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
Typical pig ignorant religious nuts
The Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up clerical child abuse until the mid-1990s, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday.
The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation's 720-page report said that it has "no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up" from January 1975 to May 2004, the time covered by the report.
"The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets," the report said.
"The welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages," it said.
"Instead the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members -- the priests."
For RL Schaefer
Science does not deal with the spirit world of philosophy. It deals with the physical world. It does not answer the questions of WHY we are here; it only answers the question of HOW we are here. What Science DOES do, much to the chagrin of people who like to believe in ghosts, are disprove many of the “stories” in the Christian bible. There are no talking snakes, there are no magical fruits, there are no giant wooden boats, there was never a world flood, etc, etc etc. So if a Christian God is omniscient and omnipotent, why is he lying to you? On the other hand, is it that people with a large stake in the political and monetary rewards that can come with convincing other people that they know the REAL truth about the world manipulate historical events. People that claim to have magic powers to heal, not too convincingly cry on television after “sinning against God”, tell others that God hates homosexuals and then have sex with a male prostitute. Would people like that actually change historical events to further their own ambitions?! I am SHOCKED!!
So believe in ghosts and demons if you wish, that is actually a right you have in this great country. Conversely, the rest of us have a right to freedom FROM religion. We also have the right to criticize your archaic and ridiculous ancient religious beliefs based on myth that existed thousands of years before your Jesus ever lived. Christianity is no more valid than any other religious belief in the world, much more violent than most (onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war) and a Christian God is no more relevant than Apollo or Zeus.
QUITE A DISCUSSION...
The fact that there is evolution has absolutely no bearing on the existence of God. Evolution and adaptation would be necessary in any perfect, non-static design - In other words, it’s simply a necessary part of the perfection of our universe.
It is also incorrect to suppose that the Bible should be taught as science or history. There is truth and wisdom there, but the effect of “Sola Scriptura” as the only avenue by which to approach God, science or creation is to limit our understanding - the Bible is a great book, it is not the only book. I note here that nowhere in Christ’s teachings did he mention the need to write a New Testament. However, he did say to “listen” to His Church - this digression is worth exploring in depth- at another time .
Furthermore, to suppose that science has, or will ever have, all the answers is as weak a position as, “Because the Bible tells me so.”
Science will never be able to answer the simple question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?’ You must have either “eternal, preexisting” time, matter, energy, laws of physics, thermodynamics, gravity and one heck of a lot of “coincidence” ( on the order of many billions to one) - or a creator outside of time. There is no third choice.
Offense is the often the best defense , thus many scientists constantly attack Christianity. They live in a world of self-contained arguments. They have no answers for the origin of all that “is”, and so they ignore the foundation upon which they stand - the preexistence of that which makes up the dimension of time, space, matter. All that is left to them is to theorize about the after effects of creation.
A valid scientific approach would consider the possibility of design as well as trick of chance. An open mind would consider the dimension of time, space and matter as a creation - instead of merely assuming it has eternally existed - a physical universe without beginning or end is no less far fetched than a spiritual one.
Now, to you atheists and agnostics (nihilist lite) who believe that Christianity is akin to insanity, I'd like to point out that your belief system is merely the opposite pole... Instead of Creation, you believe in the Big Bang - which in fact, is meaningless, and is nothing more than Genesis simplified, with fireworks. Instead of design you rely upon fortunate coincidence and happenstance. Instead of accepting that there is Absolute Truth, Perfect Morality and Eternal Justice you worship the idea of impenetrable skepticism, obstinate relativism and absolute moral subjectivity - all of which make the basics of human existence , right and wrong - good and evil - love and hate, not only unknowable but irrelevant... A belief system leading to an ephemeral, shifting landscape without bounds or permanence. A meaningless nihilistic world, without purpose or reason - a dimension easy to get lost in.
In closing I’d like to note that God has nothing to fear from an open mind - nor should science.
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