"Darwin's Corrosive Idea" John West at Dallas Science Faith Conference 2020

[Music] it was 10 p.m. at night and I was standing with my teenage daughter and son outside the historic Lodge at Mount Rainier in Washington State the sky was so clear that we could actually see along the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy and for someone like myself who lives in a suburban area where artificial lights really makes it very hard to see lots of the night sky the experience was awe-inspiring and it gave me a feeling that we as human beings are part of something greater than we can usually conceive maybe you've had an experience like that I think many people have nearly two centuries ago a young Charles Darwin had a similar experience the year was 1831 Darwin was 22 years old recently graduated from college he wanted to explore the ecosystems of the world so he joined the expedition of the HMS Beagle in this voice to South America and beyond two months later he was walking in the midst of a Brazilian rainforest confronted by the beauty Darwin experienced an overwhelming sense of awe surely he thought man was more than just an animal and there was some greater purpose behind nature than mere physical survival unfortunately Darwin's sense of awe about nature and about human beings did not last fast-forward to the ending chapter of his life as he wrote his autobiography reflecting on his earlier sense of awe in that rainforest Darwin wrote that now not even the grandest scenes in nature would inspire such a view why well he explained that the evidence of exquisite design and purpose that he once saw in nature failed now that he had discovered his law of natural selection now there are many different influences that shape our culture's view of human beings but I've become convinced that one of the most significant has happened to be modern science in the form of Darwinian biology Darwin's theory isn't just an academic exercise it has real-world implications for how we understand our world in each other and there's sort of a logic to our conference today in my talk and in Steve Myers talk and sort of in our morning sessions we're going to be focusing on why does it matter and what does science really point to our science and faith really contrary or not and then after lunch we're going to be still dealing with those topics but drilling down more on specific areas of science that actually point to a reconciliation between faith and science but the purpose of my talk in particular is to convince you that it's not just an ivory tower thing that ideas have consequences and Darwin's ideas have had significant consequences for our culture and for your life even if you don't know it but to fully grasp the impact of Darwin's ideas I think we need to understand the two main prongs of this theory first Darwin proposed that all creatures including humans had descended with modifications from an original simple primordial or organism second Darwin proposed that human beings and the rest of nature were produced by a process of natural selection or survival of the fittest acting on random variations in nature this process of natural selection was supposed to be blind and unguided now you can believe in a guided form of evolution and many people have throughout the past hundred years but that was not Darwin's theory it's really important to understand that and that's not the mainstream theory of evolution accepted today by most evolutionary biologists - Darwin and many others the first prong of his theory common descent suggested that there was no fundamental difference between human beings and the rest of nature in the words of Darwinian philosopher Peter Singer at Princeton University Darwin showed we are simply animals singer is not alone in that view according to a 2016 survey 45 percent of American adults nearly half 45 percent believe that quote evolution shows that human beings are not fundamentally different from other animals unquote now the second prong of Darwin's theory suggested that we are not the intentional creation of a loving creator but the unintentional product of a blind and purposeless process in the words of the late Harvard paleontologist Georg Gaylord Simpson man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind and not only was the Darwinian process blind it was also ruthless human beings according to Darwin gained their highest capacities not because those capacities were planned by a beneficent creator but because natural selection ruthlessly killed off those who didn't measure up it can't be emphasized enough that Darwin enshrined death and the struggle for existence as the great engines of progress as he wrote in his book on the origin of species thus from the war of nature from famine and death the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving namely the production of the higher animals directly follows think of it war death starvation struggle that's where all the good things that we experience come from in the Darwinian worldview this worldview has impacted our cultures understanding of the human person in at least three key ways first in the erosion of the sanctity and value of human life our nation just marked the another anniversary of roe v wade there were over a hundred thousand people in Washington DC yesterday marching on that there are a lot of connections between Darwinian theory and the devaluation of life but I want to mention one historical example and then discussed the way Darwinian thinking still is impacting us today the historical example is scientific racism now Charles Darwin was not the world's first racist and he was better than some racist in that he opposed slavery but Darwin nevertheless helped fuel a virulent form of racism by proposing that natural selection was a scientific explanation for why we should expect significant differences between what he called men of distinct races moreover Darwin contended that the break in evolutionary history between Apes and humans came in his words between the Negro or Australian Aborigine and the gorilla thus in his view blacks were the closest human beings to Apes now Darwin's view inspired a whole generation of scientists like one of his correspondents who was named Ernst Haeckel who became preoccupied with trying to use evolution to classify races according to their presumed evolutionary history and if you actually look up here you will see a diagram that appeared in countless biology textbooks in the early part of the 20th century that derived from Ernst Haeckel and if you see it on the very top you have the Nordic male who's the the top of the evolutionary ladder and then at the very bottom you see these ape-like creatures note in the middle and this was actually heckles point for this diagram that the gap between the lowest human being and the highest human was a lot larger than the gap between the highest ape and the lowest human think about that the gap between the highest human and the lowest human is much larger than the gap between the highest eighth and the and the lowest human in in heckles view in a Darwinian biologic view this is not true by the way but think of the impact that hat would have on generations of school children who grow up being taught that this kind of Darwinian racism had a horrific real-world impact on Western colonialism in Africa especially on German policy in Southwest Africa in the early 1900s as I showed in my film the biology of the second Reich [Music] between 1904 and 1908 the German military attempted to eradicate the Herero people in South West Africa in what some scholars consider the first genocide of the 20th century on October the 2nd 1904 general loaf of on troffer issued what became known as his extermination order declaring that the herreros either had to leave german south-west africa or face extinction Herrero men would be executed and Herrero women and children would be driven into the desert where they would die of starvation or dehydration Vaughn truth had justified his extermination campaign by an explicit appeal to social Darwinism telling one newspaper that human feelings of philanthropy could not override the law of darwin's the struggle of the fittest when von truthers extermination campaign provoked a backlash in Germany a new plan was developed to move the remaining herreros to concentration camps where many more would ultimately die from malnutrition disease and exhaustion in these death camps the herreros were subjected to medical experiments by German doctors and their skulls were collected for shipment back to Germany to be studied by experts in racial science by 1908 it's estimated that more than 80% of the Herero people had been eliminated from german south-west africa back in europe meanwhile German military leaders prepared for the next conflict on their continent decades before Hitler what happened in German Southwest Africa was horrific but there were also impacts of Darwinian racism here in the United States in America our immigration restrictions in the 1920s were largely devised in cooperation with Darwinian biologists who decided that certain races were lower on the evolutionary scale and so should be kept out the Bronx Zoo in New York City put an African man on display in a cage with the monkey as an evolutionary missing link between humans and apes in the early 1900's we sterilized 60,000 women against their will in the name of eugenics an effort to remake humanity by applying the principles of Darwinian biology to human breeding eugenics was promoted by leading evolutionary biologists at Harvard Princeton Yale the University of Texas Columbia Stanford and the National Academy of Sciences now today Darwinian biology is still employed to devalue life in the area of abortion both scientists and activists over the past several decades have appealed to Darwinian theory to justify the claim that babies in the womb aren't fully human invoking an idea known as embryonic recapitulation these proponents of abortion argue that human infants replay the history of evolution as they develop in the womb they go through a Phish stage a lower mammal stage and more before finally reaching the state of a human being thus if you abort an infant while she's still in the fish stage it's no more immoral than killing a fish embryonic recapitulation is junk science and has been discredit even among evolutionary biologists for decades that hasn't stopped some of them including National Academy of Sciences members as I talked about in my book Darwin day in America from promoting this junk science as a defense of abortion it also hasn't stopped the argument from being invoked repeatedly in the more popular sphere by people like say the late journalist Christopher Hitchens in his best-selling book a few years ago why God is not great Darwinism feeds into the culture of death in more subtle ways as well prominent Darwin Ian's believed that humans aren't inherently more valuable than any other animal so how we treat animals we should treat humans Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago is one of America's most prominent evolutionary biologists he has argued on his blog for legal infanticide for babies with birth defects or handicaps he wrote this in explanation quote after all we euthanize our dogs and cats when to prolong their lives would be torturous so why not extend that to humans unquote coin recognizes that the reason we don't do that is because of our view of human beings is really different than the one propounded by Darwinism and that Darwinism has yet to overcome that this challenge of this different view of human beings so he wrote this the reason we don't allow euthanasia of newborns is because humans are seen as special and I think this comes from religion in particular the view that humans unlike animals are endowed with the soul when religion vanishes as it will so will meant to the opposition to both adult and newborn euthanasia unquote this same Darwinian devaluation of human life can be found among a growing number of activists in our society who can simply be called anti human today Darwinian ideas influence the views of many of the most strident anti human activists in September 2010 longtime environmental activist James Lee took hostages at the headquarters of the Discovery Channel cable network Lee demanded that the Discovery Channel changed its programming to highlight what he regarded as the planets biggest enemy humans in his list of demands Lee called on the Discovery Channel to talk about evolution talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains Sir David Attenborough is one of the world's most respected wildlife filmmakers in a 2013 interview he denounced humans as a plague on the earth according to Attenborough in the past natural selection kept humans in check by killing them off but modern society undermines natural selection by saving the sick and finding ways to feed more and more people other activists today invoked Darwinian ideas in order to deny that humans have special value Christopher Mane's was an early leader in the influential environmental group earth first in his book green rage he argues that evolution means there is no basis for seeing humans as more advanced or developed than any other species according to mains human beings are not the goal of evolution because evolution has no goal in his words evolution simply unfolds life form after life form and Darwin invited humanity to face the fact that the observation of nature has revealed not one scrap of evidence that humankind is superior or special or even particularly more interesting than say lichen the use of Darwin's theory to debunk human dignity spans the ideological spectrum Princeton University bioethicists Peter Singer is author of the book a Darwinian left singer claims that the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life for peak a dog or a chimpanzee where does Peter Singer get this from he's told us in an interview Peter Singer made very clear that his view was going back to dawn he said darlin really showed us that human beings aren't special we're not sort of separate from the rest of nature were not unique and so that we should be treated that way and so this idea that there's something special or unique about human beings that human beings deserve special treatment really is undermined by Darwin in Peter singers view the same dismissal of human uniqueness can be found amongst some on the right John Derbyshire was a longtime writer for the conservative journal National Review in 2012 he was dismissed after writing an article for another publication arguing that blacks are more antisocial and less intelligent than whites Derbyshire believes that racial differences are the products of evolution he also believes that Darwinian theory refutes the claim of traditional Western monotheism that human beings are exceptional in his words the broad outlook on human nature implied by Darwinian ideas contradicts the notion of human exceptionalism to modern biologist informed by Darwin we are merely another branch on nature's tree ideas do have consequences a second impact of Darwin's theory that has had on our view of human beings has been in the area of morality in his book The Descent of Man Darwin depicted morality not as something permanent or transcendent but simply as those behaviors and beliefs favoured by natural selection because they promoted physical survival under a given set of circumstances in the Darwinian view of ethics morality radically changes over time based on changing conditions for physical survival so if parental love promotes survival and that becomes moral but if selective infanticide promote survival better in your situation then that becomes moral Darwin's reductionistic account of the development of morality leaves very little room for objectively preferring one society's morality over another because according to the Darwinian framework every behavior that occurs regularly in at least some sub population is normal almost by definition moral and immoral behaviors developed for the same reason to promote biological survival for the most part Darwin himself didn't press this relativistic analysis of morality to its logical conclusion but he certainly laid the groundwork for others who came after and again it's had an impact on our culture in the United States some fifty five percent of adults now believe that quote evolution shows that moral beliefs evolve over time based on their survival value in various times and places unquote perhaps nowhere has a Darwinian view of ethics had more severe impact than in family life and human sexuality it's not an accident that the thinker most responsible for the breakdown of traditional sexual ethics in our culture was a harvard-trained evolutionary zoologist his name was Alfred Kinsey adopting a thoroughly Darwinian approach to sexual morality Kinsey argued that any sexual practice that could be found somewhere among mammals could be regarded in his view quote as normal mammalian behavior unquote and then be regarded as alright today many evolutionary psychologists have gone beyond mere sexual relativism in are actually affirmative ly arguing against monogamy they claim that we were bred by Deranian evolution to have multiple sex partners which means that we are programmed for promiscuity and infidelity in their view the very idea of faithful monogamous marriage contradicts our biology and therefore needs to be abandoned one of those prominent evolutionary psychologists to advocate this view then christopher ryan he is co-author of in 2012 New York Times bestseller sack at dawn in the words of Ryan marriage in the West isn't doing very well because it's in direct confrontation with the evolved reality of our species Ryan says he wants to save marriage by making it consistent with Darwinian biology for him that means redefining marriage to include partners multiple partners at the same time that's how he's been to save marriage ideas really do have consequences a final impact of Darwin's theory has been the erosion of the idea that humans have a spiritual purpose in the judeo-christian tradition in the biblical tradition humans have eternal Souls and their lives serve a higher purpose because they were intentionally created by a loving God but if Darwinism really proves that life is the product of a blind unguided process then God is either impotent or likely more likely does not exist and if God does not exist there is no higher spiritual purpose to human life indeed there is no likelihood that human beings have eternal souls it should come as no surprise then that according to a survey by researchers at Cornell University of leading scientists in the field of evolution 87% deny the existence of God and 88% disbelieve in life after death the claim that science somehow disproves the existence of God or the reality of the spiritual aspect of human life can have tremendous consequences in 2013 National Public Radio ran a story on why young people are abandoning faith in God among others they interviewed one twenty-something who said I don't believe in God but I really want to but looking right at the facts evolution and science they're saying no there is none even those who don't lose their faith in God because of Darwinian theory may give up their belief in an active and all-powerful God thus it's increasingly popular among some Christian proponents of evolution to claim that because evolution is an unguided process God Himself doesn't guide indeed God may not even know how evolution will turn out in this view human life is no longer something specifically intended by God accordingly Catholic priest Joyce coin proclaims that not even God could know with certainty that human life would come to be not even God could know and Christian biologist Ken Miller of Brown University author of the popular book finding Darwin's God which was a favorite at the evangelical Christian university that I taught at for 12 years Ken Miller argues that mankind's appearance on this planet was not preordained that we are here as an afterthought a minor detail a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out this is from a Christian biologist and it's actually a popular view among a many evangelical Christian Scientists the message of secular Darwinist on the other hand is that science shows that the spiritual side of life is a complete myth you can believe God if you want to but it's tantamount to a fairy story the consequences of this Darwinian worldview are bleak but thankfully the story doesn't end there and that's the story of this conference while Darwinism has eroded our culture's respect for human life in recent decades scientists and philosophers at the highest levels have started to question Darwinian orthodoxy one of these scientists was my friend the late Phillips Kell dr. scowl was a renowned professor of chemistry at Penn State University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences he spent much of the last decade of his life publicly raising questions about the evidence for Darwin's theory he wrote that Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis this quasi-religious function of the theory is why many scientists make public statements about the theory that they would not defend privately to other scientists then there's atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel who in 2012 published a book with Oxford University Press titled mind and cosmos why the materialist neo-darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false to be sure Nagel is actually still an atheist but after examining the evidence he has become completely unpersuaded that Darwinian explanations for mind morality and life itself hold water indeed he derives Darwinism as in his view quote a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense unquote and he concludes that the Darwinian worldview is ripe for displacement but it's not just scientists and philosophers are now questioning Darwin's theory as never before science itself is revealing stunning evidence that life is the product of intelligent design rather than an unguided process which will be teasing out for this whole day science has been shedding light on how humans are truly special in this cosmos one of my colleagues at Discovery Institute is Australian biologist Michael Denton Michael has both an MD from Bristol University and a PhD in biochemistry from King's College in London his research into retinal disease led to the identification of the gene used in the first successful gene therapy trial at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London Michael has increased my sense of wonder about both our universe and ourselves he writes about how our world is exquisitely fine-tuned for life to exist in ways that go far beyond what chance processes could create for example everyone in this room right now is breathing oxygen we likely take that for granted here's just a little taste of why you shouldn't as you're sitting there yes breathing they're relaxing you're using up 250 mils of oxygen every minute it's incredible that's that's the amount of oxygen you need to maintain your energy levels and you need about 20% or so oxygen in the atmosphere to get sufficient to feed your metabolic needs the problem with needing so much oxygen in the atmosphere is that oxygen is dangerous because it's so reactive if you have too much of it in the atmosphere you can have spontaneous combustion fortunately the form of oxygen prevalent in our lower atmosphere is diatomic that means two atoms of oxygen typically combine together into a molecule diatomic oxygen happens to be much less reactive so long as the temperature is below 50 degrees centigrade or 122 degrees Fahrenheit and this allows in fact the quite a high level of oxygen in the atmosphere without spontaneous combustion the properties of diatomic oxygen mean our atmosphere has just the right level of oxygen we need for living not too little and not too much if you raised the level of oxygen much more than 20% perhaps certainly more than 30% you'd have raging spontaneous fires all over the place here okay an equally serendipitous property of diatomic oxygen is that it does not absorb heat which has helped prevent a massive increase in Earth's surface temperature that would wipe out life as we know it if it had been a greenhouse gas forget it we wouldn't be sitting here in fact oxygen absorbs no incoming radiant heat because it's a diatomic molecule so it goes on in our neurons is one coincidence or another one coincidence after another but it's not just that nature is amazingly set up to make life possible and our lives possible it's also that we human beings are unique and special and exceptional in numerous ways here are five some of which you may not have thought of our brains have intellectual powers including mathematical reasoning that surpass the capabilities of other animals the physical design of the human larynx enables us to utilize a much broader range of vowels and consonants than any other mammal facilitating sophisticated verbal communication of complex ideas the human hand is better adapted than any other known appendage for the intelligent manipulation of the physical environment the human body and mind seem to be optimized in a variety of ways to make us the only animal who can harness the use of fire which opened the doors to technology finally humans live on a planet that seems optimized for scientific discovery our clear atmosphere and location in the galaxy enable many of the observations that have fueled modern science humans are not only equipped with a potential for self-reflection and scientific reasoning they were placed on a planet that allows for that potential to be fulfilled far from being insignificant specks living on an insignificant planet humans are truly a privileged species inhabiting a home that seems to have been prepared for their benefit in my view discovering the fitness of the universe the unique fitness of universe for carbon-based life and beings like ourselves is one of the major discoveries of 20th century science and one of the major discoveries of all time in the area of design religion and science and all these sorts of things the human form is something significant in the cosmic order and that's a scientific finding it's implicit in astrobiologist thinking about looking for carbon-based life somewhere else and looking for oxygen on a planet the 20th century have shown that human form is not similar elegance not some freak of nature it's deeply significant for me I think I can't think of any discovery that's going to come the 21st century which could be more significant more research it's a very significant finding [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I love that what Darwinian science tried to take away from humanity new discoveries in the sciences have been restoring and when people encounter these discoveries for the first time it can be life-changing every summer in Seattle Discovery Institute brings together undergraduate and graduate students from all over the world from Africa from Asia from North America South America Europe they come to study the compelling evidence of design in nature and each summer we see how the real evidence of nature not the phony evidence offered by Darwinian ideology the real evidence of nature can give a lifeline to those who have been told we're just the blind products of a blind process that did not have your eye in mind one alumnus of our summer program is now a Fulbright Scholar at one of America's leading research universities he shared with us how he grew up loving science and he was actually in another country that I won't name but he grew up loving science until he started studying it at a university in his home country where he was repeatedly told by his professors that the material universe is all there is and that science shows in his words we are the results of purposeless accidents then he just happened on one of our videos online featuring some of my colleagues and then the student this young man said and I'm quoting him for the first time in my life for the first time in my life science does not mean materialism for me and I started to see the signature of a designer I hope today the same will be true for you thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Discovery Science

Views: 36,249

Keywords: science, philosophy, biology, evolution, Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, human origins, science and faith, intelligent design, Discovery Institute, Charles Darwin, Evolution News & Views, John West, Darwin Day in America, religion and science, Darwin, ideas have consequences

Id: FWKKVL_Pkf8

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2020