Darwin "Replaced God?"
by JoyKrauze drew attention to a BBC documentary in his blog Intelligent Design on BBC's Horizon, to which I'd begun a reply that got way too long. So I'm posting this separate blog to make a point about the BBC's own claims about their documentary, and to tie that into psychological studies about the apparently innate nature of religious-type beliefs in the human psyche. First, some issues and questions about the BBC documentary:
The promotional blurb on BBC's 'Horizon' website betrays an ideological bias that obviously doesn't belong just to reporters, but indicts a certain segment biology itself, or at least indicts the way it's sold to the public. This sets up a historical review I'll post in this blog, and introduce the psychological studies in a follow-up post.
Paragraph 4 from BBC: To its supporters, intelligent design heralds a revolution in science and the movement is fast gaining political clout. Not only does it have the support of the President of the United States, it is on the verge of being introduced to science classes across the nation. However, its many critics, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, fear that it cloaks a religious motive "“ to replace science with god.
Operative concept: "fear" that ID intends to "replace science with god."
Paragraph 1 from BBC: When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day "“ that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.
Operative concept: Darwin "replaced god with science."
Now, this is an odd conceptualization even though we do know that Darwin personally fretted quite a bit over the religious implications of his theory to certain interpretational factions of the dominant faith of his era. Though the fact is, natural selection (Darwin's formalized concept) was always an uncontroversial factor of life and death on planet earth effecting the geneology of future generations. People have been practicing selection on purpose for livestock breeding ever since animals were first domesticated. So how could the idea of natural selection "replace" God? Obviously, it did not.
Variation is uncontroversial as well. Variation has always been the fodder humans have used to facilitate purposeful selective breeding. No "modern science" necessary to grasp the facts, thus no religious tradition arising from among human populations who had known about (and purposefully used) variation and selection as part of their normal lives would have denied them. I have never heard of one that did, so the attempt to re-write history on this point is transparent. Organismic variation upon which selection acts to accomplish organismic change over time has never been controversial enough to "replace" God in the psyche of humanity.
So what was Darwin's dangerous idea that BBC insists "replaced" God? It could only have been the idea that one species gradually turns into another, thus challenging the idea that God zapped creatures into being as-is and they never change. But was that belief ever a serious tenet of the great monotheistic tradition arising from the ancient Middle-East? Answer: No. Such a literalist belief has never held predominant sway in Judeo-Christian theology, in Darwin's time or any other time in the entire history of monotheism (Jews didn't take their creation mythologies literally, so 'orthodox' Christianity didn't either).
[Warning: theological historical background to follow]…
Biblical literalism - and specifically the holding that the first chapters of Genesis are a literal description of absolute scientific fact - is a recent development in Christianity, and it has never represented a majority view. For ~1300 years after Christianity gained power enough in the Roman Empire to avoid mass martyrdom, the faith was highly monolithic. Tenets were defended zealously against heretical interpretations by the absolute power to kill anyone who appeared to hold alternative beliefs.
None of the tenets so jealously defended included literal Genesis, since for all that time the actual scriptures were unavailable to the general public and individual interpretations were discouraged on pain of death. Why? Consensus view of biblical historians is that the fathers and priesthood were concerned that if the scriptures were available to the rank and file it would be impossible to prevent individual interpretations. And if individual interpretations were allowed, the church would explode in a thousand different directions. A concern that in hindsight seems wholly justified.
So we see that the historical developments that led to splintering of the Christian faith into those thousand different directions did enable the anti-authoritarian rise of the Baptist concept of a "Priesthood of Believers" positively encouraged to interpret scripture for themselves. And that this inevitably developed into the peculiarly unorthodox belief that the separate oral traditions recorded in Genesis I and II (Hebraic creation mythologies) are a literal and scientific description of divine creation. Which, aside from being anti-realist, also ignores the meticulously recorded discrepancies in the differing tribal accounts.
So while there has never been Christian theological consensus on the Hebraic creation mythologies being literal/scientific accounts, lilteralism is the only splinter of Judeo-Christian tradition that could ever have been seriously threatened by a scientific theory of origins postulating variation and selection as mechanisms for organismic change over time.
So. Why do we see BBC and other media - as well as entire contingents of Dawkins-ists - still claiming that the idea of evolution somehow "replaced God with science" when that claim is very obviously predicated upon a scarecrow [straw man]?
Why do we see the BBC engaging in this sort of confrontational propaganda, when the fact is that the state religion of Britain is Anglican (which is not and never was literalist/Baptist)? Heck, the Baptists were persecuted in Britain so severely they came to America to escape it! Most perplexing of all, why is 'science' (or, particular outspoken, anti-religious scientists claiming to "speak for science") using a particular, sectarian interpretive peculiarity to make a grand claim against the whole of religion/spirituality itself?
In follow-up I'll introduce a psychological study blogged about over on Cognitive Daily published in 2004 that concludes certain religious/spiritual beliefs are NOT acquired through social learning, which suggests they may come standard with human equipment. Stay tuned! 
January 27th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Dave Munger of the Cognitive Daily blog offers an interesting analysis of recent research in a post entitled When you die, do you know you're dead?
This research, conducted by Jesse Bering and David Bjorklund and published in Developmental Biology in 2004 [40(2), 217-233], compared reactions to a puppet show depicting a mouse getting eaten by an alligator, as established by questions asked afterward of the test subjects - pre-schoolers, elementary age children, and college students. Munger explains -
"The questions were designed to examine six different aspects of death: biological ("Will he ever need to eat food again?"), psychobiological ("Is he still thirsty?"), perceptual ("Can he see where he is?"), desire ("Does he still want to go home?"), emotional ("Does he still love his mom?"), and epistemic ("Does he know that he's not alive?"). The experimenter was careful to make sure that all participants understood that the mouse was truly dead — that he didn't somehow escape or remain alive inside the alligator. Several of the questions were prompted by the story of the puppet show (the mouse is lonely and lost in the forest; he's hungry and thirsty, and thinking about how much he loves his mom and is angry with his brother. Then he hears a rustling in the bushes, and … now the alligator's caught himself a tasty snack!). The experimenter was careful not to scare the children, and didn't actually directly mention death, instead saying "Baby Mouse is not alive anymore." None of the children, who were as young as three, appeared at all disturbed by the puppet show or the questions."
Without comment about whether this sort of thing is particularly age-appropriate material for 3-year olds, I'll just cite Munger's description of the researchers' conclusions -
"Bering and Bjorklund argue that these data suggest it is likely that beliefs in an afterlife are not acquired through social learning. If they were, then we would expect less discontinuity, particularly at the emotional and epistemic levels, as children aged — just as older children and adults do acquire stronger beliefs about biological and psychobiological explanations of death. In a separate experiment, where more questions of this nature were asked, older elementary children showed significantly more discontinuity on both emotional and epistemic questions. The ultimate question this line of argument raises, perhaps, is whether higher levels of education about the biological and psychological implications of death would ever be able to supersede all belief in the afterlife."
Beliefs about afterlife beliefs are NOT acquired through social learning? My goodness! What does this suggest about the range of religious/spiritual beliefs humanity holds so stubbornly to despite what BBC says about Darwin having "replaced God with science?" More pertinent (to my mind), what does it say about BBC's expression of scientists' fear that ID is out to "replace science with God?"
Just this past November E.O. Wilson once again expressed his opinion in New Scientist. Which is no different than it's ever been, Wilson being another of those notorious religion-haters who uses his scientific position to evangelize his scientistic faith. I'll let him finish this blog, asking readers to keep in mind the researches that have established that spiritual beliefs and even experiences appear to be hardwired [by evolution?] in human beings, and consider the outstanding questions raised in my previous post, as to why evolutionary biology - specifically as Darwinism/NeoDarwinism (to the point of putting his own ideological ideas into Charles Darwin's head) is being used as a weapon against what is known to be true about human nature. -
"So, will science and religion find common ground, or at least agree to divide the fundamentals into mutually exclusive domains? A great many well-meaning scholars believe that such rapprochement is both possible and desirable. A few disagree, and I am one of them. I think Darwin would have held to the same position. The battle line is, as it has ever been, in biology. The inexorable growth of this science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faithbased religion.
Rapprochement may be neither possible nor desirable. There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
Religions continue both to render their special services and to exact their heavy costs. Can scientific humanism do as well or better, at a lower cost? Surely that ranks as one of the great unanswered questions of philosophy. It is the noble yet troubling legacy that Charles Darwin left us."
Comment by Joy — January 27, 2006 @ 7:26 pm
January 28th, 2006 at 1:11 am
I think it is clear that at least some of the anti-ID crowd have their own metaphysical axe to grind in this debate!
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 28, 2006 @ 1:11 am
January 28th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Hi, Matthew. The metaphysical axes of deliberately offensive people like Dawkins and Wilson are of course obvious. What gets me is how they manage to sell their weapons to other scientists AS a form of spirituality/morality [metaphysics], and then sell the press on the idea that this metaphysics *is* science.
It's a corruption of science IMO. And notice that what Wilson says about religion being divisive and dangerous is precisely where he wants to go with his own brand of "scientific humanism!" Seems not even he and Dawkins can manage to escape the 'natural' proclivities of human nature. All they can do is name it after themselves and become evangelists in the standard mold.
Worse, they're flat-out lying about what it is that Darwin formalized. The real challenge didn't come from Darwin's mind, since variation and selection were (as I pointed out) entirely uncontroversial. It came from Neo-Darwinism, which was formulated in the 1930s after Mendel's ignored work was 'rediscovered' and reliable particulate inheritance had to be incorporated into the evolutionary picture. And it came with the entirely arbitrary, ideologically tainted qualifier of "random" to describe organismic adaptation. Something very much anti-Darwinian, since Darwin's own view of variation was quite Lamarckian.
It seems clear to me that the ideological/metaphysical corruption was well in place by the '30s, and predictable, reliable inheritance had to be minimized in order to maintain the "science replaced God" lie. We've been suffering the clash of "Dueling Metaphysics" ever since, engaged by intelligent design by people like Dawkins and Wilson, et. al.
Comment by Joy — January 28, 2006 @ 11:08 am
January 28th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Joy,
That's an excellent sideline about the history of the literal interpretation of Genesis. I'm Eastern Orthodox and my Church for the most part holds to the ancient view that Genesis is a story that shows us why the Universe, life and Man were created, not when and how. I occasionally get in discussions with modern evangelicals who hang their faith on a literal interpretation of the creation story. They have no authority or Tradition outside the literal text to show them the real purpose of a book like Genesis, and yes this is a modern development as you said.
Ironically, the radical Darwinists and evangelical Christians may have a similar mindset based on scientism: There can be no truth at all in a story unless it is literally true in every way, especially on the issues of "when" and "how". It's doubly ironic when we know that scientific work is so often based on the creation of imperfect models that are supposed to explain a larger truth, and that Christians (be they evangelicals or others) accept Christ's parables as a way to understand larger truths.
Comment by Stuart Harris — January 28, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
January 28th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Hi, Stuart! I'm glad you weighed on on 'orthodoxy', because there's some confusion about this among the DarwinDefenders for sure!
My Dad was Presbyterian, Mom was Baptist. My childhood was spent going to the base chapel, where the Jewish chaplain held sway on Saturday, the Catholic chaplain had early Sunday mornings, and the Protestant chaplain got late Sunday mornings. My godparents were Jews, my best friends growing up were almost all Catholic or Jewish.
I married a Presbyterian. His parents and grandparents were deacons and elders, and I got to learn all about who invented parliamentary procedure (and theology-by-vote). I've attended the General Assembly a few times with him, and never cease to be amazed at how it works, or how seriously the delegates take matters of policy and conscience. They'll argue for days on end about the "and's," "or's," "thus's" and "therefores in any official position statement going out to the churches, and it's always entirely likely that some of the churches are going to complain about it come next GA.
My husband's brother, 8 years younger and the religious 'black sheep', is a Baptist preacher. Has his own church and everything, is a truly inspiring and spirit-filled man. I told a joke at one General Assembly that although little brother is one of the most inspirational guys I've ever known, he's always peppering his sermons with requests for the congregation to "Amen" his statements (apparently a Baptist thing). They dutifully comply.
"I never 'Amen' anything," I told the delegates. "I want to know precisely what you mean by that, how it applies in situations X, Y and Z, and how you plan to word it when it comes up for vote!" Got big laughs.
These brothers' passionate arguments (occurring every few years when they see each other) are famous! And we're always left to sigh and feel sad when we come home, because there's just no getting through the brick wall of ideology to remind little bro' that he used to be a real human being with real friends and real concerns and real desires. And yes, even real sins.
The literalist position is so blatantly absurd (whether you're religious or not) that I was forced to go looking at documented history, and at the analyses of actual theological historians. My husband was literally physically attacked in a college class one day for giving a report on the two different Hebraic tribal mythologies recorded in Genesis I and II, giving his opinion about why Moses (and/or his scribes) determined to record them both as-is for all of posterity despite their contradictions with each other.
For that analysis, he relied somewhat on my experience with my godparents and best friends when they were in Torah school. They were taught to view the recording of discrepant oral traditions in the Torah as the most truly inspired aspect of their history. Not only did it establish that the ancient tribes had very similar conceptions of the WHY, they were prevented from the literalism error by the very discrepencies themselves! That always made great sense to me.
Too bad Christian literalists can't see the truth.
I know this blog isn't about arguing religion or religious views. I gave the theological history because it's 'important' in the ID versus RM-NS debates to understand that die-hard Neodarwinists are every bit the biblical literalists that Baptists and some other fundamentalist Christians are. They believe they've defeated the strawman, and have erroneously extended that to mean they've "replaced God" for all of humanity. Worse, they expect all of humanity to believe their error is big-t Truth!
In my opinion, they have not and never will "replace God" either for literalists or for anyone else. The very idea that this is their goal renders their 'science' to be nothing of the sort. One need not be a Christian or even religious to see this.
Too bad the great majority of scientists can't see the truth. Or, at the very least, that they don't speak out forcefully against the corruption in their midst.
Comment by Joy — January 28, 2006 @ 5:16 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 2:42 am
Hey Stuart,
I also was an Eastern Orthodox most of my life. My mother, Jewish and raised atheist, converted to Catholicism at 18. My father was Irish Catholic, and I was the 5th baby in 5 years. My Catholicism was short-lived. So we went to a teeny church filled with ancient prerevolutionay Russians. I think I was the youngest child and how I loved those little, round baked and blessed breads! The priest always had one hiding for me in the pocket of his black robes after church, or if not, I ran to his house and got one from his wife.
When my mother-in-law died, my English friend came to her funeral. They liked one another because they could both speak French. She and her husband appreciated the finer things in life, and frequented the classical music concerts. They were atheists. I love classical music myself, but there is nothing, I think, which compares to the beauty of the Russian funeral service and she was absolutely stunned. She stood next to me (no pews! the freedom!) and kept saying over and over, "I can't believe how beautiful this is. I had no idea."
Yes, it's a shame to betray so beautiful a woman, but so it goes. Now I belong to no religion and none can contain me. I have become a Holy Spirit radical.
But as to the topic. First, there's the problem that science, to a certain group, is not just about discovery, but is a means of escape from a detested worldview. The exclusion of God is the basis upon which they are building a new worldview, one which gets shivers of excitement from contemplating the indifferent and mindless universe, without goal or direction. For them, consciousness research and the dreaded ID could spoil everything. Actually, it's surprising they get away with their pretense of being primarily scientists when they so often find the need to say such things as that they have replaced God. They give themselves away.
And the thing is, the atheist materialist reductionists, and the Biblical literalists aren't so far apart as they seem. They're rather close to each other, and even make frequent conversions, one to another. The Biblical literalists have a shallow faith, as all unexamined beliefs must be, and so they keep their God contained in little boxes of their own making. And the scientists, too, keep their awe in check by reducing this whole amazing, intense unimaginable reality that we find outselves in to just matter.
Yeah, it's interesting, Joy, that many neoDarwinists seem to avoid a minute examination of their system in a similar way that Biblical literalists do. But the similarities are to be expected; when one group exists as a reaction to a prior group, their fundamental approach to life will be the same, and only the window dressing will differ. That is also of course the source of their hypocracy, using tactics so similar to those the Church once used to enforce dogma and punish the wayward.
Comment by onething — January 29, 2006 @ 2:42 am
January 29th, 2006 at 11:45 am
joy,
Okay, you should have known that I'd have to reply to your above post.
"The literalist position is so blatantly absurd (whether you're religious or not) that I was forced to go looking at documented history, and at the analyses of actual theological historians."
Hogwash. There is nothing absurd about the literalist position (that is, that the Genesis Creation account, particularly, is literal and literal history).
"My husband was literally physically attacked in a college class one day for giving a report on the two different Hebraic tribal mythologies recorded in Genesis I and II, giving his opinion about why Moses (and/or his scribes) determined to record them both as-is for all of posterity despite their contradictions with each other."
Sorry to hear about his attack. Were they red-necks, driving a Ford pickup truck with Kansas license plates? (You never know.) (By the way, I am not implying that his or your claim in this is anything like Mirecki's.) Anyway, there is no contradiction whatsoever between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 that a little careful and unbiased thought wouldn't easily reconcile - that is, any seeming contradictions are entirely superficial, and not actual.
"For that analysis, he relied somewhat on my experience with my godparents and best friends when they were in Torah school. They were taught to view the recording of discrepant oral traditions in the Torah as the most truly inspired aspect of their history. Not only did it establish that the ancient tribes had very similar conceptions of the WHY, they were prevented from the literalism error by the very discrepencies themselves! That always made great sense to me."
Astounding. The "most inspired" aspect of the history of God's people (since it is assumed that history was relayed only orally) is a claimed contradiction right at the beginning of the account? God certainly works in mysterious ways.
"Too bad Christian literalists can't see the truth."
Hah. It's too bad non-literalists go to such lengths to argue away what is eminently clear and logical, just so that they can deny aspects of the Bible that offend them or those they seek to impress. Or so it seems to me from my experiences dealing with non-literalists. Tell me: Did Jesus consider Adam to have been a literal human being? Did the Old Testament treat Adam as the first in the human family tree? Do the genealogies of Matthew and Luke act as though Adam was an actual human being, and the originator of Jesus' lineage? If Adam was a literal human being, and the first in the human lineage, would this not argue for a LITERAL understanding of the Genesis Creation account in its entirety?
"I know this blog isn't about arguing religion or religious views. I gave the theological history because it's "˜important' in the ID versus RM-NS debates to understand that die-hard Neodarwinists are every bit the biblical literalists that Baptists and some other fundamentalist Christians are."
Not exactly. The "die-hard Neo-darwinists" do not seek a logical, rational understanding of the Bible, but rather seek to interpret it in any way which would seem to undermine its authority. They will argue that the Bible teaches a "flat Earth", that the Sun orbits the Earth (and is carried in a chariot), and other such un-Biblical, non-validly literal, things. Biblical "literalness" consists in interpreting the Bible contextually, and straightforwardly where the context allows. The Genesis Creation account is quite clearly intended to be taken literally, and all valid scientific evidence supports the accuracy of its literal meaning.
There is no valid scientific evidence that the Earth is any more than a few thousand years old. And there is a mountain of valid scientific evidence which indicates it is only several thousand years old. And, if you choose to bring up the issue of starlight, I would merely ask you if you know what "relativistic time dilation" is.
Comment by Douglas — January 29, 2006 @ 11:45 am
January 29th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Douglas, I included the theological history in order to point out that people like Dawkins and Wilson are as literalist as anyone. You can't change the history just because you personally reject it. In the end you may be right and everyone else wrong. But your interpretations of scripture are not something you can (or should) expect science to validate for you.
I did not mean to offend you, so I do apologize for expressing my opinion that literalism is "absurd." I could have chosen a less inflammatory word. My husband was attacked by a girl in his class, while he was giving the report. He wasn't hurt, she was pulled off and taken elsewhere to cool down. So the entire class got a good lesson in how violent literalists can be when they encounter what historians have to say. I have not heard that they tend to get so upset when they encounter what science has to say, but you never know.
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2006 @ 2:32 pm