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Alan Keys on Evolution

Below is a really long excerpt from the Skeptic Mag Hotline newsletter from March 6th.

5. Alan Keyes on Evolution

Thanks to Dave Buckner: Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes' remarks on evolution were made at Hylton High school in Virginia on 2/27/00. You can listen to his speech on C-SPAN's RealPlayer at

http://www.c-span.org/Campaign2000/keyesspeeches.asp

The remarks on evolution begin about 27:00, which you can zoom to on Real Player using the slide-bar.

Here's a rough transcript made by a netfriend in which Keyes contrasts the philosophy in the Declaration of Independence with the philosophy that
grows out of evolution:

********************KEYES on EVOLUTION*******************
But now in our schools there is a different ideology. It isn't
taught in the civics courses (I don't know what we do teach in the civics
courses), but we teach it in the science classes. it masquerades as science though it is taught as indoctrination. Last time I looked science you can question it; there is no scientific theory that you're not allowed to question. The questions aren't likely to work in some cases, but in other cases the fact that you were willing to question certain basic assumptions, I mean the questions that Einstein was willing to raise about Newtonian physics created the world in which we live.

Skepticism is the hallmark of the scientist's mind; always question
the theory in light of the facts. There is only one so-called scientific
theory where you are not allowed to do that, and where our children are not
to be exposed to any alternative except the one that has been placed before
them in this dogmatic fashion. And that is the ideology of evolution. Why
would they insist upon it in this way? Because it represents the total
subversion of the premise of our way of life. What would we have to do to
the declaration of independence if we were to revise it to reflect the dogma that is now quite seriously taught to our young people and which shapes their consciousness. This is, by virtue of the claims of science, what they now believe about themselves. You do realize that, don't you. What would we have to do to the declaration to make it conform?

First we'd have to take out that inconvenient reference to truth,
since it's obvious that the purpose of evolution is to explain away the
appearance that an intelligent being created it in such a way as to dispense with any need to any reference to such an intelligent cause. But I've often wondered, why do we go to all that trouble? Do we go to all that trouble in the rest of science to look for a cause that is not commensurate with the effect? Usually you look for a commensurate cause. But this is the one area of so-called science where we don't look for a commensurate cause. We actually want to look for a cause that is not commensurate with the effect. That's amazing.

But having dispensed with the possibility of an intelligent creator,
that does raise serious questions about the possibility of truth, doesn't
it, since truth does imply a kind of intelligent cohesion that could
ultimately be known and understood. If we discard that idea, then we're
left with something like this: "We hold these ideas to be more or less
familiar to everybody though no longer necessarily accepted by everybody,
that all of us have more or less evolved to about the same point, and that
as a consequence of this evolutionary process we all of us are equally
inclined to whine a lot about our rights."

Sad to say, even if one could state the sort of evolutionary
declaration principles with somewhat greater respect, there would still be a problem. What authority does the evolution process have? Why should one
care about its results? Is there any particular reason to respect those
results? If evolution says we've more or less reached the same point, but I say, no we haven't, because you reached the point without the gun and I
reached the point with the gun, doesn't that put us in a position where the
whole evolution thing doesn't matter, where equality is no longer of any
importance, and isn't it a point that the underlying premise of evolution -- crudely stated, I know, but still I think reasonably accurate -- is the
survival of the fittest. And what is the survival of the fittest? It is
the domination of the stronger over the weaker in terms of the ircumstances
in which both find themselves. Do we experience any regret in terms of
evolutionary science for those weaklings that are now extinguished? No we
don't. They were extinguished because they were not able to cope, and not
being able to cope, why should we shed any tears over them? We may look at
them with curiosity and interest, but beyond that, why do we care?

The interesting thing about that doctrine is that, actually, dressed
up in fancy scientific duds, it turns out to be for human affairs the same
brutal, ugly principle that governed all along: that might makes right, and we needn't shed a tear of concern for the hindmost, for justice cares only for the strong. I point all this out not just because it's interesting theory, but because this is what our children learn. And if we don't understand what we're doing, let me put it clearly, we have thrown out the principle of justice on which our nation was founded, that promises justice to the weak as well as the strong, and we have substitute for it an ideology that offers no sympathy for the weak and confirms the domination of the strong. We have destroyed in our schools and therefore in the hearts and consciousness of our children already the principles without which our whole way of life is a meaningless sham. And don't think this is just an academic treatise -- what on earth is a politician doing talking about this stuff. I'll tell you why. The major issue we face as a moral challenge in this country today is a direct reflection of the same abandonment of principle of the same surrender to the age-old lie that might makes right. For we see there clear as day in the arguments that are made by the proponents of abortion, who tell us that that child in the womb is rightly subject to his mother's choice because it is not viable apart from her body, because it is wholly dependent upon her physically, because she has it absolutely within her power. What are we looking at there, if not the claim that absolute power means the absolute right to dispose of the being in your power in any way you choose. It is the same awful ugly premise of despotism and tyranny and slavery and conquest and oppression that has sadly consigned so many human beings to oppression, to death, through the centuries of mankind's existence.

Yet here we are, a people supposedly governed by a principle that
respects all, regardless of their weakness or strength, embracing now the
lie that in fact once again surrenders the very heart of our civilization to the principle that might makes right, that the one who has the power has the power to destroy the lives of those that are within its power.

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Alan Keys on Evolution

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