The Darwinian Holocaust

Richard Dawkins is an atheistic, neo-Darwinian evangelist. His The God Delusion is a masterpiece of falsehood, self-indulgence, and just plain sloppy reasoning. The holes in his arguments are so obvious that even Dawkins has difficult concealing them. Dawkins argues that atheists are moral upright people because they follow the moral zeitgeist (world spirit), and the moral zeitgeist is the standard of morality. Dawkins uses a Nazi-esque passage from H.G. Wells’s 1902 book New Republic to illustrate the depravity of the zeitgeist in the past (if a “progressive” like Wells was bad in the past, just imagine the contemporary conservatives!) and the goodness of progress according to the zeitgeist. Wells writes:

And how will the New Republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black?… the yellow man?…the Jew?… those swarms of black, brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well, the world is a world, and not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go… And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favor the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds… And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness…is death…. The men of the New Republic…will have an ideal that will make killing worth the while. (quoted on pp. 269-270)

Dawkins omits from his telling two embarrassing facts: (1) Wells’s predecessors and the conservatives of his day would have been just as horrified as we are by his zeitgeist-endorsed views, and (2) Wells’s views are unmistakably Darwinian: the strong survive; death to the weak. Later Dawkins asserts, “One reason black people and women and, in Nazi Germany, Jews and gypsies have been treated badly is that they were not perceived as fully human.” But what goes unsaid is the Nazis saw the slaughter as part of a racial Darwinian struggle. In Darwinism, there is no such thing as a human being, since, as Dawkins confesses, “there are no natural borderlines [between species] in evolution” .

The connection between Darwinism and eugenics as well as the U.S.'s unsavory part in it is well described in a recent article, "Deadly medicine: The forgotten history of eugenics" by Logan Paul Gage (no relation). Here's an excerpt:

The acknowledged founder of the eugenics movement is Francis Galton [Charles Darwin's cousin]. Through an examination of the British upper class, Galton tried to show that talent is largely hereditary. As eugenics ideas spread, it was not much of a stretch for Indiana's General Assembly to believe conversely that "heredity plays a most important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy and imbecility."

While modern Darwinists may wince, eugenics clearly drew inspiration from Darwin's theory. In fact, Galton was Darwin's cousin. He took evolutionary theory seriously, arguing persuasively that hospitals, mental institutions and social welfare all violate the law of natural selection. These institutions preserve the weak at the expense of the gene pool. In the wild, such people would die off naturally, thus keeping the human race strong. As Darwin himself declared in "The Descent of Man," "No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this has been highly injurious to the race of man. ... Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Pro-abortion views for a slave to politically correct fashion go without saying. Dawkins of course justifies abortion with Darwinism: “The humanness of an embryo’s cells cannot confer upon it any absolutely discontinuous moral status. It cannot because of our evolutionary continuity with chimpanzees and, more distantly, with every species on the planet.” By that argument, there can be no special moral status for any human being; the lines between human and subhuman are purely arbitrary, definable by whoever has power: the state, as in Hitler’s Germany, or the media elite, as in the modern West. Dawkins attempts to avoid the uproar of making born humans fair game by resorting to “well-thought-out consequentialist morals” (a double oxymoron): the adult’s fully developed nervous system sets him off-limits to killing, while the embryo’s inability to feel pain makes him fair game. Can Dawkins be so dense as to fail to see that his moral “standard” justifies any killing so long as accompanied by anesthesia?

The best that can be said for Dawkins's moral "principles" is that they are incapable of argument against the holocaust of World War II. Thus it should be no suprise that they offer no real barrier to the modern holocaust of abortion.

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Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

Summer Natural Philosophy Events

The homepage for the Institute for the Study of Nature has been newly updated and amplified. Among the new offerings is its first summer institute and conference in mid-June. The institute is a multi-day tutorial for science students on “Does Nature Act for an End?: Teleology Reconsidered.” The conference is on “The Nature of Nature” and the Institute is accepting paper proposals until May 11. Check out the Institute's webpage “Articles, essays, etc.,” which features a number of important natural philosophy papers you can download free of charge.

The Nature Institute is holding its annual summer course "Coming Alive to Nature: Practicing the Goethean Approach to Science and Nature Study" in late June. A friend tells me that the Nature Institute takes a Platonic approach to nature. You may have read the excellent essays of Institute member Steve Talbott in The New Atlantis.

The Institute for Advanced Physics is having its fifth summer conference in late July. As always, participation is for members only, but I encourage those qualified to go through the process of becoming members. I always learn a lot at these conferences and enjoy talking to so many great people, especially the wise and serene Fr. Benedict Ashley.

Now's the time to start planning your summer activities. I'm planning to attend all three events. Will I perhaps see you at one?

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One additional event but in the fall: The American Jacques Maritain Association meeting is in late October, but paper proposals are due June 15th. (The Association has yet to post the conference information on the web, but when they do, it will be here.) The meeting title is "The Majesty and Poverty of Metaphysics," which I believe is the original title for what we know in English as Maritain's Degrees of Knowledge.

As the conference flier says, central themes of the book include "philosophical realism, philosophy and empirical knowledge, metaphysical knowledge, mystical experience, and speculative and practical knowing. Papers on subjects of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of human nature and science, philosophical theology, and ethics would all be highly appropriate. We also welcome papers on the work of cognate thinkers who were known to Maritain or who profited from his work." Last meeting centered around philosophy of nature. I'm hoping to see more papers on the same subject, as well as the epistemological and ontological status of mathematical entities.

Same-sex Civil Unions

Last week the New Hampshire Senate Judiciary Committee heard public testimony on HB 437, a bill to legalize "same-gender" civil unions (essentially homosexual marriage). There was a lot of excellent testimony against this ridiculous plan. Sadly I cannot reproduce most of it here, but only my own testimony. Sadly the Judiciary Committee recommended passage of the bill, which the Senate passed on to the Governor's desk.

(The political background to this entire sordid affair is that the Democrats, thanks to disorder in the state and national Republican Party organizations—thanks President Bush!—, took control of the NH legislature for the first time since 1911. Governor Lynch is also a sly Democrat, with whom the state GOP leadership have dim-wittedly made peace.)

But first here is the reasoning I sent to an libertarian acquaintance who favors the civil union bill:

The civil union bill is really an attempt to use the power of the nanny state to commandeer benefits given to heterosexuals for the good of the community.

I agree that all people should be equally protected under the law (including the unborn), but are homosexual unions actually equal? Do they equally serve the common good as well as heterosexual marriages? Definitely not. It's been extensively experimentally verified over millennia that homosexual couples don't produce children. If it were an equality issue, then why wouldn't the bill's proponents allow civil unions for non-sexual couples or groups?

The problem with civil unions is that they are just a relabelling of marriage (notice that they change the marriage RSAs, and the dissolution of a union is through the divorce protocol), and the attempt of a relatively wealthy minority (homosexuals are largely DINKs) to tap into priviledges the state affords to heterosexual married couples to make it easier for them to have the children that form the future of the state. From the state's perspective, marriage is a very practical thing--nothing sacred about it.

There are other legislative ways to provide for any two people to have access to each other's medical records, inheritance, etc. Civil unions aren't necessary for that. It's an attempt to redefine marriage. A state that already has a birth dearth (and future shortage of workers) can ill afford to tinker with redefining marriage and family life (yes, the law has a pedagogical effect). The fact that states with civil union laws (Maine and Vermont) are the oldest states in the country (Mass. only escapes by having a large immigration rate--legal and otherwise) should give us pause before we decide to follow them down the population toilet (to the future ruin of our economy).

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The hearing began at 1:15pm. After two hours of testimony by legislators (almost entirely in favor—the House had passed the bill by a large majority), the people finally got to speak and they were mostly against the bill. My turn to speak arrived at 5:15. What I said played off the previous spoken testimony and covered the following points:

• There's been a lot of talk of individual rights, and individual feelings and beliefs, but very little about the common good of the people of the state.
• There's been a lot of talk of equality. But are same-sex unions equal in ability to contribute to the common good? No, same-sex couples cannot produce children.
• Same-sex unions have been portrayed as the wave of the future, but the future of the state will be formed by the children of traditional families.
• How do you want to be remembered by posterity? As the anomalous generation of short-sighted lawmakers who voted in a perk for a vocal minority—a perk that diluted the uniqueness of marriage at the expense of children and the economic future of the state? Or do you want to be remembered as the far-sighted defenders of a now-voiceless posterity?

Previous testimony had covered these two points (and because of shortage of time, we were asked not to repeat what had already been said:

• Research shows how important both mother and father are to the well being of children.
• The law has a teaching function.

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The following is the testimony I submitted to the NH Senate Judiciary Committee. One paragraph may look familiar to regular readers of this forum.

Say 'No' to Civil Unions

Executive Summary

• Civil unions will erode the uniqueness of traditional marriage.
• The structure of the traditional heterosexual family is inscribed in our human nature; the future of our state is born in the traditional family.
• Same-sex couples do not conceive children and raise children.
• In addition to drawing on the financial incentives given traditional families, civil unions would dilute the uniqueness of marriage as a sexual union that produces an objective good for the community.
• New Hampshire has a dearth of young people to join the work force (see data); we can ill afford to exacerbate this situation by enacting anti-family legislation.
• We don’t want to follow the rest of New England down the population sink hole. Our economic future rides on our children.
• How do you want to be remembered by posterity—a posterity that will almost entirely be raised in traditional families?

The Argument

Many opponents of this bill will argue that on some sort of religious grounds. In contrast, I argue that it is simply foolish public policy. Our common human nature and the health of the state argue that you should oppose this bill.

Human Nature and the Essentialness of the Traditional Family

Independent of religious beliefs, whether one believes in almighty God or almighty evolution, there is a wisdom in nature that we ignore at our peril. There’s a reason that it takes one man and one woman to produce a baby. The uniqueness of traditional one man-one woman marriage needs to be preserved because it is the only institution that has any consistent success in raising well-adjusted adults. This is not to say that traditional marriage is flawless, but simply that it is the best and the largely the only way that human have raised children throughout history.

Why is the family so essential to raising children? How do we know? Notice that human children aren’t born with claws or fangs or fast legs. Unlike other animals who know what to do by instinct, human behaviors are largely learned. The child is born into the world tiny and defenseless, but nature has provided the community it needs to sustain its life in the persons of its parents. The presence of both parents is the optimal setting for the child’s maturation. Please note that I’m not saying that it’s impossible to raise good children without certain conditions, but merely about what is optimal. Studies show, for example, that children from two-parent families have higher educational achievement and lower dropout rates. Studies also show that the presence of both a mother and a father is important, that they fulfill complementary roles in child development. A child’s emotional bond with its mother builds its capacity for intimacy and empathy, and its sense of self-worth. Children whose fathers are involved in their upbringing have better emotional health, academic achievement, and, on growing up, higher job status. Daughters especially benefit from their fathers by learning that they are loveable and how to appreciate their own femininity. The presence of both parents models for the children interactions between the sexes. (Maher) Marriage is the way that human culture provides for the upbringing of children, and this is the reason that societies with even the most exotic moral beliefs and practices have treasured marriage. Detracting from marriage hurts the well-being of children.

Same-sex couples do not produce children, and by and large they do not desire to raise children by adoption. The same-sex couples who would be united civilly will not produce coming generations; by their nature they disqualify themselves from the Darwinian struggle for survival, and drag the state as a whole into the same category.

It might be argued that same-sex unions won’t detract from traditional families. The problem with that argument is that it ignores the pedagogic function of law. By normalizing same-sex unions, the state will be giving them a tacit approval that weakens traditional heterosexual marriage by diluting its uniqueness, saying that sexual unions are primarily for the satisfaction of the couple and need not contribute to the common good by being open to children, as the dynamic of natural human sexuality indicates. (Certainly not all heterosexual couples can produce children, but notice that if they did, it would be unusual, but not contravention of nature—a man and a woman are the kinds of beings whom nature intends to be united.)

Demographic Considerations

Perhaps you’ve been listening to the NHPR series this week on “The Graying of New Hampshire.” Our state is suffering from a dearth of young working-age people (see appendix). Lower growth in working-age population creates labor shortages, a more expensive business environment in which employers having trouble finding workers. Certainly this is part of the larger trend of young people from New England and the Northeast to migrate south and west, but New Hampshire has always had an independence of spirit that has allowed it to buck regional trends.

New Hampshire has a diminishing population growth rate. At 0.6% per year, it is overall much lower than that of the nation as a whole. Meanwhile our elderly population is growing 2% per year. Five of the ten counties of NH have a net negative growth rate from natural causes (i.e., death rate higher than birth rate). (Knoy, et al.)

NH has a median age of almost 40 and is the sixth oldest state in nation. (The oldest is Maine, followed by Vermont). In 1990 we had same median age as rest of country, so we've grown older more rapidly. New Hampshire has the third lowest fertility rate in nation (for reasons not wholly negative). (Knoy, et al.)

Northeast has been subject to a long-term downward demographic trend. New Hampshire has historically managed to buck this trend by being the one state with substantial growth in New England. (Knoy, et al.) Will we throw away our New Hampshire distinctiveness, our advantage, to follow the losing crowd by enacting such anti-family policies as same-sex unions?

Conclusion

The traditional family is the granite bedrock of our state’s future. Licensing same-sex unions will erode the uniqueness of traditional marriage and family. The same-sex couples who would be united civilly will not have children. They will not produce the coming generations who will write history. The future of our state is born in the traditional heterosexual family.

This is not to say that rejecting civil unions will reverse the aging of our state, but that enacting them is part of the general trend of slighting the upbringing of children and the future of our state. Enacting civil unions will exacerbate a bad situation. Certainly the world won’t come to an abrupt end if civil unions come to NH, but the world can pass away slowly too. Civil unions would contribute to the decline of the state’s population.

We can follow the rest of New England down the population sink-hole, or we can retain our identity, our distinctiveness.

Civil unions are portrayed as the way of the future, but what seems unavoidable and permanent often times becomes a thing of yesterday. A few decades ago the Soviet Union seemed like an eternal verity, but then in the span of a few years it just faded into a bad memory. Civil unions will likewise be come to seen a temporary fad, something that belongs to the old days. Scientific data backs common sense in telling us that they are part of dead-end anti-family policies.

How do you want to be remembered by posterity? As the anomalous generation of short-sighted lawmakers who voted in a perk for a vocal minority—a perk that diluted the uniqueness of marriage at the expense of children and the economic future of the state? Or do you want to be remembered as the far-sighted defenders of a now-voiceless posterity?

For the future of our state, I urge you to oppose the civil union bill.

Appendix: Demographic Data

New Hampshire has a diminishing population growth rate. It was formerly over 1% per year and above the national average and now at 0.6% is much slower than nation as a whole. Meanwhile our elderly population growing 2%/year. (Knoy, et al.)

[Polecon Research Chart: “The Concern: Labor Force Growth in NH Will Decline Significantly, It Will Be Concentrated Among Older Workers, and Combined With Retirements Will Create Severe Labor Shortages”]

[Polecon Research Chart: “NE is Older: A Big Reason NE is ‘Aging’ is VT, ME, and NH Have the Lowest Fertility Rates for Women 15-44 Among All States, Boosting Median Age”]

“NH’s Fertility and Mortality Rates Are Lower And Declining Faster Than The US Rates, Boosting Median Age More in NH…. Had NH’s fertility rate matched the US average, another 67,000 children would have been born in the state since 1985, significantly reducing NH’s growth in median age.” (Gottlob presentation)

“Aging is a permanent, irreversible consequence of low average family size and longer life expectancies in developed societies. Because NH has both wealthier and healthier older citizens (on average) than does the US, we expect greater longevity. As we discuss below, NH also has among the lowest fertility rates of any state in the nation and this, more than anything, accounts for our increasing median age relative to the US. From an economic and fiscal perspective, the importance of population aging is that it implies a reduction in the ratio of economic production to consumption. In demographic terms, there is an increase in the number of “dependent” citizens relative to the number of citizens who can support them.” (Gottlob newsletter)

[Francese graphic: “Chart II: Shifting New England age structure 2000-2005”]

• “People ages 65 + are rising rapidly in NH but not in other New England states
• “People age 18-24 are growing fast, but little incentive for them to stay as they age
• “The highest growth rate & largest increase is, as expected & planned, ages 55-64”

(Francese)

[Francese graphic: “Chart III: New Hampshire age profile in 2015”]

• “By 2015 Baby Boomers will be ages 50 - 70 & NH’s median age will be nearly 45
• “A smaller pool of young workers suggests more jobs are likely to go unfilled”

(Francese)

References Cited

Peter Francese, “New Hampshire Futures: Demographic trends to inform your planning decisions,” accessed March 9, 2006.

Brian Gottlob, “Will Demographics Be New Hampshire’s Downfall?” (presentation to the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce, January 24, 2007), accessed March 9, 2007.

Brian J. Gottlob, Trend Lines NH: Economic, Fiscal, Demographic and Policy Insights for NH (newsletter), accessed March 9, 2007, p. 2.

Kay S. Hymowitz, “Marriage and Caste,” City Journal (Winter 2006).

Laura Knoy (host), Brian J. Gottlob, Peter Francese, “How Are We Growing Old - And Why?” The Exchange, NHPR broadcast on Monday, April 9, 2007.

Bridget E, Maher, “The Benefits of Marriage,” Family Research Council Website.

Other References

Brenda Hunter, Ph.D., The Power of Mother Love (Waterbrook Press: Colorado Springs, 1997) 104.

Mohammadreza Hojat, "Satisfaction with Early Relationships with Parents and Psychosocial Attributes in Adulthood: Which Parent Contributes More?" The Journal of Genetic Psychology 159 (1998): 203-220, as cited in The Family in America New Research, The Howard Center (October 1998).

Jay Teachman, et al., "Sibling Resemblance in Behavioral Cognitive Outcomes: The Role of Father Presence," Journal of Marriage and the Family 60 (November 1998): 835-848.

Timothy J. Biblarz and Greg Gottainer, "Family Structure and Children's Success: A Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families," Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (May 2000:) 533-548.

David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1996) 143-149.

Salve Festa Dies

Have a listen to the venerable hymn, chanted but once a year: Salve Festa Dies

Ant. Salve festa dies toto venerabilis aevo
Qua Deus infernum vicit et astra tenet

Ant. Hail, festal day, venerable of all ages
By which God conquers hell and holds the stars

1. Ecce renascentis testatur gratia mundi
Omnia cum Domino dona redisse suo

1. Behold, it declares grace for a reborn world
All gifts have returned with their Lord.

2. Namque triumphanti post tristia tartara Christo
Undique fronde nemus gramina flore favent

2. For indeed, after hellish sorrows, to the triumphing Christ:
grove with green and buds with flower, everywhere give laud.

3. Qui crucifixus erat Deus, ecce per omnia regnat
Dantque Creatori cuncta creata precem

3. The Crucified One was God, behold He reigns over all things,
and all creation offers prayer to its Creator.

4. Christe, salus rerum, bone Conditor atque Redemptor
Unica progenies ex Deitate Patris

4. O Christ, the salvation of all things,
good Creator and Redeemer, only begotten Son of God the Father.

5. Qui genus humanum cernens mersisse profundo
Ut hominem eriperes es quoque factus homo

5. You Who, seeing mankind to have plunged to the deep,
that you might save man, were also made man.

6. Funeris exsequias pateris vitae auctor et orbis
Intras mortis iter dando salutis opem

6. That Thou, the author of life and the world, might open
the way of death and the grave by giving hope of salvation.

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Text and translation (also see these pages for history of the chant).

Happy Easter! He is risen indeed!

End and Essence

Nobis datus, nobis natus ex intacta Virgine, et in mundo conversatus, sparso verbi semine, sui moras incolatus miro clausit ordine.

Of a pure and spotless Virgin born for us on earth below, He, as Man, with man conversing, stayed, the seeds of truth to sow; then He closed in solemn order wondrously His life of woe.

You may recall that a couple years ago Good Friday fell on March 25, the Feast of the Incarnation. One key idea in Aristotle is that a being's essence is integrally connected to its end. Jesus' death manifests the full meaning of His life, begun at the Incarnation.

Furthermore, Jesus' death reveals the truth of human freedom and human fulfillment:

Rational reflection and daily experience demonstrate the weakness which marks man's freedom. That freedom is real but limited: its absolute and unconditional origin is not in itself, but in the life within which it is situated and which represents for it, at one and the same time, both a limitation and a possibility. Human freedom belongs to us as creatures; it is a freedom which is given as a gift, one to be received like a seed and to be cultivated responsibly. It is an essential part of that creaturely image which is the basis of the dignity of the person. Within that freedom there is an echo of the primordial vocation whereby the Creator calls man to the true Good, and even more, through Christ's Revelation, to become his friend and to share his own divine life. It is at once inalienable self-possession and openness to all that exists, in passing beyond self to knowledge and love of the other. Freedom then is rooted in the truth about man, and it is ultimately directed towards communion.

Reason and experience not only confirm the weakness of human freedom; they also confirm its tragic aspects. Man comes to realize that his freedom is in some mysterious way inclined to betray this openness to the True and the Good, and that all too often he actually prefers to choose finite, limited and ephemeral goods. What is more, within his errors and negative decisions, man glimpses the source of a deep rebellion, which leads him to reject the Truth and the Good in order to set himself up as an absolute principle unto himself: "You will be like God" (Gen 3:5). Consequently, freedom itself needs to be set free. It is Christ who sets it free: he "has set us free for freedom" (cf. Gal 5:1).

Christ reveals, first and foremost, that the frank and open acceptance of truth is the condition for authentic freedom: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32). This is truth which sets one free in the face of worldly power and which gives the strength to endure martyrdom. So it was with Jesus before Pilate: "For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth" (Jn 18:37). The true worshippers of God must thus worship him "in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:23): in this worship they become free. Worship of God and a relationship with truth are revealed in Jesus Christ as the deepest foundation of freedom.

Furthermore, Jesus reveals by his whole life, and not only by his words, that freedom is acquired in love, that is, in the gift of self. The one who says: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13), freely goes out to meet his Passion (cf. Mt 26:46), and in obedience to the Father gives his life on the Cross for all men (cf. Phil 2:6-11). Contemplation of Jesus Crucified is thus the highroad which the Church must tread every day if she wishes to understand the full meaning of freedom: the gift of self in service to God and one's brethren. Communion with the Crucified and Risen Lord is the never-ending source from which the Church draws unceasingly in order to live in freedom, to give of herself and to serve. Commenting on the verse in Psalm 100 "Serve the Lord with gladness", Saint Augustine says: "In the house of the Lord, slavery is free. It is free because it serves not out of necessity, but out of charity... Charity should make you a servant, just as truth has made you free... you are at once both a servant and free: a servant, because you have become such; free, because you are loved by God your Creator; indeed, you have also been enabled to love your Creator... You are a servant of the Lord and you are a freedman of the Lord. Do not go looking for a liberation which will lead you far from the house of your liberator!".

The Church, and each of her members, is thus called to share in the munus regale of the Crucified Christ (cf. Jn 12:32), to share in the grace and in the responsibility of the Son of man who came "not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:28).

Jesus, then, is the living, personal summation of perfect freedom in total obedience to the will of God. His crucified flesh fully reveals the unbreakable bond between freedom and truth, just as his Resurrection from the dead is the supreme exaltation of the fruitfulness and saving power of a freedom lived out in truth.

Jesus manifests the full meaning of our life, begun anew with the Sacrifice of His Incarnation and Death.

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Also of interest: Þe milde lomb isprad o rode

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John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) (6 August 1993), 86-87.

Thomas Aquinas, Pange Lingua (hymn), trans. Edward Caswall.

The Heart of Creation

With all the strife over the meaning of Genesis with respect to the neo-Darwinian model of creaturely origins, it is easy to lose track of the central Truth that Scripture seeks to pass on to us. In 1981, before he ascendended to the papacy, Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) gave a series of four Lenten homilies (sermons) on creation. These homilies recollect our attention to the core purpose of the creation accounts:

And so it came to be understood that this God of Israel was not a God like the other gods, but that he was the God who held sway over every land and people. He could do this, however, because he himself had created everything in heaven and on earth. It was in exile and in the seeming defeat of Israel that there occurred an opening to the awareness of the God who holds every people and all history in his hands, who holds everything because he is the source of all power.

...

I just said how, gradually, in confronting its pagan environment and its own heart, the people of Israel experienced what "creation" was. Implicit here is the fact that the classic creation account is not the only creation text of sacred Scripture. Immediately after it there follows another one, composed earlier and containing other imagery. In the Psalms there are still others, and there the movement to clarify the faith concerning creation is carried still further: In its confrontation with Hellenistic civilization. Wisdom literature reworks the theme without sticking to the old images such as the seven days. Thus we can see how the Bible itself constantly readapts its images to a continually developing way of thinking, how it changes time and again in order to bear witness, time and again, to the one thing that has come to it, in truth, from God's Word, which is the message of his creating act. In the Bible itself the images are free and they correct themselves ongoingly. In this way they show, by means of a gradual and interactive process, that they are only images, which reveal something deeper and greater.

That something deeper and greater is the touchstone of Christianity and the standard by which we judge any interpretation of Scripture. At the beginning of his second homily, Ratzinger summarizes the unified Message that God has been trying to communicate from the beginning:

In our first encounter with the Bible's and the church's faith in creation, two realizations became particularly clear. We can sum up the first in this way: As Christians we read Holy Scripture with Christ. He is our guide all the way through it. He indicates to us in reliable fashion what am image is and where the real, enduring content of biblical experssion may be found. At the same time he is freedom from a false slavery to literalism and a guarantee of the solid, realistic truth of the Bible, which does not dissipate into a cloud of pious pleasantries but remains the sure ground upon which we stand. Our second realization was this: Faith in creation is reasonable. Even if reason itself cannot perhaps give an account of it, it searches in faith and finds there the answer that it had been looking for.

Above the fray of the evolution wars, the Truth stands serene.

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Joseph Ratzinger, trans. Boniface Ramsey, In the Beginning...: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company), 11-12, 14-15, 21.

See also: Pius XII, Humani Generis (12 August 1950).

The Peril of "Beauty"

Lately I've been reading The New Story of Science by Robert Augros and George Stanciu. It's an excellent book so far—the second chapter on "Mind" is enough for me to HIGHLY recommend the whole book—but the third chapter mightily aggravates a pet peeve of mine.

The idea of the chapter is that beauty has re-entered our picture of the universe through developments of modern science. While Augros and Stanciu are writing from the realist tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, the situation of the discussion in the shifting sands of mathematical physics lures them into an over-abstracted account of beauty insufficiently grounded in objective reality. The error in which Augros and Stanciu find themselves mired is rather subtle, but for that reason especially important to recognize.

Before I get started, let me note the worthwhile truth at the core of Augros and Stanciu's praise of beauty: we moderns have a nasty tendency to deny the truth in beauty and to revel in the ugly as if it were the mark of truth. We get wrapped in our own wills and our power to create that we forget that goodness is largely something that we receive from a world much bigger than ourselves.

To return to the over-abstracted notion of beauty, the authors write, "In physics, beauty reigns supreme. Experiment often errs, beauty seldom" (41). It would better read "experiments often err": while individual experiments can err, experiment in the universal sense is the touchstone of modern science, including theory. In 1919, when his assistant asked Einstein about the possibility that experiment had not supported general relativity, Einstein reportedly said, "Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct anyway." Einstein's statement was probably justified in regard to a single experiment or perhaps even a small number of experiments, but not for a large number of well-conducted experiments. Real science ultimately has to be grounded in objective reality. Forgetting this fact is the basic error of the chapter.

As we all know, beauty in general is no sure-fire window on truth and goodness. Although one can always pick out the protagonist of a movie by looks, real life is not so simple. Famous are the fables of the femme fatale. Even more apparent these days is the divergence between beauty and goodness evident in the lives of modern celebrities. Should I emulate Liz Taylor or Britney or Paris just because she is attractive? So much for the evidential power of beauty.

Even otherwise solid philosophers are not immune from the mania for beauty, albeit to a lesser extent. Many of them have an unreflective tendency to elevate beauty to stand among the "big three" transcendental perfections synonymous with Being: the True, the Good, and the One—sometimes displacing the last, Oneness or Unity.¹ As Fr. Ashley points out, beauty is only "a particular goodness of truth": "truth as we desire its contemplation" (174, 328). And all too often its essential relation to the (imperfect) knower makes it but an apparent goodness. It is perilous to exalt "beauty" with insufficiently context.

Augros and Stanciu educe from the words of many prominent physicists that beauty comprises "simplicity, harmony, and brilliance" (42). Similarly Aquinas speaks of beauty as the splendor of truth or of form thusly in the Summa:

For beauty includes three conditions, "integrity" or "perfection," since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due "proportion" or "harmony"; and lastly, "brightness" or "clarity," whence things are called beautiful which have a bright color. (ST I, Q 39, a 8)

So according to Aquinas, harmony is synonymous with proportion, and brilliance (or brightness) with clarity. But equating simplicity with integrity or perfection is a bit harder to understand. Augros and Stanciu write, "The principle of simplicity implies two things—completeness and economy.... A theory beautiful by this standard must take into account all the facts and must include only what is necessary" (42-43)— in other words, it must possess a wholeness validly described as integrity or perfection. Harmony, the authors write, requires not only that a theory harmonize with previously established theories, but also implies symmetry. Augros and Stanciu are manifestly writing in the Thomistic tradition.

Unfortunately any discussion of mathematical physics necessarily tends toward mathematical abstraction, which is a human construct, a human creation.² The slippery sand sneaks in through the mathematical notions of completeness and simplicity (along with symmetry). Abstracted from actually existing reality, "completeness" takes on arbitrary boundaries. Modern scientific theories necessarily omit parts of that reality. Newton's Laws of Motion, for example, leave out the fact that bodies are composed of parts which interact separately; you could never come up with the laws of thermodynamics purely from Newton's Laws. Mathematical abstraction methodologically ignores some facts: Newton's law of inertia ignores the fact that no body exists untouched by outside forces. Theoretical completeness in modern science contains a large dose of arbitrariness (for lack of a better word).

Taken with the arbitrariness of completeness, "simplicity" in the context of mathematical abstraction becomes a weird perfection: the more complicated a thing becomes or the more parameters it requires for its description, the less of the perfection of simplicity (economy) it apparently possesses. (Symmetry is similar in that it increases simplicity.) One atom is simple, but a molecule is comparatively complicated. Life, and in particular human life, is a messy affair, very unsimple. Apparently unbeautiful too. But there's little doubt that a human has more being and goodness than an atom. What could be simpler than a perfect, sterile sphere? The world itself is messy. While the laws of nature have a symmetrical generality, applying "always" and "everywhere" the same, there's no avoiding the asymmetry of the particular, the scandal of the concrete reality in front of you: why does this exist and not something else?³ The unfortunate side-effect of elevating simplicity in this context is a tendency to see all existence is a wart on the perfect symmetry of Nothing.

These days what we call good or beautiful follows the lead of physics in consisting simply in what is easy or useful, or conveniently meets our purposes, and in willfully shutting out the less pleasant bits. The world would be more beautiful (simple) if no children were born with birth defects, but not every way of achieving that end is good. The world would certainly be more democratic (symmetrical) and simpler if there were no moral absolutes, since everyone regardless of behavior would have an equal claim to goodness, but its apparent simplicity doesn't make such an idiotic idea true. Likewise, the history of mathematical physics is littered with the remains of theories that appealed to their authors as beautiful, but which turned out to have zero bearing on physical reality.⁴ Truth is a correspondence between the mind and (extra-mental) reality; in place of truth, the modern world settles for consistency, e.g., harmony with preceding theory.

Conversely truth and goodness are often ugly, or at least appear under the guise of the ugly. Sometimes the good that the truth requires is repellent, like sacrificing ourselves for family or country. Francis of Assisi is a saint because he was able to find the beauty in a leper. Teresa of Avila is a saint because she was able to find God in the emptiness of spiritual purgation. What could be more horrifying than a crucified man? What could be more asymmetrical than a people who lay unique, historical claim to the Absolute?

The problem with the modern world is not our lack of attraction to beauty, but our failure to recognize what is truly beautiful. Just as everyone desires the good, everyone finds beauty attractive. The controversy is the content to attribute to the perfection (beauty, goodness), and the challenge is how to know it.⁵

The world has forgotten true beauty, so there's great value in its exaltation, Augros and Stanciu are writing for that worthy end, and its difficult to blame them for missing the subtle error to which they fall prey in this single chapter of an otherwise excellent book. Examining the results of mathematical physics can broaden our minds to recognize the beauty of the world. Unfortunately, taking the example of mathematical physics as a guide for discovering beauty only more firmly shuts us up within our uneducated tastes. The way out of our morbid fascination with the ugly is not so much allowing whatever chances within our tortured definition of beauty to guide us, as in training our hearts to recognize what is truly good and beautiful. What our hearts perceive as beautiful, they inevitably follow.

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Notes

1. Fr. Dubay's The Evidential Power of Beauty merely elevates beauty without displacing unity (p. 45-7), apparently based on the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Dubay doesn't seem to clearly distinguish goodness and utility (a common modern confusion), at least on p. 46. Goodness, unlike unity and truth, has no entry in Dubay's index.

2. Cf. "The expressions ‘the order of nature’ and ‘the biological order’ must not be confused or regarded as identical; the ‘biological order’ does indeed mean the same as the order of nature but only insofar as this is accessible to the methods of empirical and descriptive natural science.... The ‘biological order’, as a product of the human intellect which abstracts its elements from a larger reality, has man for its immediate author." (Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, pp. 56–57)

3. The scandal of the particular is the source (philosophically speaking) of the need for probability in quantum mechanics, the so-called collapse of the wave-function in some versions of the Copenhagen interpretation, as well as the alternative "many worlds" interpretation.

4. Contrary to Augros and Stanciu's claim that "If occasionally a supremely elegant theory does not fit one group of facts, it inevitably finds application elsewhere" (41). But I suppose the wiggle room is in the word "supremely."

5. That naive acknowledgment of lovely appearance was easier in pagan times, before the centrality of the Cross laid bare the inner contrariety of our created existence. Maybe the Misfit was right: "Jesus thrown everything off balance." More likely Jesus exposed what had always been lying behind the "beautiful" face of the world, and what we ignored to our own destruction.

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Robert M. Augros and George N. Stanciu, The New Story of Science (New York: Bantam Books, 1986).

Benedict Ashley, The Way Toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 2006).