Born into wealth and privilege, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were Jewish Chicagoan graduate students who decided to commit the perfect crime. In the spring of 1924, they abducted and murdered 14-year old Bobby Franks. They were eventually apprehended and confessed to their crime. Clarence Darrow was hired to save Leopold and Loeb from the gallows. Yes, the same Clarence Darrow of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee.
Here, too, the law was intertwined with biology. Darrow was a true believer in biological evolution. According to him, the question before the court was whether it would embrace “the old theory” that “a man does something... because he wilfully, purposely, maliciously and with a malignant heart sees fit to do it” or the new theory of modern science that “every human being is the product of the endless heredity back of him and the infinite environment around him.” According to Darrow, Leopold and Loeb murdered Franks “... because they were made that way...”
According to Darrow, Leopold and Loeb murdered Franks “... because they were made that way...”
Robert Crowe, the state’s chief prosecutor in the case, challenged “Darrow’s dangerous philosophy of life.” He read to the court a speech Darrow had delivered to prisoners at a county jail more than 20 years earlier. Darrow had told the prisoners that there was no moral difference between themselves and those who were outside jail. “I do not believe people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it, on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control, and for which they are in no way responsible.” “There ought to be no jails” he told the prisoners.1
Darwinism as a Universal Acid
Biology dictating morality? Well, yes. Daniel Dennett is a philosopher of biology who has famously described Darwinism as a universal acid – a corrosive ideology that dissolves traditional ideas. And the effects are perhaps nowhere as apparent as in the discussion over free will and morality.
In the debate between Darrow’s moral determinism and Crowe’s insistence that human beings can make moral choices, Judaism takes the side of the latter. We are free to make moral decisions; those decisions are judged on the basis of an objective (Godly) morality. Maimonides concisely codifies our position:
Each individual has free choice – if he wishes to become righteous, he can do so, and if he wishes to become wicked, he can do so... Don’t even consider what the gentile fools and numerous silly Jews think – that God decrees regarding each individual whether he will be righteous or wicked. It isn’t so! Every individual can be as righteous as Moses or as wicked as [King] Yeroboam.2
Enlightenment Rejection of Free Will
This is an old debate. Atheists have for millennia rejected the concept of absolute morality and human free will. In the modern era, this view became prominent during the Enlightenment. For example, the prominent French Enlightenment philosopher Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789) argued that determinism must be true and, as a consequence, human beings do not control their own destinies as religion had always taught. He argued that if human beings are really merely complicated mechanical systems obeying the laws of nature as much as a comet or a planet in orbit around the Sun obeys such laws, then it must be possible, in principle, to predict the future behaviour of any person. Accordingly, man cannot have free will.
The great French biologist Georges Buffon (1707-1788) was also thoroughly committed to a mechanistic picture of the universe, and did not hesitate to extend this picture to man. He conjectured that human beings were but another part of the grand cosmic machine. As such, he could not believe in free will. In 1748, Julien de la Mettrie published L’Homme Machine (Man as Machine). As with d’Holbach and Buffon, he argued that man is nothing more than a mechanical organism whose behaviour is as predictable as the tides.3
Morality as an Evolved Adaptation
But the argument over free will and morality has become more acute ever since Darwin published On the Origin of Species, so let’s start there. William Provine is a biologist and historian of biology at Cornell University. Professor Provine is an outspoken advocate for atheism and biological evolution. One of his favorite aphorisms is that evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented. Provine summarizes the consequences of the belief in evolution as follows:
1) God does not exist; 2) No life after death exists; 3) No ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) No ultimate meaning in life exists; 5) Human free will is nonexistent.4
Let us focus on points 3 and 5 above. The evolutionary view is that moral law is something humans created eons ago as an evolved adaptation. Thus, a conviction that something is right or wrong arises, ultimately, out of the struggle for survival. All the notions we associate with moral and ethical principles are merely adaptations, foisted upon us by evolutionary mechanisms in order to maximize survival.
Provine’s logic is unassailable, if you grant his premises. His point of departure is that nothing exists beyond matter and energy. Matter and energy may manifest themselves in relatively simple forms – a hydrogen molecule, perhaps – and in complex forms, as in a butterfly or human being. But in the end, it all boils down to quarks, electrons and other denizens of the subatomic world. It follows that there cannot be an objective foundation for morality, and that human free will is an illusion, the result of complex neuronal interactions.
This is a popular (inevitable, really) notion among contemporary evolutionists. In 1985, the entomologist E.O. Wilson and the philosopher of science Michael Ruse co-authored an article in which they wrote that “Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to co-operate.” In his 1998 book Consilience, Wilson argued that “Either ethical precepts, such as justice and human rights, are independent of human experience or else they are human inventions.” He rejected the former explanation, which he called transcendentalist ethics, in favour of the latter, which he named empiricist ethics.5
One implication of the belief that human beings do not possess moral freedom is that criminals cannot be held responsible for their deeds.
Indeed, the whole field of sociobiology, founded by Wilson in the 1970s, presupposes that morality is the product of evolutionary processes and tries to explain most human behaviours by discovering their alleged reproductive advantage in the evolutionary struggle for existence.6
Are Criminals Culpable for their Crimes?
One implication of the belief that human beings do not possess moral freedom is that criminals cannot be held responsible for their deeds. University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne thus writes – in a post entitled Is There Moral Responsibility? – that he does not believe in moral responsibility:
I favor the notion of holding people responsible for good and bad actions, but not morally responsible. That is, people are held accountable for, say, committing a crime, because punishing them simultaneously acts as a deterrent, a device for removing them from society, and a way to get them rehabilitated – if that’s possible. To me, the notion of moral responsibility adds nothing to this idea. In fact, the idea of moral responsibility implies that a person had the ability to choose whether to act well or badly, and (in this case) took the bad choice. But I don’t believe such alternative “choices” are open to people, so although they may be acting in an “immoral” way, depending on whether society decides to retain the concept of morality (this is something I’m open about), they are not morally responsible. That is, they can’t be held responsible for making a choice with bad consequences on the grounds that they could have chosen otherwise.7
David Baggett8 describes how this notion manifests itself in contemporary academia:
I have found a recent trend among a number of naturalistic ethicists and thinkers to be both interesting and mildly exasperating, but most of all telling. Both one like John Shook, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York... and Frans de Waal, author most recently of The Bonobo and the Atheist (to adduce but a few examples) seem to be gravitating toward functional categories of morality. Talk of belief and practice replaces talk of truth; references to moral rules exceed those of moral obligations; and prosocial instincts supplant moral authority. What is interesting about this trend is that the resulting picture is entirely consistent with the view of complete moral skeptics, even amoralists.9
Charles Darwin and Morality
As we said above, these notions are hardly recent. The historian Richard Weikart writes that, “The idea that evolution undermines objective moral standards is hardly a recent discovery of sociobiology, however. In the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin devoted many pages to discussing the evolutionary origin of morality, and he recognized what this meant: morality is not objective, is not universal, and can change over time. Darwin certainly believed that evolution had ethical implications.”10 Ever since then, evolutionists have been arguing that human free will is a mirage and that morality is subjective.
Still, Darwin made it much easier to be an atheist, having conjured up what seemed to be a plausible explanation for life without the need to invoke a Creator. His followers found Darwinism to be a convenient peg on which to hang their conviction that criminals should be exonerated from moral responsibility for their deeds seeing that, as they believe, no absolute moral code exists. Here are a few examples.
Darwinists and Criminality
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) was a leading criminologist who authored the landmark study Criminal Man in 1876. According to Lombroso, infanticide, parricide, theft, cannibalism, kidnapping and antisocial actions could be explained largely as a throwback to earlier stages of Darwinian evolution. In earlier stages of development such behaviours aided survival and were therefore bred into biological organisms by natural selection. William Noyes, one of Lombroso’s American disciples, explained that “In the process of evolution, crime has been one of the necessary accompaniments of the struggle for existence.”
Invoking modern science in general and Charles Darwin’s work in particular, Italian jurist Enrico Ferri (1856-1929), one of Lombroso’s top disciples, argued that it was no longer reasonable to believe that human beings could make choices outside the realm of material cause and effect. Ferri applauded Darwin for showing “that man is not the king of creation, but merely the last link of the zoological chain, that nature is endowed with eternal energies by which animal and plant life... are transformed from the invisible microbe to the highest form, man.” Ferri looked forward to the day when crime would be treated as a “disease”.
Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899) was a German medical doctor who became president of the Congress of the International Federation of Freethinkers. He was an outspoken atheist and authored Force and Matter, a materialist tract that went through fifteen editions in German and four in English. He was one of the most energetic popularisers of Darwin’s work in the German-speaking world. Büchner wrote that “the vast majority of those who offend against the laws of the State and of Society ought to be looked upon rather as unfortunates who deserve pity than as objects of execration.” Büchner argued that the [alleged] brain abnormalities in many criminals showed that they were throwbacks to “the brains of pre-historic men.”
In his book Crime: Criminals and Criminal Justice (1932), University of Buffalo criminologist Nathaniel Cantor ridiculed “the grotesque notion of a private entity, spirit, soul, will, conscience or consciousness interfering with the orderly processes of body mechanisms.” Because we humans are no different in principle to any other biological organism, “man is no more ‘responsible’ for becoming wilful and committing a crime than the flower for becoming red and fragrant. In both cases the end products are predetermined by the nature of protoplasm and the chance of circumstances.” The sociologist J.P. Shalloo wrote in the 1940s that it was the “world-shaking impact of Darwinian biology, with its emphasis upon the long history of man and the importance of heredity for a clear understanding of man’s biological constitution” that finally opened the door to a truer understanding of crime than traditional views.
Judaism unequivocally rejects the view that free will is an illusion and that morality is subjective
This Darwinian tradition continues to this day. Jerry Coyne’s fellow New Atheist, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, sets out his position in his 2012 book Free Will:
Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.
The Jewish View
Judaism unequivocally rejects the view – ancient but bolstered in modern times by the scientific respectability granted to evolutionary theory – that free will is an illusion and that morality is subjective. The Torah tells us, in no uncertain terms, that God has placed before us life and death, blessing and curse, and that we should choose life.11 The Talmud goes further. It records the first attempt in our tradition to refute the case for moral responsibility. It occurred when Job argued that human beings are forced to act as they do, and bear no moral responsibility for their actions.12 The Talmud rejects this out of hand.
Evolutionary biology is not just another scientific discipline, which can be safely ignored by the masses. It is an amoral ideology whose corrosive spiritual poison undermines the foundations of human society.
Yoram Bogacz is the author of Genesis and Genes (Feldheim 2013) and Facets of Eternity (Feldheim 2014). He can be contacted at bogacz@telkomsa.net.
1. Some of the material in this article is from the superb Darwin Day in America by John G. West, ISI Books, 2007.
2. רמב"ם הלכות תשובה פרק ה': רשות כל אדם נתונה לו – אם רצה להטות עצמו לדרך טובה ולהיות צדיק, הרשות בידו. ואם רצה להטות עצמו לדרך רעה ולהית רשע, הרשות בידו... אל יעבור במחשבתך דבר זה שאומרים טפשי האומות ורוב גולמי בני ישראל, שהקב"ה גוזר על האדם מתחילת ברייתו להיות צדיק או רשע. אין הדבר כן, אלא כל אדם ואדם ראוי להיות צדיק כמשה רבינו או רשע כירבעם...
3. Anthony Serafini, The Epic History of Biology, Perseus Publishing, 1993, page 141.
4. Abstract of William Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address, Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life. This used to be available at http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/frmain.html. I was not able to retrieve it.
5. See the article by the historian Richard Weikart here: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/05/at_emory_univer_1059491.html.
Retrieved 12th June 2014.
6 Stephen Jay Gould was one of many evolutionary biologists who ridiculed the field for its proclivity to invent what Gould called just-so stories.
7 See http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/is-there-moral-responsibility/.
Retrieved 13th June 2014.
8 Baggett is professor of philosophy at Liberty University and co-author, with Jerry Walls, of Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality.
9 See http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/04/26/watering-down-the-categories/#comments.
Retrieved 13th June 2014.
10 See the article by the historian Richard Weikart here: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/05/at_emory_univer_1059491.html.
Retrieved 13th June 2014.
11 דברים ל, יט: הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם אֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת הָאָרֶץ הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים.
12 בבא בתרא דף טז עמוד א: אמר רבא בקש איוב לפטור את כל העולם כולו מן הדין אמר לפניו רבונו של עולם בראת שור פרסותיו סדוקות בראת חמור פרסותיו קלוטות בראת גן עדן בראת גיהנם בראת צדיקים בראת רשעים מי מעכב על ידך ומאי אהדרו ליה חבריה דאיוב [איוב טו, ד] אַף אַתָּה תָּפֵר יִרְאָה וְתִגְרַע שִׂיחָה לִפְנֵי אֵל. ברא הקדוש ברוך הוא יצר הרע ברא לו תורה תבלין.
עלי שור חלק ב עמוד לט: הרי איוב טען כי האדם מוכרח לחטוא בגלל יצר הרע שבו, והשיבו לו חבריו כי הוא מפר יראה, וכיון שיש יראה, אין האדם מוכרח לחטוא.
A Response to Comment
I was encouraged by the large number of comments to my essay Darwinism, Morality and Free Will, many of which were sent directly to me and don’t appear on the Aish site.
The negative comments fall into, very broadly, three categories. I shall respond with three comments.
First Comment
Some readers (I’m being generous here; these folks evidently do not read very well) assert that “the author blames Darwin and the Theory of Evolution for all kinds of conclusions about free will, absolute morality, and belief (or lack thereof) in God.”
Wrong. Anyone who actually read the article would have immediately noticed that the connection between morality, free will and Darwinism is made by the numerous authorities I quoted. Virtually every writer cited in the article is an evolutionary biologist or an ally of evolutionary biology: William Provine, E.O. Wilson, Michael Ruse, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris are all ardent atheists and, it goes without saying, true believers in evolutionary biology. They are the ones who assert, unequivocally and unambiguously, that evolutionary doctrine leads to the conclusion that free will is a mirage and absolute morality is non-existent.
Second Comment
Some readers seem to think that scientific ideas exist in a vacuum, and generate no implications.
Wrong. Scientific theories often do generate philosophical and theological implications. Case in point: cosmologists and astronomers who measure the redshift of distant galaxies and conclude that there is a linear relationship between redshift and distance are not content to leave it at that. They assert that this relationship (together with other measurements) implies a beginning to the universe. This is how (roughly speaking, of course) Big Bang Theory came to be, together with its implications of a creation event, rich in theological and philosophical import.
Similarly, evolutionary biology is not limited to the nitty-gritty of allele frequencies and discussions of allopatric and sympatric speciation. It has broad philosophical implications. Those implications are spelled out clearly and vocally by proponents of evolution (see First Comment above).
Third Comment
Some critics immediately resort to Law 101 – when you don’t have a case, insult your opponent. When David, for example, begins his comment with “What a bunch of nonsense” he proclaims, loudly and clearly, that he’s lost the debate before it even started.
Yoram Bogacz
(20) Anonymous, July 21, 2014 11:54 PM
free will in evolution
I'm not a proponent of evolution, but in one sense it actually seems to support free will. If God set the process in motion, allowing organisms to adapt/not adapt to their environments "at will," this would make free will the absolute foundation of evolution. Once a creature evolved to the point of being a sentient being & capable of taking intelligent responsibility for their choices beyond mere self preservation, then might God not call him "Adam," or "human," and begin to interact with him to refine his understanding? I've considered such possibilities due to conversations with my (currently) atheist son. Who knows how long the Spirit of God hovered over the waters in the beginning, or the microscopic changes that occurred over eons while the earth was formless before humankind walked with God? An invisible God speaking creation into existence... how might that appear to the eyes of an observing watcher?
(19) H.E.Brown, July 7, 2014 1:09 AM
Free choice
Free choice is everywhere in life. I made a free choice to leave a comment. Others made a choice not to. Free choice is a fact of life. GET OVER IT. MAKE A CHOICE.
(18) Robert Semple, June 30, 2014 2:34 PM
Don't blame Darwin
reducto ad absurdum: Let's assume that the biologists are right, that morality is an evolved trait. That would mean that at some point humanity adopted morality. The perseverance of this trait, and its universality would, to any thinking biologist prove, not only its (morality) necessity in human development, but also its success over any other competing trait. The same thing can be said about theism, a belief in God. If these are evolved thought processes, they are remarkably, fantastically successful ones.
Secondly: There is no evidence that theism and moral imperatives are a natural development in human evolution. The idea that caveman could look up to the sky and easily or naturally ascribe the unknown to a divine being, and that this being proscribes behaviour, requires a leap of faith unsupported by fact or history.
Third: someone needs to explain moral responsibility to these biologists. Jerry Coyne's arguments are facile to the point of ridiculousness. I should go to jail for murder, but no-one can tell me why murder is wrong?
Fourth: Please try to avoid sensationalist, "straw-man" arguments. You are good enough to not need them
(17) YH, June 29, 2014 4:24 PM
Loeb not Jewish
Loeb's father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic, so he was not Jewish.
(16) Mary, June 27, 2014 2:21 PM
Enough already
Here's the thing, we all know there is evolution within a species never has there been any proof that evolution jumps a species. If what they claim is true, then there wouldn't be any chimps in the zoo. I love the part that says something to the effect that evolution is the engine of atheism. How true is that, it's also true that engines break down, and in light of what's happening in the world today, that engine is on it's last leg! I wished they'd stop beating that poor dead horse and bury it already. Gen: 6-6. "And the Lord was sorry He made man on earth, and He was grieved in His heart." Me too! God is great!
(15) David, June 27, 2014 1:38 PM
Science and Morality are completely separate
What a bunch of nonsense. The theory of evolution is just that – a scientific theory based on the scientific method. The scientific method sets forth a method of basing hypotheses on observation and testing the validity of those hypotheses. When significant evidence supports a hypothesis, and the hypothesis withstands tests and challenges, it becomes a theory. And by the way, theories are revised when new evidence requires it. There is no inherent morality in the scientific method or the theories that it produces. Morality is separate from and beyond science. The two meet in the application of science.
The author blames Darwin and the Theory of Evolution for all kinds of conclusions about free will, absolute morality, and belief (or lack thereof) in God. Rather than bashing a solid scientific theory, perhaps the author should look for faults in the logic of people reaching the conclusions that he doesn’t like. Alternatively, the author can reject science completely, and live in a very small and blinkered universe that does not allow for evidence supporting contrary world views. I am not a Torah scholar, but I would be surprised if we are supposed to ignore real world observations and solid logic. Would it not be better to find explanations that reconcile solid scientific theory with Torah?
(14) Adrian, June 27, 2014 9:15 AM
The author is ignorant or a creationist
Connecting morality with evolution , and especially modern evolution displays either a complete lack of knowledge of what modern evolution is ( a significant part of modern biology) or an intentional trail to support creationism and Intelligent Design, as the extreme conservative Christians in US do today ( see the Tea Party).
The connection with free will is just nonsense . Yes your parents have a great impact on your morals and the environment too. Your genes have some impact on your health, on your look, on your sensitivity and many other things . On your morality ? NO!!! There is no scientific evidence about it and a lawyer 100 years ago and some of Darwin's thoughts are not evidence.
The claim than only a "True believer" is moral based on the Torah is both an insult to basic intelligence and not true as a fact.
- You really expect today to stone an adulterer woman ?
- Are we going to punish somebody not respecting Shabath ?
- Are we going to sentence to death homosexuals ?
It is all written in the Torah.
Give people enough credit and they might create a code of ethics , based on the old , but answering to the needs of the modern times,
A proud atheist JEW
(13) Irene, June 27, 2014 8:19 AM
Funny what people might believe
It's actually quite entertaining to see what People want to believe. For me this is a proof of God allowing to not believe in Him, if they don't want to...
Because... you really need to WANT to believe in atheism and darwinism in order to adopt the ideas.
They claim that human beings don't have free will, and therefore cannot be accountable. Yet - they claim that they do believe in "evolution" and in "change"... - now for "evolution" as a theory to work, you need the concept of something being able to "change". For something to be able to "change" it means that two options is before this "something", the "change" option and the "not change" option. For the "change" option, to happen, "will" need to be implemented. And... "will" by nature, as it is called "will" and not "response" is always in some way free. This can be proved by the fact that whenever "will" is executed, there is a Choice between the options availiable, and it is always possible to stick to the "no change" option. If someone is pointing that gun towards you, and demanding you do something, everyone knows at the bottom of their hearts that there is always 2 options, either to submit to the demand, or to not submit. And, it IS possible to not submit to the demand. The result might be that you get shot, but everyone knows there is a Choice.
And, for the record, almost every child understands that in a lot of cases what is seen as criminality is a much smarter way of behavior if survival and beneficial conditions for oneself was the goal. We behave morally correct of other reasons.
(12) Alan, June 26, 2014 8:38 PM
Evolutionary biology does not argue against free will
First, thank you for writing your article and addressing a complex topic. I recently wrote an article, "God, Justice, and Free Will" on my blog, The Examined Life, at https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1124491989022978299#editor/target=post;postID=8875700525591861975;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=56;src=postname. Perhaps not surprisingly, I reach the same result, i.e., we have free will and that we must have free will. I also have numerous other essays on religious, philosophical, and political topics.
I disagree with the statement near the end of the article that evolutionary biology is an amoral ideology. It is not an ideology - it is an area of science. The fact that some latch onto it to argue that free will does not exist is an abuse of the science. The science is not corrosive; the misunderstanding and misuse of the science can be corrosive.
While our actions are influenced by our genetics and environment, absent mental illness or defect, clearly we can make choices and do so daily. While I agree that if you change my genetics and change my environment, my decisions will likely change, but this is not equal to lacking free will.
While there may be some who argue that free will does not exist and, hence, moral responsibility cannot exist, I suspect that many atheists and evolutionary biologists would argue that free will exists and that we can exercise choice upon our decisions.
(11) judith, June 26, 2014 6:42 PM
I found this article disturbing
As a Jew and a retired biological scientist, I find this article disturbing. I do not understand this interpretation of evolutionary biology as one that excludes free will and excuses immorality. Like other sciences biology alone cannot help us solve problems and make decisions, we all need spiritual/ ethical guidance to help us make decisions and take actions that do not harm others.
visitor, June 28, 2014 2:50 PM
Relieved to find such well-informed comments
Others have done a better job than I could have of explaining my disappointment in this article. I currently teach a scientific subject where the study of genetics and epigenetics have made a huge impact. A big part of that impact is documenting that our individual choices each day make a difference! So this article is bizarre at best. I'm glad it was not the first Aish article I ever read, because in that case I would not come back, and I do find lots of inspiration on this site.
Thanks again to the thoughtful commenters.
(10) Larry Smith, June 26, 2014 6:26 PM
Science is not the enemy of Torah.
Evolution does not require “that free will is an illusion and that morality is subjective.” It is wrong for Mr. Bogacz to mislead Aish readers by implying that it does. To the contrary, modern science has given us a better understanding of the nature of the world, in particular how it is not deterministic, which refutes the idea that free will must be an illusion.
Science is not the enemy of Torah; and Aish would serve its mission better by not publishing this sort of attack on it.
(9) Emil Friedman, June 26, 2014 6:01 PM
Evolution by natural selection does not imply determinism.
Quantum mechanics makes a deterministic model of the world untenable. One can easily describe a situation where there is a 50/50 chance of something significant happening (dead person, bomb detonation, etc) and where predicting whether it will happen is fundamentally impossible.
(8) anon, June 26, 2014 5:57 PM
having his cake
" According to Darrow, Leopold and Loeb murdered Franks “... because they were made that way...”
He also said they were influenced by their professors/university environment because of their
views on darwinism. (which, as mentioned, he defended in a famous case)
Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
Smart guy though.
(7) Beverly Margolis-Kurtin, June 26, 2014 5:15 PM
Split feelings
My first impulse is to keep my yap shut rather than let people know I'm a fool when it comes to this subject. As a scientist, I believe that humankind evolved in Africa and spread out from there. I cannot, however, ignore the reality of G-d nor the fact that Judaism is ethical monotheism expressed in no uncertain terms.
To claim that people have no choices over their actions is nothing more or less a gigantic lie.
Judaism refined ethical morality and continues to do so.
We humans are animals, simultaneously we are not animals without souls, without morals, without ethics. I have heard it said that we have an animal soul and a human soul. I can accept that.
At what point were we humans endowed with our ability to know about Hashem? How and why I will not attempt to postulate as I do not have the intellectual wherewithal to do so.
Sometimes, the simplest way to explain what I feel is to just say it simply: I believe in G-d, I believe that I have free will, I believe we all evolved into what we are today and I believe that someday we will have to explain to the Judge what we did in this life. Those people who deny those simple things are afraid of what will come to pass, so they must deny them to avoid a life of fear.
As I said above, perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut rather than show how little I really know.
(6) Bob, June 26, 2014 5:07 PM
Science Denial
Too bad this author is wrong on so many factors. Morality, like living things evolve. We don't stone children who disrespect their parents, because our morality has evolved. Evolutionary biology is a field of science based on facts, not ideology. Free will is an illusion, there is no mind-body duality. Everything you think is the result of the basic forces of physics.
Wagner, July 3, 2014 6:56 AM
Free will is an illusion
Why should I pay any credence to someone who was forced by elements beyond his control to write "free will is an illusion"?
(5) John, June 26, 2014 3:47 PM
Simple math
It's a simple math question....it's a generic way of looking at evolution vs. creation (G-d) equation. On one hand you can believe that evolution created itself and the cosmos, and thus have a 0% chance of an eternal after life, or you can believe in the creation of the universe by G-d, and have a %100 chance at eternal life. As a Christian I'll take the 50/50 chance that a supreme G-d exists over a 0% chance at nothing every time.
Another way to look at the argument is this: When you're dead you'll have your answer. Very sad indeed.
judy, June 26, 2014 4:57 PM
there is no conflict. God created the world and evolution is how He created it. The order in genesis doesn't conflict with that. A 24 hour day didn't happen till the sun was created. Also- if God created an adult human being (Adam ) and we know that human beings grow through birth, infancy and childhood before they reach adulthood, Then ,might God might have created a world that would naturally grow through evolution? Besides- it's not only about creation- things continue to evolve. That's the way the world works. .
Aviva, June 26, 2014 11:01 PM
You and Blaise Pascal both.
(4) judy, June 26, 2014 3:45 PM
What? You don’t have to be an atheist to recognize the scientific validity of evolution. No one claims that biological evolution explains everything. It explains aspects of biology. No one claims that evolution defines morality. It is not a meaningful argument to quote a lawyer who represented two murderers long ago and used what ever excuse he could come up with in an attempt to represent them. Also, using old sources is never valid in science, because scientific understanding, itself, evolves. Neither is it valid to pick out statements that back your argument and ignore others. The statements you quote are not representative of anything other than the individuals who stated them.
Science is not something to disregard. It is an effective a system to try to gain understanding of the complex world that Hashem created. Evolution may explain how the human mind developed to a point where people can experience spirituality and have awareness of a higher being. It may explain the development of human thinking capable of writing articles and explaining ideas- though a more highly evolved mind might write them less simplistically and be more cognizant of the multifaceted complexities of life.
Anonymous, June 26, 2014 8:56 PM
Great response Judy!
Judy, I totally agree with you. I don't believe that people who are against Darwin theory really understand it, or took the time to learn it. There is no regards to logic in the arguments presented in this article. You did a good job pointing it out.
(3) scott, June 24, 2014 2:20 PM
Some religions are more dangerous than others
I believe in evolution of life on this planet. I think that natural selection and adaptation are almost proven facts. But I would not describe myself as an evolutionist because I do not think that this process happened independently of divine direction any more than I think that the Mona Lisa painted itself.
Remove divine direction and evolutionary biology can become religion. It creates its own G*d-the human intellect and the collective human will. I would argue that Adolf Hitler was a saint of that religion. His moral philosophy was a natural outgrowth of a belief in the cult of evolutionary biology. He maintained that individual rejection of societal morality (as expressed by his actions as the popular leader) was unnatural and through use of death camps and summary executions could be bred out of the species. He took power in his own country and then attempted to enforce his views on the rest of the world. It was moral natural selection. And since there was no god other than human intellect and collective will of that intellect, murdering millions was a moral act based upon the cult of evolutionary biology.
Absent some morality that does not derive from human intellect, this would seem to be a completely natural way for species to weed out the weaker intellects and collective wills which are in this modern society the key attributes that would make one group more fit to propagate the species over another. All that happened in WWII was that two or more differing intellects and wills competed to see who was fit to survive. And, oh yeah...about 50 million people died horrible deaths in the process.
But remember…life just happened. It has no inherent value other than our on fleeting pleasure and pain. One day the sun will explode and the relatively short existence of life on the planet will end. Against all that what’s 50 million people…or a billion next time?
anon, June 26, 2014 6:10 PM
you believe
Professor James M. Tour feels he should be among those who should be able to understand how evolution works, but, he can't understand it. Are your credentials better?
(2) Elliot, June 22, 2014 12:16 PM
I agree
I'm writing in new York,and I agree with Stan. The article ends abruptly. What's your point?
(1) stan, June 22, 2014 9:52 AM
your wrote half an article. Where is the other half?
Either someone is interested in the references you quote, in which case either he is waiting to hear a similar learned rebuttal - probably showing the where the evolution implies atheism argument breaks down, or he is simply revolted by the amoral implications, in which case your references are probably not interesting to him.
I find it disturbing to leave an impression to the first type who may well be swayed by your impressive name dropping in the opposite direction you want.
There are many impressive counter-arguments for those wishing to hear them.
Please consider your audience before you write an before you publish.