When the subject of Christianity and Darwinism comes up, many persons respond as follows:
"There is no reason why any Christian should feel at all worried or threatened or challenged by the discoveries of Charles Darwin. Whenever any new scientific truth comes along, some people are going to feel uncomfortable about it just because it is unfamiliar, and so they will call it un-Christian, or whatever, but in fact it turns out to be nothing of the sort. What Christian today has trouble reconciling Christianity with the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo? There is in fact no discrepancy there. And the same holds for Christianity and the discoveries of Darwin. Once you get over your nostalgia for the Garden of Eden story as you heard it at your mother's knee, you will see that the idea of God's creating man by a long evolutionary process is every bit as beautiful and religious and reverent and creditable to the deity as the idea of His creating man by taking a handful of dust and blowing on it. More reverent, in fact, some of us think."
I suggest that the situation is a little more complicated than that.
When Darwin's views were first published in the middle of the last century, they were widely perceived as a challenge to Christianity. Christians (some of them) denounced Darwinism as a wicked attempt to undermine the faith, and non-Christians (some of them) hailed Darwinism as a conclusive scientific proof that Christianity was false. Now in what ways is Darwinism a challenge to Christianity? I can think of five:
1) Darwinism contradicts Genesis. 2) Darwinism denies that death is the result of sin. 3) Darwinism undermines the Design Argument for theism. 4) Darwinism blurs the distinction between men and beasts. 5) Darwinism blurs all distinctions whatever.
Let me indicate the general nature of the challenge in all five cases and then proceed to discussion.
1) Darwinism contradicts Genesis.
This is straightforward enough. Genesis appears to say that dinosaurs, for example, began to exist less than a week before the first man, but the Darwinists say that the interval was more like 60 million years. Genesis gives the first human pair no ancestors, while the Darwinists give them a pedigree all the way back to the amoeba. Genesis tells us that the human race started twenty generations before Abraham, who may be dated -- well, roughly in the time of Hammurabi, perhaps four thousand years ago. Darwinists put the first humans back a million years and more.
2) Darwinism denies that death is the result of sin.
In former times, Christians who were asked, "If God is good and God is omnipotent, how do you account for the existence of pain and suffering in the world?" could answer that this suffering was the consequence of the sin of Adam and his descendants. Today, however, the prevailing opinion is that death, and presumably pain and suffering, were found on this earth for millions of years before the first man.
3) Darwinism undermines the Design Argument for theism.
In the early 1800's, a standard argument for theism was the Design Argument, in the form presented by Archdeacon William Paley in his text, _Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature_ (London, 1802)
Suppose (says Paley) that you were to find a watch lying on the beach. Even if you had never seen a watch before, you would observe how the mainspring turned the first gearwheel, and how the successive gearwheels meshed together so that each turned the next, but with different wheels turning at different speeds, and how the flywheel kept the motion of the wheels uniform, and how the gears turned the hands, and how the marks uniformly placed around the edge of the dial made it easy to see how far the hands had turned, and how the characters inscribed at every fifth mark made it easy to count the marks, and how the lens permitted you to see the hands and the dial, but at the same time protected them from bumps and from grime. In short, you would observe that the watch can be used for measuring time. Moreover, you would note how almost any slight change in the structure of the watch would render it useless as a timepiece. If the mainspring were of crystal rather than metal, it would break. If the lens were of metal rather than crystal, the hands could not be seen. If the gearwheels were further apart, they would not mesh. If they were closer together, they would jam, and so on. Surely you would conclude not only that the watch can in fact be used as a timepiece, but also that it had been designed by an intelligent craftsman for that purpose.
Now, if you look at the eye of an insect, you will see at least as complex an array of parts working together to achieve an end, and will see, as in the watch, that if any of the parts were missing or significantly different, the eye would not function, and so (if you are rational) you will arrive at the same conclusion -- that the eye was designed by an intelligent craftsman for the purpose of enabling the insect to see.
Obviously this is only the first step of the argument that proceeds from God the Engineer to God the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, to the God of Abraham, to God made flesh for our salvation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, it is an important first step, and Darwin appeared to have made mincemeat of it. He offered a beautifully simple explanation of how the giraffe got his long neck and the birds got their wings and the insects got their eyes, that did not bring God into the picture. Darwinism did not offer a disproof of theism, but it cut off at the knees the standard disproof of atheism, and it apparently made belief in God unnecessary and irrelevant to the study of Nature. It was only to be expected that Christians would greet the theory with dismay, and atheists with unbounded enthusiasm.
4) Darwinism blurs the distinction between men and beasts.
If Darwinism is true, it appears that the difference between men and other organisms must be strictly a difference of degree, that any gap between them must be one that can be bridged (and in the course of history has been bridged) by a series of small steps, each insignificant in itself. If you are tempted to think that you have an immortal soul but that a cockroach does not, or that your love for your spouse is radically different from the mating instinct of spiders, you need to read a little biology.
5) Darwinism blurs all distinctions whatever.
When I took freshman biology, just about the first thing I was told was the following:
> A proper understanding of evolution is important, not only for > thinking about biology, but for thinking about reality in > general. Darwin's most important contribution is that he helps > us to see that there are no clear-cut distinctions. You may > think that there are cats, and there are dogs, and that there is > never any doubt as to which is which, but we know that if the > ancestors of our present-day dogs and cats were here, it would > be possible to line up a series of animals with your pet poodle > at one end and your pet Siamese cat at the other, and with other > animals in between in a continuous spectrum so that no two > people would agree on where to draw the line between dog and > cat. And in fact, there is no reasonable place to draw such a > line. Anywhere you drew it, you would be separating two animals > that are practically indistinguishable, that might well be > siblings, and that it is ridiculous to classify as different > species, let alone different biological families. The same > applies to vertebrates and invertebrates, or even to plants and > animals. We talk about some differences being as clear as the > difference between day and night, but in fact day fades off into > night imperceptibly, and there is no one point at which day > becomes night. We have specific names for colors, like red, > orange, yellow, but in fact there is no point in the spectrum > that divides red from orange. We are accustomed to classify > persons as either male or female, but that is not correct. > Every embryo, as you will learn, has the beginnings of both male > and female sexual organs, and will retain at least those > beginnings throughout life -- consider the nipples on a man's > chest. Every adult has both male and female hormones. In most > persons, one type of hormone far outweighs the other, but > sometimes they are approximately balanced, and then the person > is what we call a hermaphrodite. With medical assistance, a > person can alter his/her gender. Thus we see that male-female is > not an either-or, but rather two ends of a continuum. Thus we > see that all traditional logic is flawed. Traditional logic > involves arguments like: > > All men are mortal. > Socrates is a man. > Therefore, Socrates is mortal. > > People in ancient and medieval times, especially admirers of > Aristotle, used to sit around making up arguments like this and > thinking that they were really being deep thinkers. But all such > arguments are based on the either-or fallacy. They assume that > every thing has to be either mortal or not-mortal, and either > man or not-man. And that is like supposing that every person is > either tall or not-tall. What percent of the people in the world > would you say are tall. You see that there is no answer, right? > Similarly, there is no answer to the question whether something > is mortal, or is a man, or even is Socrates. Names are an > illusion. Classifications of things are an illusion. Divisions > of things into those which have a property and those which do > not are an illusion. Anyone who tries to tell you that there is > a clear line between right and wrong, between true and false, > between anything and anything else, simply hasn't understood the > implications of the scientific point of view, which is most > clearly illustrated by evolution. There are no distinctions. > Everything shades off into everything else. No gaps. All of > life, all of reality, is a seamless web.
In other words, my professor told me that believing in evolution meant giving up most of what I would previously have called thinking clearly.
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Those, then, are the five challenges -- threats, if you will -- which Darwinism seems to present to Christianity. You will note that the target increases as we go down the list.
The first challenge is a threat only to Christians and Jews, and among them, only to those who take a certain view of the authority, and for that matter of the meaning, of the opening chapters of Genesis.
The second challenge targets those who view the world as created by God, and created good, but now flawed by human sin.
The third challenge targets all theists, or rather all theists who are accustomed to draw inferences from the apparent design in nature to a supernatural designer, whether they treat those inferences as arguments to be used in converting the infidels, or as constant reminders surrounding them and directing their attention and their praise to the Creator.
The fourth targets all those, whether theist or atheist, who view man as more than simply a trousered ape.
The fifth challenge targets all who care about truth and rationality.
It is accordingly not surprising that skepticism about the theory of evolution is even today not confined to fundamentalists, but is found in the writings of militant atheists like Ayn Rand, who cares not a fig for the first three challenges, but is intensely concerned about the last two.
Before considering these challenges individually, let me remark as regards all five of them, that these were not merely points seized upon by Christians who wished to discredit Darwinism, but were also points seized upon by Darwinists eager to discredit Christianity. The writings of Thomas Huxley and his allies are full of indications that they valued Darwin's theories precisely because they saw in them a way of convincing large numbers of people that the Bible is nothing but a collection of primitive folklore; that man, far from being a fallen sinner, was the product of countless ages of steady progress and improvement; that the complex and amazing contrivances by which organisms live are no evidence of design or of a Designer; that there is no fundamental difference between humans and apes (or baboons, or skunks, or sponges, or any other living organisms); and finally, that nature is a perpetual flux in which all distinctions are essentially arbitrary.
I am now going to say something about those five challenges from a Christian perspective, and I ask you to note that I am not about to question the soundness of the Darwinian position. My question is not whether Darwinism is true, but rather, granted for the sake of argument that it is true beyond all doubt, exactly how much trouble are we in? Instead of tackling the five challenges in the order given, I am going to start with a lengthy discussion of the third one, the one concerned with Paley's Design Argument. After that, I shall comment briefly on each of the other four.
THE DESIGN ARGUMENT REVIVED AND REVISED
Charles Darwin, writing around 1876, says: "The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered." quoted by his son, Sir Francis Darwin, in an appendix to the father's Autobiography, as edited by the son.]
My contention is that Darwin has in fact refuted Paley's argument in its standard form, but that there is a variation of Paley's argument that Darwinism leaves untouched and which remains a valid proof of the existence of God.
Paley begins by saying something like this:
"Suppose that you are walking on a deserted beach and that you find a watch, and suppose further that you have no previous knowledge of watches and where they come from. You see how elaborately the parts of the watch interact, and how this interaction produces a result that can be used for telling time, and how any slight variation in the structure of the watch would make it useless for that purpose. You quite naturally conclude that some intelligent contriver made it for that purpose. Now this is not the only possible explanation. Perhaps the pounding of the surf has hammered a few stray bits of metal against the rocks until they were shaped into gearwheels and springs, and has sloshed a bit of broken bottle back and forth until the sand polished it into a lens, and then swept them all together into this structure you are now holding in your hand. This is a possibility, in the sense of not being a logical contradiction. But surely it is not the sort of possibility that any sane person would take seriously."
Paley, in my judgement, is wrong here. If the beach and the ocean are infinite in extent, and if they have both been around infinitely long, then it seems highly probable that sooner or later the surf, strictly by accident, would hammer out the parts of a watch and assemble them in working order. Therefore, if you are completely convinced that no intelligent being had ever been near this beach and this ocean until now, I would find it quite reasonable for you to exclaim, "Amazing! See what the tide and the surf have thrown together!"
(NOTE: Let me insert two definitions here. When I say that something came about by design I mean that it came about as the result of someone's intending it, and when I say that something came about by accident, I mean that it came about NOT as a result of anyone's intending it. "Accident," in this sense, is not to be confused with "chance," which implies randomness and is a different concept altogether.)
Now let me refine the example a little. Suppose that the watch is wound up and running and showing the correct time. This stretches probability a little further, but does not alter the nature of the problem. Once again, I would find it reasonable for you to say, "Will wonders never cease? Here, purely by accident, the action of the water has not only assembled this marvelously intricate timepiece, but has got it all wound up and running and showing the correct time of day. I must write to Ripley about this."
But now let me add one more touch to the parable. Suppose that you have found a watch on the beach, wound and running and saying three o'clock, and you assume that the watch is the product of accident. Suppose, moreover, that you do not know even approximately what time it is, and that you proceed to accept the watch as evidence that it is in fact three o'clock. Is this reasonable? I cannot see that it is. If the surf has produced a watch, there is no more reason for it to produce a watch that shows the correct time than one which is, say, four hours and twenty minutes slow. The watch is therefore no more evidence for a correct time of three o'clock than for a correct time of twenty minutes past seven. You can assume the watch to be a product of accident, if you like, but you cannot simultaneously assume this and treat the watch as evidence of the correct time.
Or again, suppose that you are lost at sea, and, landing on an unknown shore, you see a green hillside with white stones arranged on it spelling out the words, "WELCOME TO WALES." You may assume that the stones were placed in their present position by the action of a glacier, and you may be right. But if you assume this, you may not without blatant irrationality take the stones as evidence that you are now in Wales.
Or again, suppose that a piece of slate is discovered near Trieste bearing some scratches arranged in more or less in rows, and that a linguist reads them as saying in an ancient Greek alphabet and dialect, "Here Kimon the Athenian and two thousand hoplites fell in battle against the Gauls." Given that the inscription is faint and some of the letters very uncertain, we may suppose that the scratches were put there by natural weathering and not by any human scribe. But if we do so, we cannot consistently take this weathered stone as evidence of the fate of one Kimon the Athenian.
Now I ask you to consider your mind, or your brain and your sense organs -- what we may call your cognitive apparatus, whatever it is you use for amassing information and making judgements about reality. Is it a product of design, or of accident? If the latter, then it was ultimately brought about by causal factors that have no built-in disposition to supply you with correct information or with reliable or appropriate means of collecting the same, any more than a glacier has a built-in disposition to arrange stones on a hillside or scratches on a piece of slate in such a way as to spell out true messages. Now every judgement we make presupposes the underlying judgement that our minds are competent to make judgements (not that they are infallible, but that our means and methods of making judgements are right in principle, are appropriate to reality). We cannot proceed without this underlying judgement; we must make it, and therefore we must reject any proposition that is contrary to it. That our minds are the product of accident is such a proposition. We must therefore reject it and embrace the contrary proposition that our minds are the product of design -- that it, that they were brought about on purpose, because someone intended it; that they are the work of a rational agent, a designer.
OBJECTION: THE NEW DESIGN ARGUMENT IS NO IMPROVEMENT ON THE OLD
At this point, the reader may want to raise some objections. Naturally, I cannot anticipate all objections, but I will now discuss two in particular.
The first is that Darwinism with its mechanism of Natural Selection accounts for the origin and development of minds just as satisfactorily as the origin and development of eyes, teeth, claws, wings, or any of the other tools of survival possessed by any organism whatever -- that the proposed revision of Paley has not changed the status of the Darwin-Paley confrontation one whit. Mosquitos have eyes that see efficiently, because the ones that didn't have died out. Similarly, men have brains that work efficiently, because the ones that didn't have died out.
(The second objection is: If God made my mind, then who made God's mind? This will be considered after we have finished the first.)
PSYCHOLOGICAL DARWINISM
I shall refer to the attempt to account for man's reason in terms of Natural Selection as Psychological Darwinism (or more briefly, as PDism). Please note that an attack on Psychological Darwinism is not an attack on the theory of Evolution, Darwinian or otherwise. One can be a Darwinist without being a Psychological Darwinist. The two authors of the theory of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, both repudiated the idea that Natural Selection could account for the emergence of minds capable of philosophy, although their repudiation took different forms.
Wallace accounted for man's mind by supposing that God had directly created it. References follow:
_Darwinism, an exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection_ (London, MacMillan, 1889) p475
_Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_, chap. 10.
"Geological Climates and the Origin of Species," _Quarterly Review_, 1869, Vol. 126, pp 359-94.
"Difficulties of Development as Applied to Man," _Popular Science Monthly_, 1876, Vol. 10, p65.
"Limits of Natural Selection in Man," _Natural Selection and Tropical Nature_, (London,1895) p204.
(See also Loren Eiseley, _Darwin's Century_, Anchor, 1961, pp 310-313)
Darwin's approach varied. In the _Origin of Species_ (Mentor, 1958, p 228), he writes, "I may here premise that I have nothing to do with the origin of the mental powers, any more than I have with life itself."
In another context, however, he writes:
While thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind ... and I deserve to be called a Theist.... But then arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? ...
inward conviction ... that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Charles Darwin, _Autobiography and Selected Letters_, edited by Francis Darwin, (Dover, 1958; Appleton, 1892), pp. 66,68
Thus, he says in effect:
(1) A mind that has evolved by Natural Selection from that of a lower primate is not fit to decide whether theism is true.
(2) My own mind has so evolved.
(3) Therefore, my mind is not fit to decide whether theism is true.
Had he been of a slightly different turn of mind, he might have noticed that, in this argument, "theism" could have been replaced by "the theory of Natural Selection," or by the name of any belief whatever. Having done so, he might have chosen, as did his colleague Wallace, to turn the argument around and phrase it as:
(1) A mind that has evolved by Natural Selection from that of a lower primate is not fit to decide whether theism is true.
(3) My mind is fit to decide whether theism is true.
(2) Therefore, my own mind has not so evolved.
Either way, however, the first premise is a repudiation of Psychological Darwinism. My position, therefore, is that I have no quarrel with Darwinism as such, but that I repudiate Psychological Darwinism, as did Darwin and Wallace, the co-founders of Darwinism.
THE CASE AGAINST PSYCHOLOGICAL DARWINISM STATED
I shall now give my reasons for rejecting Psychological Darwinism. Lest my main point be obscured by a mass of detail, I will state it briefly here. A mind fitted for learning the truth is _not_ something that man needs for mere biological survival, survival as an organism. Most organisms survive without minds. The mind is essential, not for life, but for specifically human life, the life appropriate to man's nature as man. Natural Selection, being concerned not with such appropriateness, but solely with mere biological survival, is irrelevant to questions of the origin of man's mind.
And now to elaborate this thesis.
THE RED SUSPENDER FALLACY
I begin by inviting the reader to consider the Red Suspender Fallacy, so named from the old riddle, "Why do firemen wear red suspenders?" and its answer, "To hold their pants up." What makes this answer a trick answer is that it answers the wrong question. If the question is taken to mean, "Why red suspenders, as opposed to no suspenders (and no belt) at all?" then the answer is to the point. But the hearer will normally understand the question to mean, "Why red suspenders, as opposed to, say, gray ones?" And this question has not been addressed at all. The riddler has confused the question, "why _some_ means?" with the question "why _this_ means?"
Now the PDist considers the question, "Why do men have rational minds?" and answers it, "In order to survive." It is true that this explains why men have _some_ means of survival, but not why they have _this_ means. It is a straightforward example of the Red Suspender Fallacy. For, just as we see many pairs of pants -- the majority, in fact -- held up without the use of red suspenders, so we see many species -- perhaps all but our own -- surviving without the use of rational consciousness.
Nature, in Darwinian terms, selects rabbits who run when the fox approaches. But the selection is independent of why the rabbit runs. It may run because it believes that the fox will kill it, or because it believes that the fox wants to play tag, or because it is an unconscious automaton physically programmed to do so. True belief, false belief, or no belief -- all that matters for survival is the running. PDists ask, "Why do men have the ability to discover that nightshade berries are poisonous?" and answer, "In order to survive!" But if a belief that nightshade berries are the property of the elves, or a purely physical aversive reflex, would accomplish the same thing, then the PDist answer misses the point.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DARWINISM IS BEHAVIORISTIC
One reason why many people find Evolution by Natural Selection an adequate account of the origins of man's consciousness is that they have consciously accepted, or more often been influenced by, the behavioristic approach. For the behaviorist, thinking consists merely of a certain kind of physical behavior. Awareness of danger is deemed to be identical with avoidance behavior, so that if a monkey leaps for a tree when a tiger approaches, the suggestion that he may not be thinking about the tiger is meaningless. Thinking the tiger dangerous _means_ (to the extent that it means anything) jumping out of the way. Fear and pain _mean_ exhibiting avoidance reactions. Intelligence _means_ exhibiting intelligent behavior, which in its turn may mean anything from stalking game skillfully to marking the right boxes on an I.Q. test. I do not propose to offer a refutation of behaviorism, since I have never been quite sure how to reason with someone who insists that there is no such thing as reasoning -- there is only verbal behavior. According to his own theory, he is not putting forward a theory, he is merely beating his gums.
I am less concerned with avowed behaviorists than with the fact that, when a certain assumption, largely unspoken, pervades much of contemporary writing, many people who do not explicitly accept it may be influenced by it. I believe that the influence of behaviorism is chiefly responsible for the willingness of many people to accept a PDist account of the origins of the mind.
For Darwinian Nature is a behaviorist. Not, perhaps, a radical behaviorist, denying that consciousness exists, but a methodological one, attending only to physical behavior, and ignoring all questions of consciousness. If two monkeys, one conscious and one not, avoid a tiger with equal agility, Nature rewards them both alike, just as, when two firemen are wearing suspenders, one a red pair and the other a gray pair, gravity rewards them alike. Nature is behavioristic, just as gravity is color-blind.
FROM SURVIVAL TO UTILITY TO TRUTH
The PDist offers us the following syllogism:
(1) Anything fitted to survive is fitted to discover truth. (2) Jones is fitted to survive. ----------------------------------------------------- Therefore, Jones is fitted to discover truth.
Or, as otherwise stated:
(1) Useful thoughts are true thoughts. (2) Jones thinks useful thoughts. -------------------------------------- Therefore, Jones thinks true thoughts.
Now the connection between competence to survive and competence to discover the truth cannot simply be taken for granted in all areas. A skeptic might argue as follows:
If, as the PDists tell us, our reasoning powers evolved because it was conducive to survival to be able to solve certain kinds of problems rationally, then our minds are competent to deal with problems and situations like those faced by our pre-hominid ancestors. But this does not mean that they are competent to deal with all problems. Frogs have eyes, developed to help them survive and deal with reality. It would be natural to suppose that a frog can see every not-too-small object in his field of vision. But this turns out not to be the case. The optic nerve of the frog is actually so constructed that he sees only objects moving in a particular way -- like flies. There is a realm (call it Realm A) of things that he is equipped to see, and another realm (call it Realm B) of everything else. Our own lungs are equipped for breathing an oxygen atmosphere, where we evolved. They are not equipped for breathing a methane atmosphere, where we did not evolve. What more natural than that our minds should be similarly restricted -- that there should be a Realm A of things that man's mind is competent to investigate, and another Realm B that it is not.
For example: It is plausible to say that correct beliefs about the position and velocity of a tiger are useful (meaning life-preserving, and Darwinianly advantageous) in avoiding a tiger, and that correct beliefs about the position and velocity of a ship or a plane are useful (in the same sense) in setting the plane down on the runway or navigating the ship to its destination. We might also argue that the skills of navigation are present, in root form, in the avoiding of the tiger, that both involve the same kind of reasoning about spatial relationships. So far there is no problem.
But now modern physicists tell us that space is curved (whatever that means). They tell us that triangles (especially very large ones) have angles that do not add up to one hundred eighty degrees. They tell us that objects (especially very small ones) do not have exact co-ordinates of position and velocity, but only approximate ones, and that the inexactitude lies not in our observations but in the objects themselves. They tell us that the Law of Causality is only approximately or "statistically" true. They say that if two events happen some distance apart at "about the same time," it may be that one observer will say that one event happened first, another that the other happened first, a third that they happened simultaneously, and that all three are right -- that there is no _objective_ (i.e. observer-independent) answer to the question of what happened first. They say that two people at Point A, who witnessed an event some time ago at point A, may disagree on how long ago it happened, and (provided that at least one of them has travelled) they may both be right. We complain that all this talk is an insult to our intelligence -- that it contradicts our fundamental notions of space, time, cause, and reality -- in short, that it is contrary to common sense. The physicists cheerfully reply:
"You must remember that our common sense notions of things developed as a result of observing middle-sized objects (neither so large as a galaxy nor so small as an electron) either standing still or moving at moderate speeds (relative to ourselves). And our common sense notions do in fact describe such objects correctly, or as near as makes no difference. It is only when we venture outside the realm of such objects that reality takes on a topsy-turvy Alice-in-Wonderland sort of character and common sense goes out the window."
To this I (the skeptic) reply that not only our common sense but also our minds as a whole developed as a result of dealing with middle-sized objects moving at moderate speeds. It was not to the survival advantage of our remote ancestors to derive correct mathematical equations about quasars, as opposed to incorrect ones, for the simple reason that they never troubled themselves about quasars one way or another.
It follows that, like the frog with his specialized vision, we have a Realm A (middle sized objects moving at moderate speeds) which we are competent to investigate, and a Realm B (everything else) which we are not. We know that we are not competent to study Realm B for three reasons. First, because everything starts going crazy when we do. Second, because a consideration of our evolutionary history makes it clear that this is not the sort of things our minds developed to study. Third, because our minds are only equipped to find truth in those areas that it is useful for us to explore, and relativity and quantum theory are not among those areas. The chief practical effect of such explorations thus far is the prospect of wiping out the human race, and that is not what I call useful!
Before my atheistic readers begin eagerly copying out the preceding paragraphs as evidence that theists are the sworn enemies of the mind, let me emphatically state that the position of the skeptic as just stated is not my own position. I happen to think that the mind of man _is_ equipped to investigate objects of any size, moving at any speed. But then, I think that it was designed for that purpose. The PDist, on the other hand, thinks that it evolved while studying Realm A, surviving because it thought useful (and therefore true) thoughts about Realm A. Why should he expect its thoughts about Realm B to be either useful or true? How can he avoid simply writing off Realm B as unknowable?
Now it may seem to the plain blunt man-in-the-street, who never paid much attention to Einstein anyway, that giving up the claim to have the kind of minds that are capable of figuring out whether Einstein was right is a minor concession. But it is only the thin end of the wedge. The skeptic continues:
Realm A consists of those matters on which we are fitted to make true judgements, because they are the sorts of matters about which our remote ancestors made judgements when the human mind was in the process of evolving, and are matters on which a right judgement was conducive to survival. Realm B is everything else. How do we draw the boundary between the two realms? If we are not sure which realm a given matter belongs to, is that question itself in Realm A or Realm B? Does trying to decide _that_ question put us into an infinite regress? Were infinite regresses among the questions that our precursors contemplated? It seems that in order to decide what goes in which realm, we must know something about the evolutionary history of the human species. But what can be less likely than that our remote ancestors formulated hypotheses about their own evolutionary history, and that Nature punished the ones whose hypotheses were incorrect by killing them off? But if this did not happen, then evolutionary theory is in Realm B, which means both that PDism is in Realm B and that every question about the boundary between the realms is a question in Realm B. I think that the time has come to check my premises and repudiate PDism!
PSYCHOLOGICAL DARWINISM IS PRAGMATIST
The PDist observes that rationality is in fact conducive to survival. He then tries to make survival value the criterion, the justification, and the cause of rationality. But this is not the sort of defense that man's mind needs or deserves.
Let all the claims of the PDists be granted. Let us suppose that the most useful ways of thinking are always the truest ways of thinking. Let us suppose that, in response to the pressures of the struggle for survival, we have developed (or our ancestors have developed) minds that think usefully, and therefore minds competent to think rationally and accurately, about all aspects of reality whatever. There remains a problem. According to PDism, we do not think certain thoughts because they are true, or reason in certain ways because they are valid or rational. We think that way because it is useful to do so. Truth is a bonus, an afterthought. Truth is not a free-born citizen of the realm of our minds, but a resident alien, permitted to remain only as long as her cousin, Utility, continues to sponsor her. Our confidence that they will continue to remain on good terms does not alter the difference in their statuses.
The PDist, is short, is a radical pragmatist. He agrees with William James that
"The true," to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as "the right" is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. [William James, "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth," (Lecture VI of _Pragmatism_), reprinted in _Essays in Pragmatism_, p. 170]
Thus, for instance, Nietzsche on truth:
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it.... The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing.... [_The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche_, ed. Oscar Levy (18 vols., New York, Russell & Russell, 1964), _Beyond Good and Evil, Chap. I, XII,8-9]
As Goebbels put it:
"Important is not what is right but what wins." [Peter Viereck, _Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind (New York, Capricorn, 1961), p 314, apud _The Atlantic Monthly_, June 1940]
Anyone who accepts Psychological Darwinism is saying, in effect:
The only important, the only significant characteristic of true thoughts, as opposed to false ones, is that they lead to actions that are conducive to survival. A monkey that gets out of the way of a tiger, a monkey that survives, has passed the only intelligence test that matters. As for the suggestion that his thoughts may be erroneous even though his actions are useful, such worries are either meaningless or irrelevant.
To this I reply:
When a person puts forth a doctrine which amounts to the assertion either that he is not conscious or that it makes no difference to him (and should make no difference to others) whether he is conscious or not -- the irresistible temptation is to agree with him.
(Nathaniel Branden, _The Psychology of Self-Esteem_, p 12)
And that concludes my remarks on Psychological Darwinism.
OBJECTION: ASSUMING A DESIGNER MERELY POSTPONES THE PROBLEM
Now we turn, as promised, to the other objection.
The neo-Paleyite (such as, for example, the author of this essay) says: "Where did man's mind come from? Did it come about by accident, or did someone intelligent make it? We would not trust a computer that had come about by accident (say, by an explosion in
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a warehouse for spare electronic components), but everyone trusts his brain. Therefore, no one really thinks that his brain came about by accident. Man's mind is the work of an intelligent designer."
The skeptic replies: "If you explain man's mind by saying that God made it, then how do you explain God's mind? Do you assume a second God to create the first, and a third God to create the second, and so forth in an infinite series?"
The neo-Paleyite replies: "No, I don't think that an infinite regress of explanations explains anything. But kindly note that not everything calls for an explanation. No one asks for a causal explanation of the fact that two and two equal four, because he sees that it is logically impossible for them to equal anything else. No one asks how four came to be less than five, because he knows that it didn't come to be less, it always was less. Now if you think that your mind has always existed, then I will not ask you to decide whether it came about by accident or design. If you think that it is logically impossible for you ever to be mistaken about anything, then I will not ask you what is the causal explanation of your being competent (in principle) to investigate reality. If, however, you are a little more modest than that, then I will suggest that we account for the existence and competence of your mind by supposing it to be the work (either directly or with a finite number of intermediate steps) of a mind that is eternal and uncaused, and that is completely reliable, not because it was designed to be, but because it is logically incapable of error."
OMNISCIENCE AND TIMELESSNESS
The skeptic says: "That sounds pretty far-fetched to me. What does it mean for a mind to be logically incapable of error?"
The neo-Paleyite says: "There are some particular points on which an ordinary human mind is logically incapable of error. For example, each of the following assertions is self-contradictory:
(1) Jones believes that he exists, but in fact he does not. (2) Jones believes that he is conscious, but in fact he is not. (3) Jones believes that he is in pain, but in fact he is not.
(Some persons would deny that the last is a contradiction, and assert that pain is an illusion. I reply that if it is an illusion, it is a painful illusion.) I affirm that Jones cannot err as regards what I will call the content of his immediate consciousness. Thus, the proposition, 'Jones believes that Jones has an itching sensation,' logically implies the proposition, 'Jones has an itching sensation.' Likewise, God cannot be mistaken OR IGNORANT (stronger assertion) as regards anything. That is, for any proposition X, the statements, 'X is true,' and, 'God believes that X is true,' are logically equivalent. I express this briefly by saying that God is logically (or necessarily) omniscient."
Note that that this implies uniqueness. To say of a being P that P is necessarily omniscient is to say that, for any proposition X, "X is true" and "P believes that X is true" are logically equivalent. If P and Q are both necessarily omniscient, then "P believes that X is true" and "Q believes that X is true" are logically equivalent for all X. This implies that P and Q are in fact the same being. Thus, there is only one necessarily omniscient being, and "God" may be considered a proper name.
Moreover, "God believes X today" and "God believed X yesterday" are logically equivalent, since each is equivalent to the truth of X. (Do not suppose that X can be true some days and false others. The string "It is now raining," uttered at two different times, expresses two different propositions, since the word "now" points to two different times. It is like pointing twice with your finger and saying, "That is Joe Smith." If you point to two different persons, you are in fact affirming two different propositions. The truth of a proposition, properly understood, is not subject to change.) Now, "Fred believes X today" and "Fred believed X yesterday" are not logically equivalent. Fred is in time, is subject to change. Even if he does not change, it is logically possible for him to do so. For God, on the other hand, change is not a logical possibility. God is timeless. More on this (maybe) later, in another context.
SUMMARY REMARKS ON THE FIVE CHALLENGES
You will remember that we began this section by noting five challenges that Darwinism presents to Christian thought:
1) Darwinism contradicts Genesis. 2) Darwinism does not allow for death as the result of sin. 3) Darwinism undermines the Design Argument for theism. 4) Darwinism blurs the distinction between men and beasts. 5) Darwinism blurs all distinctions whatever.
My comment on the first challenge, put briefly, is that Genesis can reasonably be interpreted in more than one way, a comment that would have been no novelty to Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine.... Of the four interpretations that I have offered in this paper, only the last is incompatible with Darwinism, and it is by no means obvious why someone who accepts the authority of Holy Scripture should not opt for one or more of the first three interpretations instead.
The second challenge is presented by the existence of death before Adam. It appears that evolutionism contradicts St. Paul's statement that death entered the world only with the sin of Adam (Romans 5:12). But St. Paul frequently speaks of death in the sense of spiritual death, alienation from God, being cut off or separated from fellowship with God and from life in the Spirit. If this is what he means here, then his comment has no bearing at all on the question of ordinary biological death.
It may be objected that there is a problem regardless of what St. Paul said. Thus, C S Lewis writes:
"The origin of animal suffering could be traced, by earlier generations, to the Fall of man -- the whole world was infected by the uncreating rebellion of Adam. This is now impossible, for we have good reason to believe that animals existed long before men. Carnivorousness, with all that it entails, is older than humanity." (_The Problem of Pain_, chapter 9)
At least two answers to this have been offered. The first is that death, in the absence of sin, is not an evil. Most persons have no trouble granting this where the death of plants is concerned. The problem is that the death of animals, at least of vertebrates, normally involves pain and suffering. But this is not undisputed. Some philosophers, most notably DesCartes, have held that all non-human animals are automata -- that is, that they exhibit physical behavior, but have no mental activity -- that they are like robots. A robot could be programmed to avoid extremes of heat and cold, and to say "Ouch!" when one of its circuits was damaged, but would presumably not be feeling pain. And all non-human animals MAY be in that condition. Since we cannot directly observe the mental activities of another entity, a statement like DesCartes' is very difficult to prove or disprove.
I also refer the reader to the essay "On Natural Death" in THE MEDUSA AND THE SNAIL (Viking 1979) by Lewis Thomas, columnist for the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, and to "Natural Anaesthesia," by William Stanley Sykes, in ESSAYS ON THE FIRST ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF ANAESTHESIA (E & S Livingstone, Edinburgh 1961). These authors tell us that many men who have been mauled by large carnivores or otherwise drastically injured report having felt neither pain nor fear at the time, even when the physical damage was extensive. From their accounts, we may hope that carnivorousness entails considerably less suffering than we might have expected.
Another answer, discussed at length by C. S. Lewis in his book, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, quoted above, is that sin, like death, preceded man; that when Adam fell, he was tempted; that the first rebel was not a rebellious man but a rebellious angel, whose fall infected the created universe; and that man in his origins had, but chose not to take, the opportunity to restore the earth by an act of obedience. But more of this when we discuss the Fall at length.
The third challenge I have dealt with above, at considerable length, by distinguishing between Darwinism and Psychological Darwinism. With the former I have no quarrel. The latter I believe to be demonstrably false. I accordingly maintain that, although one cannot (at least I cannot) argue cogently that the eye of the bee must have been created by God, one can argue cogently that the mind of man must have been created by God. And this argument is sufficient.
The above argument is also a sufficient reply to the fourth challenge. We see that God has made humans and given them rational minds. We may suppose that we are the only species so favored, or we may suppose that there are other rational species (chimpanzees, dolphins, angels, Martians). The latter supposition naturally raises questions about our ethical obligations where (say) dolphins are concerned, but neither supposition seems to me incompatible with Christianity.
As for the fifth challenge, the fact that every classification scheme has to deal with the awkward borderline case is a fact that was with us long before Darwin. Abolish Darwinism and the problem of where to draw the line between red and orange will still be with us. If the fossil record presented us with a continuous chain of organisms linking the dog and the cat, this would not make the philosophical problem worse. But in fact the fossil record shows no such continuous chain, and as we have noticed, many evolutionists are beginning to suspect that no such chain exists or ever did.
A comprehensive discussion of the borderline problem in philosophy is beyond the scope of these lectures. I simply remark that one has to assume the existence of categories even to deny them. A speaker who says, "There is no clear-cut point to draw the line between red and orange," is assuming that there are such things as red and orange and that we can talk about them. A speaker who says, "One cannot make a statement about chairs in general; all chairs are different," deserves the reply, "All WHAT are different?"
So much for Genesis and Darwin.
And so much for the four interpretations of the Creation Hymn. We now proceed to the account of the Fall.