From: Ted Davis (TDavis@messiah.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 19 2003 - 08:09:43 EST
I wrote:
Thus, the ultimate irony: the competition seen in human economic behavior
becomes the driving force in evolution, which in turn is read back into
human society to justify ubridled competition.
Rich responded:
Here is your error. The competition seen in human economic behavior
doesn't
BECOME the driving force in evolution because of anyhting
perpetrated
in the 19th century. It has always BEEN the driving force in evolution!
It is written in Ezra that:
"The land which you are entering and will possess is a polluted land,
polluted by the foreign population with their abominable practices, which
have made
it unclean from end to end. Therefore do not give your daughters in
marriage
to their sons, and do not marry your sons to their daughters, and never
seek
their welfare or prosperity. Thus you will be strong and enjoy the good
things
of the land, and pass it on to your children as an everlasting
possession."
There is a Biblical reference for your unbridled competition.
Ted responds:
Sure, Rich, people have competed for land and other resources for a very
long time, within and outside of Palestine. Who would deny this? My point
concerns the content of a modern scientific theory, and that content does
derive from other modern ideas about competition in the economic sphere.
Now yes, one might then say that Smith and Malthus and others were informed
by their observations of (age old) human behavior. So what? The
*practices* we associated with social Darwinism have been around since
Biblical times and earlier, but the *scientific justification* for those
practices, in terms of Darwinism itself, is obviously quite recent in
appearance. Ask Thomas Jefferson, and he would have told you that "science"
led to the conclusion that "all men are created equal," even though it is
abundantly clear that we aren't. One major point of social Darwinism, was
to take "scientific" conclusions about the whole of nature originally
inspired by observations of human economic behavior and apply them back into
the human sphers, *in order to justify* more of the same practices. In
other words, what we have always done is exactly what we ought to keep
doing, *and it is fully scientific* to do so--that is, Christian moral
principles are not only unscientific, they are *wrong* because they are
unscientific.
I don't think that what you are saying, is inconsistent with what I said.
If you still think so, please reread what I said.
ted
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