In Ethics, Ridiculed Spirit Theorists Often Outshone the Stars of Darwinism

 In the 19th century Spiritualism arose in 1848 and the following years, almost exclusively in places where slavery had been abolished. Almost all of the reported spiritual manifestations in the United States between 1848 and 1861 (the start of the American Civil War) were in the US states where slavery had been abolished, such as New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.  Spiritualism spread from the US to England after slavery had been abolished in the British Empire (which happened in 1834).  It should therefore come as no surprise that when examining the early Spiritualist literature, we find some strong denunciations of slavery. 

For example, on pages 236 to 239 of his 1851 book on spiritualism, Joel Tiffany gives a ringing denunciation of slavery.  Referring to three million slaves in the US, he states this:

"Here are among us, three millions of men, women and children made chattle by the laws and public sentiment of this christian nation. Three millions of immortal beings, whose business here it is, to individualize and develop immortal spirits ; whose birth-right it is, to investigate, study, improve, and develop those minds preparatory to the eternal future, upon which they are about to enter ; shut out by the laws of the land, from the rights and immunities of manhood ; denied the privilege of learning to read the volumes of nature or revelation ; shut out from the reach of human sympathy; proscribed and hunted like boasts through the land ; denied the rights of being husbands to their wives, or wives to their husbands ; parents to their children, or children to their parents... Three millions of human beings doomed to perpetual servitude and bondage, and made the victims of avarice and lust. And it is made a penal offence to give them food, raiment or shelter, even when they are ready to perish. By the laws of these christian states, the husband can be torn from the wife and be doomed to perpetual bondage, and she to ceaseless concubinage ; the baby may be plundered from the cradle, or torn from the breast of its mother, and sold in the public shambles. The family circle may be invaded, and all the ties of natural affection broken, crouched and trampled upon; and all that avarice can exact, caprice and villany can inflict, or lust can crave, these three millions are subject to, and there is no arm to protect them ; there is no city of refuge within this christian nation to which they can flee, and no christian altar to whose horns they can cling, und demand protection....It cannot be denied that the Christianity of the United States holds the institution of slavery in its power, and can put an end to it at pleasure, if it were disposed to do so. And the only reason why that most accursed of all institutions, still continues among us, is because the religion of the country wills it."

To give another example, in an 1855 book a leading figure of American spiritualism  (Adin Ballou) states this:

"Slavery, and all kinds of tyranny and oppression are utterly sinful. So all war, violence, revenge, and vindictive punishment."

I was shocked recently to see a diagram depicting the worst murderers in history. On the right of the diagram (listed as history's worst murderers) were Hitler, Stalin and Mao, which did not surprise me. But I was quite surprised to see the man listed as the fourth worst murderer in history: King Leopold II of Belgium. I knew nothing about such a person. Researching the topic, I learned about one of history's most horrible tales of human oppression. 

In the late nineteenth century,  European nations were rushing to exploit the riches of Africa. The worst offender, it seems, was Belgium. King Leopold II set up a nation he called the Congo Free State, which he regarded as his own personal property, to be ruthlessly exploited for raw materials such as rubber. Because of his ruthless exploitation of this state, a huge number of Africans died, a number estimated between 1 million and 15 million. It is impossible to accurately estimate the number, because no one was keeping track of all those who died from the oppression. 

The ruthless subjugation and exploitation of the Congo is documented in the 1909 work The Crime of the Congo by the noted author Arthur Conan Doyle. While almost all of America and Europe stood mute during decades of the most horrible abuses in the Congo, Doyle stuck his neck out and wrote a full book denouncing the oppression. In his first paragraph Doyle writes this:

"There are many of us in England who consider the crime which has been wrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I am strongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like that of the Normans in England or of the English in Ireland. There have been massacres of populations like that of the South Americans by the Spaniards or of subject nations by the Turks. But never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre all done under an odious guise of philanthropy and with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. It is this sordid cause and the unctious hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror."

After noting that the United States was the first nation to recognize this Congo Free State set up King Leopold II of Belgium, Doyle describes on pages 11-12 how ruthless exploitation began:

"Having obtained possession of the land and its products, the next step was to obtain labour by which these products could be safely garnered. The first definite move in this direction was taken in the year 1888, when, with that odious hypocrisy which has been the last touch in so many of these transactions, an Act was produced which was described in the Bulletin Officiel as being for the 'Special protection of the black.' ....This Act had a very different end. It allowed blacks to be bound over in terms of seven years' service to their masters in a manner which was in truth indistinguishable from slavery. As the negotiations were usually carried on with the capita, or headman, the unfortunate servant was transferred with small profit to himself, and little knowledge of the conditions of his servitude...In that case the negotiations run their course easily enough; each chief promises to supply a certain number of slaves, and receives presents in return. It may happen, however, that one or another pays no heed to the friendly invitation, in which case war is declared, his villages are burned down, perhaps some of his people are shot, and his stores or gardens are plundered. In this way the wild king is soon tamed, and he sues for peace, which, of course, is granted on condition of his supplying double the number of slaves."

On page 22 Doyle describes some of the economic enslavement involved:

"Having claimed, as I have shown, the whole of the land, and therefore the whole of its products, the State — that is, the King — proceeded to construct a system by which these products could be gathered most rapidly and at least cost. The essence of this system was that the people who had been dispossessed (ironically called 'citizens') were to be forced to gather, for the profit of the State, those very products which had been taken from them. This was to be effected by two means; the one, taxation, by which an arbitrary amount, ever growing larger until it consumed almost their whole lives in the gathering, should be claimed for nothing. The other, so-called barter by which the natives were paid for the stuff exactly what the State chose to give, and in the form the State chose to give it, there being no competition allowed from any other purchaser. This remuneration, ridiculous in value, took the most absurd shape, the natives being compelled to take it, whatever the amount, and however little they might desire it. Consul Thesiger, in 1908, describing their so-called barter, says: 'The goods he proceeds to distribute, giving a hat to one man, or an iron hoe-head to another, and so on. Each recipient is then at the end of a month responsible for so many balls of rubber. No choice of the objects is given, no refusal is allowed.' "

Later we read of more details of the exploitation:

"By this system some two thousand white agents were scattered over the Free State to collect the produce...Each agent was given control over a certain number of savages, drawn from the wild tribes, but armed with firearms. One or more of these was placed in each village to ensure that the villagers should do their task. These are the men who are called 'capitas,' or head-men in the accounts, and who are the actual, though not the moral, perpetrators of so many horrible deeds. Imagine the nightmare which lay upon each village while this barbarian squatted in the midst of it. Day or night they could never get away from him. He called for palm wine. He called for women. He beat them, mutilated them, and shot them down at his pleasure. He enforced public incest in order to amuse himself by the sight....Then came the punitive expedition, and the destruction of the whole community. The more terror the capita inspired, the more useful he was, the more eagerly the villagers obeyed him, and the more rubber yielded its commission to the agent. When the amount fell off, then the capita was himself made to feel some of those physical pains which he had inflicted upon others. Often the white agent far exceeded in cruelty the barbarian who carried out his commissions. Often, too, the white man pushed the black aside, and acted himself as torturer and executioner. As a rule, however, the relationship was as I have stated, the outrages being actually committed by the capitas, but with the approval of, and often in the presence of, their white employers."

On page 33 we read one of very many similar accounts in the book:

"It was not merely for rubber that these horrors were done. Much of the country is unsuited to rubber, and in those parts there were other imposts which were collected with equal brutality. One village had to send food and was remiss one day in supplying it: 'The people were quietly sleeping in their beds when they heard a shot fired, and ran out to see what was the matter. Finding the soldiers had surrounded the town, their only thought was escape. As they raced out of their homes, men, women and children, they were ruthlessly shot down. Their town was utterly destroyed, and is a ruin to this day. The only reason for this fight was that the people had failed to bring Kwanga (food) to the State upon that one day.'  "

The same page quotes a Mr. Murphy:

"The rubber question is accountable for most of the horrors perpetrated in the Congo. It has reduced the people to a state of utter despair. Each town in the district is forced to bring a certain quantity to the headquarters of the Commissary every Sunday. It is collected by force; the soldiers drive the people into the bush; if they will not go they are shot down, their left hands being cut off and taken as trophies to the Commissary. The soldiers do not care whom they shoot down, and they most often shoot poor, helpless women and harmless children."

On another page Doyle quotes a witness of the atrocities inflicted on those resisting slave-like work as rubber gatherers:

"They refuse to bring the rubber. Then war is declared. The soldiers are sent in different directions. The people in the towns are attacked, and when they are running away into the forest, and try to hide themselves, and save their lives, they are found out by the soldiers. Then their gardens of rice are destroyed, and their supplies taken. Their plantains are cut down while they are young and not in fruit, and often their huts are burned, and, of course, everything of value is taken. Within my own knowledge forty-five villages were altogether burned down."

There was no moral difference here between the slavery of the American south (in which blacks were forced to work all day gathering cotton under penalty of death) and the slavery-in-all-but-name of the so-called Congo Free State in which blacks were forced to work all day gathering rubber under penalty of death. The abuses listed in Doyle's book were as bad as any occurring in the American south. On page 52 we read the report of one witness:

"I heard from the white men and some of the soldiers some most gruesome stories. The former white man (I feel ashamed of my colour every time I think of him) would stand at the door of the store to receive the rubber from the poor trembling wretches, who after, in some cases, weeks of privation in the forest, had ventured in with what they had been able to collect. A man bringing rather under the proper amount, the white man flies into a rage, and seizing a rifle from one of the guards, shoots him dead on the spot. Very rarely did rubber come in but one or more were shot in that way at the door of the store — 'to make the survivors bring more next time.'... The white man himself told me that you could walk on for five days in one direction, and not see a single village or a single human being. And this where formerly there was a big tribe! "

On and on the book goes documenting the atrocities, with Doyle stating on page 86 that "The greatest, deepest, most wide-reaching crime of which there is any record, has been reserved for these latter years." But where were our biologists at the time this holocaust was occurring? Some of them (including leading names of Darwinism) were busy creating the type of intellectual environment in which such atrocities would be tolerated. 

There were, for example, the people who caused the kidnapped Congo native Ota Benga to be displayed around 1906 caged with monkeys in the Bronx Zoo, displayed as a claimed example of a "missing link" between apes and men. The wikipedia.org article on Benga incorrectly states that the exhibit was presented "as a lampoon on Darwinism." In fact, the exhibit was designed to promote Darwinism by trying to display evidence that some missing link had been found between apes and men.  A Guardian article tells us that "New York’s newspapers, scientists, public officials, and ordinary citizens revelled in the spectacle," which seemed to attract more than 100,000 visitors. A BBC.com article discusses some of the subsequent attempts to cover up this embarrassing episode. The Guardian article tells us that the caged display of Ota Benga was supported by two major Darwinists:

"Unrepentant, [William T.] Hornaday declared that the show would go on just as the sign said, 'each afternoon during September' or until he was ordered to stop it by the Zoological Society. But Hornaday was not some rogue operator. As the nation’s foremost zoologist – and a close acquaintance of President Theodore Roosevelt – Hornaday had the full backing of two of the most influential members of the Zoological Society, both prominent figures in the city’s establishment. The first, Henry Fairfield Osborn, had played a lead role in the founding of the zoo and was one of the era’s most noted paleontologists. (He would later achieve fame for naming Tyrannosaurus rex.)" 

Henry Fairfield Osborn was a fervent Darwin devotee (as you can tell from reading these two pages) and eugenics advocate who co-founded the American Eugenics Society in 1922.  The Wikipedia.org article on him states this:

"Osborn therefore supported eugenics to preserve 'good' racial stock. Due to this, he endorsed Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race, writing both the second and fourth prefaces of the book, which argued for such views. The book was also largely influential on Adolf Hitler. Hitler called the book 'his bible' for it advocated a rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who, according to the writer's opinion are to be seen as 'weak' or 'unfit.' "

A scholar puts it this way:

"The teaching of Darwin in a sense sanctified the exploitation of the less fit by the better fit -- that is, exploitation of those less able to adapt to the circumstances and opportunities of the times. The industrial revolution that was shaping itself in the Victorian age saw the enterprising, but also the unscrupulous, take advantage of the underprivileged, the resourceless, the ignorant, the unprotected -- in a word, the unfit. The exploitation manifested itself in work hours from before dawn until the night, in child labor paid pittances, in unhygienic factories and perilous mines." 

The scholar was referring to the exploitation of workers in England during the Victorian age, but the words apply all the more forcefully to the situation in the so-called Congo Free State established in 1885, soon after Darwinism started to gain traction. There seemed to be scarcely a word of protest from Darwinists against the genocide occurring in that state between 1885 and 1909, while Leopold II of Belgium was its effective dictator. 

In a book William T. Hornaday (referred to above) taught both the untrue racist idea that there was a "vast" difference between the intellect of human races, and also the very absurd claim that "the gap between the gibbons and the monkeys is much greater than that between the gorilla and man." It was the old deceptive Darwinist strategy of trying to make the oceanic gulf between apes and humans look like a small crack. 

The information overlords controlling today's mainstream information try to depict Arthur Conan Doyle as a fool, because he was a proponent of spiritualism. They love to cite how Doyle was fooled by two clever sisters who cut out some magazine artwork and made some fake photos that Doyle was fooled by.  But we never hear in discussions of Doyle how he was the one writing a book denouncing one of history's  worst holocausts, while the mainstream authorities of the US and England turned a blind eye to such atrocities that persisted for decades, with some of them helping to create an intellectual environment in which such atrocities would be more likely to be tolerated under Darwinist grounds of "survival of the fittest." 

An Absurd Proposal Reminds Us of the Limits of Science

At the “Science-Based Medicine” web site there is currently an essay advocating one of the most absurd proposals I have ever heard. Entitled “A right to science,” the essay advocates that there should be a new amendment to the United States constitution, one that reads, “Neither Congress nor any State shall make or enforce any law unless it is based on the best available science.” The author, a lawyer, notes “I cannot find a single mention of any such proposal in the legal literature.” I can think of a reason why no one has ever previously proposed such an amendment. It is that if such an amendment were enacted, we could no longer enforce laws against murder, theft, fraud, or kidnapping.

Science tells us about physical realities, and it can tell us some things about human behavior and human thinking. But science tells us nothing at all about value, morality, or right or wrong. There is no scientific evidence that murder is wrong. The judgment that murder is wrong is one that humans reach because we have a conscience. So if we could no longer enforce any law “unless it is based on the best available science,” we would have to stop enforcing laws against murder. We would also have to stop enforcing laws against theft. There has never been a single shred of scientific evidence showing that it is wrong to steal from someone else.

You could try to argue against the opposite by arguing for some principle that whatever produces sadness or pain is wrong, and that science can show that certain actions tend to produce suffering. But the principle that whatever produces sadness or pain is wrong is a debatable philosophical principle, not a scientific principle. And such a principle doesn't even work as an ethical principle, as it would prevent us from paying our income taxes (a source of sadness), and prevent us from forcing students to study hard subjects like physics (a source of pain).

Science cannot prove the morality or rectitude of anything. Scientific evidence can prove that some particular person killed someone. But science is absolutely mute about what should be done as a consequence of such an event. Science has nothing to say about whether it is better to hang murderers or to give them a second chance and let them go free.

If all laws had to be based on scientific evidence, we would have to repeal any law gathering taxes to help pay for a military to defend the country against foreign threats. Science tells us nothing about whether it is better for an American flag, a Chinese flag or a Russian flag to be the main flag flying over United States soil.

Here are some of the things that science can measure: mass, charge, weight, speed, momentum, heat and position. Here are some of the things that science cannot measure: value, justice, rightness and morality.

There were many scientists involved in the building of the first atomic bomb. But not one of them protested to his superiors that such a weapon should never be used. They could not see in their physics equations or data anything suggesting it would be wrong to incinerate 100,000 people. Scientists later developed hydrogen bombs that helped put mankind on the brink of destruction. The hydrogen bomb scientists did not let moral considerations stop their work, seeing nothing in their equations suggesting it would be wrong to create a bomb that might kill 10 million people at a time. Warning of the risks of gene splicing, a recent scientific paper stated, “Given the pace of biotechnology’s progress, the irresistible pressure to continue that progress for universally-desired medical purposes, the dual-use potential of the technology, and its potential worldwide reach, many humans could soon have the capacity to end Earth’s technical civilization.” But the paper's warning has attracted little attention, and today's scientists show unbridled enthusiasm for gene-splicing. Why should we be surprised by such things, given that there is scarcely a moral statement to be found in the average textbook on physics, chemistry and biology?

Their equations didn't tell them it was wrong to invent H-bombs

Science tells us that our planet is getting warmer, and that this is mainly because of man-made activity. But science tells us nothing about whether we should inconvenience ourselves to help limit global warming. Should we build smaller cars with less legroom to try to help save thousands of little-known animal species from extinction? Science is mute on this, and almost all other moral questions.

Morality is something that does not come from science, and moral sentiments are something that cannot be well-explained by science. The science of sociology can explain why certain group taboos can arise that may include things that are forbidden largely as the result of custom. But science cannot explain the basic fact of human conscience. Why is a person troubled if he does some bad act causing pain, injury or death for another, even if he thinks there is no chance he will be punished? Science cannot explain this. The idea that it comes from our genes or DNA is nonsense, as are all claims that attempt to genetically explain unique human mental characteristics. Genes merely specify the linear polypeptide sequences in proteins, and cannot possibly express behavior rules or subtle mental feelings.

It is reasonable to assume that the moral light that shines within us comes us from our souls, the very existence of which many a scientist would deny.  Scientific facts can be morally relevant, but what is right and what is wrong is never or almost never something that can  be scientifically determined.

Science Offers Us Not Much of a Guide to Morality

Some would have us eliminate religion, and perhaps even philosophy, and rely solely on science. But where would that leave us in regard to morality? Does science offer any guide as to how to behave, or does it help us sort out questions of values?

There are basically two ways to define science. According to the first definition, science is just the body of facts that have been established through scientific inquiry. According to the second definition, science is the process of searching for truth through scientific means. If we use the first of these definitions, we must conclude that science offers not the slightest guide to either morality or values.

A mere body of objective facts does not offer any guide as to how to act. Imagine if a man is considering whether to sneak into someone's house, kill the owner, and steal that person's jewels. If we were to first give such a man a large volume summarizing all of the factual findings of modern science, and have him read such a volume from cover to cover, that would in no way give him any guide as to whether or not he should take such an action.

But imagine we use the second definition of science – the definition that defines science as the activity of scientists. Could this serve as some kind of guide as to how to act in a wide variety of situations? Not really, despite claims to the contrary – we can't get very much of a moral code just through emulating scientists.

Here is one argument that could be used to support a claim that a good code of ethics can be derived from science, defined as the activity of scientists: scientists work for the benefit of man, so you too should work for the benefit of man. But we must remember that science has also given us things such as nuclear weapons which have long threatened the human race with extinction. So we would have to include that, making the previous statement like this: scientists work for the benefit of man, and also create things that may cause the extinction of man, so you should work for the benefit of man. The second part of that statement doesn't seem to necessarily follow from the first part.

Another attempt to derive some kind of ethical code from science might go like this: scientists consider things calmly and dispassionately so you should make life decisions calmly and dispassionately. It is true that such a principle might be helpful in calming down someone who is considering killing someone in a rage. But such a principle would not deter someone who is calmly plotting to kill his spouse for the insurance money, or someone calmly plotting a bank robbery. Also, if we made all our decisions dispassionately we might not be moved to make the moral act of helping someone out of pity. So such a principle isn't all that useful in guiding us to a moral life.

Another attempt to derive some kind of ethical code from science might go like this: scientists prize the advancement of knowledge, so you should avoid that which causes a destruction of knowledge. Such a principle might be fairly useful in discouraging some maniac plotting to start a nuclear war that causes the extinction of mankind. But it wouldn't discourage someone who plans to start a nuclear war designed to wipe out 99% of all humans, leaving behind only a privileged remainder. Nor would such a principle discourage someone from wiping out all humans and replacing them with robots who had been uploaded with the sum of human knowledge. Nor would such a principle deter someone from killing another person, as long as he thought that the person to be killed had no important knowledge known only to that person.

Another attempt to derive some kind of ethical code from science might go like this: scientists are careful to truthfully report the facts, so you should be truthful in your life. But the conclusion doesn't really follow from such a premise. Strictly speaking, from the fact that scientists are accurate in their professional reports, all we might be entitled to infer is that we too should be accurate when we make professional reports. Since we know nothing about how much scientists lie to their friends or spouses, we can't derive any general principle about truthfulness from scientific behavior. Another problem with such a principle is that truthfulness is only a small part of morality (for example, you can be a truthful ax murderer).

It seems that science offers us no very substantial guide as to how we should conduct our lives. We may note that scientists have often favored the morally destructive doctrine of determinism, the idea that humans have no free will. Those who believe in such a doctrine can justify any atrocity they may commit on the grounds that they had no choice, because they didn't have free will. Such a factor may wipe out any claim you might be able to make that following science leads to moral behavior.

Another morally destructive doctrine advanced by some scientists is the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. This doctrine is upheld by a minority of physicists, but when physicists do advance this doctrine they are pushing a doctrine that by all rights should be a complete morality killer. The “many worlds” theory holds that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, and that basically every second our current reality splits into an infinite number of alternate realities, in which every possibility becomes actualized. Such a theory is completely antithetical to moral concerns and moral rules. For example, why worry about saving a child freezing to death on the street, if there will be both an infinite number of parallel universes in which the child freezes, and also an infinite number of parallel universes in which the child prospers – no matter what action you take? Also, why bother with following moral rules, if there will be an infinite number of alternate universes in which you act morally, and an infinite number of alternate universes in which you act wickedly? I can't think of any idea more destructive to the foundations of morality than such a theory.

Vision disorder reminiscent of parallel universes theory

Considering all these factors, it seems that at best “following science” will only have a mild tendency to make you more moral, and at worst following certain theories fashionable among certain scientists may tend to take you completely cavalier or indifferent to moral concerns.

Some scientists are highly moral, and some type of scientific activities are moral, such as searching for a cure for cancer. But overall science itself is basically amoral – meaning morally neutral. From a purely scientific standpoint, a nation in which half of the population are slaves is just as good as a nation in which the entire nation is free; and from the same narrow perspective, a world in which half of humanity is starving is just as good as a world in which everyone is well-fed.  From a purely scientific standpoint, one accurate data set is just as good as any other accurate data set, regardless of whether either includes moral horrors.

A scientist puts it like this on his web site:

Science is amoral. I ask if this is a good or a bad thing, and after a moment, we realize that such a value judgement is irrelevant. It is simply a statement of fact.

So what will happen if we only rely on science in the decades ahead? Our weapons will grow more and more frighteningly destructive, but we will be lacking the morality to restrain us from using such weapons. Such an approach may be a prescription for human extinction.

As discussed here, modern science is unable to explain the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of human consciousness, and the cause of many puzzling phenomena that we observe. Science is also unable to give us much help in figuring out how to live or any help in discovering moral truths. Consequently the claims of scientism (which claims that science is all we need or the only thing that gives truth) are laughable. 

Postscript: In this discussion I originally failed to mention the harmful moral consequences of enthroning the idea of "survival of the fittest." When we have only science to guide us, we may end up with a moral outlook that approves of the strong wiping out the weak,  approving such a thing as "survival of the fittest" that is "natural."