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The Fallacious Appeal To Personal Prejudice
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The most important rational consideration of all is a healthy skepticism toward your own personal beliefs. When attempting to verify or falsify a proposition, it is completely irrelevant to attack an implication of the proposition based on psychological apprehension.
As an example of this within the scope of the standard mystical criticisms of naturalism or evolution, we tend to find that the real (psychological) argument mystics have against evolution is simply that they do not like what they perceive to be the implication of evolution that the Christian God (or some other mystical being) is only
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Is "Evolution is wrong because I don't like it" a good argument?
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imaginary and thus Christian morality (or some other mystically-based morality) loses its supposed solid foundation.
Here's another way that this particular attack against evolution might be worded: We should reject evolution because we cannot reject our belief in our God because this in turn would destroy the basis that we have for our morality.
This is, I believe, the primary motivation behind fundamentalists' denunciation of evolution in particular, and mystics' objection to naturalism in general. Their belief that morality possesses a fundamentally mystical basis implies to them that naturalism, by destroying mysticism, destroys the basis for morality.
However, even if it this mystical claim was correct, how would this present a rational argument against evolution, or against the naturalist perspective in general? "I know this idea must be wrong, because I don't like it's social consequences." This is an argument based on personal prejudices, not on empirical observation or rational analysis.
Saying "I don't like what I think evolution implies" is simply not a legitimate argument against evolution. In terms of reason and truth-seeking, this kind of criticism is totally irrelevant.
I have always found it intriguing that so few fundamentalists or mystics demonstrate even the slightest awareness of the entirely subjective nature of this argument. They use the vocabulary of reason as a disguise for essentially emotional considerations.
Moreover, in raising their psychological attachment to their beliefs above truth-seeking, they have abandoned their espoused veneration of their adherence to the truth. They seem to have no awareness of the fact that their claim of highly valuing "truth"
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Fundamentalists use a subjective argument to argue against the alleged subjectivism of evolution. This is hypocritical.
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obligates them to evaluate evolution separate and apart from how uncomfortable it might make them feel because of its implications with regard to their personal beliefs. In their rush to defend their supposed "objective" morality, they destroy their pursuit of genuinely objective truth.
In an attempt to try to keep evolution, and science in general, neutral with respect to religion, some have espoused the attitude that "a science like evolution is only about matters of empirical fact and hence can have nothing to say about God and morality." This claim is certainly debatable, but the focus of this particular essay is this: Even if evolution really did have implications with regard to our ideas about God and morality, since evolution is about matters of empirical fact we cannot base any part of our evaluations of evolution on our personal feelings about those implications. Genuine truth-seeking demands that you ignore your personal prejudices.
This inherent contradiction in the fundamentalist Christian attack against science and evolution is the most critical fallacy of the creationist perspective.
Ethics and morality are not entirely subjective, because our personal behavior has real world consequences, but ethics and morality do have substantial subjective aspects to them. But to claim that morality must be based on religion (mystical considerations) rather than naturalism does not at all provide ethics and morality with a rationally firmer foundation. Religion does not make morality more "objective."
Which religion? Buddhism? Which variety? Hinduism? Which tradition? Christianity? Which of the thousands of flavors? Catholic? Baptist? Disciples of Christ? Fundamentalist Pentacostalism? Talk about subjective morality! As an entirely practical matter, Christianity has simply not provided any kind of bulwark against "subjective morality."
So this mystical argument against evolution, based as it is on how aspects of naturalism affect the mystical basis for morality, is simply not relevant in the realm of reason. If you reject consideration of evolution because it makes you feel uncomfortable about losing what you consider to be your basis for whatever moral code you happen to follow, then you are placing your personal feelings above reason.
Doing this doesn't make you wrong and a bad person. However, it does mean that you can't legitimately claim to be a truth-seeker, and you can't claim to be criticizing evolution on the basis of reality and reason when you are ultimately making your judgments based on emotional considerations.
Truth-seeking demands a reasoned consideration of ideas, not an emotional one.
Someone who read this essay took exception to my major premise, claiming that it was a "straw man." He claimed that creationists do not argue against evolution based on personal prejudices. So I have added the following references as just a few examples that verify what I had thought was an obvious point. This kind of emotional attack against evolution is pervasive in the fundamentalist attitude.
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Question: "But isn't this so-called scientific creationism simply a back-door method of getting Biblical creationism introduced [in public education]?"
Answer: We could just as easily ask whether teaching evolution is a back-door method of teaching atheism.
[What Is Creation Science, by Henry M. Morris and Gary E. Parker (1982, p. 264)]
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The Biblical teachings of man's responsibility to his Creator, the fact of sin and the fall of man, and the necessity of redemption and regeneration, have all been set aside in favor of the concepts of evolutionary progress, of universal struggle and natural selection of man's genetic kinship with the animals, of a "this-life-only" approach to social problems, and of humanistic [note that this is a keyword meaning "atheistic" in creationist terminology - TSG], rather than theistic, criteria for decision-making in every area of life.
[Evolution and The Modern Christian, by Henry M. Morris (1967, p. 13)]
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If morality just merely evolved, then what right does the evolutionist have to upbraid me for not accepting his theory? Why does he say, "You should accept evolution because it's the truth"? If morality has evolved, then the value judgment he's just expressed (we should accept the truth) also "just evolved" in human experience. If that's true, why should we get so worked up about it? How can the evolutionist justify using the word "should"? According to him, all morality, all shoulds and oughts, will probably turn out to be a vestigial organ like the appendix. This is close to what Hitler thought.
[...]
The fact is, Darwinian evolution tends to belittle both reason and morality by merging both back into their - alleged - animal origins and obscuring their uniqueness.
[Fallacies Of Evolution, by Arlie J. Hoover (1977, p. 76, 77)]
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The Bible clearly teaches that there are some things that are not to be compromised! Yet many in the church today are screaming and yelling "Compromise, compromise!" If their words do not say it, their actions do. The ranks of the church are being breached because brethren shout, "Compromise!" Liberalism and modernism are steadily driving wedges into the ranks of the army of God. False teachers have not only "crept in unaware" (Jude 4), "bringing in their damnable heresies" (2 Peter 2:1), but in too many instances these same false teachers are being openly invited to come in and bring their false teachings with them - and brethren welcome them with open arms!
The false teacher and his heresies are welcomed because others possess the spirit of compromise. He could bring them in among faithful brethren in no other way!! Perhaps this spirit of compromise is a symptom of a much larger disease. The unfaithful, the adulterers, the disorderly, and others of almost any sin mentionable have been fellowshipped in the church in many places (though not all) for a long time. An increasingly large number of churches, it seems, do not know (or at least do not follow) the New Testament teaching concerning discipline. Others seemingly care little what the New Testament teaches in this regard. And on the skirts of this laxity, the false teacher has made his appearance among us! [pp. 9-10]
It is the firm belief of this writer that the most serious compromise of our day and time is in the area of creation. there is the offer to compromise at every point where God has spoken. Men have compromised Genesis 1 into an allegorical, poetical myth - something written by a senile old Hebrew storyteller who could do no better.... Men have compromised Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 20:11 until there is nothing left to compromise!!
The result of all this compromise is theistic evolution!
There is no compromise any more despicable than theistic evolution!
Theistic evolution is the old "compromise game" at its best (worst?!). "Christians" who have so little faith in what God has said, and so much faith in what man has speculated, have capitulated and have accepted theistic evolution in its totality. These are people who have "the best of God and the best of science" (or so they think). Let it matter not, we are told, that theistic evolution is in direct contradiction to direct Bible teaching. [pp. 11-12]
Theistic evolution is possibly the greatest (and most dangerous) compromise which a Christian could ever make. To compromise on the matter of origins is certain to lead, at some point in the future, to another compromise, and another, and then another. The end result who can know? It is not at all impossible that the Christian would be led into atheism!! In the words of Dr. R. L. Wysong:
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Many hold to evolution while at the same time espousing belief in a creator. The result is a sort of hybrid, a baptized evolution called theistic evolution.... The creator is used here as a vindicator of evolutionary difficulties. With time, as evolutionists explained more and more by naturalism, the creator was crowded further and further back in time and given less and less responsibility. For many, theistic evolution is only believed transitorily. The position is only a filler, an easily passed bridge from theism to atheism.
(The Creation-Evolution Controversy, 1976, p. 63)
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[p. 64]
[Theistic Evolution, by Bert Thompson (1977, pp. 9-10, 11-12, 64)]
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