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1 DARWIN AND GOD: WHY IS THERE A DISPUTE? All Saints Church, Clifton th 17 October 2009 2 INTRODUCTION We live in troubling times. If we are to accept the pronouncements of some commentators, there is an absolute and irreconcilable chasm between science and religion. For example, Richard Dawkins has written: The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things. Dawkins, and others, have driven a large wedge between religion and rationality, in attempting to force intelligent, thinking people to make a sharp choice. After all, the Universe and life were either created or they were not. The discoveries of science have demonstrated that many aspects of the Biblical account of creation are not literally true, and some might say it would be perverse, or sentimental, to try to keep a small corner in which God might operate. 1. Charles Darwin was not motivated by religious, or atheistic, ideas in publishing his books. 2. Evolution is as much a fact as the observation that the Earth rotates around the Sun. 3. Richard Dawkins has not disproved the existence of God. 4. Science is a powerful method that lies at the root of the modern comfortable, healthy, and wealthy world, but it cannot explain religion, art, or emotions. 5. Scientists need not be atheists. 6. American creationists have backed themselves into a corner of Mediaeval obscurantism, and they should not be allowed to impose untruths on education. But, first, what did Darwin actually say? DARWIN AND EVOLUTION ‘The Origin of Species’ has been identified as the greatest book of Victorian times, even as the most influential book of modern times. These grand claims are plausible because Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural This present-day philosophical tension echoes selection lies behind modern biology, the tension that existed 150 years ago, when agricultural science, medicine, anthropology, Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ was even sociology, political theory, psychology, published, on the 24th November, 1859. It is and many other intellectual fields. reported that, on being told its contents, the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, remarked: … my dear, let us hope that what Mr. Darwin says is not true. But, if it is true, let us hope that it will not become generally known. Disraeli doubtless had in mind commentaries from the time, including the famous cartoon of the defrauded ape, who says, rubbing his weeping eyes: "That Man wants to claim my Pedigree. He says he is one of my Descendants." Mr. Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals replies: "Now, Mr. Darwin, how could you insult him so?" In this talk, I would like to suggest a number of points: 3 It should be noted that Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution – that had been posited many times for over a hundred years. Evolution means simply ‘unrolling’ or change through time, and it is opposed to the immutability of species, the suggestion that species do not change and never have changed. Darwin made two major contributions to evolutionary thought in his book: (1) evolution occurs by natural selection; and (2) on longer time scales, all organisms are linked by genetic relationships into a single great evolutionary tree of life. Famously, his observations during the voyage of the Beagle in the 1830s showed him the need for such a tree-like vision of the large-scale pattern. would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones destroyed. On that date he drew a simple branching evolutionary tree in his notebook, based on his observations in South America and the Pacific islands. Thomas Malthus argued in his book Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) that human populations tend to grow far faster than their food supply, and Darwin transferred this concept to the natural world, seeing that reproductive rates are higher than they need to be. He noted, in South America, that the peculiar modern mammals – sloths, anteaters, and armadillos – had left extinct relatives in the rocks, giant fossil armadillos and sloths. Why, he asked, would these fossils occur uniquely in South America, where their current relatives live, unless they were in some way their ancestors? Further, and more famously, he noticed that the tortoises, plants, and finches on each of the islands of the Galápagos Archipelago showed significant variations. This geographic variation suggested to him that the species had diverged relatively recently as a result of having been isolated on each of the Galápagos islands for thousands of years. The vertical (or geological) and horizontal (or geographic) axes of the evolutionary tree were there before him. Darwin returned to England in 1836. Following detailed studies of all the specimens he had brought back, he began thinking about evolution. The night of September 28, 1838 was critical: it was then that he realized the So, Darwin’s first key insight was that life is missing piece of the evolutionary puzzle – more diverse than it ought to be if it had been natural selection. He wrote in his created and his second was that all species autobiography that, living and extinct can be linked in a single great evolutionary tree that shows their I happened to read for amusement Malthus relationships and that tracks back to a single on Population, and being well prepared to ancestor. appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes from long-continued But Darwin is remembered most for the observation of the habits of animals and principle of natural selection, a process that plants, it at once struck me that under explains the diversity of life and its branching these circumstances favorable variations history of relationships: only the organisms 4 best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated. Darwin made the case with remorseless logic, and this can be dissected into a series of clear statements: 1. 2. 3. 4. insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. Since 1859, Darwin’s theory of evolution has been confirmed in many ways that would have Nearly all species produce far more amazed him. Modern genetics, rediscovered young than can survive to adulthood and developed through the early twentieth (Malthus’ principle). century, provided the model of inheritance that The young that survive tend to be those Darwin sought. Further, modern molecular best adapted to survive (larger at birth, biology, dating from 1953 when James faster growing, noisier in the nest, faster Watson and Francis Crick discovered the to escape predation, less disease, etc.). structure and function of DNA, is purely Characters are inherited from parent to Darwinian. This insight provided the basis for offspring, so the characters that ensure essentially half of modern science, and survival (size, aggressiveness, speed, especially for applied areas of biochemistry freedom from disease, etc.) will tend to be such as pharmacology and agricultural passed on. science. If you use antibiotics or eat crops These survival characteristics will grown with pesticides or genetically modified, increase generation by generation. The then these result from modern evolutionary changes are not inexorable, so cheetahs biology. run fast enough to catch their prey, not at 2000 km per hour, because they do not Most convincing of all is that modern scientific have to and their bodies would fall to bits discoveries unimagined by Darwin confirm if they tried. older assertions. For example, the coding of complete genomes confirms the patterns of relationships in the tree of life worked out in Victorian times by the study of anatomy and fossils. Disturbing as it may be, we look and behave like chimpanzees because they are indeed our close relatives, separated by a common ancestor that lived 6 million years ago. That this is confirmed, any way you care to look at it, by essentially independent sources of data is as close to proof as one might hope for. Darwin was motivated to publish the ‘Origin’ because he was a scientist with a discovery to report to the world. He did not do it from loss of faith, loss of a daughter, or any other emotional reason, despite what has been Each of these points can be supported by any said, and very clearly in the wonderful film number of observations from the natural ‘Creation’. The timing of publication was world. Darwin’s Origin (1859) said it all, and doubtless affected by the arrival of Alfred he said it so well. In conclusion of this section, Russel Wallace’s manuscript on natural Darwin described natural selection in action: selection. Darwin wrestled with a proper course of action, and both essays, his and It may be said that natural selection is daily Wallace’s, were published at the same time. and hourly scrutinising, throughout the His book followed and everyone, Wallace world, every variation, even the slightest; included, saw this as entirely appropriate. rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and 5 Darwin was a conventional Unitarian and then Anglican, and he certainly lost much of his faith through his personal troubles and his scientific work. He was most comfortable to label himself an agnostic, a term invented by his younger supporter, Thomas Henry Huxley. Despite endless discussion, there is no evidence that Darwin was an atheist, nor that he converted back to Christianity on his deathbed, nor indeed that he would have seen it as proper or polite to discuss such things in public. Darwin would have been bemused with the causes to which his book has been put. In his lifetime, he refused Karl Marx’s generous offer to dedicate Das Kapital to him. Darwin was made the father of eugenics (survival of the fittest) and so was much admired by Hitler. Since 1859, Darwin’s name, and evolution in general, have been associated with scourges such as communism, fascism, racism, imperialism… even liberalism, homosexuality, free love, and drug-taking. I suspect Darwin would have disapproved of all of these – after all, he was a scientist seeking to explain the evolution of life. Doubtless he would have disapproved of the association of his name and thought with militant atheism as much as with modern creationism. 1. Creationists call on God when something is not yet understood by science – the ‘God of the gaps’ argument; and yet all arguments presented by creationists/ intelligent design advocates have been demolished. 2. All attempts to prove God’s existence by rational arguments have failed. 3. If there is a Creator, who created the Creator? 4. In the absence of alternative evidence, we should accept the simplest theory for the Universe (principle of Occam’s razor), and a Universe without a God is simpler than one with. 5. All (or nearly all) intelligent people, including essentially all Nobel prize winners, are (or were) atheists. 6. Religion can encourage bigotry, and has been behind most of the wars of the past. 7. It is perfectly possible for an atheist to be a good, moral, and fulfilled person. Let’s consider these in reverse order. The final point is self-evidently true. Jut as atheists and agnostics can clearly be moral and good people, so too can believers be complete monsters, lacking in morality and decency. Point 6 is also partly true: indeed, religions DAWKINS AND THE EQUATION, RELIGION can lead to bigotry and wars. However, = IRRATIONALITY Dawkins fails to clarify that, although, for example, the Crusades were ostensibly Richard Dawkins has made a clear case that religious wars, they were also about territory. scientists must be atheists. In his best-selling Most holy wars are about expanding the 2006 book The God Delusion, he argues that power of particular states at the expense of you cannot be an evolutionist and a Christian. others, and they may acquire a religious tenor to help rally the troops and to argue Of course, if Dawkins is right, the case is justification. It would be equally jejune to rather wider, and somewhat troubling: explain the evils of Stalin, Mao Tze Tung, and according to his reasoning, the dissonance other professed atheists, as simply, or mainly, between Christianity and evolution broadens a result of their atheism. Dawkins spends to a standoff between rational thought and some time discussing whether Hitler was an religion. In other words, if you understand the atheist or not: he concludes more or less that world as a rational place that is structured and he was a Christian, and so his evil fits the explained by the laws of physics, chemistry, pattern. and biology, then there is no place for Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other Point 5 could be debated endlessly and, in religion for that matter. any case, proves nothing. Nobel prize winners have generally kept a decent silence Let’s review Dawkins’ arguments in order, as about their religious beliefs – but even if all of presented in his book: them were atheists, this does not prove that atheism is right. 6 Dawkins lays great store by points 2 to 4, that God does not exist because His existence cannot be proved, because his existence is unparsimonious, and because a First Cause must be preceded by a pre-First Cause. After trailing the fact, in chapters 1-3, that he will disprove God in his Chapter 4, these are essentially the arguments. None is original, and none can be said to be decisive; nor in fact can any of these claims be flatly refuted. Further, of course, few would agree with Dawkins that the scientific method is the appropriate approach to proving or disproving the existence of God. Science deals with the concrete world around us and seeks to develop the best explanatory models (‘theories) in the realms of physics, chemistry, and biology. The scientific method cannot address miracles and beliefs, just as it cannot address superstitions, art, and personal passions and interests. The first point, that the creationists have been found out and refuted time and time again is broadly correct, and yet this is a sideshow to the core debate – but a fascinating side show that I propose to explore in a little detail here. WHAT IS SCIENCE GOOD AT? Science seeks to explain how the Universe works. As a method, it focuses on reductionism (reducing complex entities to their component parts, and focusing on those elements that are key in explaining the complexity) and rejection of hypotheses. It is commonly said that proof is only possible in mathematics; in other areas of science, evidence is sought that disproves a current ‘theory’. The word ‘theory’ is often misunderstood – it does not mean ‘chance conjecture’ or ‘hunch’, as it often does in common speech, but rather a model that seeks to explain a series of linked phenomena. So, the heliocentric theory is that the Sun is the centre of the solar system and Earth and other planets rotate around it. The heliocentric theory, thanks to Copernicus and Galileo, famously replaced the alternative, Geocentric, model or theory, that the Earth was the centre of things. Most scientists would equate the theory of evolution with the heliocentric theory in terms of its explanatory power and its resistance, so far, to disproof. Theories are open to disproof at any moment, but the longer they withstand disproof, the more they are accepted. Further, some theories, such as the two just mentioned, are rather broad in their implications, and so would require a rather astonishing set of observations to disprove them. Further, the disprover is expected to offer a more satisfactory theory that explains everything explained by the overthrown theory, and more. Often of course, theories in science are of practical import. Scientific theories lie behind all technological or medical advances: people fly to the moon using calculations based on the heliocentric theory, and resistance to antibiotics and pesticides is a result of natural selection among bacteria. These practical consequences tend to further bolster the acceptability of a theory. This is why it is so easy to enrage a scientist by saying, ‘Well, it’s only a theory’. As if the theory of evolution is equivalent to my theory that buses always come in threes because the drivers like to have a natter at the traffic lights. One is a model of how life works; the other is a hunch or notion. Science then works with theories or models, and these are founded on physical observations and measurements. Science therefore is not capable of testing the existence of God, nor indeed of any god. Further, science is not capable of explaining why Michelangelo was a great artist, or Bach a great musician, or why we don’t like some foods, or find certain jokes funny. In a commentary on the Dawkins affair, Alister McGrath quoted Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote that “science covers what the universe is made of and why it works this way”, and “religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value”. It seems that the Pope would agree. Pope Benedict commented earlier this year that ‘Darwinian evolution and the account of 7 Creation in Genesis are perfectly compatible.’ In an earlier statement, in 2004, he wrote: collected in Ohio around 1750 truly belonged to animals that had lived a long time ago, and that no longer survived in North America, even …the first organism dwelt on this planet in unexplored parts of the Rockies or in about 3.5 - 4 billion years ago. Since it has California. By 1830, most geologists were been demonstrated that all living organisms ready to accept that the Earth was on earth are genetically related, it is unknowably ancient, although nobody could virtually certain that all living organisms express that age, whether in hundreds of have descended from this first organism. thousands or millions of years. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. CREATIONISM Having found that Darwin was not an evil man, nor were his ideas, that Dawkins’ disproof of God’s existence was not convincing, that science can never fruitfully take over large areas of human thought, and especially religious thought, and in fact that the Pope accepts modern scientific evidence, where does that leave the creationists? Creationism is the firm belief that the Earth and life were created by God. In those terms, creationism can encompass a wide range of differing understandings, and yet this is sometimes forgotten because the noisiest creationists are sometimes startling illinformed and irrational. Creationism then was encapsulated in William Paley’s natural theology, that living things were astonishingly complex and, like a pocket watch, this complexity indicated the necessity of a Creator. Such views could be accommodated, however, against a long span of geological time and perhaps without Divine intervention all the time. This was consonant with deism, a theological position that arose during the Enlightenment. Deism holds that God does not intervene with the functioning of It is worth noting that modern, American-style, the natural world in any way, allowing it to run creationism represents a return to Mediaeval according to the laws of nature that he thinking, and that the current version arose configured when he created all things. really only in the 1960s. Theism, on the other hand, holds that God creates through evolution, and it can suggest Up to 1850, it is probably rather meaningless more constant Divine guidance of the laws of to talk about creationism from a modern nature, but need not. Theism represents the standpoint. Indeed before the Enlightenment, position of the Roman Catholic church, most there were many views on the age of the mainline protestant denominations, and some Earth and the origin of life. Up to 1750, few Jewish denominations. naturalists even understood or thought about the notion of extinct organisms – fossils were This was the world Darwin grew up in, and ‘sports of nature’ or simply archaeological opposition to his book came generally from remains of fishes and shells discarded by thoughtful people who held what one might Roman soldiers on the march. call a ‘liberal creationist’ position, a position that allowed an ancient Earth and varying The idea of extinction was accepted by 1800, levels of divine intervention. Indeed, at the when it became clear that the great bones of time of the Scopes Trial in Tennessee, in mastodons and mammoths that were 8 can hardly be said to be precise, nor even required by, or part of, the Bible.] As shown by Ronald Numbers in his study of modern creationism, the hardening of American creationism came in 1961, with the publication of ‘The Genesis Flood’ by Henry Morris. This was the first seemingly thorough scientific textbook made available to the creationist movement in America, and it was clearly a Godsend for them in their constant efforts to shoehorn creationism into the secular public school syllabus. Morris had become a Seventh-day Adventist, and a tenet of their belief was the literal truth of the seven days recounted in Genesis. Seemingly, this rather arcane viewpoint, peculiar to the Seventh-day Adventists, then became mainstream for bible-believing creationists. Fundamentalism and creationism go hand in hand, and 1925, the chief accuser, the famous they are powerful evangelist William Jennings Bryan, while forces in North denying evolution and especially that man America. From was descended from some lower kind of life, President George was not a biblical literalist, despite his claims. W. Bush He was an ‘old earth creationist’. So long as downwards - or creationists allowed a great age for the Earth, upwards - the then they could accept most of the findings of majority of science. Americans express some, or So why did creationists adopt the young-earth substantial, doubt position, that the Earth is 7000 years old? In about evolution. doing so, they are obliged to tussle constantly This is often with science: to deny radiometric dating, to expressed in terms deny prehistoric archaeology, to deny of ‘long-standing palaeontology, to deny geology, and many debates among others. This extraordinary hardening of evolutionists’ or a creationism has done religion no favours, and call for equal time. obvious criticisms of their Mediaeval world The first concern stems from the level of view can extend to criticism of all religion. creationist critique: there are as many debates among astronomers, physicists, and chemists. [Parenthetically, it worth recalling that the 7000-year-old Earth is nowhere quoted in the Debate about details is a constant in science, Bible, except in footnotes added to some and evolutionists must debate every issue in editions. James Ussher, Archbishop of biology and geology. No one however has Armagh, famously calculated in 1654 that the mounted a concerted campaign of literature Earth was created in 4004 B.C., later refined and web sites aimed at destabilizing the to 9 a.m. on October 26th, according to further principles of physics, astronomy, or chemistry. calculations by James Lightfoot – more or less The call for equal time seems reasonable, the beginning of teaching term at Cambridge more or less appealing to the principle of fair at that time. The calculations were based on play. There is a clear response: equal time for summing the ages of the patriarchs, and so what? What exactly is the body of knowledge 9 that will be placed in contrast with the literature of evolution? On the one hand are ten thousand books written since 1859 by professors around the world, and ten million articles from the refereed international scientific literature. On the other hand is… nothing; a small number of books and no refereed scientific literature - no experiments, no observations, no tests. All that exists on the creationist side are dog-eared copies of books by Steven Gould highlighted with yellow highlighting. The creationists love to pick holes and criticize, to seek expressions of uncertainty. “How old is the Earth?” “Oh, perhaps 4600 million years plus or minus 100 million years – we can’t say for sure because all the rocks were molten then and nothing has survived that we can date. The oldest datable rocks are 4030 million years old according to repeated independent radiometric tests.” “Aha, they don’t know what they’re talking about… so they’re wrong.” Of course, honest uncertainty and mistakes are a part of science. Piltdown man was a fake, but it was unmasked by scientists using new fluorine dating techniques, not by creationists. A theory, or model, in science is open to criticism, but cannot be rejected as an explanation of nature until a better theory is presented. As Michael Shermer, editor of ‘The Skeptic’ magazine has pointed out, if we offer equal time for creationism and evolution, what next? Geography and flat earth theories, chemistry and alchemy, astronomy and astrology? Modern creationism contends with two curiously American phenomena: the school boards, and secular public schools. The school boards are local, sometimes covering only five or ten schools, and they decided matters of syllabus and textbooks. In all other countries, such decisions are made at regional or national level. The local decisionmaking in the United States allows activists to insert themselves on school boards, and keep worrying at them, and so rational people must be ever alert to challenge any nonsense – not just creationism – that might be proposed in backwoods Arkansas or Georgia. An opposing irony is that the American constitution allows no religious teaching in the public schools, and so creationists have been forced to class their views as scientific. And this is their downfall of course. Whether called creation science, intelligent design, or sudden emergence, their views track back to Henry Morris’s Genesis Flood. They have to try to prove that the Earth is 7000 years old, that all the vast diversity of life on Earth – all 10 to 50 million species – somehow fitted on the Ark, and that fossils were all buried by the single Flood or that dinosaurs were on the Ark too. I’ll say a word on each of these notions before finishing. 1. The young Earth. To suggest the Earth was created 7000 years ago, at a time when the Mesopotamians were building irrigation systems, cattle were being herded in the Sahara, early Europeans were smelting bronze to make bowls and weapons, the peoples of Iran were making wine and storing it in wine jars, and the Jomon peoples in Japan were building longhouses and making figurines, is preposterous. 2. No room on the Ark. When the Old Testament was written, people knew probably only a few hundred species of plants and animals. Modern taxonomy has revealed nearly 2 million named species, and new species are being found all the time – most notably among insects – and projections suggest there are at least 10 million species alive on Earth today, perhaps as many as 50 million. Some creationists try to fit them all on the Ark, but most now posit that only a few hundred main ‘types’ were on the Ark. All the diversity we see today arose by rapid 10 evolution in the past 7000 years or so. The ‘types’ might be a core ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ that then evolved rapidly into lions, lynxes, leopards, and house cats on the one hand, and wolves, foxes, and domestic dogs on the other. As for the estimated million species of beetles, it’s not clear whether they evolved rapidly from one beetle type, or whether a few thousand beetles were fitted in somehow. As for freshwater fishes, or marine fishes – did they go on the Ark, or somehow change their osmotic systems to be able to survive in the homogenized waters during the flood? Why the carnivores did not eat the herbivores on the Ark, and whether plants were on board or not, is not clear. And as for parasites and disease vectors such as the AIDS virus, it’s a mystery. 3. Fossils. The young earthers have to suggest that fossils are ‘sports of nature’, the Mediaeval view, or that somehow all the fossil creatures, including dinosaurs, also somehow squeezed into the Ark. Pre-Darwinians had no problem with an ancient Earth and endless stages in the history of life, as organisms came and went. Modern American creationists have to squabble over all the modern evidence of geology and biology to sometimes ludicrous extents. Most astonishing is their claim of spectacular, enhanced rates of evolution in the last 7000 years, after the Noachian deluge. CONCLUSION Modern American Creationists are throwbacks to a pre-scientific time, and their current views are as preposterous as those of the flatearthers. It is disappointing that they are moving rapidly towards irrationality when there is no apparent need. Disappointing for two reasons. First, they represent a large proportion of the American population, and they could devote their evident energy to more useful topics, and especially to allowing young people to be educated appropriately. Second, they make an easy target for attack by atheists who can set them up as ‘typical’ Christians and then associate all believers with their outlandish views. The spread of fundamentalism in Christianity, and now sadly in the Moslem world, hardens attitudes and does not improve dialogue and humanity. As has been said by many wise commentators, there is no conflict between science and religion. For the present, I’d rather side with the Pope than with Morris or Dawkins. Michael J. Benton October 2009