Wednesday, September 03, 2008

The Difficult Concept of Evolution

I hope that the notion that there is zero heritability of intelligence is a straw man. The debate ought to be over what proportion of intelligence is heritable.

Don Boudreaux wrote (and recently recycled),


Just as there is a compelling non-creationist view of biological beings, there is a compelling non-creationist view of social order.

He is arguing against the view that we owe all of our peace and prosperity to government.

The point that both posts make is that the left, which denounces religious denial of the theory of evolution, nonetheless has a hard time with evolution. Friedman gives examples in which the left has difficulty accepting biological consequences of the theory of evolution. Boudreaux gives examples in which people insist on intelligent design rather than economic evolution.

I think that the concept of evolution is really quite difficult. Perhaps we have evolved with a hard-wired belief in intelligent design or creationism, and only with considerable effort can we accept evolution and spontaneous order.

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