Loren Haarsma wrote:
>I have a slightly unusual request here.
>
>I'm like to have a small collection of "Evolutionism quotes"
>from the popular literature -- quotes along these lines:
>
>-Evolution proves there is no creator;
>-Evolution proves that human existence has no purpose;
>-Evolution proves that there is no absolute morality.
I would also be interested in quotes of this type, hopefully Loren will
post his results to the reflector or make them available to interested
parties by e-mail.
I would also be interested in quotes saying the opposite, especially if
they come from a surprising source. If people could send these to me by
e-mail, I'll summarize them on the reflector later.
Here is one example of each type of quote:
negative:
===========================================================================
Why are people?
Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out
the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space
ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to
assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered
evolution yet?' Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever
knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth
finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To he
fair, others had had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who
first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist.
Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the
curious child whose question heads this chapter. We no longer have
to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there
a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man? After posing the
last of these questions, the eminent zoologist G. G. Simpson put it
thus: 'The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer
that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better
off if we ignore them completely.'
-- Richard Dawkins, <The Selfish Gene>, Oxford University Press,
1976, p. 1.
Dawkins elaborates on the Simpson quote in the endnotes on page 267:
Some people, even non-religious people, have taken offence at the
quotation from Simpson. I agree that, when you first read it, it
sounds terribly philistine and gauche and intolerant, a bit like
Henry Ford's 'History is more or less bunk'. But, religious answers
apart (I am familiar with them; save your stamp), when you are
actually challenged to think of pre-Darwinian answers to the
questions 'What is man?' 'Is there a meaning to life?' 'What are
we for?', can you, as a matter of fact, think of any that are not
now worthless except for their (considerable) historic interest?
There is such a thing as being just plain wrong, and that is what,
before 1859, all answers to those questions were.
Here is some of the context surrounding the Simpson quote:
What Is Man?
The question "What is man?" is probably the most profound that can
be asked by man. It has always been central to any system of
philosophy or of theology. We know that it was being asked by the
most learned humans 2000 years ago, and it is just possible that
it was being asked by the most brilliant australopithecines
2 million years ago. The point I want to make now is that all
attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and
that we will he better off if we ignore them completely. The reason
is that no answer had a solid objective base until it was recognized
that man is the product of evolution from primeval apes and before
that through billions of years of gradual and protean change from
some spontaneously, that is, naturally, generated primordial monad.
-- G.G. Simpson, "The Biological Nature of Man", _Science_,
152:472-478, 1966.
Now for the positive side:
=============================================================================
My position, very briefly, is this. I am on the side of science and
of rationality, but I am against those exagerated claims for science
that have sometimes been, rightly, denounced as "scientism". I am on
the side of the _search for truth_, and of intellectual daring in
the search for truth; but I am against intellectual arrogance, and
especially against the misconceived claim that we have truth in our
pockets, or that we can approach certainty.
It is important to realize that science does not make assertions
about ultimate questions--about the riddles of existence, or about
man's task in this world.
This has often been well understood. But some great scientists, and
many lesser ones, have misunderstood the situation. The fact that
science cannot make any pronouncement about ethical principles has
been misinterpreted as indicating that there are no such principles;
while in fact the search for truth presupposes ethics. And the success
of Darwinian natural selection in showing that the _purpose or end_
which an organ like the eye seems to serve may only be apparent has
been misinterpreted as the nihilist doctrine that all purpose is only
apparent purpose, and that there cannot be any end or purpose or
meaning or task in our life.
[do you suppose Popper had Dawkins in mind here?]
[...]
I think that science suggests to us (tentatively of course) a picture
of a universe that is inventive or even creative; of a universe in
which _new things_ emerge, on _new levels_.
[...]
I think that scientists, however sceptical, are bound to admit that
the universe, or nature, or whatever we may call it, is creative.
For it has produced creative men: it has produced Shakespeare and
Michelangelo and Mozart, and thus indirectly their works. It has
produced Darwin, and so created the theory of natural selection.
Natural selection has destroyed the proof for the miraculous specific
intervention of the Creator. But it has left us with the marvel of
the creativeness of the universe, of life, and of the human mind.
Although science has nothing to say about a personal Creator, the
fact of the emergence of novelty, and of creativity, can hardly be
denied. I think that Darwin himself, who could not "keep out of the
question", would have agreed that, though natural selection was an
idea which opened up a new world for science, it did not remove,
from the picture of the universe that science paints, the marvel
of creativity; nor did it remove the marvel of freedom: the freedom
to create; and the freedom of choosing our own ends and purposes.
-- Karl Popper, "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind",
_Dialectica_, vol. 32, no. 3-4, 1978, pp. 339-355.
=============================================================================
Brian Harper:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=
"I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,
044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the
Universe and the same number of electrons." Arthur Stanley Eddington
:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=