Non sequitur, thy name is Gary!

Okay, okay. Don’t read this if it annoys you when I call out Gary DeMar on his incessant Campaign for Idiocy. I questioned whether I should even bother writing this, but then I decided that as long as he keeps making these ridiculous arguments and has an audience willing to snatch up whatever scraps he gives them, I will not feel it amiss to call him on it.

His May 1st podcast was entitled, “Swine Flu is an Effective Evolutionary Extermination Plan”. Yeah, you can see where he’s going here.

He begins by sarcastically wondering aloud why his archenemies, those he has identified as leaders of “modern day humanistic thought” (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.), have not been out there publicly cheering on the swine flu, hoping that it kills as many of “the weak” as possible. In an attempt to “answer his fool by his own folly” (Proverbs 26:5 – has he happened to read Proverbs 26:4?), he goes on his own sarcastic rant in favor of a world-wide swine flu epidemic:

I mean look, if you can’t take [the] disease, then there’s no reason why you ought to be reproducing. I mean, this is a way to really cull the gene pool; this is a way to get rid of the weak links in the evolutionary chain. So once again, I think we should embrace the swine flu. We should let it ravage the earth to get rid of the weakest elements and then we are left with the strongest elements.

Of course, affirming that evolution has taken place and is a natural process that is still ongoing no more requires taking active measures to perpetuate evolutionary selection (besides, this is not natural but artificial selection) than describing the atrocities of Hitler makes you a supporter and proponent of such atrocities. Come on, Gary — read one or two of your bookstore’s books on logical fallacies, why don’t you?

Now, lest you think he’s just targeting the new atheists who are actively proselytizing for infidelity, let me assure you that he really, truly believes that one does not argue that evolution occurred without implicitly or explicitly advocating genocide and the horrors of eugenics. He almost never even acknowledges that evolution is something accepted by Christians as well as by non-Christians. In fact, the biggest thing that drives me batty about DeMar and makes him dangerous to the Church’s influence in the world is his tireless insistence upon conflating the acceptance of evolutionary theory — the notion that evolutionary processes explain the current state of nature — and the dogmatic philosophy of atheistic materialism of the new atheists. Here’s a few quotes from his five-minute rant that show he countenances no harmless variety of evolutionary theory.

“So again, we as Christians need to get out there and play the sarcastic role, but force unbelievers, force humanistic ideology to live consistently with its operating assumptions. I would like to hear from the evolutionists.” [humanistic ideology = the evolutionists (= unbelievers?)]

“They’re not being consistent with the evolutionary theories that they’re teaching in the public schools across the country.” [Shame on you if you advocate teaching the current scientific consensus in a school setting, despite the fact that nowhere is it being done in a way that actively encourages atheism/materialism.]

“So there is a great deal of inconsistency in the evolutionary worldview and we need to push them on it.” [His big thing is "worldviews"; every belief is part of a bigger philosophy that guides your life and morals.]

“So on one hand they glory at the evidence that this particular viral strain supports their evolutionary theory, but on the other hand, they still fall into the conventional moral worldview that humanity puts forth, that human life is sacred and it needs to be protected at all levels.” [The linked article was probably the one he referred to in the podcast; but here again, it's not the new atheists "glorying" in it, but run-of-the-mill scientists noting yet another evidence for the fundamentals of evolutionary theory. Also notice: no denial from DeMar that this does support evolutionary theory!]

And finally:

“Isn’t that what evolution is all about, to get rid of the weakest members of society?

Now, this isn’t sarcasm – DeMar really believes that this is what evolution is. Who could ever guess that the man who utters this has the nerve to sell books he’s written about the fallacies of “Darwinism” (gee thanks, Dawkins, for using that term so much)? Not only is evolution not centered around getting rid of the weakest members of society, but he could not produce one quote from any of his favorite set of contemporary atheist apologists to speak in favor of such a thing. In fact, Dawkins specifically encourages “un-Darwinian misfiring” of our moral sense. DeMar’s blustering with slander here.

“Remember, it was Richard Dawkins who said that ‘super niceness’ is contrary to the evolutionary worldview. In evolutionary logic, there shouldn’t be any vaccinations, there shouldn’t be any hospitals. People who can’t make it should be left to die. They should be the fertilizer of the earth for those who have been able to fight against this viral strain.”

Dawkins never said anything about “the evolutionary worldview”. What he said was that super niceness is “a perversion of the Darwinian take on niceness.” Dawkins continues, “Well, if that’s a perversion, it’s the kind of perversion we need to encourage and spread.” Dawkins believes that a basic sort of “take care of your own” morality makes perfectly good evolutionary sense as part of the natural order, but above-and-beyond morality, self-sacrifice for people we don’t know and the like, would not increase (and likely decrease) our likelihood of selection and so is icing on the cake, an emergent accident that our race should be proud of. DeMar’s claim is that it is inconsistent for “evolutionists” to describe what has happened in nature and then advocate going above and beyond what nature has dealt us.

His only valid argument is that the atheistic humanitarian doesn’t have an objective reason to do what he does, not that he is somehow illegitimate for doing something apart from the blind, dumb natural processes of unchecked evolution. The thing that gets me every time he tries this is that his fond contention that consistent atheists/evolutionists have no objective moral reason to worry about people dying of the flu does not itself make atheism/evolution false. The best he can hope for is that someone decide they don’t like that consequence, and so seek other avenues where the results are more in line with their inclinations. This is not a good intellectual habit to be stroking.

All of his customary appeals to consequence aside, notice that DeMar has deftly steered the question of the source of Dawkins’s morality in a direction that he hopes will collide with and derail the scientific theory that is content to pursue the down-to-earth goal of describing the change in allele frequency in a given population over time. Gary DeMar has no answer to the latter, and so he is reduced to making the sorts of lame sarcastic potshots lobbed from this podcast.

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View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 12:20 am.

Filed under Evolution/origins, Science, , , , .

  • (Terribly sorry it's been so long getting back to you!)

    Fair enough. I have a general hunch that pointing at gaps is usually faulty, so I wouldn't expect that DeMar et al.'s gap argument concerning the moral law would be particularly helpful insofar as God's existence goes. But note that my original, modest concession to DeMar was not that an "objective" morality is evidence of God (how could it be? they would have to prove that there is such a thing as universal morality), but that there is no universal morality aside from an external source such as God, a position with which you obviously agree.
  • RBH
    I'm still jammed up, which seems to be my state in perpetuity these days, but I'll indicate where I'm going. You wrote
    So with that understanding, it’s not at all clear in what sense an atheist can believe in “objective” morality. The best I can guess is that you mean that because there is no externally defined morality, morality is decided by groups (but is that not subjective?), and so everyone who disagrees with the morality defined by that group is “objectively” immoral to that group because that group’s moral code is being contradicted. Is this where you’re going with this? That seems to lead to my hypothetical example in the last comment.
    In the end, I don't believe there such a thing as "objective" morality, in the sense of a conceptual system that 'exists' (whatever that means for conceptual systems) independent of humans. That is, every moral system is subjective in the sense that it reflects choices made by humans rather than observations of an external (to humans) reality.

    Theists appeal to an external authority for what they often call an "objective" moral system. But even the supposed 'objective' moral systems of the various religions, purportedly given by some deity, are subject to choices made by their human adherents, the first obvious choice being which religion to adhere to. And then within a religious system one must make subjective choices among the contradictions and ambiguities of the holy texts. When do I choose "An eye for an eye" vs "Turn the other cheek"? That's a subjective decision. So it's not only atheists who have subjective moral systems based on human choices, it's the religious, too. Consider the enormous variability among religions, and tell me where there is widespread agreement on moral principles that cannot also be agreed to by most atheists without the theological justifications of the religious. "Do unto others ..."? Reciprocity is a good principle to start with given a context in which one will repeatedly meet and interact with a relatively small set of people. "Love thy neighbor ..."? Sure, since for all of human history up until quite recently one's neighbor also had a high likelihood of being kin. One can derive moral principles associated with mutualism, cooperation, and even altruism from a relatively few principles that have the virtue of being defensible in terms of the non-aversive (at least!) living conditions they produce.

    But those are subjective choices we can make because we can think about consequences. We can model the world in our heads and test the potential effects on ourselves and our kin of one or another moral principle, and make decisions based on what the models suggest will result.

    That's a sketch, anyway.

    <abbr>RBH´s last blog post..Chrysaora achlyos</abbr>
  • RBH
    I'm happy to have that discussion here, though I am jammed up for a while -- second semester grades are due soon and the Freshwater hearing starts again tomorrow (well, today, Thursday, actually). So I don't have a lot of time until sometime next week. I'll comment on one thing now, though. You wrote
    However, “objective” is defined by Merriam as “not dependent on the mind for existence, actual”, and hence also “external”.
    The first relevant definition I see in Merriam is
    b: of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind
    The clause you quoted is a gloss of the more detailed definition I've quoted, and that definition is couched in terms of the agreement of the perceptions of all observers. That is, it is not a function of a particular person's idiosyncratic perception. In essence, whan asked how we know something is objectively the case, the answer given by that definition is 'by unanimous agreement.' Is there unanimous agreement among all observers on moral choices even among those who claim to profess the same beliefs, say Christian beliefs? Nope.

    Hence we need to find some basis for making moral judgments other than appeal to some putative external authority that purports to speak "objective" truth, since that definition of "objective" does not accord with the full definition I referenced.

    Argument by dictionary is not my preferred mode, but we do need to agree on a common definition of the core notion here, "objective."
  • My bad - my dictionary quote was from the New Oxford American Dictionary (the integrated dictionary on Macs - I thought it was Merriam). And I didn't as much intend to argue by dictionary, but to explain that this word has legitimately been used in such a way as to blur a distinction between "objective morality" and "absolute morality as determined by an external source".

    That is, it is not a function of a particular person’s idiosyncratic perception. In essence, whan asked how we know something is objectively the case, the answer given by that definition is ‘by unanimous agreement.’

    But if objective is not individual but decided by groups, is it not by definition external to the individual? How is external to the individual vs. external to a group by nature different?

    Hence we need to find some basis for making moral judgments other than appeal to some putative external authority that purports to speak “objective” truth, since that definition of “objective” does not accord with the full definition I referenced.

    I presume that you don't deny an absolute reality, right? If that's the case, objective, by both dictionaries' definitions, is based in "reality"; i.e, it's independent of every person's, and hence by extension every group's, perceptions. Whether or not everyone agrees that the earth revolves around the sun does not call into question the objective basis of that fact. So with that understanding, it's not at all clear in what sense an atheist can believe in "objective" morality. The best I can guess is that you mean that because there is no externally defined morality, morality is decided by groups (but is that not subjective?), and so everyone who disagrees with the morality defined by that group is "objectively" immoral to that group because that group's moral code is being contradicted. Is this where you're going with this? That seems to lead to my hypothetical example in the last comment.

    I understand that you're busy - get back to me when you can.
  • RBH
    His only valid argument is that the atheistic humanitarian doesn’t have an objective reason to do what he does, ...
    Someday, somewhere, I'm going to have a long discussion with someone (is that vague enough? :)) about that claim, starting with the observation that "external" and "objective" are not synonyms.

    <abbr>RBH´s last blog post..Mt. Vernon, OH, school levy results</abbr>
  • Let's have that discussion now, RBH. I really have no particular allegiance to DeMar's specific argumentation. However, "objective" is defined by Merriam as "not dependent on the mind for existence, actual", and hence also "external".

    As I understand it, unless there is a universal basis for morality (what I meant by "objective"), Person A cannot claim to have a "right" to hold Person B accountable for a violation of Person A's morality. Person A can say, "I don't like that you did that. Please stop or I will punish you," but not, "What you do is wrong." Therefore, raping women may be acceptable in one particular village, and any dissenters in the village are nonetheless beholden to that society's "internal" morality. If this is correct, as I understand it, morality for the atheist is a battle between peer interests over the question of whose "morality" will rule the day. Am I correct?

    Just to be clear, I'm not trying to caricature, obfuscate, or even stake a claim to this line of argumentation - I'd really like to know what you think about this.
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