Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

lution: Populations always surpass their resources, with the inevitable
result of violent competition and starvation. Intelligence should
allow humans to foresee this result and prevent it by restraining
reproduction, but as Malthus noted when he surveyed the condition
of Europe, humans seldom do so.
Darwin’s friend, the botanist, evolutionist, and Christian Asa
Gray (see gray, asa) maintained a belief in the ultimate purposes of
a good God. In a letter of May 22, 1860, Darwin wrote to Gray:
With respect to the theological view of the question.
This is always painful to me. I am bewildered.
I had no intention to write atheistically.
But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others
do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of
design and beneficence on all sides of us. There
seems to me to be too much misery in the world.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and
omnipotent God would have designedly created
the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of
their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars,
or that a cat should play with mice.
Darwin noted a couple of silver linings in this cloud. First, his
principal contribution was to point out that the victims of natural
selection were primarily those that had inferior adaptations, with
the result that the destructive process of death produced improvements
in adaptation. At least something good—in fact, a whole
world of biodiversity—comes from it. The author of this encyclopedia,
in younger and more naïve days, published this view in
an unsuccessful attempt at Christian theodicy. Second, Darwin
assured his readers that most animals were incapable of feeling
pain, and even for those that could, “… we may console ourselves
with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no
fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the
healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.”
One reason that many in the general population, and even
many scientists, had a hard time accepting natural selection was
that it seemed so unfair. Neither the individuals with superior nor
those with inferior characteristics deserved them; they were born
with them, and most have paid the price for it. Genetic variation
comes from mutations (see population genetics). For every good
mutation that benefits its possessor there are numerous deleterious
ones that cause their bearers to suffer. lamarckism, the inheritance
of acquired characteristics, seemed much more fair: An individual
that worked hard could pass on to its descendants the progress
that it had made. While perhaps all evolutionary scientists wish that
Lamarckism were true, it simply is not. Furthermore, the fossil record
is littered with millions of extinct species. The unfair and painful process
of natural selection has therefore occurred everywhere for billions
of years. If there is a supreme God, then this unfair and painful
process was the method God used to create the living world. Without
mutation, there is no variation, and extinction almost inevitably
results; yet these mutations cause much suffering.
Darwin’s contemporaries struggled with these issues. Theologian
Henry L. Mansell published a Christian theodicy the same
year and through the same publisher as Darwin’s Origin of Species
(see Origin Of SpecieS [book]). Alfred Lord Tennyson was a literary
friend of Darwin and Huxley, and one of his most famous poems (In
Memoriam) captured the essence of this problem. The poem was
published before the Origin of Species but reflected much of the
thinking prevalent among his scientific acquaintances:
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw …
And while there may be cruelty at present, at least, Tennyson
wondered, would not a benevolent God at least preserve species
from extinction? But no:
“So careful of the type?” but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, “A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.”
evolutionary ethics
Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (see gould, stephen
Jay) claimed that religion and science were compatible because
they had non-overlapping realms of competence (which he called
non-overlapping magisteria). Science explained how the world
works, and its physical history; religion focuses on what is morally
right and wrong. The distinction is between what happens or has
happened, and what should happen. He considered both science
and religion to be components of our “coat of many colors called
wisdom.”
Earlier scientists held beliefs that appear to match this
approach. Galileo, who was punished for an astronomical theory
that contradicted what Church authorities claimed was biblical
teaching, said the Bible was about “how to go to Heaven, not how
the heavens go.” And Huxley (see huxley, thomas henry), Darwin’s
contemporary and defender, said that even though natural selection
is a violent and unfair process, human responsibility was to
resist acting in a violent and unfair manner (see evolutionary ethics).
Natural selection produced humans, but humans should not
practice “survival of the fittest” in society or between nations. In
this, Huxley directly opposed the social Darwinism of people like
Spencer (see spencer, herbert).
Therefore, Christianity and evolutionary science are, or can at
least be forced to be, compatible. But many thinkers have wanted
to go beyond mere compatibility. They have aspired to bring religion
and science together. One of the most famous attempts to do
so was William Paley’s natural theology. Natural theology claimed
that the existence and attributes of God could be discerned by a
study of God’s creation. As Richard Dawkins has written, “Paley’s
argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the
best biological scholarship of his day, but it was wrong, gloriously
and utterly wrong.” Natural theology, which today exists in the form
of intelligent design theory, never seems to go away.
Still other scientists attempt a union of science and religion
without embracing natural theology. Some of them detect evidence
that supports their faith within the anthropic principle. Others claim
that natural law itself, uniform throughout the universe, shows that
there is a universal and constant God. Perhaps the minimalist version
of the union of science and religion is the statement, of uncertain
origin, that God is the answer to the question of why anything
exists rather than nothing. Because the presence of God may be
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