by celesteh
I wrote the other day about Francis Collins and Alfred Russel Wallace, who both use the same argument for the existence of God, even though there is 120 years separating their scientific understandings. Here is a little more about Wallace and his scientific argument, one based on the accepted, for its time, racism of Western civilization.
He wrote that there was no doubt that Man’s physical form was directed by natural selection, but he tried to prove that Man’s morality, music and math could only have been derived from an external source (all quotes from the Alfred Russel Wallace Page):
It is not, therefore, to be assumed, without proof or against independent evidence, that the later stages of an apparently continuous development are necessarily due to the same causes only as the earlier stages [He is saying that just because we know that the body evolved, that does not mean the mind did. Separate proof is needed. RBG]. Applying this argument to the case of man’s intellectual and moral nature, I propose to show that certain definite portions of it could not have been developed by variation and natural selection alone, and that, therefore, some other influence, law, or agency is required to account for them. If this can be clearly shown for any one or more of the special faculties of intellectual man, we shall be justified in assuming that the same unknown cause or power may have had a much wider influence, and may have profoundly influenced the whole course of his development.
He then proceeds to demonstrate that Mankind has certain intellectual attributes not seen in other animals. But he then choses things like mathematics and music to illustrate that difference.:
Among the lower savages music, as we understand it, hardly exists, though they all delight in rude musical sounds, as of drums, tom-toms, or gongs; and they also sing in monotonous chants. Almost exactly as they advance in general intellect, and in the arts of social life, their appreciation of music appears to rise in proportion; and we find among them rude stringed instruments and whistles, till, in Java, we have regular bands of skilled performers probably the successors of Hindoo musicians of the age before the Mahometan conquest. The Egyptians are believed to have been the earliest musicians, and from them the Jews and the Greeks, no doubt, derived their knowledge of the art; but it seems to be admitted that neither the latter nor the Romans knew anything of harmony or of the essential features of modern music.16 Till the fifteenth century little progress appears to have been made in the science or the practice of music; but since that era it has advanced with marvellous rapidity, its progress being curiously parallel with that of mathematics, inasmuch as great musical geniuses appeared suddenly among different nations, equal in their possession of this special faculty to any that have since arisen.
Similarly, with mathematics, he notes the progression from savages who can not count beyond two upwards to the elite of Western culture. He then makes this statement that is he grand proof:
As with the mathematical, so with the musical faculty, it is impossible to trace any connection between its possession and survival in the struggle for existence. It seems to have arisen as a result of social and intellectual advancement, not as a cause; and there is some evidence that it is latent in the lower races, since under European training native military bands have been formed in many parts of the world, which have been able to perform creditably the best modern music.
So, the fact that there is no selective advantage to music or math, but coupled with the fact that man possesses it means that Darwin’s theory does not cover morality in Man.
In fact, it only leaps into existence when people become civilized and possess a Spiritual faculty:
Such is the metaphysical faculty, which enables us to form abstract conceptions of a kind the most remote from all practical applications, to discuss the ultimate causes of things, the nature and qualities of matter, motion, and force, of space and time, of cause and effect, of will and conscience. Speculations on these abstract and difficult questions are impossible to savages, who seem to have no mental faculty enabling them to grasp the essential ideas or conceptions; yet whenever any race attains to civilisation, and comprises a body of people who, whether as priests or philosophers, are relieved from the necessity of labour or of taking an active part in war or government, the metaphysical faculty appears to spring suddenly into existence, although, like the other faculties we have referred to, it is always confined to a very limited proportion of the population
His best statement is that wit and humor falls into the class of exceptional traits not only found in man but actually only in small numbers in the civilized population, ” the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun even to save their lives.” Since, by his argument, such a very small percentage of Mankind can even understand music, practice mathematics or posit a social barb, then the shear presence of these traits requires a divine Creator.
Now, we know better today because, as I tried to do before, we have 120 years of exemplary research to inform us. Collins still suggests that codes of behavior or altruism provide the same demonstration that Wallace’s arguments did; that certain specific human traits, ones not found in any other animal, must be divinely created because there is no reason for evolution to have ever produced them.
Again, what are the timely, rational, evidence-based arguments for this?? Even Wallace, whose arguments today would be seen as ineffective and ill-informed, at least tried to come up with an evidence-based approach. His arguments were at least based on current research. They were entirely rational. Does Collins’ argument come close to possessing any of these three traits?
Wallace tried to sustain his faith in the exceptional creation of Mankind by using scientific evidence to provide proof. He actually made a valiant attempt but 120 years later his argument is known to be misguided, with an underpinning of data that were shown to be factually wrong.
Wallace’s argument was filtered by his special pleading for Mankind. He had the conclusion first and arranged the data to fit. While this is not too unusual in science, the danger is that the scientist can too easily fool themselves with a wonderful theory. They can then cherry pick data and shoehorn things into the theory that do not actually provide the sort of rigorous proof needed.
This is what happened to Wallace, who took up a theory and explained it with data that has easily been shown to be totally incorrect, thus rendering his theory ineffective as a useful model of Nature. This figures to happen to Collins also. It starts getting to be like a post hoc logical fallacy. ‘Since this data supports my theory, it must be right. Since this data does not support my theory, it must be wrong.”
What sort of data will Collins accept in order to forget about his theory of a Creator who is responsible for morality in humans? In order to adopt a purely mechanistic origin of moral codes derived from lower primates and modified by human civilization? If other primates are shown to be moral, will that change his mind? Because a scientist that is not willing to drop their theory after facts that can not be explained by their theory have been uncovered is not much of a scientist.
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