A former student of mine is in a graduate program at a major university on
the west coast. He is taking a class that has given him the opportunity to
debate a position on ethics and evolution. If you have any comments or any
helpful suggestions, please send them to me and I will forward them. He is
pretty much on his own in the class. There are some other students with
Christian backgrounds, but nobody willing to take a stand. I would like to
give him some encouragement (or tell him to change the debate topic!)
Thanks for any help you can offer.
I have asked Dr. Chadwick to pass this letter on to you in hopes that some
of you
may have feedback for me as to which way I should direct a debate
that I am participating in as part of my masters program at [...].
The class is Issues in Evolution and Ecology. I
am arguing that the logical endpoint for evolution (survival of the
fittest) is extinction. My premise is that humans are the apex of
evolution and have the natural right to exploit our earth's resources
however we see fit, as we are simply living out our genetic program.
Other population explosions and extinctions have occurred in the past
(here i could use some examples) and humans are probably no different.
I would further argue that we are doing no harm in accelerating the
destruction of the earth's habitats as we are simply creating new
opportunities for evolution to further diversify and radiate into new
niches. In fact if evolution is the sole driving force to create new
species than I would further argue that we are actually doing harm to the
gene pool of managed animals by protecting their environments and thus
preventing fortunate mutations from having an opportunity to further
diversify the species, thus preventing the species from progressing to
its natural endpoint (which of course it has an inalienable right to
achieve:). Please consider this argument and forward to me [via
Chadwick] any
comments, examples, or citations that you feel will be helpful. My goal
is not to promote evolution, but to get my peers to recognize the end
results of the evolution argument. Most ecologist religiously believe
that they must preserve the environment. My objective is for the
listeners and participants ask themselves why they have an innate desire
to protect the creation around them rather than to live for selfish,
self-centered gain. The natural conclusion is that we have a higher
moral sense that guides us to protect our environment, not because we are
all descended from mother earth ( that would lead to self interest), but
because we are commissioned by our creator to preserve. I
have about a month before I present. Thank you in advance for any ideas
you may have.
Art
http://geology.swau.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 14 2000 - 09:31:53 EST