as Arnhart likes to note, Aquinas even once described natural right as "that which nature has taught to all animals." Aquinas's strongest statement on this matter, however, occurs in the context of a wider discussion of natural law. Aquinas there states that the natural law's second inclination, which man shares with all animals, directs him to preserve the species. But as Arnhart shows, Darwin extends this insight substantially further than Aquinas does. In contrast to Aquinas, Darwin believes that those behaviors that are necessary for the survival of the species gradually become woven into human biology itself. Over time, human beings eventually come to view behaviors that are necessary for survival as both meaningful and moral.

The Darwinian defense of morality characteristically points to the end of the family as illustrative of how morality is rooted in human biology. Arnhart himself traces the family back to the strong sexual drive of young men. Rooted in their "biological nature," this drive plays an important role in the preservation of the species, yet it also fulfills "the natural desire for conjugal bonding." Once properly channeled (Arnhart conspicuously never explains how or why this occurs), the sexual drive allows for the kind of bonding that naturally occurs within the family. The preservation of the family and, ultimately, of the species itself are the result of the "biological drive for sexual mating." Scrutinized from the Darwinian perspective, the biological desire for conjugal bonding is revealed to perform the necessary task of stabilizing society.

While Darwinism can defend the family as a natural institution, it is not a genuinely moral or spiritual defense. Wedded to biological materialism, Darwinism necessarily reduces the good to the useful–finally viewing the family as instrumental to evolution's larger goal of the preservation of society. While family life undoubtedly helps stabilize society, this clearly is not the only thing that is good about it. Arnhart's recognition of natural desires for "conjugal and familial bonding" shows that he is aware of this fact. But the logic of his position ultimately requires him to view the family in terms of its preservation of society.

But is this really compatible with conservatism? Is it really possible to understand family life solely in terms of its role in the preservation of society? Setting aside for the moment any sacramental notion of marriage(not mere conjugal bonding) and family life, Darwinism would have one believe that a husband's self-conscious love for his wife or the personal sacrifices that parents willingly make for their children are byproducts of a primordial desire to perpetuate the species. Viewed from the perspective of human beings' lived experience, Darwinism's appreciation of the family is even more dehumanizing than modernity's view of marriage as simply a contractual arrangement.

Part of the reason for this flattening of the human horizon is Darwinism's systematic identification of the good with the flourishing of the species rather than with the self-conscious individual. There is then something fundamentally incoherent about the effort to defend the intrinsic goodness of morality on the basis of Darwinism. This incoherence, however, explains a number of oddities about the Darwinian defense of morality. The most obvious of these is its creative effort to present Darwin as a teacher of "evolution." As surprising as it sounds, Darwin never uses this term in The Origin of Species. Rather, he speaks of "descent with modification." The difference between these terms is not merely semantic. Darwin realized that evolution is a teleological term. To say that something evolved is to say that it has evolved toward something. Evolution implies the kind of purposeful change by which something unfolds according to a prearranged plan–precisely the understanding of evolution that the Roman Catholic Church claims is not necessarily inimical to Christianity. While often popularly misunderstood, what the Catholic Church consistently has opposed, from Pius XII's nuanced 1950 encyclical Humani Generis to John Paul II's recent statements, is not the idea of evolution per se but, rather, those materialist theories that reduce psychic humanity to biological animality.

Darwin, however, eschews such teleological thinking–going so far as to note in his manuscript not to use "hierarchical" terms such as higher and lower. For him, nature is intrinsically mechanistic. Change results from "natural selection," the process by which species adapt to environmental changes by weeding out variations that jeopardize their survival. Far from acting towards an end, nature responds to external forces of chance and necessity. It is not difficult to see why Darwinians such as Arnhart try to gloss over the harshness of this teaching. By drawing attention to the fact that nature is a blind and continuous process, they effectively undermine their political defense of the intrinsic goodness of morality.

Darwinism's teaching on perpetual modification points to another problem with the idea of Darwinian natural law. For Darwin, the process of modification is, in principle, continuous. Contrary to what they may wish to believe, human beings are not the end of the evolutionary process. The Darwinian defense of natural morality, therefore, is not to be taken too literally. Lacking the fixity of any genuine end, the goods supported by natural law are useful only over long periods of time. Like nature itself, they are transitionally good. This explains why Arnhart places so much emphasis on biology, since it offers the only real source of "temporary fixity" in the world.

What is most striking about the Darwinian defense of morality is that it argues for one of the positions that natural law traditionally has argued against. Natural law historically has opposed any simplistic identification of the natural with the biological. Contrary to Darwinism's identification of the natural with the instinctual, natural law associates the natural with the reasonable. It seeks to humanize and transcend the realm of biology by incorporating it into the realm of reason–to view the low in light of the high, not vice versa. Whereas materialist Darwinians see human nature culminating in the biological instinct to perpetuate the species, Aquinas thinks that man's natural inclination directs him to seek the truth about God and to live in society. Rather than insisting that he be completely at home in the biological world, natural law realizes that his natural desire for transcendence ensures that man can only be ambiguously at home in the world. Psychically different from other creatures, the rational creature (not merely the calculating, species-preserving animal) somehow embodies all of the aspirations of the evolved biological world.

This natural desire to know does not negate the desire to perpetuate the species but, in fact, can explain why such perpetuation is desirable. Part of the attraction of natural law thinking, therefore, lies in its ability to show that human beings are not slaves to their instincts but, rather, that they possess the psychic freedom to make sense of these instincts. Over and against Darwinism's biological determinism, natural law theory is grounded in the all-too-human experience of wrestling with matters of conscience–of trying to do what one ought to do and not merely what one instinctively wants to do. Rejecting the reality of such an inner life, Darwinian-based defenses of morality are necessarily self-defeating. They replace relativism's belief that nothing can legitimately make a claim on the human soul with materialism's belief that human beings are biologically incapable of caring about their souls.

Near the end of his essay in First Things, Arnhart celebrates the remarkable recent advances of science in the areas of neurobiology and genetics. In light of these advances, Arnhart warns that "if conservatism is to remain intellectually vital, [it] will need to show that [its] position is compatible with this new science of human nature." But what does Arnhart think Darwinism has to say to these new sciences? If there really are no natural limits on human beings, if nature really is in a constant slow state of flux, how can a Darwinian, even a morally serious Darwinian, oppose something such as the "new science" of human cloning? A self-conscious Darwinian such as E. O. Wilson realizes that cloning is simply the next stage of human "modification." Faithful to the spirit of his Darwinism, Wilson looks forward to the day when cloning or "volitional evolution" will allow scientists to alter "not just the anatomy and intelligence of the species but also the emotions and creative drive that compose the very core of human nature." Less consistent Darwinians such as Arnhart choose to remain blissfully unaware of this fact. Consequently, they fail to recognize that what they offer is not so much up-to-date moral guidance as the ultimate moral justification for the "brave new world."

Marc D. Guerra teaches theology at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is a contributing editor to Religion & Liberty.

"One would expect that "SCIENCE" should be interested in the question of whether one would expect the "outside sources" that it knows about [a Creator being deliberately excluded] to possess the requisite GFE."

Uh, "Science" IS interested in the question. That's what the book is all about.

Thus far, existing natural processes are sufficient to explain the data about life and evolution--"biblical creationists" claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

Yes! Because ultimately most of us could hardly care about what happens to the "stock" except in a limited sense with our own families.

Unfortunately, there are way too many people working to dilute the stock in other ways. Like the safety requirement that snack dispensers be tip-proof (fastened to a wall or something). Hey, if someone is dumb enough to try to shake out a freebie and winds up tipping the thing over and killing himself, it would benefit the gene pool to prevent his reproductive contributions, but NOOOOO, we have to protect him.

Another is (and I know there will be some howls out there) motorcycle helmets. I oppose mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. I think that if someone wants to forgo the protection, and incurs serious injury because of that decision, then maybe the human gene pool is a little better off.

That's an excellent point. By the standards of natural selection, the cockroach would have to be the most moral creature on the face of the earth -- which is absurd.

You can idolize whatever morality and whatever standards of superiority you fancy.

But nothing you fancy counts to nature unless it contributes to the survival of your kind.

If one accepts that behaviour is based on biology, which it clearly is to some degree (example - start a cult where people eat only grass. It wouldn't work. Humans can't digest grass and they would quickly starve to death), then one has to accept that behaviour is at least partly based on where that biology came from - evolution. However, morality is a different thing altogether. It isn't just survival. In fact, it's often anti-survival, as when someone loses their life saving another. To paraphrase Heinlein, morality is the instinct of survival extended beyond the individual.

People attribute far too much to this one theory, and if someone wants to twist that theory for sociopolitical ends, that doesn't necessarily reflect on the theory's validity.

No one has yet offered a valid basis for the phenomenon of speciation other than Darwin's Theory of Evolution, except to say "God did it". OK, fair enough, but that's religion, not science, and can't be proved.

I oppose mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. I think that if someone wants to forgo the protection, and incurs serious injury because of that decision, then maybe the human gene pool is a little better off

I agree.

But only on the following two conditions:

1. If he has health insurance, he should only have it by virtue of paying a higher premium, else you and I would be paying higher premiums to protect his like from their idiocy.

2. And if he has no insurance, society should withhold medical treatment if he can't pay for it himself.

Now, does all that sound more practical than having helmet laws?

Of course, if we got about only by walking, we wouldn't have such problems--but that's another story, and a theoretical one at that.

In fact, it's [morality is] often anti-survival, as when someone loses their life saving another.

Bad example.

Such instances can be explained by the action of natural selection on behavior--be that behavior inherited or learned or both.

The only cases where self-sacrifice is anti-survival, is where that self-sacrifice does not promote the passing of your genes to ensuing generations.

"The only cases where self-sacrifice is anti-survival, is where that self-sacrifice does not promote the passing of your genes to ensuing generations."

What if the person I save isn't one of my children, and I die before I have had children myself? Then I have sacrificed myself saving another and have not passed on my genes to the next generation. A very moral and selfless decision, but one that is anti-survival for myself and my descendents.

A decision is moral or not regardless of it's eventual outcome. If I save a man's life who later turns into another Hitler, my decision was still a moral one at the time. I couldn't know that the person I saved was going to be another Hitler, and even if I stopped to think about it, I would have to conclude that the odds of that happening are very remote.

What you have to remember is that the Theory of Evolution is a mechanistic explanation for a natural phenomenon. It isn't a be all and end all explanation for everything that happens, especially when you put culture and intellect into the mix. You also have to remember that there was a lot that Darwin didn't know back in the 1850s, like genetics.

BTW, you're mention of agriculture is a good one, because it proves that evolution does take place, in this case from artificial selection via selective breeding. It's not so preposterous to suppose that such a thing can happen in nature, too.

As usual, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, arguments rife with amorphous semantics, ad hominem invective and ever-broadening scope featuring the usual cast of characters and work-hardened viewpoints.

It's a fascinating topic, but loses my interest quickly when on the one hand some people deny what every dog breeder knows is fact, while on the other hand some people assert that what we observe locally with our limited faculties must necessarily apply unmodified throughout all existence.

The very notion of "creationism versus evolution" is a presupposition I cannot agree with, and thus excludes me from such debates. The folly otherwise brilliant people can indulge in when faced with this false dichotomy is truly breathtaking, and perhaps a bit heartbreaking.

When the terms of parley and the actual points of debate are set down and honored, however, the question of the "Origin of Species" opens the door to realms of thought that can indeed lead to illumination.

I hold little hope, however, that I will live to see that happen.

Actually, information theory, which is based on the 2nd law, can be used to make an apparently irrefutable refutation of Darwinism.

Eh? You have that all mixed up.

Thermodynamics is derivative from computational information theory, not the other way around. Since biological evolution is derivative from well-understood systems theory in mathematics, any "refutation" of it is going to be pretty damn thin.

That said, it does not mean that evolution has anything to do with the earth's biological systems. It almost certainly has some role, but there are a lot of other mechanisms provided for in systems theory that will generate the same result. By analogy, rolling on wheels is a perfectly valid method of going down a road, but one need not assume that a deer rolls down a road on wheels as well. That a deer does not use wheels does not invalidate the original wheeled model as a valid mechanism for going down a road.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.