The Darwinian Controversy and the Nature of Humanity
The Darwinian Controversy and the Nature of Humanity
One of the most vigorous debates within modern Christian thought concerns the implications of Darwinism for religious belief – above all, the theological status of human nature. Traditional Christian theology regarded humanity as the height of God's creation, distinguished from the remainder of the created order by being created in the image of God. On this traditional reading of things, humanity is located within the created order as a whole, yet stands above it on account of its unique relationship to God, articulated in the notion of the imago Dei (see pp. 327–9). Yet Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) posed an implicit, and The Descent of Man (1871) an explicit, challenge to this view. Humanity had emerged, over a vast period of time, from within the natural order.
If there was one aspect of his own theory of evolution which left Charles Darwin feeling unsettled, it was its implications for the status and identity of the human race. In every edition of the Origin of Species, Darwin consistently stated that his proposed mechanism of natural selection did not entail any fixed or universal law of progressive development. It was not an easy conclusion for Darwin, or for his age. The conclusion to The Descent of Man speaks of humanity in exalted terms while insisting upon its “lowly” biological origins:
Figure 14.1 Charles Darwin (1809–82).
Source: Elliott & Fry Photography Studio (1863–early 20th century)/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities [...] still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
Most Darwinists would insist that it is a corollary of an evolutionary worldview that we must recognize that we are animals, part of the evolutionary process. Darwinism thus critiques the absolutist assumptions concerning the place of humanity within nature that lie behind “speciesism” – a term introduced by Richard Ryder (born 1940) and given wider currency by Peter Singer (born 1946), currently of Princeton University. This has raised considerable difficulties beyond the realm of traditional religion, in that many political and ethical theories are predicated on the assumption of the privileged status of humanity within nature, whether this is justified on religious or secular grounds.
So what are the Christian responses to Darwinism? It is now a century and a half since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. During that time, at least four categories of response have emerged, each of which will be considered briefly below.
Young-Earth Creationism
This position represents the continuation of the “common reading” of Genesis, which was widely encountered in popular and at least some academic writing before 1800. On this view, the earth was created in its basic form between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Young-earth creationists generally read the first two chapters of the book of Genesis in a way that allows for no living creatures of any kind before Eden, and no death before the Fall. Most young-earth creationists hold that all living things were created simultaneously, within the timeframe proposed by the Genesis creation accounts, with the Hebrew word yom (“day”) meaning a period of 24 hours. The fossil records, which point to a much greater timescale and to the existence of extinct species, are often understood to date from the time of Noah's flood. This viewpoint is often, but not universally, stated in the forms of a 144-hour creation and a universal flood. Representative young-earth creationists include Henry Madison Morris (1918–2006) and Douglas F. Kelly.
Old-Earth Creationism
This view has a long history and is probably the majority viewpoint within conservative Protestant circles. It has no particular difficulty with the vast age of the world, and argues that the “young-earth” approach requires modification in at least two respects. First, the Hebrew word yom may need to be interpreted as an “indefinite time participle” (not unlike the English word “while”), signifying an indeterminate period of time which is given specificity by its context. In other words, the word “day” in the Genesis creation accounts is to be interpreted as a long period of time, not a specific period of 24 hours. Second, there may be a large gap between Genesis 1: 1 and Genesis 1: 2. In other words, the narrative is not understood to be continuous but to make way for the intervention of a substantial period of time between the primordial act of creation of the universe and the emergence of life on earth. This viewpoint is advocated by the famous Schofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909, although the ideas can be traced back to writers such as the earlier nineteenth-century Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847).
Intelligent Design
This movement, which has gained considerable influence in the United States in recent years, argues that the biosphere is possessed of an “irreducible complexity” which makes it impossible to explain its origins and development in any method other than intelligent design. Intelligent design does not deny biological evolution; its most fundamental criticism of Darwinism is teleological – that evolution has no goal. The intelligent-design movement argues that standard Darwinism runs into significant explanatory difficulties which can only be adequately resolved through the intentional creation of individual species. Its critics argue that these difficulties are overstated, or that they will in due course be resolved by future theoretical advances. Although the movement avoids direct identification of God with this intelligent designer (presumably for political reasons), it is clear that this assumption is intrinsic to its working methods. The movement is particularly associated with Michael Behe (born 1952), author of Darwin's Black Box (1996), and William Dembski (born 1960), author of Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology (1999). Both Behe and Dembski are fellows of the Discovery Institute, Seattle.
Evolutionary Theism
A final approach argues that evolution is to be understood as God's chosen method of bringing life into existence from inorganic materials and of creating complexity within life. Whereas Darwinism gives a significant place to random events in the evolutionary process, evolutionary theism sees the process as divinely directed. The roots of this approach can be found in Augustine of Hippo, particularly in his exegesis of Genesis 1–2 and his use of the idea of “seed-bearing reasons” within a providentially directed process of cosmic development (see pp. 197–8). Some evolutionary theists propose that each level of complexity is to be explained on the basis of “God working within the system,” perhaps at the quantum level. Others adopt a “fully gifted creation” perspective, arguing that God built in the potential for the emergence and complexity of life in the initial act of creation, so that further acts of divine intervention are not required. The English biochemist and theologian Arthur Peacocke (1924–2006) is particularly associated with such an approach.
How should we evaluate these positions and their underlying religious and scientific concerns? Perhaps the most important point to make is simply this: the natural sciences, including the various Darwinian paradigms, are patient of atheist, theist, and agnostic interpretations and accommodations – but demand and necessitate none of them. Darwinism can be “spun” in ways that are seemingly totally consistent with and seemingly totally opposed to Christian belief. Both “Darwinism” and “Christianity” designate a spectrum of possibilities, making determining their conceptual overlaps and tensions both problematic and critically dependent on definitional issues. Perhaps one of the more interesting paradoxes of the contemporary religious scene is that, for precisely these reasons, Darwinism has been prematurely and unnecessarily branded as “atheist” on the left by writers such as Richard Dawkins (born 1941) and on the right by various American creationist individuals and organizations.
As the conservative Protestant theologian Benjamin B. Warfield (1851–1921) uncontroversially pointed out, serious issues of biblical interpretation often underlie such controversies. Perhaps somewhat more controversially, but almost certainly correctly, Warfield also observed that scientific advance offered a means by which the church could “check out” its interpretation of the Bible, avoiding being locked into an arcane or archaic biblical interpretation which, by force of tradition, was assumed to be the self-evident meaning of the Bible itself. It is for this reason that Darwinism has proved to be especially controversial within the conservative American Protestant constituency, whose general approach to biblical interpretation is often based on the seemingly straightforward (but actually nuanced and complex) notion of the “plain sense of Scripture.” (Similar issues arise within the Islamic constituency concerning the interpretation of the Qu'ran.) For precisely the same reason, Darwinism has proved much more acceptable to Catholic writers, on account of the notion of the magisterial interpretation of an occasionally opaque Scripture.
Yet one point must be made in closing. When all is said and done, Darwinism is a scientific theory, provisional in its status and open to modification, correction, development, or even ultimate abandonment as the process of scientific advance continues. It may be the received scientific wisdom of our age; no study of the history of science would be unwise enough to suggest that it is necessarily, and possibly uniquely, immune to the process of radical theory change that has characterized scientific advance in the past. So what will this debate look like in a century? Will we have moved on, scientifically and theologically? I am no prophet, and have no answers on this. It would, however, be extremely unwise to suppose that the present age has settled, or even begun to settle, the question of the relationship between religious faith and the scientific exploration of the biological origins of life.
The present chapter has briefly surveyed a vast amount of material relating to the Christian understandings of human nature, sin, and grace. Only a fraction of the debates within the Christian tradition have been explored. Nevertheless, central landmarks have been identified which remain of decisive importance to the continuing debates within Christianity on such issues.