Here is a long article by Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse which appeared in a
journal called Endeavour, which AFAIK hasn't a web page.
I presume Ruse is feeling worried by the continued rise of what Del Ratzsch called
the "emerging upper tier of the creationist movement" (Ratzsch D.L., "The Battle of
Beginnings," 1996, p84), and is trying to undo some of the damage done by
outspokenly atheist Darwinists like Dawkins and Provine?
My comments are in square brackets.
Steve
===================================================
Darwinism and atheism: different sides of the same coin?
Michael Ruse
What is Darwinism? It is atheism, thundered the nineteenth century Presbyterian
divine, Charles Hodge 1. But is this true? Darwinism makes the claim that all
organisms, living and dead, are the consequence of a long slow process of
natural change - evolution - by a mechanism known as natural selection, from
humble beginnings to the complex diversity of forms we see today. .If you want to
make this the basis for your denial of the existence of God, then I cannot stop
you. Nor can I prevent it, if you a believing practicing Christian, think it incumbent
on you to reject one of today's most magnificent scientific theories. But I can
show that your stand has little support from history.
[This begs the question that "a long slow process of natural change" is
automatically "evolution" Also, Ruse fails to mention *why* Hodge concluded
that Darwinism was "atheism." It was because Darwinism *denied design*, not
because it postulated a long process of change over time.]
The birth of evolution
Evolutionary thinking is the child of the eighteenth century, the Age of the
Enlightenment: it is an offspring of the belief in the inevitability of upward social
and cultural and intellectual progress 2. This ideology centres on the claim that it
is possible to improve the social state of humankind as well as its store of
knowledge: one could perhaps have predicted that more daring thinkers
supposed there to be an analogous upward rise in the world of nature - from the
most simple to the most complex, ending ultimately with humankind.
One such early progressionist-made-flesh was the British physician Erasmus
Darwin. He was forthright in seeing upward trends in the organic world: trends of
a kind which we today would label evolutionary'. (The word 'evolution', meaning
transformation of forms, tended not to come into general use until the middle of
the nineteenth century.) Much given to expressing his views in verse, Darwin's
enthusiasm knew no limits:
`Organic Life beneath the shoreless
waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly
caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric
glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery
mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs
assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation
spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet,
and wing.
Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood,
Which bears Britannia's thunders on the
flood;
The Whale, unmeasured monster of the
main,
The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain,
The Eagle soaring in the realms of air,
Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar
glare,
Imperious man, who rules the bestial
crowd,
Of language, reason, and reflection
proud,
With brow erect who scorns this earthy
sod,
And styles himself the image of his
God;
Arose from rudiments of form and
sense,
An embryon point, or microscopic ens!' 3
The ideology of progress was seen (with reason) to be a challenge to a Christian
view of history. For the Christian, Providence is the key factor in events over time.
We humans are fallen sinners, and it is through and only through God's great love
- as shown by His sacrifice on the cross - that we have hope of ultimate
salvation. On our own, we are as nothing. Indeed to think that, without God's
grace, we can raise ourselves up at all is one of the oldest and deepest heresies
of Christian faith. Which heresy is the very backbone of progressivism, for the
doctrine or ideology is committed to the belief that upward improvement is
possible in all realms of the social and the intellectual and - the crucial 'and' - that
this is something which comes about through unaided human effort. There is no
need or place for outside intervention and especially not for intervention of a
supernatural or divine kind.
[Ruse makes a good point here. Christianity *is* opposed to any idea that man
can, unaided, perfect himself. But ever since Darwin's day, prominent Darwinists
from have proposed just that through eugenics and/or genetic engineering.]
Early forms of evolution were therefore seen to be incompatible with Christian
belief. The kinds of organic progressivism which lay at the heart of Erasmus
Darwin's thinking - as well as of other early evolutionists, like the French biologist
Jean Baptiste de Lamarck 4 (Figure 1) - were rightly taken to be at odds with
Christian Providentialism. And it is worth noting that early critics of organic
evolutionism, as often as not, based their critiques precisely on the perceived
progressionism. Adam Sedgwick, for example, the Cambridge Professor of
Geology (Figure 2), made explicit the way in which he linked evolution and
progress: 'I am no believer either in organic or social perfectability and I believe
that all sober experience teaches us that there are conditions both moral and
physical, which must entail physical and moral pain so long as the world lasts' 5.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Ruse
Is a professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph in Ontario,
Canada. He is the author of a number of books on the history and philosophy of
science, especially evolutionary biology. His most recent work was Monad to
Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. His interest in the
science/religion relationship dates from 1981, when he appeared in a court trial in
Arkansas USA, arguing that so-called 'Creation Science' (otherwise known as the
Bible taken absolutely literally) should not be taught in biology classes. At the
moment he is writing a book entitled Can a Darwinian be a Christian?
-------------------------------------------------------------
[...]
Figure 1 Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck
Copyright (c) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved 01609327/98$19.00.
PII: S0160-9327(98)01088-6
Endeavour Vol. 22(1) 1998 17
(Ruse M., "Darwinism and atheism: different sides of the same coin?,"
Endeavour, Vol. 22(1), 1998, p17) 18 Endeavour Vol. 22(1) 1998
[...]
Figure 2 Adam Sedgwick
It is worth noting that, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, serious thinkers
had come to realize that at least some metaphorical interpretation was demanded
of the early chapters of Genesis. Hence, for all that today's Biblical literalists
(Creationists or fundamentalists) make much of the clash between the Word of
God and evolution, back then even the most sincere tended not to take this as a
major stumbling block 6. It was progress which stuck in the Christian's craw;
although, it should not thereby be assumed that the early evolutionists thought
that they were therefore promulgating or promoting atheism. In fact, to a person
one can truly say that all of the early evolutionists were sincere believers.
However, their belief was in a God as unmoved mover, rather than in a Christian
providential God. That is to say early evolutionists like Erasmus Darwin tended
toward deism. They endorsed the idea of God as one who perhaps creates
(certainly designs) but does not intervene, rather than the theistic idea of God as
both Creator and intervener in the creation. Indeed, it seems not unfair to say that
for people like Erasmus Darwin the law-like nature - 'natural' as opposed to
'supernatural' - of the evolutionary process was taken as a confirmation of the
deism rather than as a general challenge to any kind of religious thought 7.
[Ruse has been criticised for his scientific ignorance. Here he displays theological
ignorance! At least as far back as the 4th century Augustine and others had
interpreted the days of Genesis 1 metaphorically.]
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles Darwin (1809-1882), grandson of Erasmus Darwin, student of Adam
Sedgwick, and author of on the Origin of Species (1859), is rightly known as the
'father' of evolutionism. Not only did he provide solid evidence of the very fact of
evolution, but he offered the mechanism which has established itself as the chief
cause of change. Starting with the arguments of the clergyman-cum-political
scientist, Thomas Robert Malthus, that population pressures and limited
resources of food and space will lead to an inevitable 'struggle for existence',
Darwin argued that those that do succeed - the 'fitter' - will tend to differ from the
unsuccessful, and that this will lead to a natural equivalent of the breeders'
practice of improving organic forms by judicial selection.
[Another error. Darwin was never a "student" of Sedgwick, at least not in any
formal sense.]
`Can the principle of selection, which we have seen is so potent in the hands of
man, apply in nature? I think we shall see that it can act most effectually ... Can it
... be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly
occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and
complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of
generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more
individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any
advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving
and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any
variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation
of favourable variations and rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural
Selection' 8.
Given enough time, the end result will be full-blown evolution.
[That does not necessarily follow. Bacteria have presumably been living and
dying by their billions every minute for billions of years, but they are still bacteria
and show no signs of evolving into something else.]
Where if anywhere did religion fit into all of this? The one indisputable fact is that
Darwin's relationship with religion in general, and with Christianity in particular,
was more complex than has often been thought to be the case. To see this, let
us start at the beginning with Darwin's education at conventional British
establishments. Both at the great public school at Shrewsbury, and then at the
University of Cambridge, he received an orthodox Anglican education 9. This had
its effect for, as a young man, Darwin intended quite sincerely to be a clergyman:
the future evolutionist was a Christian of a conventional British Protestant variety.
But this did not last: in the course of the voyage which he made around the world
as naturalist on HMS Beagle (1831-1836), Darwin's Christian faith started to fade
away.
[Another error? My understanding was that Darwin did not want to be a
clergyman but Darwin's father wanted him to be one.]
A major reason for this growing scepticism was that Darwin no longer found
miracles to be overwhelmingly certain, something which his Cambridge mentors
would have stressed as an absolutely central and crucial part of religious belief.
The 'set book' for all undergraduates was Archdeacon Paley's Evidences of
Christianity, wherein it is argued that Jesus must be the messiah for the disciplines
would not have preached his message even unto martyrdom had they
themselves not experienced his miraculous powers. As Darwin delved more and
more into the mysteries of nature - most particularly the mysteries of geology - he
became increasingly convinced that all can be explained by unbroken law.
Miracles receded and with them so did orthodox Christian belief.
By 1837 - by which point Darwin had become an evolutionist - he was no longer
either a practicing or a believing Christian that is one who took Jesus Christ as his
savior. However, like his paternal grandfather and indeed like other members of
his family, particularly his uncle and his future father-in-law Josiah Wedgwood,
Darwin had not slipped into atheistic nonbelief. He too had rather developed an
inclination for some form of deism: he saw God as unmoved mover, working
through unbroken law. Indeed, for him, as for other evolutionists, the belief in
organic evolution was both a consequence and a justification of his religious
position. We know that a key factor in making Darwin an evolutionist was the
peculiar distribution of birds (primarily the mockingbirds) and reptiles (primarily the
giant tortoises) on the Galapagos Archipelago which the Beagle visited in 1835.
Why were these organisms similar but slightly different from island to island, and
why were the forms similar to, although different from, forms on the South
American mainland? Why were the forms not more similar to African organisms?
Because of evolution, obviously! And God was a factor here, for it simply would
not have made sense for Him to have done otherwise: this is a God who prefers
the reasonable consequences of unbroken law rather than the capricious effects
of miracle.
[I don't know about the reptiles, but the birds part may be a Darwinist legend? As
I understand it Darwin made little mention of the Galapagos birds in his
notebooks, and it was only after he got home that an English ornithologist named
Gould discovered their significance.]
I should say also that, combined with this new-found deistic-influenced
evolutionism, in Darwin one had a strong commitment to social and intellectual
progressivism 10. This was very much the political philosophy of his (upper
middle-class) family's segment of society. The Wedgwoods were England's
leading manufacturers of fine pottery, and as such had done extremely well out of
the move to an industrialized more urban society. Whilst it is true that, over the
years, Darwin wrestled more with problems of organic change than did his
contemporaries, he always regarded the evolutionary process as progressive.
Conversely, he took this progressiveness as a justification of his own
sociopolitical philosophy, and inasmuch as this was something the manufacturing
classes took to be firmly endorsed by their deity, Darwin regarded this as an
ideology which meshed neatly with his religious beliefs.
There is more to the story than this. Darwin's education gave him unique standing
among evolutionists. He alone had felt as a major influence the natural theology
of his day. Still under the guidance of Archdeacon Paley, everyone at Cambridge
took it as axiomatic that natural theology (the religion of reason) reinforces the
beliefs of revealed theology (the religion of faith). Everyone agreed that one finds
evidence of design or functioning throughout the world, especially throughout the
organic worldly The hand and the eye, to take the classic examples, were
thought to be more
(Ruse M., "Darwinism and atheism: different sides of the same coin?,"
Endeavour, Vol. 22(1), 1998, p18)
Endeavour Vol. 22(1) 1998 19
than randomly organized: they were thought to show evidence of functioning,
which was taken to be evidence of a wise, all-powerful designer, the Christian
God. As a telescope needs a telescope maker, so the eye needs an eye maker:
the Divine Optician in the sky.
Darwin never relinquished this belief that the organic world seems as if designed.
It stayed with him until his dying day. And indeed, such a belief is even to this day
the chief mark of being a Darwinian. It was here that the mechanism of natural
selection took on special importance, for it was intended not merely to explain
evolution but evolution of a particular kind. its function was to explain how the
design-like nature of the organic world could come into being without need of a
direct miraculous intervention of a creator. As the breeders' selection produces
features advantageous to us fatter and heavier beasts, thicker coats, more
nutritious crops - so natural selection produces features advantageous to their
possessors - keener eyesight, stronger jaws, more pest-resistant skins. All of
these designlike attributes, or (as they are commonly known) 'adaptations', came
about through natural normal laws: working as they do in the form of natural
selection. There is no need to suppose miraculous intervention by a creative
intelligence.
[Ruse confirms Hodge's point that Darwinism denies the reality of design and
hence was effectively atheism.]
Initially, Darwin certainly did not think that his evolutionary argument challenged
the fact of a designer Rather, what was challenged was the need of such a
designer to work through special directed laws, or to intervene miraculously in His
creation. In fact, there is good reason to think that right through the publication of
the Origin Darwin remained committed to the belief in a deistic designer: a
designer who works through unbroken law, and who is thereby that much more
magnificent because He has had no need of miraculous intervention. In various
places in the Origin, there are unembarrassed references to the 'Creator', and
these were meant sincerely. For Darwin, as for others of his time - notably the
Reverend Baden Powell, a professor at Oxford (and, incidentally, the father of the
founder of the Scouting movements) - a God who could work through unbroken
law was as far above a God of miracles as the British industrialist working through
machines is above the cottage artisan working by hand in isolation. God designs,
but at a distance.
[Darwin mentions "Creator" eleven times in the Origin, but most of these seem to
be just a rhetoricical device in his campaign against the idea of creation in any
theistic sense.]
Towards the end of his life, Darwin's deism started to fade into agnosticism.
Darwin never became an atheist, in the sense of an outand-out non-believer in a
deity. But increasingly he found it difficult to reconcile belief in a Creator with what
he took to be the unambiguous facts of evil in the world. The early death of his
favourite child, Annie, preyed constantly on his mind. Such emotions as this
pushed Darwin towards some form of scepticism. Yet, not only was this not
atheism but it was in no sense promoted or caused by his belief in evolution as
such. Perhaps the belief in evolution made possible a suspension of belief.
Without evolution through natural selection it would be difficult to see how design
comes into being, save one postulates some kind of intervention by an external
deity. But the evolutionism as such did not make Darwin a non-believer: indeed,
given its stress on function, evolution was probably a factor in his not making this
move.
[Ruse contradicts himself by claiming that Darwin's "scepticism...was in no sense
promoted or caused by his belief in evolution" yet in the same breath adding
"Perhaps the belief in evolution made possible a suspension of belief"]
After Darwin
For Darwin, religion was as much an aid as a barrier in becoming an evolutionist
and moving towards his mechanism of natural selection. I would not claim that
others (including his closest followers) would feel exactly as he did. It is classic
Darwinian lore how, in 1860 at the annual meeting of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, the High Church Bishop of Oxford Samuel
Wilberforce squared off against Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's 'bulldog' and at
that time professor of geology at the London School of Mines 13. Their debate
ranged over many factors including science, but there is little doubt that religion
was a major dividing point. Wilberforce was certainly no biblical literalist; but he
felt most uncomfortable at the implications of Darwinism for humankind:
particularly at the suggestion that we members of Homo sapiens might have a
purely naturalistic origin. Huxley, the man who invented the word 'agnostic', had
no such qualms about Man as Place in Nature, to quote the title of the book he
was to publish a year or two later
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the iconic status of the Wilberforce-Huxley clash,
one should not overestimate the extent to which there was Christian opposition to
evolution in general and to Darwinism in particular. As in Falstaff's encounter with
robbers, much of the opposition grew in the telling. People like Huxley were
fighting at that time for a secular professional civil service and state-supported
meritocracy: a meritocracy that would include science and science educators at
the school and university level. It suited them therefore to portray their opponents
as being more religiously bigoted than they truly were. And then, in the years to
come, when Huxley and his friends came to tell the history, there was a strong
tendency to portray the religious opposition to Darwinism - a religious opposition
which they claimed to have conquered - as being far more strident and formidable
than it truly was. More than one Christian chided Huxley himself on his
almost-deliberate misrepresentation of their beliefs and of his ascribing to them far
stronger opposition to evolutionism than they truly felt.
[In fact the "Darwinian lore" of Huxley's triumph over Wilberforce, was in Gould
words either"false outright" or "grossly distorted by biased reconstruction long
after the fact." (Gould S.J., "Knight Takes Bishop?", in "Bully for Brontosaurus,"
1991, pp385ff). The fact is that it has suited Darwinists to manipulate the truth by
propaganda to wrong-foot Christianity to achieve their ends.]
In fact, for all the opposition, historians of the period suggest strongly that most
Christians rapidly found an accommodation with evolutionism. Let me jump right
into this century to make the point. Some of its most eminent and visible
evolutionists have been sincere practicing Christians. Sir Ronald Fisher. the great
statistician (Figure 3). is properly regarded as sitting on the
[...]
Figure 3 R.A. Fisher
pinnacle of creative evolutional thought His The Genetical Theory of Natural
Selection (1930) was the truly great mathematization of the subject. He was also
a Christian - a participating member of the Church of England who worked hard to
integrate his religious beliefs with his evolutionism. Fisher saw God as having set
himself the task of creation through the process of evolution through natural
selection. So, likewise, humans have a task of improvement here on earth, which
for Fisher translated into the improvement of the human species through
eugenics.
[Fisher may be an example of how one can hold both Christian and Neo-Darwinist
beliefs, but unless we knew the content of his Christianity it is impossible to be
sure. But it is ironic that Dawkins who regards Christians generally as either fools
or knaves, in The Blind Watchmaker almost hero-worships Fisher!]
To the traditionally religious man, the essential novelty introduced by the theory of
the evolution of organic life, is that creation was not all finished a long while ago,
but is still in progress, in the midst of its incredible duration. In the language of
Genesis we are living in the sixth day, probably rather early in the morning, and
the Divine artist has not yet stood back from his work, and declared it to be 'very
good.' Perhaps that can only be when God's very imperfect image has become
more competent to manage the affairs of the planet of which he is in control 14.
[If this is what Fisher believed then it doesn't say much for his Christian orthodoxy.
Genesis clearly says the sixth day has ended and "the Divine artist" *has* "stood
back from his work, and declared it to be 'very good'" (Gn 1:31). No doubt it
suited Fisher's eugenics agenda to claim that man was still being created?]
Fisher drew a remarkable parallel between faith and works and Lamarckism and
Darwinism: the former evolutionary theory stressing the inheritance of acquired
characteristics (the giraffe's neck gets longer from generations of stretching), and
the latter the survival of the fittest (only the long-necked giraffes had offspring).
In both of these contrasting hypotheses living things themselves are the chief
instruments of the Creative activity. On
(Ruse M., "Darwinism and atheism: different sides of the same coin?,"
Endeavour, Vol. 22(1), 1998, p19)
20 Endeavour Vol. 22(1) 1998
the Lamarckian view, however, they work their effect by willing and striving only;
but, on the Darwinian view, it is by doing or dying. It is not mere will, but its actual
sequel in the real world, its success or failure, that is alone effective. We come
here to a close parallelism with Christian discussions on the merits of Faith and
Works. Faith, in the form of right intentions and resolution, is assuredly necessary,
but there has, I believe, never been lacking through the centuries the parallel, or
complementary, conviction that the service of God requires of us also effective
action. If men are to see our good works, it is of course necessary that they
should be good, but also and emphatically that they should works in making the
world a better placed.
I am not pretending that this was a science-religion synthesis that would have
been acceptable to everyone. But Fisher was far from alone in seeking some way
of meshing his faith with his evolutionary science. There were others, notably the
Russian-born American population geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky (Figure 4),
author of Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937). These men were at the top
of the profession: highly regarded and rightly so.
[Dobzhansky was probably a pantheist and so is not a good example to support
Ruse's thesis that Darwinism does not equal atheism.]
Conclusion
I suspect that no one was going to deflect the hostility of Charles Hodge, whose
rhetorical question opened my essay. But as a committed evolutionist, I think the
past does count and does have messages to teach us. Perhaps it is reasonable
to be a Darwinian. Perhaps it is reasonable to be an atheist. I am not at all
convinced that the one implies the other. And turning to history confirms my
suspicions.
[Ruse completely ignores the *reasons* why Hodge equated Darwinism with
atheism, but falsely puts it down to "hostility". It is *Ruse* who is using rhetoric,
not Hodge.]
References
1 Hodge, C. (1874) What is Darwinism? T. Nelson & Sons
2 Ruse, M. (1996) Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary
Biology Harvard University Press
3 Darwin, E. (1803) The Temple of Nature Vol. 1, Johnson
4 Lamarck, J-B. [1963 (1809)] Zoological Philosophy, Hafner
5 Unpublished letter to Herbert Spencer, Jul) 29, 1953. In Spencer Papers,
University Library, London
6 Ruse, M. (1979) The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth ant Claw,
University of Chicago Press
7 McNeill, M. (1987) Under the Banner ox Science: Erasmus Darwin and his Age,
Manchester University Press
8 Darwin, C. (1859) on the Origin of Species, John Murray
9 Browne, J. (1995) Charles Darwin: Voyaging, Knopf
10 Ospovat, D. (1981) The Development of Darwin's Theory, Cambridge
University Press
11 Whewell, W. (1840) The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Parker
12 Powell, B. (1855) Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, Longman,
Brown, Green and Longmans
13 Desmond, A. Huxley, the Devil's Disciple, Michael Joseph
14 Fisher, R.A. (1947) Listener 37, 1001
15 Fisher, R.A. (1950) Creative Aspects of Natural Law: the Eddington Memorial
Lecture, Cambridge University Press
(Ruse M., "Darwinism and atheism: different sides of the same coin?,"
Endeavour, Vol. 22(1), 1998, p20)
===================================================
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
--- Dr. William Provine, Professor of History and Biology, Cornell University.
http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/1998/slides_view/Slide_7.html
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Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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