First Things and Disgust

Joe Carter at First Things' On the Square has contributed an article literally filled with disgust. It is a thought-provoking essay on the role of disgust in human life and society.

Below a few excerpts...

Because we lack an innate sense of what to avoid, the full range of disgust triggers must be taught. Disgust, as an emotion, must be learned. And as with any knowledge that is not inherently in our biological makeup, disgust can be culturally relative and passed on through successive generations.

...

Repugnance, therefore, may be a form of knowing that precedes rational thought. Reactions to the repugnant may be similar, for instance, to the way that "fight-or-flight-or-freeze" responses work. When confronted with a dangerous situation, we don't have to wait until we can develop a reasoned response based on propositional knowledge before we react. Our autonomic responses, which are conditioned to respond to similar situations, take over and allow us to respond quickly.

...

If socio-moral disgust is an offshoot of core disgust, then shouldn't we be careful before we dismiss it as a relic of an outmoded cultural bias? What if the wisdom of repugnance protects us from harm in the same way core disgust do? Should this form of cognition be dismissed simply because it may hinder progressivism?

Read the full essay here.

Is Darwin Compatible with Materialism?

Over at the First Thoughts blog of First Things, Joe Carter has a provocative quote from atheist philosopher Raymond Tallis asserting that in considering the question of consciousness one must either adhere to materialism or Darwinian evolution, but not both. The piece is entitled The Unnatural Selection of Consciousness.

Does the fact of consciousness exclusively drive us either to materialism or the modern interpretation of Darwinian evolution? It's an interesting question which, of course, ignores any place for a theistic position in relation to evolution.

Give it a read. Your comments are welcome here (as well as there).

The Doctrine of Darwin

RealClearPolitics has an interesting article by David Warren on Darwin. Amongst highlights the article notes the following:

As Darwin himself realized, the fossil stratum corresponding to the beginning of the Cambrian geological period was potentially inimical to his hypothesis. In a blink of geological time, now dated by various means to 542 million years ago, all of the advanced body types of "modern" multicellular organisms suddenly and simultaneously appear. The event is now known as the "Cambrian Explosion," and Darwin hoped it would be explained away by the later discovery of gradual evolutionary developments through the eons before. Instead, the shock of the transition has been enhanced by all subsequent study.

Likewise, Darwin trusted that the gradual development of such "irreducibly complex" organs as the eye, ear, and heart would be explained in due course (i.e. these organs can't work at all unless and until all their many parts are present and functioning in perfect harmony). Instead, advances in genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry over the last half-century have revealed a vast world of irreducible complexities within the single living cell, by comparison to which the engineering of an eye would be child's play.

The man himself was very much a product of his age: a bourgeois Victorian adapted to an intellectual environment in which such fatuities as Utilitarianism and Malthusianism were in the air. In retrospect, he is a redundant character, for Wallace already had the theory, and many others could have drudged out Darwin’s specific points.

Read the whole article here.