Darwin and Religion

What's fascinating about natural selection and Darwinian evolution is recognizing how young Charles Darwin was in first making his discoveries. While beyond the youth of adolescence, young Charlie was only 22 when he embarked on the Beagle voyage. Even though he was a naturalist, his sole purpose for being recruited on the voyage was to "provide company for the Beagle's aloof and moody captain, Robert FitzRoy" (Adler 50). Luckily, as a break from soothing the qualms of the moody Ahab-like FitzRoy, Darwin discovered giant tortoises and wildlife of the Galapagos islands as well as a range of different species along the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific before returning It was only 28 years after the five year voyage, originally designed to chart the coast of South America, did Darwin write the "Origin of Species" at 50.

The amount of religions and scientific controversy the young Darwin provoked after publishing his book in 1859, was gastronomical. After publishing it, he developed intestinal and heart distress due to, possibly, a bug he had picked up traveling or "anxiety over where his intellectual journey was leading him, and the world" (Adler 54). Claiming that "the lineages of living things change, diverge and go extinct over time, rather than appear suddenly in immutable form, as Genesis would have it" was a stark contrast to the Biblical "origin of species" which depicts organisms spontaneously appearing in immutable form (spontaneous generation was scientifically refuted by Louis Pasteur with experimental data, and of course also by Darwin).

Darwin's erudite father, Erasmus Darwin, had similar notions of evolution, but Darwin's generation possessed the scientific advancements to prove it. He knew that the earth's calculated age was 4.5 billion years old, meaning that species around 4004 b.c would be long before the Bible. Darwin was committed to finding the origin of all species and made a massive discovery when he first observed similar shell patterns corresponding to certain turtles of distinct islands. These shell patterns convinced Darwin that the shell patterns had evolved due to each species habituating upon each respective island.'' In a world that saw the hand of God in everything, Darwin introduced a "creative force altogether, an undirected, morally neutral process he called natural selection" (55).

Darwin recognized winning species in his studies and determined, which was influenced by Thomas Malthus, that finite food supply, predators, and disease threatened the existence of animals so that only the fittest -- those possessive an edge, like speed or camouflage -- would survive. "Survival of the fittest" was a phrase coined later, to have economic and social significance that Darwin never imagined, but still he created the core of the theory.

Darwin writes that the "war of nature, from famine and death" is where the "production of higher animals" arises (Adler 55). The notion of man's original birthmark, "the indelible stamp of his lowly origin" was what really upset the strong religious advocates in "The Descent of Man", written 12 years after Darwin's first book, and explicitly connected man to the animal kingdom through apes.

The first official emergence of the Darwinian debate was in 1860 when Thomas Huxley and Joseph Hooker fiercely defended Darwin's work against the Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. Clearly, however, Darwin's work was not simply challenging the six-day creation of Genesis, but possibly the core of Christianity and all of theology in general. Evolution sparked a huge hope for nonbelievers. Richard Darwins, a british biologist wrote, "evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (Adler 56).

The creationism versus science debate reached a charged a moment in 1925, during the so-called "Scopes Monkey Trial, where John Scopes was accused of teaching evolution illegally. The trial bolstered support of the evolution theory. Then, only 23 years later, in 1948 the Supreme Court bans religious theory from being taught in public schools -- a complete 180° from the outcome of the 1925 trial. Only 12 years after the banning of religious Creationist theory in public schools, Chief Justice Earl Warren, heading the Supreme court, pulls another litigation flip-around, making it legal for evolutionary theory to be taught in Arkansas schools, saying prohibiting evolutionary theory from being taught violates the 1st amendment. 21 years after evolution was cleared "okay", in 1981, Arkansas tries to even out the debate with the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act, which did not get passed, but shows some efforts toward reconciliation of the two extremes in academia. It was during this time of reaching a balance, in 1980, that intelligent design arose, of life commencing from some intelligent designer. Reconciliation between religion and science grows stronger when the Pope John Paul II, himself, says "evolution is more than just a hypothesis" (Adler 53).

The ping-pong game of religion versus evolutionary instruction in school went from no evolution, religion in 1925 to less religious in 1948 and the 1960s (except for the Abington School District v. Shempp case in 1963, which required Bible passages to be read to commence school) to downright acceptance of evolutionary with the Pope. Currently, 80% of Americans believe God created the earth, and in England Darwin is so highly revered that his face marks a 10-pound note. Clearly, the debate -- especially in the 60s, where religious prayer was banned and then Bible recitations required in a single year for some schools -- has been vacillating between religious and evolutionary prohibitions, requirements, and permissions. In 1992, the Court ruled that public schools may not sponsor invocations at graduation ceremonies. However, the long anthology of creationism-darwinism debates appears to present an evolving synthesis.

Currently, ever since 1860 with the original Hooker & Huxley versus Bishop Wilberforce debate to Scopes, outlawing evolutionism, to such decisions in the 60s (like Engel v. Vital in 1962, which forbade public schools to require prayer recitation) which diminished religious emphasis in schools to the equilibrium attempt in 1981 to the Pope's acceptance of some of the science, religion and darwinism has traveled a long way.

Holmes Rolston III, a philosopher at Colorado State University, and writer of a book on genetics and genesis writes that the Biblical creation story is simply a poetic account of the reality with the accounts of flora and fauna of the land and sea occurring in the same order.

One of Darwin's greatest concerns was that of theodicy, the nature of the origin of evil in man. Christians and other believers say that suffering is "ennobling", meaning that anguish and pains are "agents of moral improvement" (Adler 56). Darwin quickly refuted this notion, knowing that omnivores have an amoral creation. Darwin was challenged by the thought -- along with many other theodicians -- with the possibility that God was indifferent to the sufferings of man. He fell into a period of despair when his daughter, Annie, suffered from and ultimately died from Tuberculosis at age 10. Darwin died in 1882, 43 years before the emergence of the first major contemporary debate of creationism versus evolution, the Scopes Trial. However, he was anything but forgotten. His body was buried in Westminster Abbey, honorably with Sir Isaac Newton, in a funeral attended by the leading scientists, clergy, and politicians. The mixed attendance of Darwin's funeral -- the clergy and the scientists -- connotes of a greater balance between the two dichotomies, possibly reducing the clash to something more resembling a harmony.

The emergence of ID is the alternative ideology to the extremes of Darwinism and Creationism, positing that "a supernatural force [is] behind the emergence of complex biological systems -- such as the eye -- composed of interdependent parts" (Adler 58). This is, of course, strongly refuted by biologists, as repackaged Creationism. Board member, Sue Gamble states that "Science does not investigate the evidence of the supernatural. Once you have supernatural explanations, you no longer have science". Another member of the same board, Ken Willard, claims that alternative ideas to science pose ideas which give students a broader base from which they can reach their own conclusions. The importance of drawing one's own conclusions is vitally important to the process of deciding where one's faith lies -- in religion, in science, or in a fusion of both those ideologies.

Where is the synthesis to the science of genetics, inheritance, and species relationships and the location of God. The Bible depicts the latter in detail, but not the former. Darwin and science can describe the interrelationship between species of finches and any other species, but not the location of god. Jerry Adler writes, "it is human nature to seek both kinds of knowledge" (Adler 58). Every scientific paradigm -- ever since Copernicus proved that it was not God that pulled the sun up every new morn, but the rotation of the earth within the solar system --aims to discover a little more about the existence of the unknown, whether that unknown is God or a new variety of mushroom species. The important thing is to honor the quest and the embrace that scientific process.

On a closing note, we must remember how young Darwin was when he first began writing the centerpiece for scientific evolution. Social, scientific, and political impact is not undermined by youth -- usually it is in youth that people define their niche for making tremendous impact.

Adler, Jerry. "The Evolution of a Scientist." Time. Nov, 2005.
Court Rulings. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/courtrulings.html