Was Darwin an Idiot, or Just Those Who Came After?

chuck d Don’t want to tread into waters that easily rise above my head, but I was just reading something by the former atheist Antony Flew, and it struck me.

From Flew’s book, “There Is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”:

“I wrote Darwinian Evolution when I was asked to contribute to a series on movements and ideas in the early 1980s. In this [later] book, I sought to show that the prestige of Darwinism had been invoked to sustain other ideas and beliefs that lack any solid foundation – such as the idea that Darwin’s theory is a guarantee of human progress.”

Just read that, and my head exploded. I’ve always taken for granted that part and parcel of the Darwinian theory is that evolution is by nature a process of refinement. That as things evolve, they necessarily get better with the change.

Now, reading Flew’s words, I’m left to consider that Darwin’s prime reasoning behind the Theory of Evolution was the survival of a species – that is, that a species will evolve in order to preserve its genetic place on the face of history. The theory being that only those traits that are strong and useful will persist into the succeeding generations.

Well and good. I have no problem with that assumption.

But – and this is where Flew’s words come in – do those strong and useful traits that pass on equate to progress? In other words, just because something has stuck around the evolutionary chain, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it [being the trait in question] is a progression on previous models. In other words, just because the tiger becomes a more efficient killing machine, that doesn’t equate to progress.

Perhaps this only applies in the human realm, where one would think that traits such as selfishness, hatred, racism, distrust, animosity, etc, would have been bred out of us a long time ago. Yet those traits remain historically linked to human behavior. In fact, we consider it “just part of being human.”

But if we were meant to progress as we evolved, then shouldn’t those admittedly detrimental traits have gone away?

We are still the same as we were those millions of years ago (and apparently, that’s 6 million years ago if the recent discovery of Ardi holds true). While we might look different, use different tools, there’s been no fundamental progress in the character of human beings.

Thus Flew’s argument that progress has been “deified” with the connection to Darwin’s Theory, when in cold reality, the notion of human progress as an inevitable evolutionary by-product is patently and observably false.

Don’t know what to make of all of that, but that’s what’s on my mind at the moment. Wanted to get it down before I lost it.

What do you think? Does evolution guarantee progress, at least in the philosophical terms we like to use? Or does it only guarantee survival, and a refinement of necessary impulses and skills that translate into brute continued existence?

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Published:: October 6, 2009 / 10:42 am

Category:: Educational, Geeky Things, Science, Society, news

Tags:: Antony Flew, Ardi, atheism, athiestic evolution, behavior, biology, Charles Darwin, culture, Darwin, Darwin's theory of evolution, Darwinian evolution, Darwinism, deism, evolution, genetics, God, history, human development, human progress, human race, humanity, intelligent design, media, Morality, news, People, philosophy, random, Science, sociology, stories, theistic evolution, Theory of Evolution, thoughts, traits

Shamelessly Atheist 10.6.09 / 11am

Perhaps this only applies in the human realm, where one would think that traits such as selfishness, hatred, racism, distrust, animosity, etc, would have been bred out of us a long time ago.

You need to rethink what ‘progress’ means. In the Darwinian sense, it means ‘more successful at propagating ones genes’. Both selfishness and altruism aided individuals in becoming more successful in this way- the former because it garnered more resources for the individual and the latter because it helped live in a social environment. Evolution does not care that you want ‘progress’ to mean something else. It is what it is.

Jason 10.6.09 / 1pm

Shamelessly – indeed. I had a friend who is Christian point out that I have smuggled in my own meaning of progress, assuming that my definition is the correct one.

I guess to me, progress is not measured by how much faster or appreciably successful a person is as opposed to how much better the overall human society has changed to benefit all mankind.

Even by that definition, I suppose evolution has a sense of continual progress, but if we’ve reached a stage where certain societal behaviors, or if you wish, morals, can be accepted as best, why haven’t we been able to shed the instinct to break them? And if that instinct is necessary to our survival, why have the pretense of morals at all?

1. Shamelessly Atheist 10.6.09 / 2pm
  
  You miss the point. Morals are instinctual and helped individuals survive by allowing them to live in groups. The hardwiring of rules governing interpersonal interactions made this survival strategy possible. And we see what can be described as moral behavior in most other mammalian species, which is exactly what we would expect if our moral sense evolved. Even mice have been shown to have an empathetic sense as they are stressed when a cagemate is in pain. What happened in humans is that we developed the cognitive ability to extend these instinctual behaviors (mainly based on reciprocity) to what we call ethics. Which brings us to this:
  
  I guess to me, progress is not measured by how much faster or appreciably successful a person is as opposed to how much better the overall human society has changed to benefit all mankind.
  
  And this has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution does what works, not what we think is best. However, we do have the cognitive ability to develope ethics. But consider that we can only measure the time over which ethics has developed in hundreds of years, do you really think we can shed tens of millions of years just like that? Evolution is a contingent process. That is, where evolution can go is irrevocably entwined with its past. You can’t just turn instinct on/off like a switch.
  
  Even by that definition, I suppose evolution has a sense of continual progress, but if we’ve reached a stage where certain societal behaviors, or if you wish, morals, can be accepted as best, why haven’t we been able to shed the instinct to break them?
  
  Who determines what is best? Evolution cares not one jot what we consider best. I sense that you think we can control evolution. No way.

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Was Darwin an Idiot, or Just Those Who Came After?

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