Darwinian Fundamentalism

Last Thursday was the 200 anniversay of the birth of Charles Darwin, the intellectual progenitor of the theory of natural selection. Just about every mainstream publication's run some essay or another on Darwin's impact, for example, the New York Times, "Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential."

What's interesting to me about this latest round of "Darwinmania" is the rekindling of the politics of evolution versus divine creation; and as a "scientist" (a political scientist actually, trained in positivist ontological methods), folks might have wondered where I come down on all of this?

Well, as a believer in the essential compatibility of faith and reason, I'm not one to get too worked up about the conflicts between the science of national selection and the theological origins of man. It's a complicated thing, especially in terms of historical timelines (the natural life of the earth is said to be in the billions of years; the Biblical creation just a few thousand), although we can at least make reference to Stephen Jay Gould's doctrine of nonoverlapping magisteria, in which he argues that evolution is "both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief ..."

In any case, debates over religion and society have been particularly intense following last year's general election and the passage in three states of initiatives making marriage available to one man and one woman exclusively. Radical critics attacked people of faith mercilessly, and the left's meme is that "Christianists" have increasingly become the core cell of a "Talibanized Republican Party" (if that makes any sense ...).

In any case, here's a snippet from Stephen Jay Gould's 1997 essay, "Darwinian Fundamentalism":

I am amused by an irony that has recently ensnared evolutionary theory. A movement of strict constructionism, a self-styled form of Darwinian fundamentalism, has risen to some prominence in a variety of fields, from the English biological heartland of John Maynard Smith to the uncompromising ideology (albeit in graceful prose) of his compatriot Richard Dawkins, to the equally narrow and more ponderous writing of the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (who entitled his latest book Darwin's Dangerous Idea). Moreover, a larger group of strict constructionists are now engaged in an almost mordantly self-conscious effort to "revolutionize" the study of human behavior along a Darwinian straight and narrow under the name of "evolutionary psychology" ....

The radicalism of natural selection lies in its power to dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought, particularly the notion that nature's benevolence, order, and good design, with humans at a sensible summit of power and excellence, proves the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent creator who loves us most of all (the old-style theological version), or at least that nature has meaningful directions, and that humans fit into a sensible and predictable pattern regulating the totality (the modern and more secular version).

To these beliefs Darwinian natural selection presents the most contrary position imaginable. Only one causal force produces evolutionary change in Darwin's world: the unconscious struggle among individual organisms to promote their own personal reproductive success—nothing else, and nothing higher (no force, for example, works explicitly for the good of species or the harmony of ecosystems). Richard Dawkins would narrow the focus of explanation even one step further—to genes struggling for reproductive success within passive bodies (organisms) under the control of genes—a hyper-Darwinian idea that I regard as a logically flawed and basically foolish caricature of Darwin's genuinely radical intent.

The very phenomena that traditional views cite as proof of benevolence and intentional order—the good design of organisms and the harmony of ecosystems—arise by Darwin's process of natural selection only as side consequences of a singular causal principle of apparently opposite meaning: organisms struggling for themselves alone. (Good design becomes one pathway to reproductive success, while the harmony of ecosystems records a competitive balance among victors.) Darwin's system should be viewed as morally liberating, not cosmically depressing. The answers to moral questions cannot be found in nature's factuality in any case, so why not take the "cold bath" of recognizing nature as nonmoral, and not constructed to match our hopes? After all, life existed on earth for 3.5 billion years before we arrived; why should life's causal ways match our prescriptions for human meaning or decency?

I'll have more later, dear readers ...