Letters to the Editor
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Evolutionary Theory Doesn't End with Darwin
If Mr. Haught must argue that atheists are ignorant of religion, then he should do so from a position of greater strength, namely, a clear understanding of modern evolutionary theory. If he were not ignorant of it, he would know that:
1) Self-organizing behavior is a property of the universe and is being understood more and more clearly in mathematics, physics, and biology.
2) Many so-called "moral" behaviors, such as altruism, can be demonstrated to have evolutionary survival value and to have appeared and flourished in non-human life-forms multiple times in the natural history of Earth. They exist in multiple species alive today. Hope, defined, as I define it, as an altruistic incentive to work for the survival and advancement of my progeny, my species, and consciousness wherever it may occur, has clear survival value, too. Nietsche and his evil ilk were the ones who were naive and jumping to conclusions about the implications of atheism. It's downright silly that most religions exhort us to practice some form of altruism, but defenders of Faith like Mr. Haught then foolishly go on to define "hope" purely in terms of PERSONAL survival of the individual.
3) Consciousness, like altruism, is an emergent property. Many contemporary species exhibit aspects of self-awareness, and some in the field of human cognition argue that consciousness as we experience it today is not the only mode in which the human mind can operate, and that it, in fact, evolved in its present form subsequent to the emergence of homo sapiens. To presume that consciousness is some special trait that was magically bestowed only on the human brain in some special, lesser act of Creation is the height of both ignorance and arrogance.
In short, we don't need God or Religion to make us human or to make us civilized. There is early evidence that the inclination to believe in a supreme being is genetically determined. Perhaps the virulent anti-God atheists of today are reacting to an observation that this predisposition seems to be linked to a predisposition to authoritarianism and intolerance - the latter traits, and not faith itself, being what they really find objectionable.
We'll see whether the God Gene ultimately has survival value or not. For my part, I'm far too altruistic to advocate eradicating it by any means other than natural selection.