Social Darwinism is the name given to the vile philosophy of “might makes right” on a social level and generally used to exploit and oppress large classes and races of people in the early half of the 20th century. Proponents of social Darwinism believed they had the right to “succeed” by virtually any means necessary over their fellow men. There has been much hoopla recently from the creationists drawing the conclusion that because social Darwinism is bad, the theory of evolution must therefore be wrong. Evolutionary biologists have had to spend far too much time distancing the real science from the stupidity of social Darwinism, which isn’t even held by anyone currently alive and in power. On the other hand, I do believe that evolutionary principles can lead help us discover our inherent basis for morality and ethics and help us refine those to make a better, more just society. Continue reading ‘Darwinian Society and Morals’
Archive
This morning, I was listening to Jeremiah Wright’s speech to the NAACP last night. He had some interesting points, but he was definitely wrong about one thing — and this is a common error a lot of people make. He equated bias against (more generally: being judgmental of) someone because of their religion with judging someone based on skin color or sex.
These are completely different categories. People cannot control their gender, skin color, hair color, eye color, or sexuality — it is unfair and simply wrong to judge people based on these characteristics. But the beliefs a person holds? That’s fair game for judgement. Some beliefs are simply wrong. The idea that some beliefs, philosophies, religions, perspective, whatever, are beyond criticism or judgement is dangerous. You have the right to hold those beliefs, but I have the right to criticize you for holding stupid or wrong beliefs. Wright used Pentecostals as an example in of religious discrimination. Sorry, but glossolalia is silly, and I will continue to judge Pentecostals as such. Young-earth creationists are ignorant (willfully or not), and their religion is stupider than most. Nazis are hateful, vile, dangerous people, and I will continue to judge them so.
Judging an individual or group based on their belief system (or even a particular belief) is not in any way comparable to racism or sexism.
I think it goes without saying that the federal government is currently far overgrown. Nearly everyone in the U.S. agrees with this, but no one really seems to know how to solve the problem. This is a form of tragedy of the commons, as I have pointed out previously. Interestingly, recent polls indicate record low approvals of Congress (currently slightly lower than Bush’s approval rating); the interesting part is that people approve of their own representatives. Why the disparity? The situation is that everyone wants Congress to spend less money, but as long as Congress as a whole is spending a lot of money, people want their own representatives to make sure some of that money gets to them. No one district is willing to stand up and be the first to say: “Don’t spend any money on us.” It’s a perfect deadlock.
Posting will probably resume this weekend.
Back from the road trip, and I find this story. A group of libertarians were celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s birthday at the Jefferson Memorial by dancing and generally being happy. No, that’s not the desecration. The desecration is that they were ejected from the Memorial by the police, and one celebrant was arrested for asking what law they were violating.
What. The. Fuck.
As one of the celebrants says on the video, this is not the America Jefferson wanted, and he would be ashamed. I know I am.
I’m flying to Seattle this afternoon, and driving back to Austin with a friend. Back on Thursday.
Several related topics have come up in just the last couple days that I’d like to clarify my position on. People still seem to labor under the impression that libertarians, in general, should be opposed to government interference in just about anything. My last post about Orson Scott Card contained this quote from me:
“In Texas, where I live, the religious right successfully blocked legislation requiring that all girls get the HPV vaccine. That is uncivilized.”
To which Robert O asked:
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing, considering your otherwise libertarian leanings? Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point.”
So, one of my favorite authors is Orson Scott Card. And I’m not just talking about Ender’s Game; I really do like almost all of his books. That’s all well and good, but OSC happens to have a significant internet presence, and oddly enough for the S.F. community, he’s an extremely conservative, extremely religious Mormon, and I find his politics quite revolting. This generates an internal conflict for me: how can he be such a good writer and yet display such extremely poor logical thinking skills?
Well, Kenneth Miller’s lecture at UT last night was awesome. Even better was that I got there very early and got to talk to him. He was generous enough to talk to me for about 20 minutes. I didn’t think it was possible to like him more than I already did, but he was very cool. I asked him what he thought about PZ getting thrown out of the Expelled movie, and he just laughed. We talked a little bit about the “framing” issue (see here, or just go to ScienceBlogs and search). I also asked him how he got along with Dawkins, and he told me a great story about Dawkins correcting part of Finding Darwin’s God (something very minor about physics), and how much Dawkins liked the book in general. Of course, Dawkins disagreed with almost the entire thing. But it’s positively great that rational people can disagree about such things (I exclude fundamentalists from the “rational” categorization). The world would be boring otherwise.
The lecture itself was very entertaining. Dr. Miller is very funny, and his presentation was very slick and well-done. I can easily believe that his biology classes would be excellent. You can watch online here. I highly recommend it — if you aren’t familiar with the creation/evolution debate, this is a good primer. I couldn’t stay for the Q&A period though, which seemed like it got off to a good start.
The ACLU is working hard to provide good legal counsel to the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay: The John Adams Project. At the very least, read the overview, the goals, and the background. If you can, please consider joining or donating to the ACLU. This is an important project.
No doubt many of the anti-ACLU crowd considers this an anti-American project. This position only reveals their ignorance of history and the principles this country was founded on. If you doubt this, read the title again. John Adams made a stand for 8 British soldiers accused of killing civilians. He took the job on the principle that all defendants have the right to a fair trial and to face their accusers. That right has subsequently been denied to hundreds of prisoners under the Bush administration. As a country, we have betrayed what John Adams risked his career, livelihood, and his personal safety to establish in this country’s infancy.
Please, support this project. Pass the word.
“One of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”
– John Adams on his defense of the British soldiers