Slithery D replies to my post about evolution education that although “those who accept evolution but think God guided it have willfully taken leave of their senses,” people and society just have too much vested interest in believing in delusions. He, like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, believes that human beings need the delusion. (Fortunately for us all, Slithery D is one of the lucky few able to withstand the scary reality.)
This, of course, is the argument of the Straussians, who think that society depends on the “noble lie” that God is watching you. But, again, my point is that if we decide to adopt this approach, why bother teaching people evolution at all? Why not just teach them creationism? It might make the world easier for their fragile consciences to bear—and certainly it would make them more malleable for government regulation. In fact, this is precisely the reason that many Straussians oppose evolution education, as Ronald Bailey explains in his classic article “Origin of the Specious.”
I appreciate very much Slithery’s candor. But I not only do not believe that we need to “stop that crow!”—I also think that any society that is built on a lie, simply to keep that society going, is not worth the effort. A society built on an unquestionable delusion is not a living society, but an empty husk, no matter how decorated it might otherwise be. It is not just that, as Aristotle says, a society is supposed to be a conversation about right and wrong. It’s also that, if we are going to build a society on a delusion, then how are we to know when we have become the monster? Not only would it make no sense to try to teach people evolution, but it would also seem that we (the Enlightened, oh-so-brilliant elite who are so much more sophisticated than everyone else that we can withstand a glimpse of the awful truth, while they cannot) can adopt whatever myth we see fit—even an immoral one—so long as it comforts the masses, and ensures the survival of society (and perhaps at the same time profits us a little bit, eh?)
If you’ve seen the Star Trek episode “Patterns of Force,” you understand what I mean. What is to be our useful myth? And who are to be the myth-makers? In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson said, “Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?” Who among us is so enlightened that, after withstanding a peek out of the cave, he may presume to invent a myth that he thinks is useful for us? Who has the right to tell us this lie? The government? Slithery D? Why do I not have the right to tell everyone else the lies I think will comfort them? (“Sure I love you, baby. Now just lie back...”) What gives us the right to presume that our fellow citizens simply cannot grow up?
I believe that all men are created equal, and that they deserve to be treated like responsible adults—which means, confronted with the reality, and charged with the obligation to recognize it, or evade it and bear the consequences. But if we may treat our neighbors as children, as Slithery suggests, on the presumption—and that’s the perfect word—that they can’t bear the truth, then, dammit, I want to be the Designated Grownup. After all, it’s good to be the king.
*-See Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves 10-23 (2003).
Update: Wow! I must give props to Slithery D for really grokking my post. He may disagree with me, but he sees the point in a way I rarely encounter. I respect that a lot. (He doesn’t really respond to any of my arguments, which is a bit bothersome, but he does cut to the chase.)
Where we disagree is: he says “Epistemological and metaphysical errors in reasoning are vastly less troubling than the complete inability to accept plain physical evidence that lies behind straight rejection of evolution.” That’s just it. I think they are vastly more troubling—indeed, I believe they are the greatest threat to Western Civilization. The habit of believing things without evidence, or in spite of evidence, or without any concern one way or the other about evidence (a habit that goes by the name of “faith”), is too easily transposed from the realm of anthropology into the realms of politics and personal relationships and belief in the Cortislim Lifestyle and a host of other things, where it redounds ultimately to the misery of each and every one of us.
Incidentally, the complete inability to accept plain physical evidence that lies behind straight rejection of evolution is an epistemological error....
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