Recently, there has been a firestorm of criticism raining down on Dr. James Watson, one of the men who helped unravel the mystery of DNA back in the 1950's. Here are a couple of his quotes that have ruffled people's feathers:
"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically."
"(I am) inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really."
Most of his critics are rightfully pointing out that the "intellegence testing" cannot be accurately assessed accross cultural lines. Fair enough. But something much bigger is slipping through the cracks. Let's look closer at the first quote.
Dr. Watson is clearly pre-supposing a naturalistic Darwinian worldview which holds that all life came from primordial soup and arose by random chance + time. This is also the same worldview which undergirds virtually all of Dr. Watson's scientific peers who are now criticising his statements. But here's the problem - if mankind is really just a random collection of materials, then his first statement is perfectly reasonable. Varying intellegence accross racial and ethnic lines should be expected if Darwinism is true. Why should we expect that a random collection of cells called "my brain" would function EXACTLY the same as a person raised in Africa, China or Canada? In fact, doesn't the whole Darwinian model enspouse and defend this very thinking: Survival of the fittest? Only the strong (and smart) survive?
This whole episode vividely points to one of the biggest problems with evolutionary thinking on the origin of life. On one hand, the atheist wants to remove God from the picture and live only inside a natural framework. On the other, the atheist wants equality across racial and ethnic lines. But on what basis?
Ideas have consequences. The idea of Darwinism has consequences, one of which is the loss of an objective basis for the value of equality. Too bad that only a theistic worldview can justify their outrage.
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3 comments:
Exactly.
I have never heard an argument this persuasive re: the 'samenesses' of the races. The 'intellectuals' really are self-destructing in their scramble to say that all groups are identical in their intellectual potential while maintaining that these groups evolved randomly in isolated responses to widely diverse environments. The only way this works is to postulate that intelligence is NOT under the influence of natural selection.
We must not confuse two different usages of the word "equality". Democratic equality is not the same thing as "natural equality" or "equal ability". In other words, democratic equality does not require that we all have the same developmental skills and abilities. Clearly, a mentally challenged person should have the same civil and political rights as the rest of us. Obviously, then, we mean something else when we say a mentally challenged person deserves equal treatment. But from where are such rights derived?
When we say "all men are created equal," democratically speaking, all this means is that people agree to submit to the rule of law. In other words, political equality can arise out of any number of social arrangements that have nothing at all to do with our "natural equality". A moral obligation due is not dependent upon the equivalence of he whom we owe such a duty to.
The concept of Natural Law, which is really what you are trying to say is under assault here, does not presuppose physical or intellectual equality. There are several versions of Natural Law, not all of which depend upon a particular view of nature. Locke, for example, derives Natural Rights from the fact that all humans have the capacity for reason, and therefore, are capable of ordering their lives according to natural law, i.e. rationally.
The point here is that democratic equality is not predicated upon a theory of the origin of species.
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