The Darwinian Revolution

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

What is the historical relationship between science (reason) & religion (faith)?

Science & Religion: Warfare Model (fight, fight, fight!)

Evolution BAD!!!!! Christianity GOOD!!!! “The monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornography, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of all types.”

Judge Braswell Dean, Georgia Court of Appeals (quoted in Time, March 16, 1981)

“[Evolution] provided the ultimate escape from God. What we got in return was adultery, abortion, and AIDS . . . Evolutionism not only dispenses with God and attempts to make humans the center of the universe, but evolutionism is racist as well . . . It should also be noted that Darwinian evolution is not only racist but sexist . . .”

Hank Hanegraaff, Fatal Flaws (2003)

Christianity BAD!!!! Evolution GOOD!!!! “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference . . . DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just it. And we dance to its music.”

Richard Dawkins, “No mercy on the violent river of life” (1995)

“The message is clear those who will not accommodate [to evolution], who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes [traditions] they fight for.” Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) The Darwinian Revolution: God & Evolution

Evolution is only one of many teachings of science which have come into conflict with theology, but because of the fact that supernaturalism made its last and strongest stand on the creation of the living world, and especially of man, it has been for more than a generation the centre of this conflict. Because organic evolution substitutes natural transmutation for supernatural creation, it has been said that it contradicts the biblical account of creation and denies the existence or need of a Creator; because it explains adaptations as the result of natural selection it has been held to destroy the evidences of design in nature; because of its conclusions as to the origin and nature of man it has been accused of debasing man and reducing him to the level of the beasts. Consequently it is not surprising that evolution has been generally regarded as having more important bearings on theology and religion than any other scientific doctrine. [205]

Edwin Grant Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution (1921)

Three Major Shifts 1) late 19th-century scientific texts shifted toward naturalistic language & explanations 2) difficult readjustment to idea that apes & humans have a common ancestor 3) breakdown of any consensus regarding how scientific & religious beliefs were to be related & integrated Did Darwinism necessitate a rejection of God?  NO Did Darwinism affect traditional images of God?  YES Old images challenged a) God: Creator/magician conjuring new species from nothing (e.g., literal reading of Genesis) b) God: artisan/mechanic designing new species as a watchmaker fashions watches (e.g., William Paley) c) God: god-of-the-gaps filling in when scientific explanations were not forthcoming New images emerged a) God: designer using evolutionary processes (e.g., James McCosh) b) God: lawgiver making living things make themselves without interfering (e.g., Charles Kingsley, Edwin Grant Conklin) c) God: artist/musician painting or composing with creative strokes on the universe (e.g., George Tyrrell) Excerpts from Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (1998) by John Brooke & Geoffrey Cantor

[It] would be misleading to say that God and evolution became mutually exclusive. Darwin’s achievement was to show how the process of speciation could be understood as a natural process obeying the same kinds of law that operated in any branch of the sciences. This is why another casualty was the god-of-the-gaps who had traditionally survived in the crevices of scientific ignorance, only to be squeezed out as scientific knowledge increased. But this was not enough to annihilate the God of the monotheistic religions because their God was pre-eminently a law-giver. Everything hinged on the interpretation placed on the law metaphor . . . Nature might be red in tooth and claw, but for Henry Drummond, the fact remained that it was better to have lived and been eaten than to have never lived at all. When discussing the problem of waste in nature, Darwin could even come to one’s aid. Frederick Temple, who eventually became Archibishop of Canterbury, could argue that ‘the inevitable operation of this waste, as Darwin’s investigation showed, has been to destroy all those varieties which were not well fitted to their surroundings, and to keep those that were’. As early as 1860 Temple had jettisoned a god-of-the-gaps in favour of an extension of natural law. The establishment of natural laws made the existence of moral laws more, not less, credible.

Darwinism has often been credited with turning the Creator into a remote and distant figure [i.e., deistic god] who at most designed the initial swirl of cosmic dust so that it would eventually produce such a universe as we inhabit . . . But the striking point is that . . . the name of Darwin was sometimes invoked to support the image of a more immediate God, constantly working through the laws of nature. For some theologians at least, traditional images of a totally transcendent God had been overdrawn. Their view was that the notion of an immanent God—a God involved within the world—was actually rendered more plausible by Darwinian evolution [e.g., Aubrey Moore] . . .

In early drafts of his theory Darwin himself had retained teleological language. We even catch a glimpse of a new theodicy. Darwin was deeply sensitive to the more gruesome features of creation. What a book, he exclaimed, might be written by a devil’s chaplain on the horribly cruel and wasteful processes of nature. He had in mind such gory examples as the insects that lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars. But might the deity be spared immediate responsibility if such creatures were by-products of an evolutionary process that had not been predetermined in all its details? Darwin entertained though did not systematically develop such a theodicy. Later theologians did. [e.g., F. R. Tennant] [164-165]