Archive | February 12, 2009

In honour of Charles Darwin’s bicentenary, an observation:

How are statists and creationists alike?

For one thing, as I’ve observed before, both “distrust invisible-hand processes and cannot conceive of order emerging except through some sort of centralised top-down control.”

For another, both raise the same hackneyed objections to spontaneous order again and again, as if these objections had not been answered in detail over and over. (For a good collection of links on evolution, see the TalkOrigins FAQ.)

For yet another, each loves to characterise its opponents as being religiously rather than scientifically motivated; statists accuse libertarians of having a “religious faith in the free market,” while creationists complain about the “Darwinist religion.” (Note: it is dialectically out of order to accuse one’s opponents’ conclusions of being faith-based until one has addressed and refuted – or at least shown some sign of understanding – their arguments.)

That’s why the spectacle of pro-market creationists and anti-market evolutionists would be amusing if it weren’t so depressing; each employs the same sloppy thinking and yahoo tactics on one issue that it rightly deplores on the other issue.

In fairness, it must be conceded that the opponents of statism and creationism share some vices as well. Many evolutionists write as though the truth of evolution established all sorts of metaphysical theses it does not remotely support (such as reductive materialism and sociobiology); likewise one all too often sees proponents of libertarian economic reasoning attempting to use it to undergird various dubious psychological, ethical, and sociological theses (such as psychological egoism, ethical subjectivism, or some variety of right-libertarianism).

Oh well. Anyway, happy birthday Charles Darwin!