Monday, October 10, 2005
Epicureans of the World, Unite!
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John Wilkins has proposed a FAQ for the Talk Origins Archive on logical fallacies frequently used (or should I say "abused"?) by creationists and asked for comments and examples. You can see it (and contribute) through Google Groups. The following is one of the fallacies, Poisoning the Well, and my suggested example:
Poisoning the Well - the fallacy of Guilt by Association
Form: A accepts X, therefore X is wrong (because A is a bad person or group)
Discussion: this is very popular among those who want to argue from history. Some reviled individual or group accepted an idea therefore the idea is false.
Examples: Hitler accepted evolution [or vegetarianism, or animal rights] therefore that idea is wrong.
There is a "nice" example of this fallacy in "Darwin’s Disciples: The Modern Epicureans" by Wayne Jackson, Christian Courier: Penpoints. The article not only cites to the "usual suspects" in Hitler, racists, sexists, pagans and "brutalists" (he just missed perfection by failing to call them "social Darwinists") but jumps on the less widely reviled Epicureans as well.
Understandably, given the nature of this fallacy, the article also totters on the edge of another fallacy, Ad Hominen, but the author doesn't quite say that Darwin was wrong because he was a sexist, racist, father rapist, etc. It comes close on Appeal to Consequences as well but just misses saying the bad consequences make evolution wrong.
First, the stage is set:
If the Epicurean/Darwinian dogma is accepted, and practiced consistently, it will lead humanity into a downward spiral that results in a despicable morass of violence and debauchery that is unimaginably horrible. Modern society is on its way in that "descent of man," and it has by no means reached the bottom of the abyss.The examples are then given:
Charles Darwin was a sexist. Some moderns would label him a "sexist pig," were he not the darling of their biological fantasy. For instance, Darwin argued that the male is considerably superior to the female in intellect. Hear him: "...[T]he chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn [shown] by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain – whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands" (The Descent of Man, London: John Murray, 1871, 2.327). Is it any wonder that the demeaning of womankind accelerated in the post-Darwin regime?
Darwin was a racist. He held that those "savages" beyond the pale of Caucasian boundaries would eventually become extinct – hopefully! "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the savage races throughout the world ... The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro [sic] or Australian and the gorilla" (Descent, 1.201). It certainly was not through the influence of evolutionary dogma that the evil of slavery was abolished in civilized lands.
Darwin was a tooth and claw brutalist who lamented the fact that modern man seeks to preserve the lives of his sick and weak peers. For example, he bemoaned the medical reality that vaccinations have "preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind ... this must be highly injurious to the race of man." The foremost apostle of evolution criticized the construction of hospitals for the crippled, sick, and mentally handicapped. He felt it unfortunate that doctors labor so to preserve human lives down to their concluding hours. He protested laws that were designed to care for the poor. These facts are beyond dispute (see: Descent, 1.168). [Emphasis in original]
And the point is then driven home:
This was the philosophy that Adolf Hitler found so refreshing in his quest to eliminate millions of "inferior" folks in the days of his infamous regime. Modern advocates of evolutionary theory choke on this paganistic drivel from their philosophical father, but they do not know how to effect disconnection from him.
Conclusion
Darwinists, of course, loudly protest that they repudiate these conclusions. Of course they do; such premises are too hideous to advocate without resulting embarrassment and recrimination. ...
Not that much else is needed than to point out that the whole argument in this article is a tissue of logical fallacies, but simplistically calling Darwin a "racist" or "sexist" or "brutalist" based on attitudes and beliefs widely held at the time is, at best, disingenuous and "supported" only by quote mining.
Finally, just a word about the insult the author could not resist adding to injury: "It certainly was not through the influence of evolutionary dogma that the evil of slavery was abolished in civilized lands." If he is going to take that swipe at science, it is only fair to point out that, throughout the modern controversy over slavery up to and including the American Civil War, Christians fought on both sides of the issue. So the same can be said of it: "It certainly was not through the influence of Christian dogma that the evil of slavery was abolished in civilized lands."
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