Evolution and religion today - A brief outline of some current debates between evolutionary science and the Christian religion.

This is a short essay on a very complex subject, so I have put in links to sites which give background information. Before you read any further you might  like to know what my position is: I agree with Einstein when he said: ‘Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind,’ even though I am not attached to any religious organisation.

The Beginning of an Argument

Charles Darwin wasn’t the first person to mention evolution, the concept had already been discussed in pre Christian times by Lucretius, and more recently by Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin and Robert Chambers. When Darwin published ‘The Origin of Species’ in 1859, a debate on whether man was created by God in his image as the Bible describes, or whether humans developed from other animals, was already in full swing. Most people now see no point in arguing about this, they see the story in Genesis as a myth, a way of showing the truth, not something to be taken literally. It’s understood in the same way as we understand the myth of Oedipus, it’s not something that really happened but a story that tells the truth in poetic terms. To call a story a myth is not to deny its power or truth; indeed the well-known zoologist E. O. Wilson, in his book ‘On Human Nature’ wrote ‘ the evolutionary epic is the best myth we will ever have.’ Creationists, on the other hand, claim that the story of creation in the Bible is not a myth but a scientifically sound alternative to evolution. So it seems that some scientists want evolutionary science to have the power of myth, and creationists want their religion to have the power of science. It looks as though they are trying to take over each other’s territories. Is this territorial dispute a final skirmish in an old battle, or are the arguments set to continue indefinitely?

Before I try to answer that question I’ll begin by looking at the relationship between evolution and religion since Darwin’s time. In the ‘Origin of Species,' Darwin produced powerful evidence to support his theory that species adapted and changed by a process that he called natural selection. Stephen Jay Gould, in an essay ‘Boyle’s Law to Darwin’s Revolution’ (in 'Evolution Society Science and the Universe’ edited by A.C.Fabian) makes the point that Darwin’s mechanism of adaptation (natural selection) is an inversion of natural theology, as described by Boyle and later Paley.  In his book ‘Natural Theology’  Paley set out to prove that our beautifully designed world must have had a designer, God. Gould points out that ‘For Boyle, adaptive design represents the direct handiwork of a caring God; for Darwin, the same phenomenology emerges as a side-consequence of a causal principle ... namely, a struggle among individual organisms for personal reproductive success.’

This turning upside down of the argument for a creator was unsettling to Church leaders. They were further disturbed when Thomas Huxley, in promoting Darwin’s theory, opposed not only the literal interpretation of Genesis, but also the power of the church. Adrian Desmond, in his biography ‘Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest’ quotes Huxley as wanting to see: ‘the foot of Science on the necks of her Enemies’ , which he considered to be theology and ‘parsondom’.

The philosopher Herbert Spencer added fuel to the fire by applying Darwin’s biological theory to sociology. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who thought up the phrase, ‘survival of the fittest’ and he, not Darwin, who decided that the principle should be applied to society. His ‘social Darwinism’ was especially popular in the USA. Mary Midgley in 'Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears' , highlights the antisocial attitudes of its followers. She relates how one of Spencer’s followers said that nothing could be done about political corruption in New York, which the rich ignored when it suited them, because ‘ it’s all a matter of evolution’. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the objections of Christian fundamentalists to evolutionary science are strongest in the USA. Social Darwinism is now discredited, largely because it was associated with the horrors of Nazism.

 Current Debates in Evolutionary Science

Socio-biology, which aims to explain society with reference to the biological features and evolutionary history of human beings, is both fashionable and controversial. Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain our psychology through evolution. It postulates that as our genes do not have appeared to have evolved since man was a hunter gatherer in the African plains, it follows that our behaviour is still formed by the strategies that would have been most successful in that hunter gatherer society. The enthusiasts do not seem to be deterred by the fact that we can know virtually nothing about the structure of this society, or that there is no proof that behaviour is mainly controlled by genes. The sociologists Hilary and Steven Rose have collected and edited a book of essays: ‘Alas Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology,' that oppose this extension of evolutionary theory to Psychology.

Genetics, which was not understood in Darwin’s time, is now intensively studied, and recently the structure of the human genome has been mapped out. It’s also become clear that mapping is only the prelude to a fuller understanding and that genetic mechanisms are much more complex than was first thought. Traits such as intelligence almost certainly involve complex interactions between a number of genes and the environment.

Conflict is often seen as the main driving force of evolution, but co-operation may also be important. Lynn Margulis in ‘The Symbiotic Planet: a New Look at Evolution’ expands the idea of symbiosis, a close association between species. She put forward the theory (now accepted) that a merger between three bacteria, an archebacterium that became the cell nucleus, an oxygen breathing microbe that became the mitochondria, and a green photosynthetic bacterium that became the chloroplast, gave rise to the first eukaryotic cell. All plants, animals and fungi are made up of eukaryotic or nucleated cells, and we are therefore the product of this ancient fusion of separate organisms. Margulis argues further, that: ‘most evolutionary novelty arose and still arises from symbiosis.' She collaborated with James Lovelock to develop the Gaia hypothesis. Margulis affirms that: ‘the planet’s surface is geophysical: it displays the attributes of a living body composed of the aggregate of Earth’s necessarily interactive life.’

Kevin Laland and John Odling-Smee, in an article titled ‘Life’s Little Builders’ in the New Scientist of 15 November 2003, have given the theme of interaction another twist. They believe that what they call 'niche construction' is an important factor in evolution of species and of the environment. Evolution usually conjures up the picture of an animal or plant adapting over time to their environment, but they point out that the activities of all living things bring about changes in the environment ‘Plants change levels of atmospheric gases, modify nutrient cycles, engage in chemical warfare, promote forest fires, create shade and alter wind speeds. Fungi decompose organic matter, weather rocks and extract minerals. Even bacteria and the simplest single-celled creatures leave the world in a different state from how they found it, through decomposition, photosynthesis, nutrient modification or by initiating ecological processes to colonise new environments' They go on to note that often nature seems so harmonious and co-ordinated that some have wondered whether ecosystems are super organisms. They believe Lovelock’s metaphor of earth as a living entity, Gaia, could be explained by niche construction: ecosystems could be seen not as super organisms but as constructions created by the collective activities of the living things: ‘The impacts of niche construction thread entire ecosystems, binding them together - which explains their impressive structural and functional integration and underlies the illusion that they are alive.’

Niche construction uses mathematics to model the complexities of the evidence, but the laws of mathematics are also involved in evolution at a more fundamental level. Ian Stewart in ‘Life’s other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World’ makes the case that everything that grows, from flowers to trees to leopards, has growth patterns shaped by mathematics, nothing has unlimited freedom to be any shape. ‘Life is founded on mathematical patterns of the physical world. Genetics exploits and organises those patterns, but physics makes them possible and constrains what they can be.’

Darwin believed that natural selection was the main driving force for adaptation, but he did not believe that it was the only force. So Darwin’s evolutionary theory can easily be extended to accommodate symbiosis, the interactive nature of all life, and the possibilities and constraints of physical and mathematical laws.

Not everyone however, believes in extending evolutionary theory in these directions. A group known as ultra-Darwinians vociferously insist that priority must be given to adaptive explanations and to genetics. Richard Dawkins, in ‘River Out of Eden: science, delusion and the appetite for wonder’ affirms that genes make us, and genes are selfish, genes hijack our bodies to ensure their own survival. He writes ‘We - and that means all living things - are survival machines programmed to propagate the digital database (the gene) that did the programming.’ Dawkins’ ultra-Darwinist message is bleak and Godless: ‘The universe 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.’

It is difficult for most people to be comfortable with the idea that life has no meaning. Faith has given meaning to many people’s lives but the ultra-Darwinist philosopher, Daniel Dennett thinks that we should not blindly accept old beliefs. In ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ he writes that ‘A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes.’ Can and should religion evolve? There has undoubtedly been reinterpretation, even by the ultra traditional Roman Catholic Church. Pope Pius accepted evolution in the 1950s, while cautioning that the theory was not ‘certain doctrine,' but in October 1996 Pope John Paul II went further and declared that ‘fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a Hypothesis.’

This recognition of the theory of evolution doesn’t please the creationists. They believe that belief in evolution will end up by throwing the baby out with the bath water, the baby in this case being a belief in God. Some ultra-Darwinists would say the filthy bath, polluted by lies and the blood of religious feuds, must be emptied, and there’s no baby in it anyway. Many people though, who are not creationists, also believe there is a baby, and that we should rescue and cherish this divine baby.

The philosopher John Cottingham, in ‘On the Meaning of Life’ points out that evolutionary science has been interwoven with interpretation ‘the view of religious thought as something that is superseded ... by the march of science is ... very evidently a meta thesis - a claim that operates at one remove from science itself.’ He goes on to offer the explanation that ‘the scientist offers an account of how things happened ... and then it remains a separate, (and so far open) question whether the events and processes can reasonably be interpreted as manifesting the power and purposes of a divine creator.’ In other words, scientists who say there is no transcendental baby in the dirty bath water have no scientific evidence for this pronouncement, and ultra Darwinists speak as preachers when they declare that God doesn’t exist.

Mary Midgley has as the central theme of ‘Evolution as a Religion’ ‘the distortion that afflicts science when it is put into the place of religion’ . The theologian Karen Armstrong, in her book ‘The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam’, commenting on Creationist Science, writes ‘once theology tried to turn itself into science it could only produce a caricature of rational discourse, because these truths are not amenable to scientific demonstration.’ Seen from these writers’ perspectives, the confused extremists on both sides are doing no favours to their causes. They are acting as foolishly as an Inuit driving a sled would be if he exchanged clothes with an Australian riding a surfboard.

Misguided and power hungry fundamentalists on both sides undoubtedly aggravate the tensions between evolutionary science and religion. If it was possible to persuade religious and scientific fundamentalists to abandon their unsustainable dogmas, and if theologians and scientists could then be separated by a philosophical wall, then the quarrels might end. Even if these unlikely events were to take place, I believe there would still be something wrong. Concepts may need to be studied separately to make things clear, but if I look at my own experience, the absolute separation of science and religion appears unnatural. When I see a living thing, a dragonfly for instance, all my perceptions of it: its form and movement, an awareness, though scientific knowledge, of its nature and evolution, and spiritual feelings of awe, delight etc., mix naturally together in my mind.

The philosopher Simon Critchley has an interesting discussion on scientism in ‘Continental Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction.’ He defines scientism as ‘The conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of knowledge, but must identify knowledge with science’. Critchley considers that: ‘Scientism rests on the fallacious claim that the theoretical or natural scientific way of viewing things provides the primary and most significance to ourselves and our world.’

The claim that knowledge must be identified with science has been put forward by E. O. Wilson. In ‘Consilience: ‘The Unity of Knowledge’. In this book he argues that we can explain everything in the world through an understanding of natural laws. Although Critchley rejects this claim he also warns against the rejection of science: ‘worries about scientism can develop into an anti scientific attitude. This is the risk of obscurantism. In my view, the two poles that are to be avoided in philosophy are scientism and obscurantism’

Critchley defines obscurantism as the rejection of an explanation by referring to another causal story which is essentially occult. I believe that the disputes that erupt on when scientists and Christians take up antagonistic and dogmatic standpoints could be seen as battles between scientism and obscurantism.

He writes of  ‘relearning to see the world in all its palpable and practical presence,' and explores the idea of ‘unveiling a pre theoretical layer’ of human experience. I found this illuminating. I could understand that both scientific knowledge and spiritual ideas of significance are secondary to just being in the world, and to seeing the world and the things in it, the dragonfly for instance, just as it is. Science can tell me more about the dragonfly, and the sense of awe can fuel religious feelings, but science and religion both came after the primary experience of simply being in its presence. Occasionally, I've felt that just being can be illuminating.

I felt an echo of this feeling on reading John Steinbeck’s ‘The Log from the Sea of Cortez’ . This is an account of a collecting expedition along the gulf of California with his friend Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist. Near the end of their voyage, in the log for 30 March 1940, he writes of how experiencing the teeming life of all the animals they had seen illuminated his view of the world. He writes of all life as being relational; ‘life meets and enters what we think of as non life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air... And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling that we call religious, most of the mystical out crying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Steinbeck is being very provocative when he links these apparently very different people together, arguments could run for ever on whether this is an outrageous idea or whether it hints at a basic truth.

The  reductionist scientists would get rid of Jesus, and  the creationists would remove Darwin, and they'd both be absolutely certain that they were right. I believe that scientific fundamentalism is as bad as the religious variety, and they are both bad  because they both believe they are right. Certainty and conviction are often seen as good, but  they often lead to the development of dangerous dogmas. I agree with the geneticist Steve Jones, who, in his book ‘In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny’, writes that ‘conviction kills the search for truth,' and ‘Science is above all the art of the uncertain’. He writes about Goethe’s Faust, which he sees as profoundly ambiguous, ‘It affirms that life’s greatest danger lies in certainty. The history of genetics shows that a certainty based on science is the most dangerous of all.’

Fundamentalists of any sort who are certain that they have the answers close their eyes to the dynamic complexities and ambiguities of life. If the fundamentalist scientists were to persuade everyone that there was nothing else to know in the world but science, or the religious fundamentalists were to persuade us all to throw out the findings of science, I believe that, as Einstein suggested, we'd be either blind or lame. A victory for either side would damage everyone.

So I believe the arguments are not a problem, they are the answer: the best option is to continue the arguments for ever, and to accept that while our understanding may increase it is impossible to state the truths of both science and religion completely and unambiguously for all time. The struggle between science and religion is part of the struggle to reach the truth; the debates between and within evolutionary science and religion are debates on the nature of the world which will go on for as long as humans struggle to understand the world and themselves.

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