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BGonline.org Forums
Mini Rant Because I Can
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: Mini Rant Because I Can (mamabear)
Date: Thursday, 24 January 2008, at 3:36 a.m.
Evolution: No idea why this chestnut keeps popping.
Because Stick wrote "God is fairly straightforward on a lot of morality issues," you wrote "Whoever you are reading now (Dawkins? Harris? Hitchens?)", and Chuck mentioned "Huckabee supporters." Relatively recent findings in the fields of science sometimes called sociobiology and more often and more particularly called evolutionary psychology underpin much of Dawkins' argument, illuminate and, I think, correct, parts of Harris' argument, explain God's "straight" talk, and are, apparently, completely unknown to most supporters of the man proud to be running as the "Christian candidate." Increasingly, evolutionary theory is being applied, with success, not just in the "hard science" of biology, but in neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and more generally the humanities, which encompasses human culture and includes, of course, religion.
Dawkin's bibliography lists book in or related to evolutionary psychology by Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Michael Shermer, Edward O. Wilson, and David Sloan Wilson. Not, of course, that they are all correct, if for no other reason that they do not all agree with each other. But the results in their fields have been rich, and rewarding.
Dawkins has been a scientist of evolution for decades, and in Delusion indulges his sincere conviction that we'd all be better off without the god whom he has found to be quite unnecessary (although not quite disprovable) in his profession. Harris' background and focus is different. He studied philosophy, although he is currently pursuing, I believe, a doctorate in neuroscience, and focuses much too much, in my view, on the differences he perceives between Islam and other faiths, without sufficiently weighing political, economic, social, and biological factors that influence why those religions are what they are, where there are. If, for example, a Muslim nation were today occupying a Christian nation and propping up elitist Christian dictatorships while acclaiming them as "allies" in the fight for "justice and democracy," are we quite sure that there would be no Christian suicide bombers? Or, if we were to note that humans are biologically predisposed to react irrationally and violently to perceived violations of territory and resources -- both physical and personal "space" -- would we be quite so willing to shrug off four years under a president like McCain, who told New Hampshire audiences that he had no problem with a continuing US military presence in Iraq for fifty (indeed, "make it a hundred," he said) years?
As to the laws of God that Stick mentions, evolutionary studies illuminate why cultures not infrequently attribute human-created ethical standards to supernatural beings, and why stern rules against such things as fraternizing with other tribal groups, or worshipping their gods, or adultery, or homosexuality, have a perfectly rational underpinning in the context of a patriarchal and inclusive society dependent for survival on rapid population increase with periodic territorial expansion at the expense of "outsiders" no less prone than the chosen people to violent solutions to disputes over territory and scarce resources.
But that is not the society we live in, and just as it is absurd to think that morality comes from religion (if you think that cruelty is wrong because the Bible says so, I fear for the safety of defenseless persons and small animals in your neighborhood if you ever lose your faith!), I would agree that "nonsense" describes the reality that, for instance,, as Harris writes, people even today are sometimes executed for the "imaginary crime of blasphemy." It is, I think, especially unfortunate that the legacy of the divinely inspired laws of a people who had no understanding of biology or evolution is a warped and harmful view of human sexuality due in no small part to a theology which to this day erroneously insists that the primary role of sex is, as E.O. Wilson puts it, the divinely ordained "insemination of wives by husbands." That is all sex is in many species (sans the marriage vows) but not, even in uncontemporary societies, among pair-bonding humans.
The vast majority of Christians agree with St. Augustine (354-430 a.d.) who said that God could have used already created things in the production of more of same. He also thought it was self-evident the "days" of Genesis were epochs, not 24-hour periods.
It is good that you mention St. Augustine since by example he shows that Bible interpretation need not be literal and some, at least, of the faithful have not thought so for hundreds of years.
But I doubt that most Christians agree with him, since according to polls the majority of Christians in the US don't believe in evolution, and I'd be surprised if most could tell you much about St. Augustine except that it's a city in Florida. I believe Augustine argued for a simultaneous creation and although his creational "days" were not literal but logical, they were still firmly compatible with his belief in a Creation no more than 6,000 years ago beginning, of course, with an Adam and an Eve.
Perhaps most of those Christians who do accept evolution would simply agree, one way or the other, with the current governor of Arkansas, Mike Beebe, who about Huckabee said:
I don't think that believing in God and believing in evolution are mutually exclusive. I think you can believe in both. Obviously, I believe in God. I think He started it but then I think there's all kinds of scientific evidence that we've had evolution. That's just my belief. I guess he's entitled to his.And others would concur with this 2004 Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science:
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator.I agree that some Christians rationalize the co-existence of evolution with the Genesis myth by thinking of creation "days" as representing periods of 1,000 years, or longer periods. But this rationalization, studiously correlated, cannot be a correct reconciliation, because the factual chronology of appearance of the objects and beings mentioned in Genesis does not match either of the two creation stories in that book.
The dividing issue is the "randomness" question, and perhaps some quibbles about the facile argument that adaptation and microevolution can be extended as proof for macroevolution.
I'm not sure what this means, but I would agree that many who do not accept evolution are very confused as to the role of "randomness" in evolution (genetic mutation is random, natural selection is very much not random and confused, also, in accepting "microevolution" but rejecting "macroevolution" as they were two distinct and separable types of evolution (they are not; the concepts are applied to different time periods and results attained, but the processes involved in macro- and microevolution, definitional quibbles aside, are the same). These two misconceptions, along with my favorite, that evolution is "just a theory, not a fact" (it is, in fact, both theory and fact) make any list of Most Common Misconceptions about Evolution.
We have a lot left to learn and discover!
Indeed we do, and that is why I am glad that good old St. Augustine, despite his awful ideas on many topics, like Jews, and original sin and sex, had this to say about what we have left to learn and discover:
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian.Let no one think that, because the Psalmist says, He established the earth above the water, we must use this testimony of Holy Scripture against these people who engage in learned discussions about the weight of the elements. They are not bound by the authority of our Bible; and, ignorant of the sense of these words, they will more readily scorn our sacred books than disavow the knowledge they have acquired by unassailable arguments or proved by the evidence of experience.But someone may ask: 'Is not Scripture opposed to those who hold that heaven is spherical, when it says, who stretches out heaven like a skin?' Let it be opposed indeed if their statement is false.... But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions.With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.He might have made a darn good scientist, in another time.
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