Some Christians Protest Darwin's Birthday. Is Their Antagonism Misplaced?
In an interview, one of the authors of Darwin's Sacred Cause argues Darwin was motivated by his faith
Not everyone is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Some are protesting. A Christian ministry called Answers in Genesis is holding anti-Darwin conferences on the East and West coasts this month, aimed at helping Americans "understand that Darwinian evolution is wrong and that it has undermined the Christian faith and has fueled social ills like racism and abortion." Faith-based opposition to Darwin is hardly consigned to the religious fringe. A recent Pew survey found that fewer than 10 percent of evangelical Christians believe life evolved through natural selection. Secular Americans were the only respondents who voiced majority support for the theory.
A new book, Darwin's Sacred Cause, argues that Christian antagonism toward Darwin is misplaced. Acclaimed Darwin biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore portray a Christian Darwin who was driven by his faith-based opposition to slavery to prove the common origin of the human race. A theory of common human decency, Darwin believed, would undermine a key precept of the slave trade: that blacks comprise an inferior race separate from whites. Moore talked to U.S. News this week. Excerpts:
You write that Darwin hailed from an actively abolitionist family but that he was quieter about his antis lavery views than most of them.
You could say that he was more outspoken in that he made a lot bigger noise than they did, because he published Origin of Species and we're talking about him today. But Darwin was personally reticent. He followed events in the United States very keenly, but his abolitionism—and I think it's fair to say abolitionism—took the form of undermining the ideological foundations of race segregation and slavery—or, as people have come to call it today, scientific racism—by showing the common descent of all races.
Why do you call Darwin's antislavery views a "sacred cause"?
The phrase "sacred cause" is Darwin's. He didn't mean it was a spiritual, otherworldly pursuit. It was a sacred cause because it had already been called a sacred cause among English abolitionists. The word came up so many times that we had to purge it from our book—sacred this and sacred that.
The tradition that Darwin belonged to, Unitarianism, taught that all believers die and are resurrected at the end of time to face the final judgment and to live forever in perfected creation. There was no heaven or hell in a sense, only a future state or perfection. Darwin's end was never about getting people off a sinking ship and into a spiritual realm where everything was perfect. Darwin and his family were interested in perfecting this world.
The unity of his faith and his humanitarianism was instilled in him from his youth. Darwin acquired his foundational belief in the brotherhood of all humans of all races when he was baptized, at 9 months. Even when he couldn't believe all the things he had been taught—he certainly gave up belief in Adam and Eve and, eventually, in the Bible as a moral authority—the unity of the human family was his bottom line.
How religious was the young Darwin?
When Darwin goes to Cambridge, he is expected to become an ordained clergyman in the Church of England. At Cambridge, he mixed with men whose theological views were indistinguishable from modern-day American fundamentalists: belief in the Bible, even if not as a textbook of science, and Adam and Eve. When he embarked on the Beagle voyage [his global fact-finding mission], he said he was so in captivity to the word of Scripture that he was able to quote the Bible as a moral authority. He was so priggish that his shipmates laughed at him for it.
How did a religious idea like the brotherhood of man meaningfully influence Darwin's scientific quest?
Science always begins with certain assumptions. Darwin took certain things for granted, like laws of nature, regularities established by God. Laws of creation, that's what Darwin wanted to find. Another thing Darwin took for granted was the brotherhood of man. It was the air he breathed. It would be immoral for him to believe otherwise. The really key statement that Darwin makes in his notebooks is where he says, "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble & I believe true to consider him created from animals." What that brings together is a moral, theological, and scientific judgment.
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Reader Comments
For Dryfire
It is amusing that you would use the word “belief” to describe atheism. Atheism is the antithesis of belief. All atheism means is that a person does not BELIEVE in God. It is not a subscription to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution or the Big Bang Theory of the beginnings of the universe. There are no meetings, congregations, or atheist suicide bombers. It is NOT a religion and it amuses me when people who “believe” in something that is not factual look at the rest of society as if they do too.
To respond to your questions above, there is no doubt that Jesus lived. There is no doubt that he was the leader of a religious cult and that the ruling government at that time killed him. Those are facts that can be substantiated quite persuasively. What is in doubt is the magical qualities of the story of Jesus. He NEVER walked on water, delivered fish and loaves of bread from the sky, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, turned water in to wine or arose from the dead!! It is easy to understand WHY people of faith want to believe those things and why religious leaders pass these stories on from generation to generation.
The fact is Jesus was the leader of one religious cult in a time when there were many religious cults. The fact that the story of Jesus survived is an accident of history and coincidence. The empty tomb of Jesus only proves his remains were stolen, just like grave robbers today only easier back then. The Bible is full of discredited stories the most relevant to this chain of arguments is the creation of the earth and the animals that inhabit it. Science has proven factually how the animals, including us, arose and the evidence is voluminous in its support. So what is it Dryfire? Is God a liar or was the Bible written by fallible and frail humans with a quest for power? I submit it was the later.
Not just emotion...
Looking at your comment, it seems part of the basis for your belief in atheism is emotional. My testimony does contain a personal experience, yet I have offered in my last post that there are verifiable reasons why I believe in the Christian God. No I am not going to ignore the past acts of actions done in the name of the Church, but neither am I going to forget what was done by atheistic regimes in the last century. Are you?
Do you understand the purposes behind the Law in the Old Testament? If not, I will be happy to explain them to you.
So what about the ancient historians who reference an historical person named Jesus of Palestine?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does humanity have this innate sense of right and wrong?
What of the Resurrection and beginnings of Christianity?
Dryfire
All of your positions are based on how you feel. You follow your feelings and our heart and you have concluded that God exists, all the while criticizing those who follow their heart and have come to the opposite conclusion. Religion is the most destructive force on earth by far. The so-called terrorists are so convinced that God is on their side that they are willing to die for that belief. They still refer to us, and that means you, as CRUSADERS! Are you going to ignore the harm that organized religion has done to the human race for the last 2000 years?!
Here are a few of the versus from the bible that according to the believers are GODS WORDS!
Deuteronomy 21:18
'If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not listen to the voice of his father..'...or his mother.'...even when they punish him.'...his father and mother must take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town.''They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard."''All the men of the town must then stone him to death. You must banish this evil from among you.'
Deuteronomy 13:6-8
'If your brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife tries to secretly entice you, telling you to go and worship other gods, gods of people living near you, or far from you, or anywhere on earth, do not listen to him.'You must kill them. Show them no pity. And your hand must strike the first blow.'Then the hands of all the people. You shall stone them to death.'
Deuteronomy 13:13-15
'If you hear that in one of the towns, there are men who are telling people to go and worship other gods, it is your duty to look into the matter and examine it.''If it is proved and confirmed, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword.'
'You must lay the town under the curse of destruction, the town and everything in it.'
You must pile up all its loot in the public square and burn the town and all its loot.''That town is to be a ruin for all time, and never rebuilt.'
Leviticus 11:3
'You may eat any animal that has a cloven hoof, divided in two parts, and chews the cud.''Regard the camel as unclean, for though it chews the cud, it does not have a cloven hoof.''Regard the hyrax as unclean, for though it chews the cud, it does not have a clove hoof.''Regard the rabbit as unclean, for though it chews the cud, it does not have a cloven hoof.''Regard the pig as unclean, for though has a cloven hoof, it does not chew the cud.''Do not eat their meat or touch their dead bodies. You will regard them as unclean.' Leviticus 11:9
'Of all that lives in the waters of the seas and rivers, you may eat anything that has fins and scales.''But anything in the seas or rivers that does not have fins and scales, regard as an abomination. Do not eat their meat and regard their carcasses as an abomination.''Of the birds, regard the following as an abomination and do not eat them: the eagle, the osprey, the kite, the falcon, the raven, the horned owl, the nighthawk, the sea gull, hawks of all kinds, the little owl, the cormorant, the white owl, the desert owl, the carrion vulture, the stork, the heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.''Of the birds, regard the following as an abomination and do not eat them: the eagle, the osprey, the kite, the falcon, the raven, the horned owl, the nighthawk, the sea gull, hawks of all kinds, the little owl, the cormorant, the white owl, the desert owl, the carrion vulture, the stork, the heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.''Do not eat anything that crawls on its belly, whether it walks on four legs or more. They are an abomination.''There are, however, some winged insects you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. You may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.''Wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal.'
To believe this drivel is ridiculous and to teach it to children is criminal.
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