Customer Reviews

Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists

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Although I have written six books about Darwinism, I learned much from Ben Wiker's book. Wiker tells the engrossing story of the centuries-long contest between Epicureanism and Christianity, with the Epicureans finally winning their long battle to impose their philosophy on science and the cultural definition of "knowledge." Exploiting the authority of science, Epicureans were able to seize the high moral and intellectual ground for agosticism and materialism,thereby demoting Christianity from its prior intellectual prominence into the marginalized status it now occupies in the intellectual and university world. The Epicurean objective always has been and remains to achieve a moral objective by effectively banning the supernatural from reality, and with it any fear of judgment after death. Attaining this objective prepared the way for all the events we associate with the 1960s. Ben Wiker's intellectual history tells us far more than any scientific book could of the purpose and effect of the long campaign to establish matrialism as the governing philosophy of the world. I highly recommend it.
by Phillip Johnson (author of "Darwin on Trial)< Berkeley, CA USA

Anyone seeking to understand the moral plight of the Western world should drop everything and read this book. The author presents a sweeping history of materialist moral philosophy from ancient Greece to current day. For Wiker, Western morality is split crisply and catastrophically into two utterly irreconcilable camps: the Epicurean, in which man is the measure of all things, and the Judeo-Christian, in which God is the measure of all things. Epicurus believed the goal of man is to reduce his personal pain and discomfort. Starting with this conclusion, he backed into a cosmology to support it, one which excludes the possibilities of (a) an afterlife and (b) divine interference with human affairs, both of which constrain our actions and leave us in a continual state of apprehension. It follows in the Epicurean view that nature is random and therefore without purpose. If nature is random, then there are no values or behaviors we humans are required to embrace. This conception of morality and its supporting cosmology, dormant from roughly Constantine to the Renaissance, revived when scientific discovery seemed to support Epicurean cosmic theories. It gained momentum as science advanced and eventually overwhelmed Judeo-Christian cosmology and morality, at least in terms of our social practices and laws. Wiker does an absolutely magnificent job of critiquing a host of enormously influential materialist figures including Newton, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Darwin himself, elegantly and convincingly tracing their ideas back to their Epicurean sources, and revealing the true essence and implications of their ideas. Unfortunately, in a world where one person's idea of right and wrong is as good as another's, where the only true definition of right and wrong is how it makes us feel, abuses, miseries, and horrors are bound to ensue. As Wiker reviews the thought of such modern day monsters as Ernst Haeckel, Margaret Sanger, and Alfred Kinsey, we begin to get an idea of how awful the materialist's reality can be. And yet, Wiker points out that although scientific advances in our day undermine the random view of nature and strongly support a designer universe, the materialist habit of thought is so deeply ingrained that we cling to relativistic moral positions required by random nature anyway. There are so many fascinating ideas in this book it is almost impossible to summarize. But, I think it can help anyone put his/her ideas in perspective and offer some refreshingly sensible insight about our culture, which seems so irreconcilably split over issues like abortion, euthanasia, recreational drugs, etc., etc.

I would like to share my personal knowledge of the author. I have had the pleasure of studying under Dr. Wiker's guidance in three classes at my college. He is intelligent and humourous. He can take a complex subject, break it down, and help you come to understand it and appreciate it, similar to that great writer, C.S. Lewis. I have read a number of other articles that he has written on various subjects, and I have yet to be disappointed by his ability to convey an important and valid idea with simplicity and and a sense of the practical applications of the theoretical. If you have any interest in philosophy, or evolution, or theology: this is a book that is sure to offer a new perspective on all three. You will enjoy it, and come away with new knowledge and new thoughts that you might need to mull over, and consider, before you come back for a second read.

This is a bombshell of a book, not because it unveils radical new ideas or a shocking revolutionary viewpoint, but simply because it inconveniently unearths long-buried and decently dead history. In that sense it's less like a grenade than a ticking time bomb.

It's about a dirty little secret called Eugenics or social engineering, widely promoted at the turn of the century in America and reaching its culmination in world war II. It's heyday was the '20s in America when immigration was restricted by race, Germans being the most desirable immigrants. Margaret Sanger originally started Planned Parenthood to limit the number of blacks, Jews and Irish Catholics--considered undesirables. Later she travelled to Nazi Germany and gave their eugenics program her stamp of approval.

Fast forward to the '60s and an example of lying with statistics called the Kinsey Report. The so-called poll came from convicts jailed for sexual crimes and was extrapolated to provide a survey of the sexual proclivities of Americans. Kinsey decisevely divided sex from marriage and procreation, saying there were only six types of sex and including in that sensual activities which previously wouldn't have been considered sex. In doing so he led the way for pornography to separate sex from the person. Kinsey's many "findings" and statistics are still quoted today by both friends and foes to inflate the numbers of sexual adventurers when, if anything, the trend is the other way, with a rediscovery of marriage and a return to stable families.

It's not that you can't read the facts that Wiker has compiled elsewhere, it's just that you won't, if the so-called "progressive" media has its way. As Wiker shows, it's all been done before. Desperate Housewives-- that's so last Tuesday.

Benjamin Wiker has a PhD in theological ethics; he has written a number of books including (with Jonathan Witt) "A Meaningful World" that I have reviewed. In "Moral Darwinism he shows how the currently fashionable concept of materialism or naturalism dates back to Epicurus and that the arguments that Thomas Aquinas used to refute this ideology in the 13th century are still valid today despite Charles Darwin and discoveries in the field of evolution. The book title and subtitle "How we became hedonists" refer to what Wiker calls "the acceptance of the tenets of Epicurean materialism as modified to create modern Epicurean hedonism." Just as Augustine and Aquinas had undermined the rationale behind the original ideas of Epicurus, so 20th century discoveries pulled away the foundations of modern materialism that relied on the faulty logic of Hume and Kant, the unfettered extrapolation of Darwinism, Newtonian physics pre-quantum mechanics and the eternal universe axiom that preceded the Big Bang theory. Wiker notes: "Like the atom, the universe is contingent and mortal, and not a counter-deity, as Epicurus had hoped." To acknowledge this is to reject the idea that progress in science has somehow defined God out of existence; the implication is that moral relativism, based as it is on the idea that there is no absolute standard of morality, is incorrect. The notion that our thoughts are simply the result of involuntary chemical actions in our brains, removing as it would all sense of personal responsibility, is redundant.

Abortion comes under particular attack from Wiker: "The great inversion of Christian morality by moral Darwinism is already well-seated. Abortion on the developmental continuum from the zygote up to and including (with partial-birth abortion) the half-delivered baby is now permitted by law, [the book preceded a 2007 ruling against by the Supreme Court] and the passionate defense of animal rights is fast becoming a part of the curricula of accredited schools of law ... Even though Epicurus himself said nothing about abortion, he did argue that ultimately there was no natural justice, and the only reason we should refrain from particular acts against society's views of morality was to avoid the pain of punishment or disapproval." Having read atheist ethicist Peter Singer's views that we should not stop at abortion but legalize infanticide and involuntary euthanasia I know that Wiker's rhetoric is not excessive. This is not a luddite treatise opposing science or the reality of evolution; rather it is a profound lesson in the dangers of abandoning objective standards of morality based on flawed interpretations of what science can and cannot tell us of the real world.

Persuasive and well supported expose of the extensive root system of Darwinism.

Wiker agues that Darwinism is only a part of larger movement designed from it's inception 2,000 years ago to rid the mind of pesky thoughts of a God that can interfere in this life (miracles) or bring eternal judgment in the next.

Wiker follows this movement (Epicureanism) through the last 2,000 years exposing the motives of it's promoters with many quotes and showing the profound, and mostly intended, moral consequences of this world view.

Check out Stephen Greenblatt's August 8th, 2011 article in the New Yorker, for a pro Epicureanism take on the same subject. Greenblatt says basically the same thing, but is in favor of materialism.

If you are interested in Intelligent Design and want to know what the ID-movement is really about, then read (but don't believe) this book. Wiker describes the history of ideas, of which the conclusion is that Darwin is an Epicurist and, because of that, his theory is false and even dangerous to our society, and should thus be replaced by a better one (the obvious candidate being ID).

Epicureanism, according to Wiker, is also the cause of secularization in the Western world: "secularization simply means (as should be obvious by now) accepting the premises and conclusions of Epicurean materialism, and these premises and conclusions reached consummate expression in Darwin. Such is why Darwin is rightly considered to have been the most forceful agent of secularization" (288). By redescribing the history of Western civilization in such manner, Wiker is a prime example of a 'whig-approach'.

Of course this connection between secularization and Darwinism is mere speculation. Sociologists have argued that the secularization process in Western Europe - if such a process exists - can be traced back to before the Enlightenment period. Moreover, Peter Berger has explicitly renounced the secularization thesis, claiming that the thesis is simply wrong.

Wiker's connection between evolutionary theory and the person of Darwin is an ad hominem argument and thus a fallacy. Wiker would probably dismiss Heidegger's ideas for the same reason: that his character was flawed due to adhering to National Socialism in Germany and so Heidegger's ideas must be wrong. That such reasoning is fallacious, does not seem to matter.

In Darwin's case it's also clearly wrong - since Darwin always described himself as an agnostic, not an atheist. He was very active in his local church, even though he could not consent to the orthodox theology! Darwin's rejection of orthodox theology, moreover, did not come from his evolutionary theory, but because he was unable to believe in a good God who would let an innocent child - his 10-year old daughter Annie - die. It was an existential move, not an intellectual one, as Wiker seems to suggest.

This book is one of the main examples of trying to spell out the ideological underpinnings of the ID-movement. If Darwinism is discredited, then ID will automatically gain support, and then it doesn't matter any longer whether or not ID is solid science or not - or so the argument seems to be.

Again, if you want to know what ID is really about, read this book, but I would urge any reader to remain extremely cautious of a complete whig-rewriting of Western history as Wiker does in this book. History here is used to defend ideology...

Lucretius' main contention is that matter is eternal because there was no force possible capable of splitting an atom. By no means proven, but how do people like Aquinas and the author rule it out? You want eternal, unchanging first principles? Lucretius provides one with his indestructible, unchangeable atoms. Atoms are unbreakablein turn because they determine, and thereby limit all physical forces. You want a prime mover? He recognizes any and all physical laws, things that effect changes in the universe, but still do not in any way themselves change, as qualifying. Lucretius is a challenging thinker that requires a real Thomist to provide convincing answers. This author simply does not recognize Lucretius or materialism a such. Lucretius was the inspiration of Newton's universal gravitation, not just an anticipator. A challenging world view must be addressed by this book. One is hardly referenced. It is mainly Catholic platitiudes!

A very well written book that I finished in like 2 or 3 days. In this very one sided debate where evolution as we know it rules the day, this book shows you what most colleges conceal.

I read some of the negative reviews, and decided to buy the book and read it for myself. I sure am glad I did! This book brings amazing clarity and understanding to how the Darwinist myth and its resultant nihilistic, amoral culture has been shaped by a materialist mindset that pre-dates Darwinism. However, the affects of this Epicurean mindset have outlasted both Epicurus and the much later Darwin. We find this mindset deeply embedded in aspects of modern science and culture, especially the modern day presupposition of materialism as a world view by the scientific establishment, and its resultant social effect of nihilistic tendencies. The implications of such a world view are of course, quite disturbing. Get informed. Read this book. Decide for yourself.