09.30.06
Collins and Kant
In the process he conveniently makes it appear that virtually Collins’ entire case for the existence of God boils down to the moral law in the human heart.
I was puzzled that religious Darwin critics did not jump on the issue of morality as does Collins, instead restricting themselves to the barren ID argument.
But suddenly I see why. The resemblance of Collins’ argument to Kant is striking, but the differences are significant. Collins actually does what the ID people are too sneaky to try: the reason is that (something I didn’t realize) Kant’s argument on morality and god is uncomfortably close to ‘atheism of some kind’, at least in the minds of various Christian so-called Kantians. (Steven Palmquist recently edited a book on this subject, and an effort to take back Kant for Christianity is underway, a notably futile effort). Kant’s effort to ‘redefine god’ isn’t enough for these fundamentalists.
Collins stumbles into this area with a poor version of Kant. I might recommend he upgrade his act, since his thinking is already fairly well battled over terrain.
Darwiniana » said,
October 15, 2006 at 8:32 pm
[…] I have already addressed Collins on altruism but here is an essay/review by Gert Korthof (See his webpage Was Darwin Wrong?) on the issue, at talkreason.org. Gerthof’s objections don’t seem to me to be the point, although defending t he Moral Law is problematical for Collins. Both sides have missed the point. The issue of ethical behavior, which is more than altruism as a characteristic of certain behaviors, cannot in principle be explained by Darwinian-style theories. Such theories attempt causal explanations for something that is non-causal, by definition. This debate is forever muddled by the Darwinian fixation on altruism. It really sticks in their craw. Must be economic ideology and guilty behavior of economic Darwinists trying to justify their behavior, n’est-ce pas? There is more to ethical behavior than one character, e.g. altruism. We need a theory that can define the evolution of consciousness, with the will to moral action brought into that (perhaps as ’self-consciousness, i.e something on top of ‘mere’ consciousness which might well show causal behavior). This question, and its traps, is the classic gateway to the Kantian framework on morality. This has been critiqued by many, but we don’t have to endorse the full details of Kant’s moral discourses to see that he has grappled with the real issues, and the contradiction at the hear of scientific theories. The point is that we don’t have to suddenly bring in divinity to explain morality, and Darwinian failure to explicate morality. Gerthof doesn’t mention the formulations of population genetics attempting to explain altruism, the whole shtick of pseudo-science too arcane for most of the general public. This was actually the stuff from Trivers/Hamilton et al. that Dawkins doesn’t mention when he wrote The Selfish Gene. But this cabal of geeks with their evo-dynamics bag of tricks is one of the hidden liabilities of the whole theory covered up in math sophistries the public is too confused to critique (if they even know about it). I, for one, consider such model woefully inadequate to the job, and the promotion of such stuff as grounds for the abolition of religion the most bogus, and quite dangerous, operation of technocratic legitimation con-men. Sooner or later the Nietzschean consequences of this sly glitz is going to produce another social catastrophe. So, small wonder that Collins, who is no fundamentalist, gets edgy on this question. Small wonder fundamentalists get edgy. Such people may be ’stupid’ in the eyes of these geeks, but they are salt of the earth enough to smell a rat here, and all the Nobel prize wizmo’s are stuck sucking their nerdish thumbs on advanced math, eyes glazed over. […]