Darwinism as a religion and the courts

And what rough beast, his hour come round at last
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats, "Second Coming"

The effort to recast Darwin as a religious man, more religious in fact than the common run of Christians and other believers, in the runup to the bicentennial of his birth is well under way in many quarters:

Darwin counted himself an agnostic, but in his reverence for the creative agency of nature we should count him a devoutly religious man. "There is a grandeur in this view of life," he famously wrote on the last page of The Origin of Species. The grandeur of which he spoke of has more of the divine about it than did the anthropomorphic idol who occupied the thoughts of his contemporaries.

This musing by Chet Raymo (April 22, 2007) is a typical encomium. Go here, here, and here for examples of ridiculous hagiography whose authors take it all quite seriously. For intolerance, unreasoning fanaticism, and belief in miracles, there is no religious bunny anywhere like the serious Darwinist.

But recently, my attention was attracted to Lifetime: Songs of Life & Evolution a musical by British composer David Haines, with somewhat catchy songs, sung by people "with a mission to spread the good word about evolution."

There are tributes to scientific thinkers like Richard Dawkins ("I'm a selfish gene and I'm programmed to survive") and the occasional evolutionary insight ("Water does for trees what my blood does for me"). The performance concludes with "Four Billion Years," an appeal for humans to honor our evolutionary heritage by preserving diversity.

It's unclear whether The Scientist reviewer Isani Ganguli (April 27, 2007), who promises that "The family that sings (about evolution) together, stays together" understands that "somewhat catchy" is damning with faint praise. But that doesn't really matter as much as it would with other musicals. The MIT performance, and/or others like it, stands a good chance of being fronted to captive school audiences, expected to applaud. Which raises an interesting question.

Despite the fact that Darwinists insist that their concerns are secular, it is painfully obvious that a religious agenda lies at the heart of Darwinism: As the creation story of a new materialist religion, Darwinism is advanced with missionary fervour in settings that are neutral and secular in name only. And its ablest exponents are hostile to the free exercise of other religions.

Now, if you ask what would happen if the courts got involved, two different answers must at present be given.
Read the rest here.

Thinkquote of the day: Cardinal Schonborn on Darwnism

Regular readers of this space will know that I try to keep up with the Catholic Church’s growing awareness of Darwinism, as the creation story of materialism. Here are some brief excerpts from Christoph, Cardinal Schoenborn’s thoughts on the subject, as published in First Things. Schonborn is the Pope’s point man on the Catholic Church’s response to this problem:

... armed with a richer understanding of the nature and limits of modern science, we must reexamine the genuine science at work in Darwin’s theory and its developments, and begin to separate it from ideological and worldview-oriented elements are are foreign to science. Darwin must be disentangled from Darwiism; modern evolutionary theory must be freed from its ideological shackles.

To do this, people must be permitted to exercise criticism rooted in fact against the reductionist and ideological aspects of Darwinism. A truly liberal society would at least allow students to hear o fthe debate between anti-teleological theories and those scientists and philosophers who defend teleology in nature.

Hmmm. I’m not sure that Darwin himself can be freed from the shackles of Darwinism, but His Eminence is, of course, welcome to try. Anyway, I think the discussion that Cardinal Schonborn envisions could happen in a Catholic school in my city (Toronto) and would be valuable there. But I would give no good odds on it for a public high school here. given that no value system other than administrative correctness or a current edu-fad can really be given priority. And we can be reasonably certain that the great philosophers are not a current edu-fad.

Anyway, later, he says,

An oft-cited remark by [key Darwinist] George C. Simpson runs: “Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that does not have him in mind. He was not planned.” If Simpson had said merely that no plan according to which mankind came about may be discerned using the purely quantitative-mechanical methods of scientific inquiry, then this assertion could be correct. But this way of looking at things - this “self-limitation of reason,” in the words of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address - is not “given by nature” but is a deliberate, methodological, and eminently goal-oriented choice.

Note that Schonborn says “could be correct”, not “would be correct.”

There is, of course, a critical distinction here. If science is applied materialism then, by definition, no evidence can ever be discovered that points to purpose or design because any other explanation, no matter how ridiculous, is - by definition - to be preferred, and ignoring contrary evidence and persecuting those who bring it forward or express doubt about a materialist consensus.

(Note: You have to buy a subscription to view Schoenborn’s First Things article just now (a good value, I may say); it doesn’t go into free archives for a couple of weeks.) For a good introduction to a Catholic understanding of evolution, go here.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

Animations of life inside the cell, indexed, for your convenience.

My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design. My reviews of movies relevant to the intelligent deisgn controversy.

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment will be accepted if I think they contribute to a discussion. For best results, give your name or some idea who you are and why we should care. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

The relevance of Darwin mythmaking to ID

In a comment to one of my posts of yesterday at Uncommon Descent, on the popular myths (and ridiculous hagiography) around Darwin, someone responded, "I am not seeing the ID relevance of this article."

Really not? Okay then, let me unpack it. When I started covering the ID controversy in depth (about 2002 onward, while writing By Design or by Chance?), I quickly became aware that the Darwin myths were the single most important reason why - irrespective of any evidence whatever - average educated people could not imagine that Darwin and his heirs might be mistaken in their interpretation of the history of life.

Indeed, Darwinian evolutionist Douglas Futuyma picked up that current when he wrote in the 1998 edition of his textbook,

Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism…

Yes, you see, Darwin is right up there with Einstein - where Freud and Marx also used to be - as one of the guys who explained it all for you.

Now, obviously, one consequence of materialist apotheosis (becoming a materialist divinity) is that you can't be wrong even when you obviously are. Miracles are ascribed to you or allegedly done in your name. The people who oppose you are evil, and are hatching wicked plots against the righteous elect who believe in you.

Now, religious sects in North America often behave in this fashion. But they do not often demand what the Darwinists have demanded and so far got - that all children be legally compelled to learn their dogmas (and only their dogmas) at taxpayer expense in publicly funded schools. Had the American elite not already been sold on the religion of materialism, materialism's creation story (Darwinism) would certainly not have attained this status in biology classes. And there is now no longer any question that the materialists do mean to found a church.

Slowly, materialists are succeeding in their effort to establish their church as the national religion. And, just as a sociologist of religion might predict, the vigorous Christian sects of North America, Catholicism and evangelicalism, are blowing the materialists off but the dying liberal ones are accommodating them.

Now, how does this affect ID? Well, in the present environment, any scientist who says, "My data better fit a hypothesis of the workings of nature that includes design than one that does not" is essentially either an infidel or a heretic. Thus, the question is not whether his data provide useful information but whether we should burn or drown the faithless wretch.

In my own view, most educated people will not evaluate the question of whether design is an intrinsic part of nature in a reasonable way until the dubious Darwiniania is shown up for what it is - dubious mythmaking and inappropriate hagiography. The Darwin bicentennial is a good place to begin.

(Note: A couple of years ago, I was discussing an obscure question with a fellow science journalist who confided that his personal reverence for Darwin stemmed from the fact that Darwin was a "moral" atheist - thus demonstrating that an atheist could be moral.

I was a bit surprised because I apprehended for the first time the yawning gulf between his life experience among the elite and mine among the unwashed.

I'd never doubted that a Christian could be moral. That's just expected. But the typical serious Catholic aspires to be a saint, which ratchets the bar up considerably higher. Even so, John Paul II was declaring people saints and blesseds all the time. (The typical serious Protestant aspires to a similar status, though expressed somewhat differently.) In other words, the problem was never whether morally praiseworthy behaviour is possible in principle but whether one really intends to follow the many virtuous examples oneself.)

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Public Darwin myths slammed by science historian

Here's how Cambridge's Jim Enderby's review of some recent Darwin books begins:

On the morning of November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species made its first appearance and the world changed forever. An age of faith was plunged into profound religious doubt, and believers of every kind rose to pronounce anathema on Darwin’s godless tract, sparking a fresh battle in the long-running war between science and religion. But while the reactionaries raged, the scientific community soon came to accept natural selection, and the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work in 1900 (which marked the founding of modern genetics) set the seal on Darwin’s triumph by providing the missing piece to his puzzle – a scientific understanding of just how inheritance works.

Unfortunately, everything in the previous paragraph is nonsense, apart from the Origin’s publication date (and even that is wrong in Morse Peckham’s recently reissued variorum edition, which claims it was November 26).

Well, there's not only mythmaking, there is ridiculous hagiography, and more to come with the bicentenary of Darwin's birth coming up. So it's good to see some books exploring the reality that contradicts the nonsense.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

Brazilian protests AAAS chief’s misrepresentation of Brazil’s Protestants

Recently, American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan I. Leshner wrote a fairly typical piece of bumph for a Kansas paper, Let fact and faith coexist outside schools , equating doubts about Darwinism with trying to introduce religion into the school system. He warns,

Pressures are mounting to introduce nonscientific, anti-evolution rhetoric into science classrooms, alongside well-supported facts about life's origins.

(Origins? About life’s origins, as opposed to its development over time, there are in fact no well-supported theories. There is a huge variety of poorly supported ones. But let’s let that pass for now.)

Each time one of these boffins bloviates, it becomes clearer that Darwinism is the religion of the school system. That is the fundamental reason why questioning it is so controversial. As I said in By Design or by Chance?, Darwinism—whether true or false scientifically— is the creation story of atheism. It enables you to account for life without design. If it is true, fair enough, but if you are not allowed to question it, you will never know whether it is true.

Anyway, Leshner goes on to say,

The United States is not alone in these struggles. In Brazil, where the country's Protestant evangelical population has undergone a fivefold increase since 1940, creationists have ramped up efforts to combat the teaching of evolution.

Enezio E. de Almeida Filho writes from Brazil to reply,

Can someone correct Leshner's misstatement about Brazil? It is true that evangelical protestants have undergone 'a fivefold increase since 1940', however they have no relevant impact upon Brazilian society -- culturally speaking they are kind of 'second class' citizens [kind of pariahs] and have a hard time to have a say in important cultural issues, and remain mostly 'sociologically unseen' or unwanted by the rest of our society. These creationists haven't 'ramped up efforts to combat the teaching of evolution'.

Leshner should do his homework better: the Brazilian scenario is totally different from the 'cultural warfare' in the United States -- the only church openly promoting creationism in Brazil since its inception is the Seventh Day Adventist Church, a very small Christian denomination in Brazil. But even this very small segment of Protestants hasn't 'ramped up efforts to combat the teaching of evolution' but to 'teach the controversy'.

Give me a break, Leshner, these little creationists are no threat to you nor Darwin!

Thanks Enezio. But remember, Leshner is not interested in Brazil’s second class citizens. he is only using them as a bug-a-boo to frighten his fellow science boffins. Getting it right about the Brazilians would spoil the fun. What is he going to say, after all? That people in Brazil are beginning to doubt Darwinism because it is doubtful?

To find out more about my book on the intelligent design controversy, go to By Design or by Chance?

Darwinian evolution as a religion

Philosopher of science Michael Ruse argues, in a forthcoming book, that Darwinists have largely themselves to thank for the current opposition to Darwinism:

“Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University, occupies a distinct position in the heated debates about evolution and creationism. He is both a staunch supporter of evolution and an ardent critic of scientists who he thinks have hurt the cause by habitually stepping outside the bounds of science into social theory. In his latest book, ''The Evolution-Creation Struggle,'' published by Harvard University Press later this month, Ruse elaborates on a theme he has been developing in a career dating back to the 1960s: Evolution is controversial in large part, he theorizes, because its supporters have often presented it as the basis for self-sufficient philosophies of progress and materialism, which invariably wind up in competition with religion.”

and,

“All told, Ruse claims, loading values onto the platform of evolutionary science constitutes ''evolutionism,'' an outlook that goes far beyond the scientific acceptance of evolution as a means of explaining the origins and development of species. Provocatively, Ruse argues that evolutionism has often constituted a ''religion'' itself by offering ''a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans,'' while its proponents have been ''trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.'”

In my experience, Ruse is right. For example, the single most ridiculous thing about Darwinism is the hagiography of Darwin. Darwinists, to listen to them, never suggest that their Great Master’s theory might have flaws, as all theories do; they are careful to make clear that Darwinism anticipated absolutely everything, even when it didn’t. When I wrote By Design or by Chance?, I had trouble getting used to that. It’s so unlike science and so like a cult. But, come to think of it, that’s because — ya think? — Ruse is right ... ?