Darwin on religion

From The Descent of Man, Chapter 3: “There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travelers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea. The question is of course wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.”

At first blush this may suggest that Darwin believed in God, however I think one must read it quite another way. Darwin is in fact quite careful not to say that he believes in God, but merely that “some of the highest intellects that have ever existed” stated that God exists. This statement is of course true, but is only of historical validity. Darwin himself does not affirm that God exists, nor that he believes it.

He goes on to write, “Nor is it difficult to comprehend how it [belief in spiritual beings or religion] arose. As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally crave to understand what was passing around him, and would have vaguely speculated on his own existence. As Mr. M’Lennan has remarked, ‘Some explanation of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself, and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the force of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess.’”

In other words, man explains that which he doesn’t understand by ascribing to these phenomenon spiritual or mental life. As Feuerbach noted, man is not created in the image of god, but god in the image of man. Of course once we begin to understand these things scientifically, the religious or spiritual interpretation is no longer necessary.

Darwin continues a bit further on: “The belief in spirtutal agencies would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods. For savages would naturally attribute to spirits the same passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affection which they themselves feel.”

Further, “The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Nevertheless, we see some approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master…”

In case one missed it, Darwin is here comparing the belief in God with the devotion of a dog for his master.

Continuing, “Professor Braubach goes so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as on a god. The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs,” such as human sacrifices and witchcraft. “[I]t is well to occasionally reflect on these superstitions, for they shew us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge….These miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals.”

I find very little to disagree with in this analysis, though certainly more could be said about the sociology of religion. While Darwin is careful here to draw a line between the higher forms of religion and backward superstitions, the line he draws is actually quite fuzzy. He properly places monotheism along the continuum of various kinds of superstition, and he clearly indicates that reason and science undermine these superstitions.

Mayr, Darwinism and anticreationism

In discussing the definition of Darwinism, Mayr (in One Long Argument) cites one defnition of "darwinism as anticreationism." He writes as follows:

“This is the Darwinism which denied the constancy of species and, in particular, special creation, that is, the separate creation of every feature in the inanimate and living world. There were two very different groups of anticreationists. The deists maintained a belief in God but made him a rather remote lawgiver, who did not interfere with any specific happening in this world, having already arranged for everything through his laws. Whatever happened during evolution was the result of these laws. The thought made evolution palatable to a number of Christian scientists such as Charles Lyell and Asa Gray. However, only transformational evolution—the orderly change in lineage over time, directed toward the goal of perfect adaptation—is susceptible to this deistic interpretation. Darwin’s variational evolution, with its random components at the level of both genetic recombination and selection, cannot be instrumented by strict laws. The agnostic anticreationists explained all evolutionary phenomena without invoking any supernatural agents.” (94).

There is a very important point being made here for those who would argue that evolution and religion are perfectly compatible. What religious person, let alone a Christian, would really accept that the human race may never have come into existence? What sense, even metaphorically, can one make of such statements as man was created in the image of god, if one accepts that man was not only not created by god, but that he was not even a necessary product of evolution? One can see the possibility for theoretically reconciling the concept of transformational evolution with religion—the human race is the inevitable product of the working out of god’s laws. But in what way can one reconcile Darwin’s theory of evolution with religious belief?

There is indeed a direct conflict between the teachings of science and evolution and the beliefs of religion, a fact that is indeed obvious but many scientists would still deny. There is a certain intellectual dishonesty involved in attempting to claim that religion and science can peacefully coexist. In fact, any religious concept that is not completely vacuous comes eventually into direct conflict with scientific explanations. One is left simply with the idea that maybe god exists, but “he” has no effect on anything, is unobservable, and therefore has no relevance—that is, he is a vacuous concept, devoid of all content. For once one posits some content, then this content can be explored, and refuted, scientifically. For some reason I imagine that there are very few religious people who would accept this concept of god, and if they do then they have ceased to become religious in anything but the name.

Darwin the atheist

Mayr also notes, "In order not to hurt the feelings of his friends and of his wife, Darwin often used deistic language in his publications, but much in his notebooks indicates that by this time [1836-1839] he had become a 'materialist' (more or less equivalient to an athiest)." Yes, very good Mr. Darwin! Scientists today would do well to adopt more openly an athiest position, and fight for it too (even at the risk of offending the wife or husband). See my previous post on the question of science and religion.

Ernst Mayr and essentialism

Ernst Mayr was probably the greatest evolutionary theoretician of the 20th century, in my opinion. He had a grasp of the deep philosophical questions involved in the theory of evolution that went beyond any other biologist I have read. I am currently reading his wonderful book, One Long Arugment: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought. One of his most important contributions, I think, was his emphasis on the significance of the conceptual revolution introduced by Darwin, and in general his recognition of the importance of concepts in history of science (contrary to the positivists, the greatest scientific advances come not from the discovery of new facts, however important this may be, but through the introduction of new conceptual frameworks to encompass these known facts).

Mayr quotes Darwin (who, by the way, was also quite the theoretician, with a wide knowledge of philosophy): "About 30 years ago there was much talk that geologists ought to observe and not to theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel pit and count the pebbles and describe the colors. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service."

Perhaps Darwin's greatest theoretical contribution was the mortal blow that he delivered to essentialist, or typological, thinking in biology, both across time (through the theory of evolution) and at any given time (through his emphasis on variation and natural selection as the mechanism for evolution). Evolution, which of course Darwin did not invent, postulates the transformation of one species into another. Darwin helped do away with any conception (and there were such conceptions) that this process of evolution occurred in spontaneous jumps from one species to another. The change from one species to another is gradual (and this is true regardless of what one makes of punctuated equilibrium), which undermines the idea of a hard and fast species. How can one say when a species ends and another begins? There are no sharp lines, and therefore one cannot speak of the essence of a species. A species is a dynamic, not a static, concept. "The sharp discontinuity between species that had so impressed John Ray, Carl Linnaeus, and others was now called into question by a continuity among species." (Mayr, pg. 20).

Perhaps even more significantly, the theory of natural selection has at its core the concept of variation. Within any given species, there is constant variation, with natural selection being "the preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations" (Darwin). Mayr notes that essentialist thinking dominated western philosophical thought going back centuries, with the prototype being Plato's eide. By placing variation at the center of his theory (rather than variation as an imperfection, as a deviation from the ideal), Darwin further undermined the concept of absolute categories ("yes, yes, no, no and the devil take the rest!").

The species concept as developed by Darwin is truly a unity of difference. There is an objective reality to the concept of the species, which can be defined in a number of different ways, but often in terms of populations of organisms that can breed with each other and produce fertile offspring. However, within the species there is difference; and there is no ideal type to which members of the species can be measured. It is this unity of difference which is the foundation of evolutionary change, of movement.

An interesting question to explore is the relationship between essentialism and idealism. Basically, essentialism posits an absolute type, which has a greater reality than the individual representatives of this type, these representatives being only more or less perfect expressions of the type, of the ideal. Essentialism therefore places the word before the world ("In the beginning was the word"), the ideal or idea before and above matter. It is thus at its root an idealist philosophy. This is another way to look at the hostility of religious thinking (which is always in one way or another rooted in idealism) to evolutionary thinking, and in particular Darwinism.

Death and warming

Citing an article coming out in Nature today, the Washington Post reports, "Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030." Of course, the impact of climate change will be felt most directly by the most vulnerable sections of the world's population, leading to increased rates of diseases such as malaria and ailments such as diarrhea and malnutrition--conditions that are as prevalent as they are only because of the shameful level of social inequality that exists throughout the world.

The Post notes further, "Just this week, WHO officials reported that warmer temperatures and heavy rain in South Asia have led to the worst outbreak of dengue fever there in years. The mosquito-borne illness, which is now beginning to subside, has infected 120,000 South Asians this year and killed at least 1,000, WHO said."

Earlier this month, Climate Change Futures, a project set up by the Harvard Medical school, issued a lengthy report on the health, ecological and economic effects of global warming. A summary of the report stats that "warming and extreme weather affect the breeding and range of disease vectors such mosquitos responsible for malaria, which currently kills 3,000 African children a day, and West Nile virus, which cost the United States $500 million in 1999. Lyme disease, the most widespread vector-borne disease, is currently increasing in North America as winters warm and ticks proliferate." The report is limited in many ways, reflecting the interests of one of the partners in the project, the insurance company Swiss Re, however it has a few useful articles on the health effects of global warming.

Of course, this should also be considered in light of Hurricane Katrina. There is much scientific evidence that the intensity of hurricanes and perhaps also their frequency will increase as the temperature warms. This past hurricane season was the most intense in history, with a record number of "named" storms (reaching into the Greek alphabet for the first time ever) as well as the most intense hurricane ever to be recorded in the Atlantic. See my retro post, which deals with this subject. And also here is another article on Hurricane Katrina and global warming.

And what about the record tornado season in the midwest? I haven't read anything on the subject yet, but I would not be surprised...

Religion and science

A question arises as to whether religion is compatible with science. Creationists argue, or at least believe, that science undermines religion. Are they right? In a word, yes. This is not something that many liberal opponents of intelligent design, and other forms of pseudo-science, want to hear. Typical is the following statement, from a post on Panda's Thumb:

"This statement [by a creationist] confuses scientific knowledge with metaphysical belief, and in doing so it creates a false dichotomy between the idea that something can be explained by natural causes and the idea that something was caused by God. Millions of Christians and other religious people do not accept this dichotomy because they believe that God acts through natural causes."

And further:

"This argument is the Wedge in action: if you are really for God you will reject science. However, this argument is proven false by the religious beliefs of millions who do not believe that causes are either natural or 'designed,' but rather believe that both nature and God are involved because God acts through natural causes: many agree with St, Augustine that 'nature is what God does.'"

How to make sense of such a statement? What does it mean for God to act through natural causes? If the term God is to have any meaning at all, it must refer to something supernatural, something outside of the law-governed process of material development at all its different levels (physical, chemical, biological, social, etc.). Otherwise, the term God is vacuous, for it refers to nothing other than nature itself. This is of course the God of Spinoza, which is to say no God at all. When ordinary people speak of God, they mean a supernatural being, which is associate with such things as the (supernatural) act of creation; the provisioning of divine grace; the worker of (supernatural, unexplainable) miracles; the bearer of the immortality of the soul. If God is none of these things, he is nothing. All one has left is the convenience (or comfort) of the term, which rational and thoughtful people would do well to cast away.

But the minute that one accepts the idea of a supernatural being, something acting outside of natural law, one undermines the foundation of all science. Any scientific explanation can be held to be true only insofar as one accepts that it is possible for science to arrive at the truth through a rational examination of natural law. If a being is taken to exist that operates outside of this law, then science can make no claim to truth.

Here, many would like to make the distinction here between "philosophical naturalism" (or "metaphysical naturalism") and "methodological naturalism." For example, we have the following from the book, The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney:

“Philosophers of science distinguish between ‘methodological naturalism’—sciences’ procedural approach to studying nature by assuming that continuous causal processes occur without supernatural intervention—and ‘philosophical naturalism,’ the atheistic conclusion that the supernatural doesn’t exist at all. Methodological naturalism can be justified on purely pragmatic grounds—it works. Indeed, it allows researchers of all religious beliefs to meet on common ground. Philosophical naturalism, in contrast, goes beyond scene into the realm of metaphysics. Science, which studies only the natural world, can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural or God. And wisely, it doesn’t try…The truth is that science isn’t necessarily at war with religion at all, although the ID movement certainly does seem to be at war with modern science.”

Thus the idea is that science assumes, for entirely pragmatic purposes, that there is no God, however it makes no philosophical claim to the non-existence of God. The problem is that one can make no claim to truth on this basis. According to this logic, science may work ("methodological naturalism can be justified on purely pragmatic grounds"), but that doesn't mean that it is true. Evolution may well explain the history of life, however...things might just as well have been put here by God. With this sort of argument, one simply opens the door half way to religious nonsense. One can only claim that evolution and all science contains truth if one accepts what is here called "philosophical naturalism" but what would be better termed--materialism; if one accepts that there is no god. Thus science undermines religion. Very good. Let's be done with religion.

Darwin on ID

From his Autobiography:

"The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance the beautiful hinge of bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic being and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows."

Note, "the old argument of design"--the ID people pretend like they are coming up with something new, when really they are simply rehashing arguments for the existence of God that have been around for centuries; and, thanks mainly to Darwin, are now thoroughly refuted.