During the video a person wearing a gorilla suit strolls onto the court, but the vast majority of observers are so intent on counting the number of passes that they fail to notice the gorilla! The shortcomings of observation and logic led Kierkegaard to state that embracing a faith such as Christianity requires a “leap of faith.” But even Kierkegaard noted that this leap is taken with “fear and trembling”—that is, we can never be certain that our faith will lead us in the proper direction.
Each of these ways of knowing can sometimes serve a useful purpose, but for the scientist as a scientist, only careful, controlled observations can decide between two contradictory materialist views. The paradigm is to discover what contradictory predictions the two views make and how to discover data and perform experiments that will give results that determine which of the opposing views, if not both, is clearly incorrect. A scientist's explanation must function; that is, it must permit control over some observed condition of the material world. A creationist's explanation for the same observations need only be asserted.
B. FOUR AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE
1. Theology (metaphysics), as used here, is the study of gods and their activities, which leads to questions such as “How many gods are there?” and “Are any of them male?” and “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
2. Ethics is a system of moral principles to guide human conduct. It deals with an individual's standard of conduct or a body of rules pertaining to social obligations and duties. The word ethics comes from the Greek thikos, meaning “personal disposition.” Much has been written concerning which principles a person should use to guide his or her personal conduct. It has been claimed that the theory of evolution destroys faith in the Bible as an authority for moral guidance, and hence is an attack on morality and ethics. Although the theory of evolution differs from literal interpretations of the Bible on factual questions such as the age of the Earth, evolution says nothing about what moral codes we should follow. On this matter, evolution is currently silent or neutral. In addition, moral codes can change over time and are derived from a number of sources other than the Christian Bible. Confucius devised a system of ethical precepts based upon the practice of jen (sympathy or human-heartedness) centuries before Christ. In ancient Greece, idealists such as Plato held that there is an absolute good to which human conduct aspires. Ethical systems have been ascribed to divine will, but also to an innate sense (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and to human experience (John Stuart Mill and John Locke). David Hume made contributions on the nature and necessity of a humanly inspired morality. Immanuel Kant sought to set up an ethical system independent of theology, and spoke of the categorical imperative: “Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law.” Philosophers such as G. E. Moore have postulated an immediate awareness of the morally good.
Science does not pretend to answer moral questions. But science has wrongly been cited as a justification for moral and ethical views, which is a misuse of the theory of evolution. As Fran de Waal has rather cynically observed: “Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.”
The theory of evolution has frequently been cited by various people to support their economic and political goals. I will refer to this group, loosely, under the rubric of “social Darwinists.” This is a loose and imprecise term, because the goals and positions of those who have been called, or called themselves, social Darwinists have differed greatly. In this work, I refer to “social Darwinists” as those who profess to determine an ethical ought from an empirical is—that is, those who claim to know which ethical path is best for society from contemplating nature and the theory of evolution. Such social Darwinists profess to “help nature along” by speeding up the time needed for “progress.” They have professed to know which economic system is best with the “certainty of the principle of gravitation” (David Ricardo). They have professed to know which people in society ought exclusively to reproduce (Francis Galton, Harry Laughlin, Margaret Sanger) and which races are superior.
Accordingly, they have advocated the sterilization of the unfit, opposed state aid to the poor and state support of education, and advocated permitting unrestrained business and commerce. Such beliefs have used evolution and nature to justify racism, colonialism, slavery, and Nazism. Sir Francis Galton wrote, “What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.” This citation of nature's actions as a basis for our own is an excellent example of the naturalistic fallacy, which we covered earlier. It is also an abuse of analogy arguments. Moreover, even if one wants to improve the human condition, nothing in the theory of evolution indicates that it would be helpful to turn the strong against the weak.
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