"Special Creation" on the Left:


Philosopher Michael Levin, in his "Feminism and Freedom" (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Books, 1987), draws the following parallels between feminist
theory and Creationism:

   One usually thinks of creationism as a doctrine for religious
  fundamentalists, but from a methodological point of view, belief in
  the special creation of the human species is entailed by _any refusal
  to apply evolutionary theory to man_. It is irrelevant whether this
  refusal is sustained by a literalistic reading of scripture or
  committment to a secular ideology. Indeed, a case can be made that
  religious critics of Darwin display a stronger sense of the unity of
  nature than do scientific critics of innateness in man. This is most
  especially true of scientists like Richard Lewontin and Steven Jay
  Gould, who take a wholly naturalistic stance toward all living
  creatures apart from man (and are prepared to use the theory of
  evolution polemically in ideological debate), yet reject all but
  the most trivial comparisons of other living creatures to man. (p. 66-67)

The noted humanist and biologist Garrett Hardin makes a similar comment in
his book, "Naked Emperors" (Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann,
Inc., 1982), chapter 8:

  "I am," said Charles Darwin, "a firm believer that without speculation
   there is no good and original observation." Darwin's followers, who
   have not hesitated to speculate, have found that speculating about
   the causes of human behavior is no less perilous today than it was
   in Aesop's time. It is no longer fashionable to hurl prophets from
   cliffs, but many of the defenders of the conventional wisdom are
   perfectly willing to destroy a man's reputation with polemics.
   Pejorative labels substitute for the objective examination of
   evidence....

   This calm faith [in free speech] is not is not shared by those who
   in our day are members of an organization bearing the righteous name,
   "Science for the People." At a symposium on sociobiology held in
   San Francisco in June, 1977, the meeting was disrupted by political
   activists who chanted for more than two minutes (by actual
   measurement), "No free speech for racists! No free speech for
   racists!"......

   Are the races equal? Are the sexes equal? Is there a heriditary
   component to human behavior? These are questions a right-thinking
   person never asks unless he immediately makes it clear that the
   answers are (in the same order): _Yes_, _Yes_, and _No_.....

   One of the joint productions of the Cambridge-Boston caucus of
   "Science for the People" is entitled "Sociobiology - Another
   Biological Determinism," and begins with this sentence:
   "Biological Determinism represents the cliam that the present
   states of human societies are the specific result of biological
   forces and the biological 'nature' of the human species." ...As
   for biological determinism, I know of no one who fits the caricature
   attacked by the Scientists for the People. A thoughtful biologist
   maintains that our nature - no need of derogatory quotation marks -
   has something to do with social organizations and social problems
   (which problems are the consequence of our variable  nature not
   fitting the straitjacket we call social organization.) If human
   beings had the pituitary-adrenocortal-gonadal system of domestic
   sheep our social problems would surely be different; so also if
   we had the endocrine systems of weasels or shrews. The characteristics
   of these endocrine systems are inherited, and what is inherited
   has social consequences. This is not to say genes rigidly
   determine the social order: even populations of housemice develop
   social differences due to what can only be called historical accidents.
   How much more important the accidents of human history are hardly
   needs arguing. "Biological determinism" with its implications of
   absolute rigidity is a straw man set up for the convenience of
   polemicists; we would do well to ignore it. Determinism, like
   racism, sexism, and social Darwinism, is less a definable formal
   intellectual position than it is a pejorative used to tar an
   opponent.

   The opposite of complete determinism is complete indeterminism.
   Do the critics of biosociology [Hardin suggests this term is more
   accurate than "sociobiology"] assert that inheritable behavior is
   completely indeterministic of the social order? It is hard to see
   any other interpretation of this assertion by Richard Lewontin:
   "Nothing we can know about the genetics of human behavior can have
   any implications for human society". Lewontin is a brilliant
   theoretician; it would help us all if he would enrich this _ex
   cathedra_ statement with a mathematical demonstration that social
   organization is utterly independent of individual behavior (which
   is necessarily affected by individual variations).

   ... to suppose that human behavior is uninfluenced by heredity is to
   say that man is not a part of nautre. The Darwinian assumption is
   that he is; Darwinians insist that the burden of proof falls on
   those who assert the contrary.

--

        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!
=========================================================================
From:    Brian "Rev P-K" Siano
To:      All                                    Msg #99, Dec-22-93 08:34PM
Subject: Re: Creationism on the Left (was: Skeptical About Sociobiology

Organization: The Cellar electronic community and public access system
Subject: Re: Creationism on the Left (was: Skeptical About Sociobiology)
From: revpk@cellar.org (Brian "Rev P-K" Siano)
Message-ID: 
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.feminism,talk.origins

sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:

>
> Exactly. Some right-wingers oppose teaching about human evolution because
> it conflicts with their belief in the Bible. And some left-wingers oppose
> teaching about human evolution because it conflicts with their belief
> in absolutist environmental determinism. The following helps to put this
> into context:

      Here we go again. This business about "some left wingers" opposing
the teaching of evolution is certainly news to me. But, given Sheaffer's
demonstrated tendency to put his politics before established facts (and his
inability to support many of his assertions about "left wingers,") we can
comfortably dismiss this as simply more crankery.

      Consider this: in the statements Sheaffer included with the above
remarks-- from Michael Levin and Garrett Hardin-- the two people named as
leftish "opponents" of Evolution are Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould.
I'm certain most of us are familiar with Gould; Lewontin is the Alexander
Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard.

      And Robert Sheaffer is actually asserting that these two men "oppose
teaching about human evolution?" Consider this: Gould has been one of many
scientists who have warned about the dangers of the Creationist movement. He
was a witness in the Arkansas court case over whether evolution was a
'religious" doctrine, along with CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz. Gould has
written in many publications, at great length (including the _Slkeptical
Inquirer_) about the falsehoods circulated by Creationists, the threat they
pose to academic freedom, and the necessity to educate people about the
history of life's development. I've read a lot of Lewontin's works as well--
to lump him in with the Creationists is no less a falsehood.

      So where does this nonsense come from? Since I've seen Sheaffer
peddle these silly quotes in the past-- and have poiinted out their flaws to
him in the past, and have repeatedly asked for proof of their content (with
no substantial response from Sheaffer)-- the pseudologic is embarassingly
clear. The simple fact is, Gould and Lewontin are among the foremost
critics of 'biological determinist" claims-- the idea that specific behaviors
are a result of specific biological processes, that there are cognitive and
behaviorsal differences between subgroups of humanity that are attributable
to genetics, or that currently-existing social structures are direct
expressions of clearly qwuantifiable biological processes. It's a tendency
of thought with an ugly past, from the misguided eugenics movements of the
1920s and 1930s, ti Hitler's "final solution," and racist ideologues of the
present day-- which would include zMichael Levin.

      But Sheaffer regards claims of this ilk-- for example, the
"inevitability of partriarchy" claims of sociologist Stephen Goldberg-- as
not only plausible hypotheses, but as having been proven beyond any
reasonable doubt. To doubt these theories is, to Sheaffer, to deny Darwin
himself. Considering that Goldberg's claims have been extensively criticized
for being oversimplistic (see Rose, Kamin and Lewontin, _Not in Our Genes_,
and Fausto-Sterling, _Myths of Gender_), they cannot be regarded as "proven"
in the same sense that Darwin's work has been vindicated.

      Therefore-- in the sort of logic that Alice found so useful with
the Red Queen-- Gould and Lewontin are anti-evolution. The fact that
Lewontin is a Marxist, and Gould has expressed left-of-center political
views, is enough for their opponents to claim that their objections are
solely political-- and therefore, one doesn't actually have to read what
they say.

      This is why, for the past several weeks, I have been asking Sheaffer
to provide a direct quote from either Gould or Lewontin that states in clear
and unambiguous terms, that they deny any role of biology in shaping human
behavior. Taner Edis and I have had no problem in assembling quotes where
they state that biology and environment both shape the individual; Sheaffer
claims that this is merely a rhetorical trick of "denying their denials." He
has provided nothing beyond the secondhand appraisals of Hardin and Levin.
(I know little about Hardin, but Levin is hardly what I'd call an impartial
scientist. I've gone into his record before. Funny how these standards are
set: Lewontin admires Marx, Gould's a leftie, so they can't be doing good
science: Levin advocates racially separate subqay cars, the rights of
storekeepers to dney service to blacks, and claims that blacks aren't as
smart as whites, and Sheaffer cites him as an authority.)

      It's clear that Sheaffer just isn't reading these objections. I've
dissected his ravings before, but the most he does is rant about how
everyone else merely tosses 'ad hominems" at him. So, will someone on this
newsgroup who's a _friend_ of his kindly tell him that he really has made a
complete ass of himself?



Brian "Rev. P-K" Siano (revpk@cellar.org) sez:
"Trust your own judgement on all things; but the real work lies in
making your 'judgement' trustworthy."