Uncle Joe, Il Duce, Der Fuehrer, & The Kingfish

I see that it's been almost a month since I posted anything. I don't know why I stayed away so long. I guess I've just had lots of other things occupying my attention (e.g., the terrorist plots in the UK and some really good Degrassi marathons on The N).

Mostly to keep my June 1 post from getting lonely in the monthly archives, I'm posting this picture that I found online somewhere.

Sobran and Darwinism

Joseph Sobran, whom I like and with whom I agree on some issues, has written an article which questions Darwinism by claiming that it's inconsistent with the evidence of human altruism. He never really makes it clear whether he's talking about Darwin's theory of evolution or Social Darwinism. I've excerpted a few non-consecutive paragraphs from his article and added my responses in bold below:

Of course we all want to survive. But we want just as strongly for others to survive too. Darwinism can’t explain the environmentalist movement (though I think it’s misguided). Nor can it explain why we write wills giving all we can to those who outlive us. Nor the Bill Gates foundation. Nor the sacrifices of parents who give their lives for their children. Nor the willingness of some people to suffer so that other people won’t kill unborn children. Nor nuns and priests who consecrate themselves to God in lives of charity and chastity (the pay isn’t all that good). Nor a hundred other forms of altruism.

The basic mistake that Sobran makes throughout his article is his idea that Darwinism is the same thing as absolute selfishness. If we lived forever, then selfishness at the expense of everyone else, including our descendants, might make sense from a Darwinian perspective. (I doubt that it actually would, for reasons stated a little later in this section.) Since we know we are going to die, we have concern for our descendants. They are an extension ourselves. That's why parents protect their children and try to make sure they are provided for even after the parents are dead.

The other, less familial acts of altruism (e.g., environmentalism, Bill Gates' philanthropy) also help the actor's own descendants, even though they help a lot of other people, too.

Such acts also frequently help the actor. Even most truly selfish people are not so inwardly directed that they can be happy living in an ugly world. The desire to be personally comfortable is not altruism, but it sometimes motivates us to make the world a lot nicer.

Also, we recognize that the more dangerous we allow the world to be, the more likely we are to fall victim to those dangers. There's a difference between selfishness and short-sightedness.

Animals may do that sort of thing [risk their own lives] for their own young, but not for other animals they’ve never met. The altruism of cows, for example, is pretty narrowly circumscribed, and bulls leave even more to be desired. Samuel Johnson once observed that if a bull could talk, it might say, “Here I am with this cow and this grass; what being could enjoy better felicity?” Touché.

I'll leave aside the altruism of animals, which is probably more developed in some species than Sobran seems to think. That's really a bit off-topic and I'm not sure I understand what Sobran's purpose was in bringing it up. I assume he's trying to make a point about humans having souls.

I will say, though, that I've known lots of men who could sincerely say, "Here I am with this cow and this grass; what being could enjoy better felicity?” except that they don't know what the word "felicity" means.

As I write these words, I’m listening to a stunning recording: Laurence Olivier reading the Psalms in the King James translation. They tempt me to superlatives, of course, but the real point is that I can’t think of, or even imagine, anything comparable in the animal kingdom. There are no analogies. Bulls don’t praise cows, let alone their Creator.

Explaining the phenomenon of praise is a real challenge for the Darwinian; it doesn’t appear to confer any particular advantage in that ruthless struggle for survival we’re always hearing about.
Praising our benefactors makes perfect sense from a Darwinian perspective. If the benefactor can hear our praise and is moved to benefit us again, then the Darwinian angle is obvious. Even if that particular benefactor can't or won't help us anymore, praising those who have done something that we like increases the likelihood that someone else might be motivated to do something similar. (I am assuming that Sobran isn't just talking about praising God, but also lesser benefactors.)

I can understand why atheists think religion does a lot of evil, because sometimes it surely does. But they never explain why man wastes so much time and energy in activities they insist are pointless and have no biological utility. If we found all the cattle in the pasture dancing and mooing in unison, wouldn’t we be curious about why they were behaving in this extraordinary fashion?

We would be curious about why the cattle were behaving in that way because it has always been observed that cattle are unable to dance and don't have the organizational skills necessary to moo in unison.

As to Sobran's claim that atheists have never explained "why man wastes so much time and energy" on religion, he's just wrong. Many studies, by atheists and others, have shown that some people derive pleasure or a lessening of anxiety from religion. There's nothing altruistic about that. The basic atheist response is that these people are in a state of denial, which can be blissful if maintained with sufficient fervor.

I suppose killing your own children makes some sort of sense from an atheistic and Darwinian point of view. If survival is a ruthless competition, your kids are your competitors, right? No wonder Darwin’s legions are in favor of this “choice.” It accords perfectly, methinks, with Ayn Rand’s “virtue of selfishness.”

Again, if we could live forever, then our children might be our competitors (or they might not). Since we can't, they are our best hope of achieving something like immortality. It is in our interest to not kill them.


I know I left some points unaddressed, such as altruism by childless people.

I also ignored some basic arguments that could support my position:

1) Darwinism is about the survival of the whole species, not just the individual and his direct descendants.

2) Much of altruism is learned behavior rather than instinct.

3) Extreme altruism may simply be one of those illogical things that some people do, like suicide or other self-destructive behaviors.

I decided that this post was getting too long and discussion of those issues would have taken up a lot more space and time. Maybe I'll come back to them in another post.

Until then, I'll end with these words:

As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. -- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man