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.

A very moral and selfless decision, but one that is anti-survival for myself and my descendents.

It's more complex than that, even.

1. If you saved more than one person, and those people were relatives, that would be helping some of your genes to survive.

One can calculate how many relatives (relatives share some of your genes) of what relation you would need to save by dying, to be a probable net gain for the propagation of your genes.

2. If you save one person, is that person important to the survival of your relatives, who share many of your genes?

Also, it may be that we are programmed to save strangers who just look like us, as the more that people resemble us, the greater the chances they share some of our genes.

We may also be programmed to save the children of non-relatives, because if members of a tribe were willing to die to save each other, that could enhance the survival of all families in the tribe--not so much because one child is always worth the sacrifice of one adult, but rather as a way to discourage predation by other tribes and by animals.

3. Otherwise, there is no evolutionary advantage. Anyone prone to sacrificing themselves for no evolutionary advantage would pass fewer of their genes along, including any genes that may have influenced such unfit behavior.

Cheer up, however, if you are a social conservative, because evolutionary biology may well serve to give traditional American family and cultural values a rational, scientific basis--a basis strong enough to defeat liberal arguments and to defeat the commie idea that men and women are fungible.

(Though there are some evolutionary biologists who are blind to the value of such things as an inherent desire for religion being a fit evolutionary adaptation, too.)

I don't think this is correct---thermodynamics seriously pre-dated "computational information theory".

I said it was derivative, I did not say the mathematics was formalized before the formulation of classical thermodynamics. The difference is that before the mathematics, thermodynamics was essentially axiomatic empiricism because it was not grounded in anything else. Now we know that all members of a certain broad class of systems will exhibit "laws of thermodynamics" mathematically. The point being that this property of our universe can be derived mathematically without any empirical model of thermodynamics.

Quite a few systems are derived empirically before they are strictly formalized mathematically; evolution and Occam's Razor are both examples of this. The important difference is that these things were unproven conjecture prior to the successful mathematical formulization, and some such conjectures fail to hold true when they finally are formalized in mathematics.

Thermodynamics pre-mathematics was a much weaker concept than thermodynamics post-mathematics.

I am amazed at the presumption of those who can a priori call any gene "pseudo."

A Priori? It has a precise meaning, which can be illustrated by a couple of examples: All mammals except the great apes, humans, guinea pigs, and [some] fruit bats produce ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C). One of the genes necessary for this is called LGGLO. See also here and hereThis is considered a pseudogene in people and the (other) great apes because it's missing exactly one base pair. Otherwise it matches other mammalian versions of the same gene, just like hemoglobin or cytochrome C, etc. etc.

In the guinea pig, OTOH, it's considered a pseudogene because it's missing two exons. See here

IOW, a pseudogene is something that would be instantly recognizable as a regular gene, except it doesn't work.

What that seems to mean, once the curtain is yanked away to show the man behind it, is "we have no idea what this could do beyond negating the operation of a gene that we do [partially] understand."

It may evolve into something useful someday. Who can say? But what we do know is that in the guinea pig there is *no messenger RNA* produced; and in apes and people there is some, but it sure doesn't make vitamin C.

Perhaps you could find something useful that it does; no-one else has. But that wouldn't change the *fact* that if just one base pair were added to it, we wouldn't need vitamin C.

For an example of the strange stuff that 'frame shift' mutations like the one we have can cause, see here"

The point being, why do people and apes inherit the exact same mutation from their parents, who got it from their parents, ...?

Are you going to argue that the *exact same* mutation *just happened* to occur *only* in species that standard biology *already considered closely related* !? This is something you can actually calculate odds for. (they're quite small)

Given our present level of knowledge, the simplest explanation is that the mutation occurred once, in the common ancestor of people, chimps, et al. Just like in the common ancestor of whales, cows, hippos etc.; or grizzlies, brown bears, polar... you get the picture. This same pattern repeats over and over in the living world.

The question, mad-cow, has profound implications: whether God just stood back and "turned it loose," or is at the helm steering.

There are only moral implications if you ascribe to God Himself the same myopic failings of humanity. Let's look at the logical consequence of the school of thought that insists God must be at the helm steering.

By claiming that God Almighty must be at the helm steering, one is insisting that the Creator didn't have enough omniscience to accurately account for adverse conditions before they occurred and thus must compensate for these deficits in design by manual intervention.

I cannot assent to that view. The first sign of intelligent design is how well the design copes with non-optimal environments. And since I believe in God's omniscience, it only follows that when He created the Heavens and the Earth, His creation had those evolutionary potentials for adapation built-in. QED.

Thus, if there are any profound moral implications, it is on the side of those who conceive of Almighty God as having more more scope of vision than humanity itself.

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.

This is the essence of my statement, stated differently: Evolutionary theory cannot be the foundation for morality, since it will always seek to ground morality in a principle (or set of principles) outside of morality, namely, survival of the fittest (survival of the adapted). Once one attempts to found morality in evolutionary principles, one has actually explained away morality rather than understanding morality as morality in and of itself.

On the other hand, you introduce some new language here -- and in particular, an interesting duality between human beings and "nature." Your statement implies that I (or anyone else for that matter) can choose ("fancy") to follow certain principles of morality, if we so choose, but such principles will not be "recognized" by "nature" if they do not follow evolutionary principles of natural selection.

There are a lot of assumptions here -- too numerous to explicate here. But let's examine a few, shall we?

1. You seem to assume that human beings and nature are distinct to the extent that humans can choose not to follow principles of morality
2. You seem to anthropomorphize nature, as if it were an entity that can or would otherwise accept or reject moral principles

(Feel free to correct me if these are misinterpretations).

With regard to #1, this would seem to fit with my own belief that humans can and often do transcend basic principles of natural selection. Even without rejecting evolutionary theory per se, human beings seem to have evolved a cerebral cortex that permits moral deliberation, and this moral deliberation can and often does function independent of natural selection. That is, our large cortex seems to operate in ways that transcend the originally adaptive purpose of the large cortex. We can choose to develop a moral system that goes against the principles of natural selection, if we wish, and if (I would add) these principles can be established within a community of others -- and we do.

If this is so, then morality must be evaluated independent of principles of natural selection. It would mean that an evolutionary theory of morality is misguided.

As for the notion that nature accepts or rejects moral systems according to principles of natural selection -- I'm less inclined to agree. If we assume that humans are of nature -- a product of nature -- and if we assume that moral principles can and often do contradict evolutionary principles, then this means "nature" can and does operate under principles other than "natural selection." It can also (at least in humans) operate under principles of morality that are separate and distinct from principles of natural selection.

There is a correlation between DNA sequences in various species. Certain species have DNA pattern correlations with certain other certain species that appear more correlative than with other species. And?

It's a little more than 'pattern correlations'. Think about it. There is simply no question that the genes that code for, say, hemoglobin, are *very very similar* in chimps and people, a little less similar in dogs and people, even less so between sharks and people, etc. This is true for all genes that have been studied - thousands. The 'corrrelation' in the LGGLO gene in people, macaques, orangutans and chimps is that they're all missing a single base pair - the same one! This allows us to *predict* that the same mutation will be found in gorillas. It is! Check figure five from the article you no doubt read because I linked to it above.

... Or, it can be used for curve fitting. In other words, So What? Is an observation enough to require hypothesis?

Well, like I said above, or the talk origins article explains in more detail, it's a *lot* more than 'an observation'; it's a whole pattern of related observations. Either the same mutations *just happened* to occur in cows and whales and hippos, and *no where else in the animal kingdom*, or they all inherited them from common ancestors. Want to calculate the odds, over and over and over? They aren't going to get any bigger as more genetic material fits the same pattern over and over and over...

The simplest explanation is that the phenomena described in the talk origins article is that the mutaion occured once, and has been inherited ever since.

It's not precisely curve fitting - it's tree fitting. Darwin and his successors, using clues from anatomy, biogeography, behavior, etc, put together a phylogenetic tree. Now the molecular data gives us *the exact same tree*. When two different approaches give the same result, the usual scientific response is that there must be something to it. Just like the fact that there are several ways to calculate Avagadro's Number, and they all come up with the same value, tells us it's a meaningful quantity.

Is an observation enough to require hypothesis?

Yes, when the same sort of observation occurs over and over again. The hypothesis of common descent had already been made. The molecular results simply make it even more likely.

Besides, the information-theoretical critique is enough to destroy the theory of Darwinism ... the argument used by Dembski and others is tremendously simple...

And it is?

To say there must be an error in it, though you don't know what it is, is merely a statement of faith in Darwinism. Darwinists have responded to mathematical critiques of their quaint beliefs with the same "there must be something wrong with your calculations" since before World War Two, as I recollect.

And the argument is...?

...Has something to do with the importance to quantum theory of the electromagnetic fields surrounding elementary particles...

Is he claiming something beyond standard chemistry?!

Too tired to go on, need rest, and in fact am rapidly reaching my safe depth!!! More a historian type than a physicist!!

Me, I'm a programmer, not a biologist. I stayed up too late, may be worrying about what Al Quaeda has in mind (living in DC has its advantges, most of the time...)

Once one attempts to found morality in evolutionary principles, one has actually explained away morality rather than understanding morality as morality in and of itself.

Evolution and morality are largely unrelated. One is low-level systems theory that describes a mechanism that allows very complex quasi-stable systems can emerge (and speciation in the biological example). Morality is described perfectly well in game theory, the mathematics of utility maximization when multiple agents interact with each other. Not surprisingly, things like the "golden rule" are derivable as global behavioral optimums for systems that look like the human case.

A recurring fallacy on these threads is to attempt to "apply" evolutionary systems theory way beyond its scope of applicability. Evolution has precious little to do with moral or optimal behavior. People need to use the right tool for the job, rather than trying to bludgeon everything into fitting into some preconceived pigeonhole.

We can choose to develop a moral system that goes against the principles of natural selection,

You're mixing things up here. Nothing can go "against" natural selection. If you go against it, you die, and you aren't selected anymore.

The process is still going on. There are obsolete and extinct religions. They promoted behaviours that were selected against and eventually died off.

It is the 'concept' of morality that is important here. The idea that there are 'right' and 'wrong' behaviours. Where did that idea come from? Came from not jumping off the cliff just because the deer did. Came from not picking up the rattlesnake or trying to handle fire. Just because a given action doesn't at first appear to further the survival of the species doesn't mean it doesn't in the long run. This concept comes from the requirements of survival. Like lemmings. That individual behaviour is destructive of the individual but preserves the specie.

What you call 'morality' by which you mean 'altruistic behaviour' in our former tribal conditions had the goal of preserving the genetic inheritance of the tribe, since it was likely that one was related genetically to everyone else in the tribe. And in preserving the tribe one preserved the protection the tribe afforded. That this was more successful a survival tactic than going it 'alone', so to speak, means that it was selected for.

if we assume that moral principles can and often do contradict evolutionary principles

Thus this assumption though is unwarranted.

More, the argument used by Dembski and others is tremendously simple.

In large part because Dembski's understanding of information theory is, umm, "tremendously simple". He makes basic mistakes in that field that I expect out of my first-semester math students (first semester in this field that is, these are "math for mathematicians" type classes), not from someone who claims some type expertise in the field. As such, Dembski (and all the arguments that look like his) can be safely ignored.

Information theory at large is an extremely difficult and counter-intuitive field of mathematics, far more so than the innocuous name suggests. I can probably count on one hand the number of posters on FR that appear to grok it enough to have an authoritative opinion on the subject.

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