A Curious Role Reversal

First published on my now defunct blog Random Acts of Thought
on October 13 2005 in a slightly different form


I was thinking yesterday about how ironic it is that conservatives and liberals in the United States, switch roles on the evolution vs creationism debate.

Conservatives who mostly believe in the creative power of free markets unfettered by topdown government control are often utterly unable to apply this thinking to the evolution vs inteligent design/creationism debate... suddenly structure and order are inconceivable without the existence of a benevolent central planner.

Similarly liberal who snub their noses at anything so crass and unsophisticated as a personal god making design decisions from his government office in the sky, become convinced that just such a figure is necessary to produce a "community"

It seems to me that Charles Darwin and Adam Smith go hand in hand. Both explain how competition creates order even in the absence of design. If you understand The Origin of Species you ought to be able to grasp The Wealth of Nations. Natural selection and the hidden hand of the marketplace are two aspects of the same phenomenon