Andrew Ferguson has a report on the debate that I asked about last week, that (sort of) answers my question. And I see that Derbyshire had the same question:

Darwinism, viewed one way, can easily be considered morally disastrous. But, responded pro-Darwin Derbyshire, Is it true? "The truth value of Darwinism is essential," he said. "The truth value always comes first." If Darwinism is true--and its undeniable success in explaining the world suggests that it is--and if Darwinism undermines conservatism, as West had claimed, "then so much the worse for conservatism."

I'd like to think that he was influenced by the email I sent him with a link to my post before the debate, but I suspect that he was already loaded for that particular bear. And I agree with Gilder, despite his disbelief:

"Darwinism may be true," he said, "but it's ultimately trivial." It is not a "fundamental explanation for creation or the universe." Evolution and natural selection may explain why organic life presents to us its marvelous exfoliation. Yet Darwinism leaves untouched the crucial mysteries--who we are, why we are here, how we are to behave toward one another, and how we should fix the alternative minimum tax. And these are questions, except the last one, that lie beyond the expertise of any panel at any think tank, even AEI.

It is possible to try to build an ethical system out of evolutionary theory, I suppose, but it's certainly not necessary, and not necessarily desirable.

[Afternoon update]

Derbyshire cites my previous post, and has further thoughts.

It's been done. Look up "social Darwinism", which was more or less an ethic along the lines of:

1. Darwinism posits that the strong survive.
2. Those who are strong rise to the top.
3. Those at the top must then be strong.
4. Whatever those at the top do to gain or maintain standing is ethical.

I suspect that reaction to social Darwinism, with its implicit message to 90% of people that they deserve to live worthless lives, was a key factor in the ascent of progressive ethics. (Which, oddly enough, began to migrate towards elitism the moment the progressives got into power. Strange how that happens, isn't it?)

On my page I posted a link to some Vegans who killed their baby through negligence by trying to only feed him apple juice and soy milk -- not breast milk -- and that resulted in an amusing debate I've been having with some other Vegans. They see literally no distinction between humans and animals i.e. if a girl and a puppy are both drowning, it is just as wrong to let one die in order to save the other. The only difference they see between humans and other animals is that we can tell what's morally right or wrong, so we have the obligation that no other animals have to never harm any other animal.

I think that conservatives such as West and Gilder should just get over their hangups with evolution and simply get on with it. As I have mentioned previously, even the Vatican and all of the mainstreme protestant churches accept evolution.

West and Gilder should stop obsessing over evolution and, instead, invest their efforts into promoting a version of conservatism that does not require the falsification of darwinian evolution. These people need to accept reality and stop beating a dead horse.

Taoist:

I am sorry, but I fail to see the connection between Rand's post and the vegan philosophy.

Kurt9:

These people need to accept reality and stop beating a dead horse.

Dead eohippus.

Ilya,

The point is that the animal rights people I'm arguing with have arrived at a philosophy where humans are no more valuable than animals. I would be incredibly surprised if that philosophy didn't have it's roots in Darwinism.

According to what I read on www.catholic.com, the catholic church doesn't have "an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time." However, "if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him."

If a God who created everything exists, and if He has opinion about what is moral and what is not, I think He gets to be the final arbiter of right and wrong--assuming, of course, we can figure out what His opinion is.

If a God who created everything does not exist, I'm not sure you can really have right and wrong in an abstract sense. You could certainly pick some ideas such as "the greatest good for the greatest number" (defining good is tricky), or "whatever gives the greatest average and median lifespan for the human race." But if I disagree with your ideas of "right" and "wrong," on what basis are you correct and not me? Society can use force to define "right" and "wrong" but that doesn't make it "right" and "wrong" in any abstract sense.

Jeff.....you're wrong, right?

If the history of physics is any guide to science in general, drawing philosophical conclusions from scientific theories is deeply pointless.

The reason is that scientific theories are logical structures, often mathematical. Logical structures can be expressed in forms that appear completely different, but are logically equivalent. For example,

4 = 2 + 2

but also

4 = 3 + 1

and

4 = 999,100.793 - 999,096.793

So is 4 symmetric, balanced, with evenness in its soul? Or is it lopsided, unbalanced, with evenness emerging surprisingly from oddness? Or is it the battered survivor of a war between titans?

Looking at Newtonian mechanics and concluding that reality is deterministic is as pointless as looking at the last equation above and declaring that 4 is a small difference between large numbers and not a sum of even numbers. Hamiltonian mechanics is logically equivalent to Newtonian, but it's teleological. Which is "true"?