CelticBear’s Musings

On the Agnostic Mom blog (which sadly doesn’t look like it used to thanks to unethical cyber-vandals) she posts some feedback regarding a conversation about ethics and science and animals. Interesting stuff.
Humans As Animals and Ethics

A couple of points she makes regarding science and ethics I’m posting here:

Science must do its investigating and be kept wholly separate from ethics. Learning that nature selects that which is “most fit,” for example, does not mean it is ethical for humans to favor those most fit and allow to die those who are less able. Humans must make decisions on ethics from a philosophical stand-point. But many of the findings in science can direct us to a greater understanding of how things work, giving better clarity and accuracy to our philosophy about ethics.

For example, it will take science to better understand what is going on when someone is in a vegetative state. Science does not tell us whether it is ethical or not to take someone off life-support. But it might tell us whether someone has any chance for survival, whether there is any level of consiousness, whether there exists any pain or desire within the person. We can then take the scientific evidence to help us decide the ethics of whether to leave a person on life support or take them off. Science gives us the information we need. It does not give us the ethics. That is why, yes, we have discussed a link between science and ethics on this blog. And yes, I would submit that scientific findings are crucial information as we make choices in ethics. But there is still a vast separation between the two. Science gives us factual information. Ethics must derive from philosophical discussion with the facts at hand.

Many religious anti-science zealots will commit an association fallacy and/or straw man fallacy when they claim there is some kind of philosophy of science, sciencism, religion of science. Usually it’s because of people like me, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, etc. who reject religion as any means to understanding reality and instead rely on reason and naturalism. To the religious person who puts a belief at the center of their reality, it’s hard for them to wrap their minds around the fact that people can chose to see the world objectively without the influence of faith in the unseen supernatural. To them, everything is affected by religious belief, so a reasoned freethinking viewpoint must also be likewise philosophical and ephemeral in nature.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a science-based philosophical outlook people can take. Some people who have a zealot’s mind but rejects traditional religion may supplant that fundamentalism with a twisted science-based philosophy; but that’s a fault of the individual–not science.

This misapplied attack on science by anti-science fundies tends to show up when they argue against evolution by equating Darwinism with Social Darwinism. (Wow, Darwin was kinda crazy looking, from his picture on Wikipedia. I’d probably avoid him if I saw him on the street. Kind of looks like the inspiration for Scrooge. Anyway….) Charles Darwin’s theory of survival of the species as a component of evolution was based on years of observations made and research he conducted objectively, with no ethical or philosophical component or even implication. He never once expressed any kind of value judgment upon his findings or the future of human evolution.

But, years later, some people with a socio-political agenda (god I hate politics) would usurp the concepts put forward by Darwin and apply them to humanity on a socio-economic basis, placing value on certain people over others by misapplying the concept of “fitness”. They took an objective, scientific concept and twisted it to make social statements and value judgments and it became known as “Social Darwinism,” forever casting an undeserved shadow over Darwin’s original science.

And so decades later Christian fundies will bring up Social Darwinism, which has absolutely nothing to do with science in general or evolution in particular, as a negative result of science and make a leap of (il)logic by claiming evolution is wrong because Social Darwinism is ethically bad.* Whether right or wrong, good or bad, the one has nothing to do with the other and should and can not be used to justify scientific validity.

(* Same thing with Marxism. Karl Marx came up with some brilliant and prescient observations and analysis regarding capitalism and the capitalist ideology. Then along comes people like Lenin who misuse and misapply Marx’s theories to create flawed political ideologies that end up being worse for humanity than capitalism. And so what happens, because of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, and other fascist dictators who bastardized Marxism, whenever an American hears the term “Marxism” or “socialism” they instantly think of brutal and fundamentally flawed Soviet communism and dismiss Marxism as “anti-American” and “evil”. Never taking a moment to really look into what Marxism is all about, or capitalism for that matter.
The capitalist ideology is as strong as religious ideology, and people don’t like to question beliefs they are comfortable in.

I also addressed this misapplied antagonism in regards to Nietzsche and Nazism in my blog entry: Nietzche, Would Like To Meetchya! )