Mark Kleiman's "Reality-based" Weblog goes off the deep end

[BurtWorm]

On June 21, Kleiman posted a criticism of "blue-state" evolutionists' unwillingness to cut red-state creationists some "slack," arguing that theism, at least, "implies that each human being is a Divine project, and therefore has obligations to act in certain ways that flow merely from being a human being" and that "Genesis implies that each human being I confront is sacred." Oddly, for a blog that calls itself "reality-based," Kleiman cuts "atheism" and "middle-school Darwinism" hardly any slack at all:

Insofar as middle-school Darwinism asserts that each of us is merely an animal of a particular species, fundamentally like animals of other species, it undercuts both halves of that double-barreled moral proposition. If I'm merely an animal, why shouldn't I act like one if I feel like it? And, if you're merely an animal, why shouldn't I beat you up, if I'm so inclined and bigger than you are?

Maybe Kleiman learned this kind of Darwinism in his middle-school, but he does he really think that "acting like an animal" and beating smaller critters up necessarily follow from being a member of an animal species? Is Kleiman suggesting that we aren't members of an animal species? Is the human species *not* an animal species?

Not surprisingly, Kleiman's post generated some heat in the rest of the reality-based community, in particular from PZ Myers of pharyngula.org and Lindsay Beyerstein of http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/06/religion_evolut.html">majikthise.

Well, he seems to be stepping deeper and deeper into it as he goes along:

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/spirituality_and_religion_/2005/06/literalism_skepticism_and_tolerance.php

Here is a sampling of his latest:


2. Not everyone who objects to teaching schooldchildren the Darwinian account of human origins as the Truth is a Biblical literalist. True literalism is a marginal phenomenon, even within fundamentalism. (When Deuteronomy refers to God's "sword," few if any Christians imagine that there is a divine weapon with a point, an edge, and a hilt.) Assuming that most believers in the Abrahamic faiths are literalists is both a mistake and an insult.


I have to confess to being ignorant on this score. I have yet to see an argument against Darwin in the schools from someone who wasn't a Biblical literalist on some level. They do all take at least some portion of the Bible (the bit about man being created in God's image, for instance) literally in such a way that they are unable to view biology with the same equanimity that they view, say, chemistry or meteorology. Biology threatens them, not through any fault of biology's, but through their own shakable faith.

There's more, and I'm sure there will be more from Myers and others too.

:popcorn:

[Teaser]

1. Mark Kleiman and Category Error

His entire post on "if I'm just an animal, why shouldn't I act like one" is a giant category error, confusing the moral with the biological.

[BurtWorm]

3. It's baffling that he thinks anyone who makes that error

deserves to be cut any slack at all.

[LynnTheDem]

2. "If I'm merely an animal, why shouldn't I act like one if I feel like it?"

Each animal species has societal "laws" for their behaviour and punishes those of their species who break those "laws".

Next stupid question from the stupid rightwingnuttery?

[geek tragedy]

4. Science and moral theory are two different things, pudding head.

(Referring to Kleiman, not the OP)

Science is NOT an alternative values system. It's the quest for the objective truth.

Oy.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. A paradox of the creationist view.

If all life is divinely created, then that means that animals are divinely created too. If that were the case, then what would be the problem with seeing humans as "merely" another species of divinely created organism? If one were to believe both in a God of some sort, and in Darwinian evolution, then one would simply see humans as part of a divinely created whole along with all other life forms.

As far as acting like animals, there are no animal species that behave as badly as humans do. And is the person who wrote this in the habit of going around gratuitously beating up on small animals, that he thinks he would do the same to humans if he saw them as "mere" animals?

Why does this person think he's part of the "reality based" community?

[BurtWorm]

6. Excellent points.

:toast: