There are questions of Natural Law and National Identity involved in this question.
From William Paley’s “Statement of the Argument” from his Natural Theology (1809)(abridged version)
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a Stone, and were asked how that stone came to be there. I might possibly answer that for anything I knew to the contrary, it might been there forever.
But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it is inquired how that watch happened to be in that place? I couldn’t very well give the same answer as the stone. Why is this not admissible? Simply, when we inspect the watch we perceive things about it that were not present in the stone….namely that several parts are put together for a purpose, more specifically, to produce motion, and that the motion is regulated to point out the hour of the day. (Modern children may not understand this as easily since many cannot tell time by a clock or watch, so there may be yet another lesson here.)
And that unless each part is shaped in a specific way and placed in a specific order, no motion would have been carried on the machine, and its purpose in having been created would have been denied. Each part, the cylindrical box, the flexible chain, the interconnecting wheels, with teeth that catch and apply to each other.
Once we observe and understand the purpose of this machine, we then infer that it must have had a maker. And when we consider the intricacy of it, and that we do not have the skill to make any individual part, let along put them together and make them work, ourselves, we ask if even one man in a million knows how this is done, and maybe even able to do it?
At some point this becomes an exercise in self-awareness, the Maker, and what he knew to produce it, versus us, who only knows its purpose and benefit to our own private purposes, and perhaps a modicum of skill to apply minor repairs, and the general knowledge of affixing a new chain, or glass cover, and the good sense to take to a watch-maker or repairman when it goes beyond out knowledge or skill.
Most importantly, would the observer acknowledge that in this watch there is a principle of order?
VB-Postacript: And that our teachable message here is that such a principle of order exists in virtually all things in Nature.
Paley’s “argument” continues and it would be worth your while to read it on Google. Just a few pages, this is only the first part of a much longer argument. I have the 1809 edition, and it was an argument that is still at the root of most successful arguments defending against modern-day Darwinist-atheism, and people who defend it, like Richard Dawkins, 200 years later. Their theory of Mankind can only succeed if they can “logically” argue against what Paley just stated here about “Intelligent Design”…only Darwin did not totally, disagree with it.
To be quite blunt, that requires a much more shallowly-educated listener to provide a home for modern atheism, which will eventually lead us to Karl Marx, whose arguments can more easily be analyzed by psychiatrists than natural scientists.
Paley’s argument, before both Darwin and Marx, was not religious but rather what is called “apologetics”, the attempt to express the elemental logic of Genesis 1:1 “In the Beginning….” as the starting point for a discussion about the depth and breadth of the “Maker”.
To understand the nature of apologetics in Christianity, try to imagine the task commissioned to “the 120” who set out from Jerusalem after Pentecost; in 120 different directions, gifted only with the knowledge of what they had witnessed the three years previous, plus the gift of tongues, so they could communicate these things to people who’d never heard of Jesus or even Pontius Pilate. Each of those 120 missionaries marched straight into what stand-up comedians would refer to as a “hostile room” as they had to offer their tale to people who had their own belief systems…telling about a Man, His death, then His resurrection, and finally His promise, long before there were any “writings” to pass around. Those would take three centuries to compile.
Many of those 120 were martyred, perhaps by a mob, but also by local law enforcement, especially in Roman territory, where placing any gods before Roman gods were strictly forbidden.
What happened to them is not well known, nor is there a lot of written evidence about them. Other Jerusalem, led by Peter, and other centers thanks to Paul, Church history is relatively quiet about how the Church grew those first 300 years until the Roman emperor, Constantine, became so impressed that he joined this church, then made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, inviting all the known churches to a conference at Nicea, near Constantinople, to whip it into some sort of organization, which was a natural law sort of thing to do…get organized.
For good or ill, this was when Christianity went corporate.
Now I’m rather sanguine about those early organizing events for despite the ups and downs of the makers of this corporate vision of the Faith, what has remained untouched has been the initial argument William Paley laid out about “the Maker” behind it all, and how Nature (Natural Law) is fused to this creation.
Nothing has changed with the original furnishings and Man has grown by his inventions and proceeded to invent, then bollix things up, then improve these inventions then bollix them up again, and again, and again, each time without altering the core arrangement with the Maker.
Charles Darwin did not challenge that arrangement, although several of his followers tried.
On the other hand, Karl Marx tried to modify those core understandings, using Scientism as the greater argument, which, in his mind, trumped the hocus pocus of religion.
And to do so, the the people he targeted and venues he chose were where their voices carried the greatest weight, the academy. The University and its chambers of scholarship…segregated the rest of the ignoramus world into a pile of irrelevancy…laying out why an elitist political system was needed to protected their status.
For it truly is in university that their argument would be/should be passed on, for it is from those once-hallowed (now hollowed) halls that their underlying message of scientific infallibility would be carried to children, “minds filled with mush” as the non-college attending Rush Limbaugh used to refer to them.
This was how Karl Marx merged political philosophy with Science.
To better understand Marx, you’d need to see his relationship with his father. Heinrich Marx was a lawyer, and “non-religious” Jew, who converted to Lutheranism just in order to be allowed to practice law, since Jews were not allowed practice law in that part of Europe. His letters to young Karl while in college portrayed a young man who spent his time following his whims and his appetites, and those letters were generally tongue-lashings for wanton and wastrel behavior. Those letters established the sort of 20-something we all knew in college, only Marx would even allow some of his children to starve rather than go out and getting a job to feed them.
Marxism-the-theory was largely for academicians, where it is still largely found, with no meaningful place to go, except as a salve for excessive vanity. As a practice, it is also found in governments, especially their bureaucracies, which, after a century of trying, have all, within a reasonably-predictable time, self-destructed.
In short, Marxism proves Natural Law in terms of survival-enhancing versus survival-endangering systems created by men.
Back to Paley and Intelligent Design, and why this academic distinction is important is that some of the greatest minds of the 20th Century, including Albert Einstein, conceded that there is no way to explain the Universe as mere happenchance. It had to have been a purposeful design.
Lowering Paley’s argument down to Fifth Grade level, including the modern political warfare going on in America today (indeed the whole world), Mortimer Adler, a great philosopher, and atheist, said it this way:
If there is a God, all things are possible
If there is no God, then all things are permissible
Adler was received into the Episcopalian Church at age 81.
Which brings us to where we are today in America, for our battle here is twofold as well.
Even if, with the snap of a finger, we could pass new laws undoing all the old laws that the Left has foisted on us the past forty years, and which have made the American ground more fertile for their brand of culture-destroying supervision, making possible the sort of sterile political life the Left has in mind, we would still have to go out and first retake, then re-till and replant that lost ground. After all, we’re the ones who sat idly by and allowed all that ground to turn fallow in the first place, in the naive belief that as long as we kept our own yard clean, that would be civilization enough to keep the barbarians at bay, away from our front door.
Since Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, our public schools have pumped out approximately four million students per year. They were mostly Generation X then, and we can pretty well tally how that generation turned out, in terms of education, common morality (marriage, crime), and contributions to society. Today there are also Millennials and GenZ, totalling 140 million, not counting immigrants, and they are the survival-endangering group. David Hogg, the 19-yr old “survivor” of the Parkland HS shooting, (hiding in a separate building), now a Harvard student and (I assume) paid influencer for the Left, like Greta Thunberg just chomping at the bit to be old enough to run for federal office, just boasted that 63% of Millennials and GenZ out-voted all Baby Boomers in the recent midterms.
Thinks about this.
In terms of survival-endangering Natural Law, how many of these Gen X kids came from broken or single-parent homes? Close to half, maybe more. How many were raised without any moral education based on any religion at all, outside the public schools, where situational ethics are now considered moral teachings? Probably more than half. And how many of those were raised in strong enough moral settings to strengthen rather than weaken the bonds of marriage and family as their own lives moved forward, thus providing fertile ground for that family to move into yet a third generation with even weaker core foundations? (This is the generational multiplier theory tilted downward, and algorithms are probably available to show this mathematically.)
If you think I am speaking here as a moralist, well a little, but I’m also speaking as a Darwinist, for these “survival” indicia are as important to a freedom-based society than as they are to Constitutional conservatives. And the survival of human freedom is in far greater danger today. Moreover, in these days, that 140 million I just mentioned are more apt to respond to, and respect arguments that are scientific in nature than those underpinned with moral principles, for the simple fact that our God-based foundations have been stripped away, stone by stone in their world, while we’ve idly watched, for over forty years. “Love thy neighbor” is still a good rule, but it is no longer Good because it comes from On High. It is good because it meets the approval of whatever commission that has been appointed to approve such things. And forget that “as thyself” part altogether.
American youth, as you already know, are perfectly OK with what many Darwinists and religionists agree are survival-endangering behavior, from indiscriminate sex with each other, and of either gender, having nothing to do with bonding, procreation or permanent relationships and a complete abjuration of the duty of self-sufficiency, or the simplest economic principles of personal survival.
Close your eyes and imagine the task that lies ahead for us then;
1) Saving the coming generations politically, which entails restoring the legal supremacy of the family, and its underlying traditions and institutions, then preventing the Left, with or without the Supreme Court’s help, to waylay our children in the public schools, which entails taking back the schools from the grass roots;
2) Taking back the public highway, which entails bringing a measurable percentage of those 80 million lost souls back over to our side of seeing the life-saving necessity of liberty in Mankind’s life, and the reciprocity and duty this involves, and to know what those building blocks of freedom mean in Darwinian as well as moral terms…and that they are almost the same.
If we don’t, the other side wins.
Darwinism is not all we have been led to believe, sometimes by our own preachers.
First, it never was a scientific movement marching in lock step. They disagree with one another all the time. Second, Darwin’s Theory is just a theory, many of its grander precepts, especially a direct link between ape and Man, are not proven. But the fact that humans, like other vertebrates, evolve within their own species is not really in doubt, or that our evolution is a result of new environments we’ve encountered, even over the past hundred years, e.g., smaller ears and bigger derrieres. The average man or woman today couldn’t fit into the seats that served as the audience of a Chicago opera house in 1898.
There’s Darwin-the-theory as science, and Darwin-the-theory as religion and Darwin-the-theory as politics. I only say this for amusement, for Darwin-religionists are just like the Muslim scholars Llull wanted to debate just for the fun of it, an academic adventure.
Interestingly, these seeds of doubt are being sewn everywhere in modern science anyway due to the growing exposure of the climate change hoax, a different science field altogether, but which has exposed 1) the power of politics in the scientific community, and 2) the power of the pursuit for status (peer pressure) and money within several scientific disciplines which will cause men to lie, fudge numbers, cook the books, just like commonplace government bureaucrats…just in order to maintain their standing in their field and to continue to get those grants every time some Pavlovian handler rings a bell and offers some more cash.
So just like Law, accounting, business, even some churches, Darwinism, and its whole evolutionary grab bag of disciplines, has always been contested between what can only be called “honest scholarship” and “dishonest scholarship.” This has nothing to do with the Theory itself, but a more basic principle, i.e.,whether factual evidence has been put forth honestly. Just like the rules of evidence in law, science has a process of approval for any thesis, called the Scientific Method, which is actually more rigorous than Law. Like the Talmud, The Hebrew Law, it is to be protected at all times. Or is supposed to be.
So, if one can prostitute that process, which consists of a jury of peers, then you have the rest made in the shade…until, as we’re seeing with global warming, climate change, when the whole house of cards suddenly begins to come tumbling down.
Enter Karl Marx and why all this matters to conservatives. The god of Marxism is science. But Marxists being what they are, they have always tried to make science comport to their contrived unscientific view of the world, and how mankind fits within it. I’ve never known any leftist who was the least bit intellectually curious about anything except how to steal some man’s bus ticket. It has always been this way.
True scientists are at heart ethicists, for the Scientific Method is sacrosanct with most of them. Like personal honor, it’s not for sale. These scientists see no Truth as being higher than scientific Truth, and trust me, this is a Good Thing for our world (Aristotle, Aquinas, Natural Law) for it has enabled Science to achieve many wondrous things on Mankind’s behalf over the centuries.
Now I can’t say exactly when Marxist “science” began to try to steamroll the academy, since no one was really looking at it in those terms until the 1950s. F A Hayek encountered it in England in the 30s and 40s, but in a book of essays he edited in 1963, Capitalism and the Historians, he chronicled (socialist) historians and economists fudging numbers in academic tracts going back into the 1870s. The term “political correctness” had not yet been invented yet, but Robert Ardrey, in his 1966 The Territorial Imperative, mentioned that academic discussion about the existence of instincts in Man, a central subject of the Natural Right of Freedom thesis here, suddenly disappeared from scientific inquiry in America in the 1920’s, which coincidentally, was the period in which the Soviet Union and their Marxist views of “scientism” first arose.
Ardrey was one of the early writers of science who was excoriated by the American left because he discussed observations and conclusions about Man’s instinctive behavior contrary to Marxist scientific holy writ. That’s why “instinct” is my jumping-off place here, for Darwinsists acknowledge it in lower animals, then, since the 1920s, have gone mute about, and apparently for political, not scientific reasons.
A scholar could do a much better job than me in chronicling this story of academic discrimination against any theory that highlights man’s innate instinct for freedom instead of trying to confirm his innate malleability for servitude, but I have another objective to serve with this book. Following Ardrey’s cue, I can simply pull that one un-Marxist piece of science thing from the pile, the instincts of Man, and carry that thesis forward to establish all I need in order to prove that the thirst for freedom is innate in Man, and that it cannot be conditioned out of existence, destroying all the Leftists hope to achieve as a scientific basis for their invasions.
Marxism believes in the “perfectibility” of Man through science. Namely socialization and conditioning, much like Pavlov conditioned his dog, with a whistle and bite of food. But simply by connecting a few scientific dots, Marxist science completely unravels once it can be proved that Man has instincts that cannot be conditioned out of him.
If Man is hard-wired to mate (pair bond), acquire and defend territory (and property) and to provide for a place to breed, and nurture young, so as to extend the species, just like any other animal, and to be part of a larger group (genetic population) with which he also identifies, and works together for mutual benefit and protection (reciprocity)…
…then Man is hard-wired to strive to attain this when denied it, and to resist once taken away.
Territory = Property = Status = Mating = Heirs = Genetic Population (community or nation = Survival of the Family Blood Line into the next generation.
Collectively Ardrey said this equation amounted to a “biological morality.” I can add that his biological morality is very similar to the moral antecedents found in Jefferson’s “pursuit of life, liberty and happiness” clause of the Declaration, and the moral and ethical underpinnings of the Constitution found in The Federalist Papers. They knew of what they spoke.
If this is true, and many evolutionists insist it is, then Marxism and socialism becomes unraveled at it very roots, fails, and is exposed as nothing more than a power-grab.
This we already know, but we should find profit in being able to explain Liberty in this way, for newer sets of ears.
This is the tale we need to tell non-believers about freedom. If they want to go against Nature, and many will, they must know, as “mutations,” nature has its own ways of dealing with them, which, again, is not unlike how God promises to deal with them. By telling them in this way, through disputation, you can lead them all the way to the end of the story before they finally reject you, which is much better than have them shut you down before you can get the first “God loves you” out of your mouth. We are planting seeds, and trying to restore our country, not getting them to join our church.
Marxist science is the mad dog I want to shoot down in the street, and if shaking hands with a bunch of honest Darwinists will help me in this endeavor, I’m all for it.
