Re: [asa] Was Darwin a Creationist?

From what you cite a reasonable article similar to what I and others have often published in the past. From 1830 to the 1860s Darwin was a creationist in the sense that he had a place for a creator but not in either the YEC or Progressive Creationist sense. He ignored the former and criticised the latter as grossly multiplying creative acts.

Cosans also reflects what Darwin wrote , unlike Cornelius Hunter who seems to write about another Charles Darwin who lived in a parallel universe at about the same time and held drastically different understandings of science to the real Charles Darwin.

Often good material about Darwin and the history of science is ignored as many simply wish to peddle old myths rather than find out what the texts actually point to. The conflict myth is still alive and well

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Nucacids
  To: asa@lists.calvin.edu
  Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 2:21 AM
  Subject: [asa] Was Darwin a Creationist?

  Philosopher Chris Cosans asks a question: Was Darwin a Creationist? Let me share a few interesting excerpts from his paper (Cosans C. 2005. Was Darwin a creationist? Perspect Biol Med. 48(3):362-71):

  "Darwin's assertion in the Origin that all the living things we observe descended from one organism can be traced back to speculations he had made on theology during the 1830s.When considering the transmutation of species in his notebook from 1837 and 1838, Darwin considered the theological meaning of whether or not transmutation follows from a fixed natural law. He remarks at one point in his private notebook that:

  Astronomers might formely [sic] have said that God ordered each planet to move in its particular destiny.""In same manner God orders each animal created with certain form in certain country, but how much more simple, & sublime power let attraction act according to certain law such are inevitable consequences let animal be created, then by the fixed laws of generation, such will be their successors. (Darwin 1838, p. 185)

  Just as Newton showed the greatness of God in his Principia by explaining how the one law of gravity governs the motion of all the planets, Darwin is interested in showing that God did not make each species but created one organic being from which different species could be generated by fixed laws.

  Although his beliefs about God developed over the ensuing 20 years, Darwin framed his biological Principia in a theological context. He opens the Origin with two epigraphs on natural theology. The first, by Whewell, refers to the British theological reconciliation of science and religion by holding that the laws discovered by science are secondary causes, while God, as the Creator of these laws, is the primary cause:"events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws." A second quote, from Bacon, states no man can "be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works," implying the need to study both scripture and science to understand the world in which we live. Almost 500 pages later, Darwin brings the Origin to a conclusion with a reference to Genesis that echoes his 1838 remarks about science and religion:"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved" (Darwin 1859, p. 490). In a single sentence Darwin interweaves the metaphysical breath of Genesis with the physical gravity of Newton's Principia."

  Cosans also notes:

  "Popular culture views Darwin's theory as providing scientific evidence against religion. However, this is not supported by a close analysis of the text of the Origin and its implications. A simple way of reading the Origin as supporting theistic thinking is to see the first progenitors and the laws of reproduction, variation, and selection as the results of God's action. In his autobiography, Darwin confesses that this indeed was his conviction when writing the Origin. Many historians of science have discussed the ways Darwin's analysis drew upon the Christian theology of his time (Brown 1986; Gillespie 1979, p. 124; Richards 1999, pp. 130""35). Although later in life Darwin began to entertain an agnostic perspective, this was after he had conceived of his theory." (emphasis added)

  More wisdom from the article:

  "Although usually ignored by neo-Darwinists, Darwin's hint about the supernatural origins of life is actually a critical aspect of his framework of analysis. Throughout the Origin, he usually contrasts his account not with that of other evolutionists such as Lamarck or Chambers, but with that of someone we would now call a "special creationist." The position of Darwin's hypothetical creationist is the dialectical opposite of that endorsed in the Origin.The Origin's creationist would seem in fact to be a younger less sophisticated version of Darwin himself. In the introduction to the Origin, Darwin tells us he used to believe that "each species has been independently created" (p. 6). While the Darwin of the Origin believes all life is united by its common ancestor, his creationist rejects the unity of life. Darwin believes "all living and extinct forms can be grouped together in one great system" (p. 433), but his creationist believes each form is special and unique. Darwin accounts for the diversity of life as the result of natural selection acting on existing variation; his creationist accounts for it as the result of God creating the progenitors of the varieties of organisms.Whereas Darwin believes life came into being only once, his creationist believes "that at innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues" (p. 483)."

  And then this:

  "Owen claims that the special creationist and Darwin both ultimately rely on the action of God. Insofar as Darwin concludes the Origin with the Biblical phrasing, Darwin recognizes:"a direct creative act, something like that supernatural or miraculous one which, in the preceding page, he defines, as "~certain elemental atoms which have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues'" (Owen 1860, p. 191). Darwin is no less a creationist than his dialectical rival merely because he limits God to one intervention. Indeed, Owen argues that in Darwin's theory, God's act of creation is even more miraculous. For it requires God, at that one moment, to impart to the progenitor the capacity to vary in such a way as to eventually result in the present organisms' "infinity of complications and their morphological results, which now try to the utmost the naturalist's faculties to comprehend and classify" (Owen 1860, p. 191). Darwin's theism requires God to have an incredible amount of foresight."

  - Mike Gene

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Received on Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:19:51 +0100