When I discovered this article, I immediately thought of Peter B, who was recently introduced to Phil Johnson's essays. This essay has a very Johnsonian flavor to it, and Peter might enjoy reading it as much as I did. Callahan makes Shermer look ridiculous with ease.

So you're making Christian a premature Darwinist, like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were premature antifascists?

I know Schermer's work slightly and would not spend any time on his thoughts about HMS Bounty.

But Callahan and Rockwell have not been paying attention. They allude glancingly at antireductionist scientists, as if there are hardly any.

There are many, including, notably if you're going to drag Darwin into it, Ernst Mayr.

Steven Weinberg has a grownup discussion of the kinds of reductionism and their place in research science in chapter 2 of "Dreams of a Final Theory."

Orrin, you need to get out more. Meet some actual scientists.

Harry:

If it is your argument that Darwinism did not effect Christian because he hadn't read him or something, I'll accept that. I'd thought that you believed that Darwinism existed before Darwin revealed it.

Here is the best quote from Callahan's article:

"Far from proposing a possible "cause" of the mutiny, Shermer has merely restated what happened, but in biological rather than historical terms. He offers no reason why, in this particular instance, the "evolutionarily adaptive emotions" were "expressed nonadaptively," while thousands of other times, all of them apparently quite similar to the Bounty mutiny from a biological perspective, the emotions were expressed adaptively. Shermer's "cause" is no more an explanation of the mutiny than would be a model by a physicist showing how the atoms composing the rebels moved in such a way that the atoms composing Captain Bligh were ejected from the ship."

Shermer's analysis is a total misuse of evolutionary reasoning. At best, evolutionary scenarios are ways to explain how broad, general behavioral characteristics came to be associated with a species. You can't use it to explain why a single man committed a single act in a single point in time.

I read a book on the Bounty several years ago after watching the Lon Chaney/Clark Gable movie version of the story on late night TV. The movie was a hatchet job. Bligh was an excellent captain who was very concerned with the health and welfare of his crew. He was rather brusque, and even sarcastic in his demeanor, which is probably what got under Christian's skin. It was more wounded pride than lust that pushed him over the edge.

Darwinism isn't a force, it's an accounting tool.

We can imagine that Christian thought his moves would turn out better than they did. It's hard to figure, even in Orrin's view of Darwinism, how it would prevent people from making bad decisions.

There was another, less famous example of mutinous sailors storming an island, Ngatik. They killed the men and mated with the women.

Same motives, more or less, as Christian's, but better from the point of progeny. All the current inhabitants of Ngatik are descended from the raiders.

You never can tell in advance whether your decisions will be regarded, in the light of Darwinism, as sound.

This drives some people nuts, but that's the way of the world.

Taking the longer view, occupying a small atoll (I'm aware Pitcairn's is not an atoll) is a bad move Darwinically. Until recently, roving bands of warriors would overrun an island, mate with the women and stay there until the next roving band showed up.

The inhabited small atolls of the Pacific have a very shallow history, not much more than a century in many cases.

Perfectly consistent with Darwinism.

Robert

Of course if Shermer had read his Mayr he'd know that Darwinism is just a historical narrative anyway.

Harry:

You are entirely missing the point of the essay. Your ilk holds that it has nothing to do with Christian and "decisions", but with material processes.

Robert
Charles Laughton ? instead of Lon Chaney maybe.

Thank you, Bruce. It truly is astounding that anyone would think evolution could explain this story when any fool can see it was all because of the repression of Christian's superego.

Yes, I think you're right h-man.

I have no particular opinion about the mutiny. Long ago I reviewed "Mr. Bligh's Bad Language." It is pretty clear that Bligh was an incompetent manager of men, given the bizarre system in which he worked.

He demonstrated that later, on land.

Mutinies were common, most fizzled.

The fleet's mutiny in 1797 makes an interesting study.

Higher up today, there's a pitch for hierarchy.
Close study of the Royal Navy in the 18th and early 19th century will be enough to persuade anyone that rigid hierarchies are a bad idea.

That's not what I read Harry. Bligh was a strict disciplinarian, he had the men cleaning the ship constantly, but it was to keep his men healthy and free from disease. The hierarchy in the Navy of the time reflected the hierarchy in society generally. The circumnavigational voyages that they carried out in those days, with the state of technology as it was, are probably the equivalent of our Moon landings. I don't think that you can compare management techniques between then and now, the societies and environments are too different.

Harry:

Absolutely, what'd the British Navy ever achieve?

Harry:

You condemn the British Navy at its apogee and Jeff thinks Spain was in decline during its primacy. What books are you guys reading?

On hierarchies, I spend time arguing with my compatriots that Canada's privileged and peaceful history, out realatively minor influence and our lack of defence commitment should make us appreciate what is owed to the U.S. and lead us to ground our foreign policy in respecful and grateful support and deference to the reality of their burden and the fundamental values that join us. Some agree, but many often tell me that is just medieval fealty and we should be out there proudly and defiantly doing and saying exactly what we think and feel, as befits an independent nation. I guess you agree with them.

Peter:

The book I was reading was "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" by David Landes. Spain, in its primacy, had all the viability of a dissolute trust fund child. When the precious metals ran out, so did Spain.

An outstanding depiction of the Royal Navy, in all its various faults and glories is Patrick O'Briens Aubrey/Maturin series.

Careful, though, it is hard to put down.

The Royal Navy endured two great mutinies, in 1797 and 1931.

You'll recall that I said Bligh was an incompetent manager of men in his own time. Royal Navy captains were expected, even required by statute, to be brutal. But there are ways and ways.

Bligh seems to have lacked the common touch that allowed a man like Jervis to hang men without a trial and get the survivors to think it handsome of him.

Cook, greatest of all English explorers, was notably lenient, almost never flogged. But he was a civilian at heart (originally a civilian in fact, a surveyor) and a rare genius.

I'll let Orrin list all the triumphs of the Spanish Empire. I listed all two that I know of yesterday.

Like the British Empire, nearly all its former possessions are democracies.

OJ, so they are, but you of all people ought to be aware enough to put in that their democracy has as much to do with US influence as it does with their status as former Spanish possessions.

Somehow they neglected to become democracies until they were a couple of centuries removed from direct contamination with the Empire.

Anyhow, your point would be? Which of its policies, at the time, did the mighty Spanish Empire ever put over?

It sure didn't make much of California while it had it.

It made them Christian, which made liberal democracy inevitable.

Must require something else. There were an awful lot of Christian societies that lasted an awful long time without any hint of liberal democracy.

Ethiopia comes to mind.

I'd say that liberal democracy is impossible in any Chrisitian society that has not been infected with secularism and skepticism. At least, there never has been an example yet.

Secularism is a Christian idea.

OJ:

That's kind of like saying that the IRS is the taxpayers' idea.

You could say that. It would be grammatically correct.

Jeff:

It is also factually correct. I must have missed something.

Secularism was originally a Greek idea, which was strangled in its cradle by religion.

It's a reasonable hypothesis that practical political democracy could only have grown out of secularism on a substrate of Christianity. I don't think that can be proven.

But it is obviously the case that religion -- any kind -- without secularism always leads to despotism. No secularism, no freedom.

At least, so far.

Conversely, wholly secular states (Nazism, Communism) always lead to despotism too, since folk have no internal restraints. No religion, no freedom.

Pretty small sample there. That might be correct, but it is easy enough to imagine a secular state based on a less malignant view of human society than Naziism or Communism.

If Communism was just Marxism plus electricity, then Naziism was just Lutheranism plus tanks.

That gets us down to one example. Hard to generalize from one example.

Harry:

No it isn't, because the secular view always dismisses the basis of a decent society, recognition that man is Created by God and so has rights that precede the State.

There is more than one secular view, including one that says society precedes the state.

This is, arguably, a better starting point than God preceding, because, at least with the Bible God, individuals get the short end of the stick most of the time.

In a social state, they at least have a chance of being in the majority and benefitting from that.

Your state is not all that far from Hobbes's, except that expect every man's hand being raised agaisnt every other's, God's hand is raised against every man. Grim.

You live in a state where God given rights come first--is it really grim? I know you'd prefer a Stalinist one where rights come from the State, but America seems okay.

I thought I lived in a state where individual rights come first, no matter how you thought they got that way.

And the reason we live like this is because that arrangement works better than previously tried alternatives. God just might prefer socialism--plenty of the Bible would substantiate that. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work well enough.

Ever thought you might not be on God's side?

Jeff:

That's because you're ignorant. The only reason our system has worked best is because rights precede the State.

God is indifferent to our mere political arrangements and, as you say, this one is not required, in fact, not the ideal.

OJ:

You are far more blinkered than I am ignorant. The reason our system has worked best is because is has worked better than all the others.

That is what has happened.

Why that happened is an open question. Human nature precedes the state. Since human nature is a result of evolution, then our system works better is because of its net correlation with human natuure.