On Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:09:43 -0700 (MST) Denis Lamoureux wrote:
[...]
DL>2) Concordance to the 1st Ed of The Origin. Paul H. Barrett, et.
>al., eds. Cornell U Press (1981). Yep, just like in theology, a
>concordance. Of note, there are 7 unapologetic and positive
>references to the Creator (yes, capital "C"). Pp. 186, 188, 189,
>413, 413, 435, 488. The word definitely does not show up in that
>famous (brilliant . . . oh, oh, I'll be getting a blast for this from
>Stephen Jones ;-) last sentence.
Even allowing for the wink smilicon, I have no idea why Denis should
assume that I don't think Darwin was a "brilliant" writer. For the
record, I believe that Darwin was a genius, and I think his writing in
the Origin was superb, and at times even "brilliant".
But as to Denis' assertion that these references to a "Creator" were
"unapologetic and positive", I disagree. I will post all references by
Darwin to a "Creator" in his Origin of Species with some comment by
me, and let Reflectorites judge for themselves:
1. Darwin believed that that theistic statements "it has pleased the
Creator" are meaningless:
"He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation
may say that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to
cause a being of one type to take the place of one belonging
to another type; but this seems to me only re-stating the fact
in dignified language." (Darwin C., "The Origin of Species",
6th edition, 1872, Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd:
London, 1967 reprint, p164).
2. Darwin denies that there is any analogy between "the Creator" and
human "intellectual power". He therefore implicitly denies the
Biblical doctrine that man is made in the image of God. Darwin's
"Creator" if He even exists, is therefore presumably unknowable:
"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a
telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by
the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects;
and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a
somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be
presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator
works by intellectual powers like those of man?" (Darwin,
p169).
3. Indeed, Darwin's "Creator" is just "a power, represented by natural
selection"*:
"If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought
in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue,
with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to
light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be
continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into
layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at
different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of
each layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose
that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the
survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight
alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully preserving
each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or in any
degree, tends to produce a distinctive image. We must suppose
each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the
million; each to be preserved until a better one is produced,
and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies,
variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will
multiply them almost infinitely) and natural selection will
pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this
process go on for millions of years- and during each year on
millions of individuals of many kinds and may we not believe
that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as
superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to
those of man?" (Darwin, pp169-170).
*Darwin's personnification of natural selection makes it difficult to
escape the conclusion that his God was natural selection.
4. Darwin denied that "structures have been created for the sake of
beauty, to delight man or the Creator" (ie. he denied teleology as a
scientific explantion), and in fact claimed that "Such doctrines, if
true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory"*:
"The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the
protest lately made by some naturalists, against the
utilitarian doctrine that every detail of structure has been
produced for the good of its possessor. They believe that
many structures have been created for the sake of beauty, to
delight man or the Creator (but this latter point is beyond
the scope of scientific discussions), or for the sake of mere
variety, a view already discussed. Such doctrines, if true,
would be absolutely fatal to my theory." (Darwin, p184).
*Note that Darwin, whose degree was in theology would be well aware
that Christianity taught exactly that:
"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field
grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even
Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is
how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and
tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O
you of little faith? (Mt 6:28-30)
Therefore, Darwin himself forced an antithesis between his
theory and Christian teaching about God's design and purpose
revealed in nature.
5. Darwin denied that the natural system "reveals the plan of the
Creator":
"The ingenuity and utility of this system are indisputable.
But many naturalists think that something more is meant by the
Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the
Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time or
space, or both, or what else is meant by the plan of the
Creator, it seems to me that nothing is thus added to our
knowledge." (Darwin, p396)
6. Darwin denied that homologous limbs were evidence of teleology
and indeed that theistic explanations were not "scientific":
"Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this
similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility
or by the doctrine of final causes. The hopelessness of the
attempt has been expressly admitted by Owen in his most
interesting work on the Nature of Limbs. On the ordinary view
of the independent creation of each being, we can only say
that so it is,-that it has pleased the Creator to construct
all the animals and plants in each great class on a uniform
plan; but this is not a scientific explanation." (Darwin,
p414-415)
7. Darwin denied special creation and believed in a deistic "Creator"
who impressed laws on matter:
"Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied
with the view that each species has been independently
created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of
the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the
production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants
of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like
those determining the birth and death of the individual. When
I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal
descendants of some few beings which lived long before the
first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to
me to become ennobled." (Darwin, p462).
8. Again, Darwin's view of "the Creator" was deistic (if even that*),
referring only to an original in-breathing, which set in train a
purely naturalistic process that Darwin saw as "the war of nature":
"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most
exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is
grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having
been originally breathed by the Creator 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, p463).
*E.O. Wilson claims Darwin later wrote (no reference is given) that he
did not mean a "Creator" in the Biblical sense:
"It will be some time before we see slime, protoplasm, etc.,
generating a new animal. But I have long regretted that I
truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of
creation, by which I really meant "appeared" by some wholly
unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of
the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of
matter." (Wilson E.O., et al., "Life on Earth", Sinauer
Associates: Sunderland, Mass., 1973, p594).
So Denis regards the above references to "the Creator" as
"unapologetic and positive"??? I would regard them as the direct
opposite (polemical and negative) and part of a sustained subtle
campaign waged by Darwin to undermine and overthrow the Christian
doctrine of creation, and therefore of Christianity itself, as Gould
confirms:
"Darwin was, indeed, a gentle revolutionary. Not only did he delay
his work for so long, but he also assiduously avoided any public
statement about the philosophical implications of his theory. In
1880, he wrote:
`It seems to me (rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments
against Christianity and Theism hardly have any effect on the
public; and that freedom of thought will best be promoted by
that gradual enlightening of human understanding which follows
the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided
writing about religion and have confined myself to science.'"
(Gould S.J., "Ever Since Darwin", Penguin: London, 1977,
p26-27)
Regards.
Steve
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