Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meaning of Life

520 THE FUTURE OF AN IDEA
makes life worth living. Our people, it says, benefit more from having a place
of splendor in which to worship than from a little more food. Any atheist or
agnostic who finds this cost-benefit analysis ludicrous might pause to consider
whether to support diverting all charitable and governmental support
for museums, symphony orchestras, libraries, and scientific laboratories to
efforts to provide more food and better living conditions for the least well
off. A human life worth living is not something that can be uncontroversially
measured, and that is its glory.
And there's the rub. What will happen, one may well wonder, if religion is
preserved in cultural zoos, in libraries, in concerts and demonstrations? It is
happening; the tourists flock to watch the Native American tribal dances, and
for the onlookers it is folklore, a religious ceremony, certainly, to be treated
with respect, but also an example of a meme complex on the verge of
extinction, at least in its strong, ambulatory phase; it has become an invalid,
barely kept alive by its custodians. Does Darwin's dangerous idea give us
anything in exchange for the ideas it calls into question?
In chapter 3, I quoted the physicist Paul Davies proclaiming that the
reflective power of human minds can be "no trivial detail, no minor byproduct
of mindless purposeless forces," and suggested that being a byproduct
of mindless purposeless forces was no disqualification for
importance. And I have argued that Darwin has shown us how, in fact,
everything of importance is just such a product. Spinoza called his highest
being God or Nature (Deus sive Natura), expressing a sort of pantheism.
There have been many varieties of pantheism, but they usually lack a convincing
explanation about just how God is distributed in the whole of nature.
As we saw in chapter 7, Darwin offers us one: it is in the distribution of
Design throughout nature, creating, in the Tree of Life, an utterly unique and
irreplaceable creation, an actual pattern in the immeasurable reaches of
Design Space that could never be exactly duplicated in its many details.
What is design work? It is that wonderful wedding of chance and necessity,
happening in a trillion places at once, at a trillion different levels. And what
miracle caused it? None. It just happened to happen, in the fullness of time.
You could even say, in a way, that the Tree of Life created itself. Not in a
miraculous, instantaneous whoosh, but slowly, slowly, over billions of years.
Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not.
But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love
tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space
or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which
nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything
any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something
sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in
affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.
Universal Acid: Handle with Care 521
2. UNIVERSAL ACID: HANDLE WITH CARE
There is no denying, at this point, that Darwin's idea is a universal solvent,
capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in sight. The question is:
what does it leave behind? I have tried to show that once it passes through
everything, we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important
ideas. Some of the traditional details perish, and some of these are losses to be
regretted, but good riddance to the rest of them. What remains is more than
enough to build on.
At every stage in the tumultuous controversies that have accompanied the
evolution of Darwin's dangerous idea, there has been a defiance born of fear:
"You'll never explain this\" And the challenge has been taken up: "Watch
me!" And in spite of—indeed, partly because of—the huge emotional
investments the opponents have made in winning their sides of the argument,
the picture has become clearer and clearer. We now have a much better sense
of what a Darwinian algorithm is than Darwin ever dreamt of. Intrepid
reverse engineering has brought us to the point where we can confidently
assess rival claims about exactly what happened where on this planet billions
of years ago. The "miracles" of life and consciousness turn out to be even
better than we imagined back when we were sure they were inexplicable.
The ideas expressed in diis book are just the beginning. This has been an
introduction to Darwinian thinking, sacrificing details again and again to
provide a better appreciation of the overall shape of Darwin's idea. But as
Mies van der Rohe said, God is in the details. I urge caution alongside the
enthusiasm I hope I have kindled in you. I have learned from my own
embarrassing experience how easy it is to concoct remarkably persuasive
Darwinian explanations that evaporate on closer inspection. The truly dangerous
aspect of Darwin's idea is its seductiveness. Second-rate versions of
the fundamental ideas continue to bedevil us, so we must keep a close watch,
correcting each other as we go. The only way of avoiding the mistakes is to
learn from the mistakes we have already made.
A meme that occurs in many guises in the world's folklore is the tale of the
initially terrifying friend mistaken for an enemy. "Beauty and the Beast" is one of
the best-known species of this story. Balancing it is "The Wolf in Sheep's
Clothing." Now, which meme do you want to use to express your judgment of
Darwinism? Is it truly a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? Then reject it and fight on,
ever more vigilant against the seductions of Darwin's idea, which is truly
dangerous. Or does Darwin's idea turn out to be, in the end, just what we need in
our attempt to preserve and explain the values we cherish? I have completed my
case for the defense: the Beast is, in fact, a friend of Beauty, and indeed quite
beautiful in its own right. You be the judge.