Monday, April 24, 2006

Darwinians

They reject the idea of God as an intelligent designer, but they persist in using such expressions and metaphors as intelligent genes, selfish genes, tools, tactics, devices, calculated, organized, goal, and design. By implication, these words transfer the notion of purpose from a benign, superhuman God to subhuman entities like genes and “memes.” Dawkins, who posited (he’d say “discovered”) memes, flatly calls “altruism” “something that does not exist in nature.” After all, altruism would be a fatal handicap in the ruthless struggle for survival.

Well, if altruism doesn’t exist in nature, why does it exist at all? How can it? Aren’t we still in nature? How can we escape it? When did we cease being pitiless competitors and start being cooperators, building hospitals and charities and all the institutions that preserve the people whom Darwinism’s nature, red in tooth and claw, would deem “unfit” for survival? How can we be so utterly unlike the fierce creatures from whom we are allegedly descended?

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