Michael Ruse claims that "Evolution is a religion." Not just that it's
sometimes been used as a religion. Not just that some people use it to
support their religion. But that it *is* a religion. This is either an
absurd exaggeration or a very sloppy use of language. It is inconsistent
with Ruse's own statement, later in the article, that evolution is "good,
tough, forward-looking science". Ruse is tarring the whole of the science of
evolution with a religious brush just because *some* people, *some* of the
time, use it as a religion.
And when Ruse complains about the use of religious-sounding language by
Gould and Wilson, why is he picking out only evolutionists? What about all
the physicists who've used similar language? Would Ruse have us believe that
physics is a religion too?
Richard Wein (Tich)
> [National Post Online]
>
> Page URL: http://www.nationalpost.com/artslife.asp?f=000513/288424.html
>
> Saturday, May 13,
2000
>
> How evolution became a religion
> Creationists correct?: Darwinians wrongly mix science with morality,
> politics
>
> Michael Ruse
> National Post
>
> In 1980 the young governor of Arkansas, one Bill Clinton, neglected his
> constituent base and was defeated in his run for re-election. He learned a
> lesson never to be forgotten, regained office in 1982, and remained
governor
> until he was elected President. During the two-year interregnum, the
> governor's mansion was occupied by a man called Frank White, whose
surprise
> at his election was equalled only by his inadequacy for the job.
>
> Uncritically, Governor White signed into law a bill promoted by an
> evangelical Christian state representative, a bill debated by the
> legislature for less than half an hour. This "balanced treatment" bill
> required that children be taught not only the theory of evolution, but
also
> the Bible -- taken absolutely literally. Countering the claim that we are
> all descended by Charles Darwin's glacially slow process of development
from
> very simple organisms, children were also to be told, in their biology
> classes, that Adam and Eve were real people, and that Noah's Flood once
> covered the whole earth.
>
> The U. S. constitution separates church and state. Whatever its
pedagogical
> merits -- and they were few -- the Arkansas law was clearly
> unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law,
and
> before the year was out a trial was held and the legislation struck down.
> Appearing as expert witnesses for the ACLU were the famous -- Stephen Jay
> Gould, Harvard professor, paleontologist, and America's best-known
> evolutionist -- and the not-so-famous -- a philosophy professor from the
> University of Guelph, yours truly.
>
> I still remember arguing in the Arkansas court house with one of the most
> prominent of the literalists (now generally known as creationists). Duane
T.
> Gish, author of the best-selling work, "Evolution: The Fossils Say No!,"
> resented bitterly what he felt was an unwarranted smug superiority assumed
> by us from the side of science.
>
> "Dr Ruse," Mr. Gish said, "the trouble with you evolutionists is that you
> just don't play fair. You want to stop us religious people from teaching
our
> views in schools. But you evolutionists are just as religious in your way.
> Christianity tells us where we came from, where we're going, and what we
> should do on the way. I defy you to show any difference with evolution. It
> tells you where you came from, where you are going, and what you should do
> on the way. You evolutionists have your God, and his name is Charles
> Darwin."
>
> At the time I rather pooh-poohed what Mr. Gish said, but I found myself
> thinking about his words on the flight back home. And I have been thinking
> about them ever since. Indeed, they have guided much of my research for
the
> past twenty years. Heretical though it may be to say this -- and many of
my
> scientist friends would be only too happy to chain me to the stake and to
> light the faggots piled around -- I now think the Creationists like Mr.
Gish
> are absolutely right in their complaint.
>
> Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science.
> Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a
> full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am
an
> ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one
> complaint -- and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it -- the literalists
> are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution
in
> the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
>
> ---
>
> One of the earliest evolutionists was the eighteenth-century physician
> Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles. He was no atheist, believing
rather
> in God as "Unmoved Mover": a being who decides right at the beginning on
the
> future course of nature, lays down unbreakable laws, and never acts again.
>
> Rightly, Erasmus Darwin saw this "deism" as challenging Christian theism,
> which takes God as ready always to intervene miraculously in His creation.
> For Erasmus Darwin, evolution was simply confirmation of his commitment to
a
> law-bound process of creation set down by a non-interventionist God. It
was
> part and parcel of his alternative religion.
>
> To this vision, Darwin's grandfather added an enthusiasm for social
progress
> -- as embodied by the Industrial Revolution -- which progress he then read
> right into his science. Erasmus saw social progress as a rise from a
simple
> village-based society to the complexity of the modern city, and
analogously
> he thought evolution rises progressively from the simple, the
> undifferentiated blobs of the first life forms (known as "monads"), to the
> apotheosis of organic complexity, the human race.
>
> In his progressivism -- especially in his belief that we humans ourselves
> can and do improve our overall well-being -- Erasmus clearly stood in yet
> another way against Christianity, which stresses that salvation can come
> only through God. For the Christian, our greatest gains "count for
naught."
>
> Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an
> explicit substitute for Christianity. It stressed laws against miracles
and,
> by analogy, it promoted progress against providence.
>
> And so things continued. In 1859, Charles Darwin, the father of modern
> evolutionary thought, published his great work On the Origin of Species.
> With this book, Darwin hoped to change things and make a less ideological
> system of evolution. He offered a systematic survey of the biological
world,
> showing how many different factors -- the fossil record, the geographical
> distributions of organisms, the discoveries from embryology -- point to
> evolution. At the same time, he proposed his celebrated mechanism of
natural
> selection: thanks to population pressures, some creatures flourish and
have
> offspring and some do not and, over the ages, this "survival of the
fittest"
> leads to full-blown change.
>
> But almost at once Darwin's efforts were frustrated by (of all people) his
> greatest supporter, his famous "bulldog," Thomas Henry Huxley.
>
> When Jesus died he left no functioning religion. This was the work of his
> supporters, especially Saint Paul, and as we all know the Christianity of
> Saint Paul was not exactly identical to the Christianity of Jesus. Like
the
> great apostle and Christianity, Huxley -- one of the most prominent
> scientists and greatest educators and social reformers of his day -- had
> begun by denying evolution, and when converted had the same enthusiasm as
> Paul.
>
> But like Paul also, for all that Huxley venerated Charles Darwin, he could
> see in the master's writings only a glimpse of what he himself needed for
> his own purposes. And in working to his own ends, Huxley was led to the
same
> consequences as Paul: a functioning system, but not that of the man in
whose
> name he worked and preached.
>
> Origin appeared at just that time in Victorian Britain when it was
necessary
> to transform the country from a rural-based, near-feudal society and to
fit
> it for an urbanized, industrialized future. There was need for reform
> everywhere: in the civil service, merit had to count, not connection. In
> medicine, doctors had to stop killing patients and start curing them. In
> education, learning had to be for today and not to glorify the past.
Huxley
> and his fellow reformers were in the thick of all this -- Huxley himself
was
> a college dean, served as a member of the new London School Board and on
> numerous royal commissions looking into the state of things.
>
> Correctly, Huxley saw Christianity -- the established Anglican Church
> particularly -- as allied with the forces of reaction and power. He fought
> it vigorously, most famously when he debated Samuel Wilberforce, the
Bishop
> of Oxford. (Supposedly, on being asked whether he was descended from
monkeys
> on his grandfather's side or his grandmother's side, Huxley replied he had
> rather be descended from an ape than from a bishop of the Church of
> England.)
>
> As a social reformer therefore, Huxley, known in the papers as "Pope
> Huxley", was determined to find a substitute for Christianity. Evolution,
> with its stress on unbroken law -- which could be used to reflect messages
> of social progress -- was the perfect candidate. Life is on an upwardly
> moving escalator. It has reached Victorian Britain. Who knows what glories
> and triumphs might lie ahead? Thus the vision of Saint Thomas -- something
> to be preached far and wide. Working men's clubs, popular scientific
> congresses, debating societies, university convocations were Huxley's
> Corinthians and Galatians.
>
> Indeed, recognizing that a good religion needs a moral message as well as
a
> history and promise of future reward, Huxley increasingly turned from
Darwin
> (who was not very good at providing these things) toward another English
> evolutionist.
>
> Herbert Spencer -- prolific writer and immensely popular philosopher to
the
> masses -- shared Huxley's vision of evolution as a kind of metaphysics
> rather than a straight science. He was happy to insist that even moral
> directives come from the evolutionary process itself.
>
> "Social Darwinism" (more accurately, Social Spencerianism) took evolution
to
> entail struggle and success for the few, and so the moral message was
> understood as enthusiasm for laissez-faire individualism. The state should
> stay out of the running of society, and the best should be allowed to rise
> to the top. Failures deserve their fates.
>
> Of course, there were differences between Social Darwinians. Socialists,
> Marxists and anarchists also justified their beliefs in the name of
Darwin.
> The point is that the harnessing of evolution to ends that were explicitly
> moral, even political, went on right through the nineteenth century.
>
> The even greater point is that it continued to go on right through the
> twentieth century. Evolutionary ideas were to undergo a great
transformation
> in the 1930s and 1940s, when a professional science of evolutionary
studies
> was developed -- a professional science which stood on its own legs by its
> own merits, having no need for an alternative career as secular ideology.
> But this secular ideology or religion hardly folded its tents and crept
> away. One of the most popular books of the era was Religion without
> Revelation, by evolutionist Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Henry. First
> published in 1927, the book was revised (for a second time) and reissued
in
> the 1950s.
>
> "All thought and emotion," Huxley wrote, even the highest, spring from
> natural mind, whose slow development can be traced in life's evolution, so
> that life in general and man in particular are those parts of the world
> substance in which the latent mental properties are revealed to their
> fullest extent." As always, evolution was doing everything expected of
> religion, and more.
>
> ---
>
> Today, professional evolution thrives. But the old religion survives and
> thrives right alongside it. Evolution now has its mystical visionary, its
> Saint John of the Cross. Harvard entomologist and sociobiologist Edward O.
> Wilson tells us that we now have an "alternative mythology" to defeat
> traditional religion. "Its narrative form is the epic: the evolution of
the
> universe from the big bang of fifteen years ago through the origin of the
> elements and celestial bodies to the beginnings of life on earth."
>
> Faithful to the oldest tradition of evolutionary theorizing -- reading his
> morality and politics into his science and then reading it right back out
> again -- Mr. Wilson warns us that we have evolved in symbiotic
relationship
> with the rest of living nature, and lest we cherish and preserve
> biodiversity we will all perish. Drawing on the dispensationalism of his
> Southern Baptist childhood, with the eloquence and moral fervour of Billy
> Graham, Mr. Wilson begs us to repent, to stand up and acknowledge our sins
> and to walk forward in the ways of evolution. We have but a short time,
else
> moral darkness will fall on us all.
>
> The language of Stephen Jay Gould is hardly more tempered. We learn that
> evolution "liberates the human spirit," that for sheer excitement
evolution
> "beats any myth of human origins by light years," and that we should
"praise
> this evolutionary nexus -- a far more stately mansion for the human soul
> than any pretty or parochial comfort ever conjured by our swollen
neurology
> to obscure the source of physical being."
>
> Mr. Gould ultimately rejects traditional readings of evolution for a more
> inspiring, liberating version: "We must assume that consciousness would
not
> have evolved on our planet if a cosmic catastrophe had not claimed the
> dinosaurs as victims. In an entirely literal sense, we owe our existence,
as
> large and reasoning mammals, to our lucky stars." If this is not to rival
> traditional Judaeo-Christian teaching -- with its central belief that we
> humans are not just random happenstances, but a major reason why God
created
> heaven and earth -- I do not know what is.
>
> What is the moral to be drawn from all of this? You might think that the
> time has come to save evolution from the evolutionists.
>
> Darwinism is a terrific theory that stimulates research in every area of
the
> life sciences. In the human realm, for instance, discoveries in Africa
trace
> our immediate past in ever greater detail, while at the same time the
Human
> Genome Project opens up fascinating evolutionary questions as we learn of
> the molecular similarities between ourselves and organisms as apparently
> different as fruit flies and earthworms. Surely this is enough.
>
> There is no need to make a religion of evolution. On its own merits,
> evolution as science is just that -- good, tough, forward-looking science,
> which should be taught as a matter of course to all children, regardless
of
> creed.
>
> But, let us be tolerant. If people want to make a religion of evolution,
> that is their business. Who would deny the value of Mr. Wilson's plea for
> biodiversity? Who would argue against Mr. Gould's hatred of racial and
> sexual prejudice, which he has used evolution to attack?
>
> The important point is that we should recognize when people are going
beyond
> the strict science, moving into moral and social claims, thinking of their
> theory as an all-embracing world picture. All too often, there is a slide
> from science to something more, and this slide goes unmentioned --
> unrealized even.
>
> For pointing this out we should be grateful for the opponents of
evolution.
> The Creationists are wrong in their Creationism, but they are right in at
> least one of their criticisms. Evolution, Darwinian evolution, is
wonderful
> science. Let us teach it to our children. And, in the classroom, let us
> leave it at that. The moral messages, the underlying ideology, may be
> worthy. But if we feel strongly, there are other times and places to
preach
> that gospel to the world.
>
> Michael Ruse is professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of
> Guelph. His next book, Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship
> between Science and Religion, will be published this fall.
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