Darwin vs. Darwinism

One of the many things I find exasperating about our culture is the so-called conflict between science and religion. I think the conflict is only between one restrictive, narrow-minded vision of science and one equally (and similarly) restrictive, narrow-minded vision of religion. I consider the partisans on both sides of this divide equally fundamentalist, and I would very much like to see more of us who hold more moderate positions gain attention in our public discourse (i.e., the media). But as it is now, only the extremists get air time.

I’ve done a little chipping away in this blog at the fixed positions on both sides of this polarized debate, and while I’m not interested in a frontal assault on either position (I was raised literally in the middle of a Civil War battlefield, so I know the futility of that tactic, even if I hadn’t read Sun Tzu), I want to step up the opposition to the hijacking of our intellectual life by extremists.

So here’s the first barrage:

One of the great crises of spirituality in the Western world was precipitated by the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” The spritual crisis was precipitated by the fact that because this work seemed to imply that a literal interpretation of Judeo-Christian scripture was erroneous, there was a widespread belief that “Darwin has disproven the Bible.” As a result, some people abandoned their Christian faith and others hardened theirs. (This was, in fact, what gave birth to the fundamentalist movement, which originated among a group of Baptist ministers who decided that the best answer to the challenge of science to the scriptures was to declare the scriptures right and science wrong.)

Interestingly, the word “evolution” doesn’t appear anywhere in the first edition of Darwin’s book. In fact, the only place in it where any form of the word “evolve” can be found is at the end, the final word of the final sentence of the book:

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

In the sixth edition, published in 1872, “evolution” is much more prominent, mainly in describing Darwin’s supporters and his responses to his critics. For example: “It is admitted by most evolutionists that mammals are descended from a marsupial form; and if so, the mammary glands will have been at first developed within the marsupial sack.”

In short, during the 13 years since the publication of the first edition of “Origin of Species,” Darwin has shifted from making observations of nature and drawing conclusions from them to defending his theories against the onslaughts of his many critics – mainly the religious establishment – and aligning himself with partisans who support him.

Given that there were so many who believed that “Darwin has disproved the Bible” and more generally that “Science has disproved God,” it’s interesting that Darwin made only one small change to that final paragraph reproduced above. Here it is again, with the one small change highlighted:

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”