'Darwinism' is Still a Fighting Word in the Culture Wars

I recently saw the film Inherit the Wind, the 1960 courtroom drama starring Spencer Tracy, that told the story of the famous 1925 so-called Scopes Monkey Trial. That was the trial which caused a national sensation after the state of Tennessee jailed and prosecuted a biology teacher who had dared to teach Charles Dawin's theory of evolution to his students. Watching scenes of an angry mob marching through the town's streets carrying signs reading "Down with Darwin" and "Godliness not Gorillas" I could not resist the thought of how little has changed in America , almost 50 years after the film, and over 80 years after the Scopes trial itself.

As we prepare to celebrate the Bicentennial of a man who was arguably one of the most influential thinkers Western Civilization has produced, it is little short of amazing that Charles Darwin (1809 --1882) and his theories continue to be the focus of an ongoing bitter controversy. Yes, it's true -- after 80 years the battle depicted in Inherit the Wind still rages on with no signs of a truce in sight. Right now the states of Missouri and South Carolina are considering bills requiring biology teachers to downplay evolution and teach the latest version of biblical Creationism known as "intelligent design." Just this past February, the Board of Education in Kansas reversed its own 2005 decision challenging the validity of Darwinian evolution. The February before saw the Ohio Board of Education similarly voting on a curriculum standard which mandated that science teachers "critically analyze" evolution. Last December, after a protracted legal battle, the school board in Cobb County, Georgia, finally agreed to remove "warning stickers" on biology textbooks that called evolution "a theory, not a fact." In 2005 bills were introduced in the legislatures of Nevada, Arkansas and Mississippi to promote the teaching of intelligent design. And in December of that year, in Dover, Pennsylvania, after a bitterly contested trial that garnered international attention a federal judge prohibited the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. All in all, over the last five years, anti-Darwinism legislation has been introduced in 24 states, and similar policies were being considered in 20 others. Indeed, this issue even came up at the recent Republican primary debate when contenders were asked whether they "believed in evolution," as if it were some kind of religion. What is going on?

One can only shake one's head and wonder how it is that this theory of evolution -- the carefully considered, painstakingly arrived at hypothesis of a humble naturalist seeking to unravel the mystery of life's origins has come to arose such rancor, heated debate, even outright hysteria, 150 years after it was first presented, among certain segments of the population? To listen to some of Darwin's detractors, he has apparently become the poster boy for all that is wrong and godless in America. And with much of the anti-Darwin sentiment issuing from the right-wing fundamentalist Christian camp, it would appear that to some of the extremists of this movement, Darwinism is nothing less than a sinister Communist plot to destroy Christianity.

I wonder how many of the people -- on both sides of this debate -- have actually bothered to sit down and read the groundbreaking On the Origin of Species or The Descent of Man or any of Charles Darwin's other voluminous writings. Were a poll to be taken (assuming the respondents answered honestly) I would wager that upwards of 75 to 85 percent would answer NO. For if they had done some reading they would realize that, far from being Public Enemy No. 1 in the Conservative/Religious vs Progressive/Secular Culture Wars, Darwin was a thoughful, sensitive man who originally planned to become a clergyman in the Anglican Church. But his love of nature led him to take the magical five-year journey aboard the H. M. S. Beagle that was to transform his life forever. He was a man who was fully aware of the disturbing implications of his theories, yet still saw no inevitable conflict between belief in a Creator and acceptance of evolution. This in stark contrast to some of the more militant activists on the atheist front who insist that one must reject God and all religion in order to embrace science.

And how many of the strident voices could actually give a cogent, intelligible description of what evolution means if asked to do so? Those who could would surely know that the natural law known as evolution through natural selection is actually a mysterious, often mind-boggling, awe-inspiring mechanism which presents at once the stunning beauty and the sheer terror of an erupting volcano. Far from diminishing the dignity and power of God's Creation it, if anything, only reveals the true magnificence of a God who could have devised such a scheme.

For those new to, or perhaps unsure of exactly what evolution means (other than the tired cliche notion that "your great-great-grandfather was an ape") perhaps the best way to explain it, is through the example of how mankind domesticated and bred our best friend -- the canine. All of the dogs on earth today can trace their lineage back to a wild creature that most likely resembled a wolf or coyote. Why are they not all that way still ? Because for thousands of years and countless generations man has deliberately employed a process almost identical to natural selection to literally "design" the kind of dogs that would be most useful to him. The principle is simple. A female dog has a litter--perhaps 6 or 8 puppies are produced. Though similar, none of those pups is an exact replica of either of its parents or of each other. There will be differences, slight variations, i.e., some will be taller, stockier, differently colored, more furry, faster, more aggressive, etc, than others. Now suppose you wanted to produce a dog like a greyhound -- a racing dog. You would begin by selecting from the original litter those dogs who appeared to have the longest legs, the most slender bodies, and the most high-strung temperaments of the lot. You would then breed them together exclusively, dismissing the rest, and do exactly the same thing with the next litter. Eventually, the dogs would come more and more to resemble the ideal that you are looking for, until at a certain point in time, after perhaps hundreds of generations, you would be able to consistently obtain a specific type of dog which we today call the Greyhound.

Natural selection works in a very similar fashion, except that the "traits" that are being "selected" have nothing to do with anyone's preferences, but are rather traits that somehow confer a survival advantage to that organism (better resistance to disease, for example), relative to other members of the clan. Those organisms not possessing the favorable trait are more likely to be done in either by predators, by other competitors for the same resources, or by the environment itself. As time went on, those not possessing the favorable trait would tend to die out and/or leave fewer progeny, while those organisms with the competitive edge -- provided it was a trait which could be passed down to offspring -- would tend to multiply until, at last, after perhaps millions of years, they would come to predominate in the population -- so much so that they will have in effect created a new species, related to, but distinct from their cousins who have gone extinct. This process has occurred continually with every manner of living organism -- worms, roses, starfish, oak trees, whales, bacteria, lobsters, elephants, tomatoes, butterflies, owls, and lions and tigers and bears! And, yes -- man. Thus, through a series of tiny improvements accumulated over millions of years, life on earth has followed a clear and definite, if somewhat messy trajectory from the simplest single-celled protozoan right up to the elaborate complexity of the human brain.

What is perhaps most awe-inspiring about this relentless natural law of evolution is realizing the fact that, for every single creature that we find on the earth today, hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions (in the case of micro-organisms) of similar creatures have bitten the dust!!! This means that you, me, and every other living plant or animal on this planet is the end result of incredible, unfathomable odds. To me, this is nothing short of miraculous. And so it was to Charles Darwin. He could not but marvel at the beauty, the complexity, the wondrous variety of living beings, all of which had come about as the result of this ruthless, merciless, and seemingly purposeless and wasteful process. He was mystified by the intricate specialization he saw in animals such as his famous finches from the Galapagos Islands -- each type with a beak specifically designed for and suited to its habitat (thin and sharp for picking off ticks, short and stubby to grasp buds, long to dig into fruits and seeds, etc). He was thunderstruck at the thought of how many creatures must once have roamed this earth--creatures that we would never see or know of, unless by chance some of their fossil remains were somehow preserved under layers of ice or sediment, waiting to be unearthed by geologists. And his discoveries filled him with a sense of reverence, humility and wonder -- far removed from the arrogance of some of his modern-day disciples, who have used his theories to justify such shameful adventures as the Nazi eugenics program (trying to create a "master race") or the dismal blanket proclamation that "God is Dead." Indeed, Darwin concludes his famous Origin of Species with the followng words:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Yet, to judge by the recent controversies over teaching evolution in the public schools, this is not enough to have spared Mr. Darwin from the righteous wrath of the so-called "Creationists." Those folks who insist that the Bible was meant to be taken literally, entirely, word for word, as if God himself had dictated it verbatim to some scribes who happened to be living in what is now called the Middle East, several thousand years ago. They insist on this, regardless of the absurdities and confusion that such a literal reading of the Scriptures would entail. But if these folks want to be taken seriously, to have any influence over our nation's public education, they are going to have to answer some tough questions. Taking the Bible literally leads to a number of problems.

For one thing there is the question of language. The Scriptures were written in ancient Hebrew, and later translated into ancient Greek and/or Aramaic -- languages which only a handful of scholars and linguists can claim to be experts in. Who is to say how many of the Bible's "true meanings" have been distorted or obscured by poor or faulty translations, whether deliberate or inadvertent? Who among us can claim to know for sure? As for the New Testament, not a single one of the original manuscripts are still in existence, nor were any of the books of the Gospel written by a person who actually lived through and witnessed the events he is describing, The oldest manuscripts of whatever portions of the New Testament survive today were handwritten on papyrus and parchment, and date back only to the second century. Indeed, the Book of Mark, today considered the first to be written of the four gospels, was penned at least 50 years after the Crucifixtion of Christ.

Then there is the matter of the Bible's own internal contradictions and inconsistencies. No honest person who has actually read the Good Book can deny that it contains a host of contradictions, differing versions of events, and inconsistencies too numerous to mention. Let me give just a few examples. Both Matthew (1: 2-16)* and Luke (3: 23-38) provide an account of the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary. The first starts with Abraham, the second goes all the way back to Adam. But one must ask why, if Jesus was truly born of a virgin, would it even be necessary to trace his lineage back through Joseph, who was not Jesus's true father? If Jesus had no earthly father, than tracing his lineage back through Joseph would be contradictory and completely irrelevant. Matthew (27: 5) tells us that Judas the traitor, distraught over his shameful betrayal of Jesus, tossed down his pieces of silver and commited suicide by hanging. But in Acts (1: 18) we read that he used the money to purchase a field, and then died as the result of a burst appendix. Jesus's legendary Sermon on the Mount was, of course, delivered from a mountain top, right? Well yeah, according to Matthew, that is (5: 1-2). But according to Luke (6: 17, 20), Jesus came down onto the plains to address the multitude (and neither Mark, John or Paul seems to remember that famous Sermon at all -- none even mentions it!). In Romans (2: 6, 13) and in James (2: 24) it is made quite clear that we are justified by good works, not by faith alone. But in Ephesians (2: 8-9) and in Galatians ( 2: 16) Paul seems to contradict himself by declaring just the opposite. Where was Jesus a few days after his Baptism? In the wilderness, right, where he resisted the Devil's temptation for 40 days? (Mt 4: 1-2, Mk 1: 12-13) But wait -- according to John (1: 26-34, 2: 1-9) he was at the wedding in Cana just 3 days later, turning water into wine.

Turning to the Old Testament, in Psalms 145:9 we are told "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works." This was later reinforced in the NT, when James tells us (5:11) that "the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." But when the Lord himself speaks (Jer. 13:14) one wonders which Lord we are talking about:

"And I will dash them, one against another, even the fathers and the sons together...I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them."

In Proverbs 26: 4 we are given sage advice, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him." But in the very next verse (Pro 26: 5 ), we are told, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit." Confused yet? Exodus (20: 5, 34: 7), tells us that children unto the third and fourth generation must bear the sins of their fathers. Yet in Ezekiel (18: 20) we are told precisely the opposite. In Genesis 2: 17 we learn that Adam will surely die on the very day he tastes the forbidden fruit. But a few pages down (Gen 5: 5) we read that Adam lived 930 years. Dozens more of such examples could be cited.

A literal reading of Scripture also means endorsing things that most decent people consider appalling, whether it be slavery (1 Timothy 6: 1,2 ), stoning someone to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Num 15: 32-36), dashing infants to pieces and ripping them from their mother's wombs to punish their sinful parents (Isaiah 13: 16, Hosea 13: 16), or father-daughter incest (Gen 19: 32-36). Thus it is somewhat difficult to understand how some people can be so adamant about the need to take Scripture literally and expect to go unchallenged. Moreover, for an educated person to really accept that this Earth is only about 6000 years old, or that all life was created in six 24-hour days would mean throwing out a millenium's worth of painstaking scientific discovery and technological advancement. Ask yourself, would a loving God, having endowed man with such marvelous faculties of reason and intelligence with which to uncover the workings of nature, want him to simply disregard all of the discoveries he makes through the use of these very God-given powers?

The truth is, that by and large, the vast majority of people who consider themselves Christian believe that the Bible was meant to be taken figuratively and allegorically, which, the way I see it, makes for a much more fulfilling spiritual experience, as one seeks to decipher the hidden meanings of Scripture and shed light on its age-old mysteries and enigmas . There are of course those who do not take the Bible literally, yet still have a problem with our friend Darwin and his theories. In the last several years, some of these folks have latched onto a new version of Biblical Creationism known as Intelligent Design. Many cynics will say that this is nothing more than a stealth attempt to get Genesis back into the classroom by decking it out in a new suit of clothes -- a clever tactic employed for the purpose of bypassing the 1987 Supreme Court decision which banned the teaching of Creationism in the public schools. However, I am willing to give these people a fair hearing.

It is the most natural thing in the world to gaze upon the magnificent texture and richness of life and be blown away by the intricate complexity, the exquisite organization, the breathtakingly precise patterns and systems, of the livng things all around us and conclude that surely, creations such as these MUST have been brought into being by some "Intelligent Designer." Nor is there anything new about this concept, which has been around since the days of Plato and Aristotle. In fact, seven years before Darwin was even born -- a best-selling book hit the stands titled Natural Theology by British cleric William Paley. He famously compared living systems to a finely crafted watch, and the Creator to a watchmaker. I once heard someone express the Intelligent Designer theory this way: "Saying that life on earth, and human life in particular, came about as the result of random chance is like saying an explosion in a print factory could have produced Webster's Dictionary." At the time, I felt I could not have expressed it any better. Yet compelling though this view of life may be, upon closer scrutiny and reflection, it begins to fall apart. If I told you that I was going to go out and buy a PowerBall or a MegaMillions Lottery ticket, and that I felt pretty confident I might win it, you would probably laugh and remind me that my chance of picking out just the right six numbers was less than 1 in 150 million. But let's suppose I could live five million years, and that each and every day for five million years I went out and bought a lottery ticket, what do you suppose my chances would be then? Not only would I have an excellent chance of winning the jackpot, but I'd be bound to winit eventually. Given enough time, even the most seemingly improbable things can and do happen. Time is probably the most important factor in the whole evolution theory, but it is the one that we have the most trouble getting our minds around. We simply cannot fathom a process that moves at a snail's pace over a span of millions and millions and millions of years. It truly is beyond our comprehension. But then again, isnt that exactly what the Mind of God is supposed to be?

For those who still wish to assert that Darwinism is an as yet unproven theory, or that there may be alternative explanations for human origins, the final nail was hammered into the coffin with the mapping of the Human Genome in 2003. Scientists can now demonstrate conclusively that 98 percent of human DNA is identical to that of our closest primate relatives. And for that matter we share much of our DNA with all other life forms right down to barnacles and bacteria. Yet, this need not be a cause for despair or angry denial. There is simply no reason why a person cannot accept the theory of evolution, and still be a religious, God-worshipping individual.

Why could God not have chosen as His method of Creation, the law of evolution and natural selection, and why could it not have pleased Him to allow His most intelligent creatures -- humans -- to discover it for themselves, solely for His own amusement? Why could not the utter ruthlessness of the process of evolution be taken as a metaphor for all of the trials and tribulations the human soul must go through in order to attain perfection? To give us pause, to make us stand with awe and contemplate the preciousness of this thing called life -- as did Darwin. And if we believe that humans were created in the image of God and possess a soul, then why would the notion that our physical bodies -- which after all, are just shells subject to wither and decay -- may have evolved from chimpanzees strike such terror into the hearts of some? Man's dilemna: a divinely created soul trapped in an animal body; a fitting symbol of the eternal struggle between our "higher nature" and our "lower nature," indeed, between good and evil itself. Perhaps the Mind of God knows exactly what the ultimate product of all of this "evolution" will be, but, like a good novelist, he is saving it for the final chapter, though perhaps sending enticing clues here and there along the way. It is as if a great and beautiful painting , say a Rembrandt, were to be unframed and stretched out, and then carefully folded in half, over and over again like a flag or a tablecloth. Folded in half repeatedly until the size of it became infintesimally, microscopically small. And then, perhaps for no other reason than His sheer amusement, God decides to slowly unfold it, bit by tiny bit, revealing His plan to us in, perhaps, the only way we can handle it.

Darwin's discovery of the principles of natural selection did not demolish his faith in an all-powerful all-knowing Deity, even though it may have raised new doubts about His nature, and new causes for concern. Nor did it render him any less awed by the majesty and splendor of God's creation. After all, the process of evolution is driven by the struggle for existence, the need to survive at all costs. But this tells us nothing at all about how non-life forms -- chemicals, gases, elements, inorganic materials -- could have somehow combined and given rise to Life. Divine intervention is as good an explanation as any. Charles Darwin would have been the first to admit that. In his Autobiography, wrestling with the subject of religion, he spoke of "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity."** Yet, after a certain amount of anguish, he came at last to conclude that: "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us." Who among us, except the most arrogant, can claim otherwise?

* All Biblical references are from the King James Version, Thomas Nelson publishers

** The Autobiography of Charles Darwin ed. Nora Barlow 1958; W. W. Norton & Co