Good Religion Needs Good Science
By the Revd Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and
Public Affairs
The trouble with homo sapiens is that we're only
human. People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people
and churches are no exception. When a big new idea emerges which
changes the way people look at the world, it's easy to feel that
every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do
battle against the new insights. The church made that mistake with
Galileo's astronomy, and has since realised its error. Some church
people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin's theory of
natural selection. So it is important to think again about Darwin's
impact on religious thinking, then and now - and the bicentenary of
Darwin's birth in 1809 is a good time to do so.
Theories raised moral questions
But if Darwin's ideas once needed rescuing from religious
defensiveness, they may also now need rescuing from some of the
enthusiasts for his ideas. A scientist has a duty to the truth: he
or she is called to be fearless in discovering the way the world
works. But how a scientific theory is used, and the ways in which
ideas can be deployed politically or ideologically, are the
responsibility of a less easily defined constituency. 'Darwinism'
has become something bigger than Darwin's own theories, and raises
many moral questions. This doesn't make the church of the 1860s
right to have attacked Darwin, but it does suggest that the
question is deeper than deciding whose side you would have been on
in that historic debate between Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of
Oxford, and Darwin's supporter, Thomas Huxley.
Nothing in scientific method contradicts Christian
teaching
Darwin was, in many ways, a model of good scientific method. He
observed the world around him, developed a theory which sought to
explain what he saw, and then set about a long and painstaking
process of gathering evidence that would either bear out,
contradict, or modify his theory. As a result, our understanding of
the world is expanded, but the scientific process continues. In
science, hypotheses are meant to be constantly tested. Subsequent
generations have built on Darwin's work but have not significantly
undermined his fundamental theory of natural selection. There is
nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching. Jesus himself
invited people to observe the world around them and to reason from
what they saw to an understanding of the nature of God (Matthew 6:
25-33). Christian theologians throughout the centuries have sought
knowledge of the world and knowledge of God. For Thomas Aquinas
there was no such thing as science versus religion; both existed in
the same sphere and to the same end, the glory of God. Whilst
Christians believe that the Bible contains all that we need to know
to be saved from our sins, they do not claim that it is a
compendium of all knowledge. Jesus himself warned his disciples
that there was more that he could say to them and that the Spirit
of truth would lead them into truth (John 16: 12-13). There is no
reason to doubt that Christ still draws people towards truth
through the work of scientists as well as others, and many
scientists are motivated in their work by a perception of the deep
beauty of the created world. Nevertheless, it is worth remembering
that scientific theories can be overtaken in their turn even as old
ideas prove to have an enduring quality. Most of us get by with
some version of Newtonian physics and understand little of Quantum
Theory. Newtonian ideas suffice for most of our everyday needs -
but we now know that we can't push them too far as there is plenty
that they do not adequately explain.
Reaction now seems misguided
Darwin's meticulous application of the principles of
evidence-based research was not the problem. His theory caused
offence because it challenged the view that God had created human
beings as an entirely different kind of creation to the rest of the
animal world.
But whilst it is not difficult to see why evolutionary thinking
was offensive at the time, on reflection it is not such an
earth-shattering idea. Yes, Christians believe that God became
incarnate as a human being in the person of Jesus and thereby
demonstrated God's especial love for humanity. But how can that
special relationship be undermined just because we develop a
different understanding of the processes by which humanity came to
be? It is hard to avoid the thought that the reaction against
Darwin was largely based on what we would now call the 'yuk factor'
(an emotional not an intellectual response) when he proposed a
lineage from apes to humans.
But for all that the reaction now seems misjudged, it may just
be that Wilberforce and others glimpsed a murky image of how
Darwin's theories might be misappropriated and the harm they could
do (see the section Darwin and the Church). Even if
they were blind to the future, it remains that the legacy of Darwin
(rather than Darwin's own achievements) has had a shadow side.
Social misapplication of Darwin
If evolution is continuing, and humanity as we know it is not
the final summation of the process, it is not difficult to slip
into a rather naïve optimism which sees the human race becoming
better and better all the time. Despite our vastly expanding
technical knowledge, even a fairly cursory review of human history
undermines any idea of constant moral progress. Humanity's advance
in terms of technical prowess and achievements has not, to most
people's eyes, fully liberated us from our burdens. Christians
believe that all of us are constrained by sin and that only through
the death and resurrection of Jesus can we move beyond what
constrains us, to a fuller and more human way of living. But
Christians are not the only ones who are sceptical of the idea that
evolution means moral progress.
Natural selection, as a way of understanding physical
evolutionary processes over thousands of years, makes sense.
Translate that into a half-understood notion of 'the survival of
the fittest' and imagine the processes working on a day-to-day
basis, and evolution gets mixed up with a social theory in which
the weak perish - the very opposite of the Christian vision in the
Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). This 'Social Darwinism', in which the
strong flourish and losers go to the wall is, moreover, the
complete converse of what Darwin himself believed about human
relationships. From this social misapplication of Darwin's theories
has sprung insidious forms of racism and other forms of
discrimination which are more horribly potent for having the
appearance of scientific "truth" behind them. Darwin's immense
achievement was to develop a big theory which went a long way to
explaining aspects of the world around us. But to treat it as an
all-embracing theory of everything is to travesty Darwin's work.
The difficulty is that his theory of natural selection has been so
effective within the scientific community, and so easily understood
in outline by everybody, that it has been inflated into a general
theory of everything - which is not only erroneous but
dangerous.
Capacity to love consistent with Darwin
Christians will want to stress, instead, the human capacity for
love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice. There is nothing here
which, in principle, contradicts Darwin's theory. Humanity has
acquired the capacity to reflect, to imagine, and to reason from
what is known to what is not yet known. Some animals may have these
features in a very rudimentary form, but the human capacity is so
much greater as to be effectively unique. It is our capacity to
imagine other people as more than bodies, but as persons, which
marks us out. It is that, above all, which has enabled the human
mind and will to achieve so much. And if this capacity - which we
can characterise as the capacity for love - is consistent with
Darwin's ideas of natural selection, it suggests that our capacity
as a species to act in ways which appear to be against our personal
interests has, paradoxically, enabled us to survive as "fitted" to
our context and environment. So the pseudo-Darwinian reductionism,
which elevates selfishness into a virtue and celebrates power and
dominance, is not only a misunderstanding of Darwin but may even
contribute to human decline by eroding those aspects of being human
which have given us such a natural advantage. Even the more
sophisticated versions of 'Social Darwinism', which interpret all
human behaviour in terms of the struggle for dominance and the
maximisation of genetic advantage through the generations, risk
presenting us with an image of being human which makes us slaves to
some kind of evolutionary imperative, as if we are programmed in
ways we cannot over-rule. But the point of natural selection is
that it is precisely by being most fully human that we demonstrate
our fitness. And being fully human means refusing to abdicate our
ability to act selflessly or lovingly and to challenge thin
concepts of rationality which equate "being rational" to material
self interest. It is vital that Darwin's theories are rescued from
political and ideological agendas that are more about controlling
human imagination and unpredictability than about good science.
Discerning where culture threatens
Christianity
All that I have said so far will remain contentious in some
circles. Some Christian movements still make opposition to
evolutionary theories a litmus test of faithfulness and - the other
side of the coin - many believe Darwin's theories to have fatally
undermined religious belief and therefore reject any accommodation
of one by the other. Why should this be?
The Church of England in 1860 was already facing challenges to
its former pre-eminence. Freethinking and non-conformist
Christianity were confronting the power of the established church -
and then came Darwin. These were nervous times for Anglicans, and
when worldly power is thought of as God-given, threats to power are
perceived as attacks on God. What was true for Anglicans in 1860 is
largely true for all kinds of Christians today, although (depending
where you are in the world) the threat may be perceived to come
from radical Islam, secularism, consumerism or atheism. The
cultures within which Christians try to be faithful are widely seen
to be hostile, at least in some respects, and discipleship means,
at some level, standing against some social trends. The problem for
all Christians is discerning where the surrounding culture is
really a threat and where it is compatible with our understanding
of God. Because "science" has been widely regarded as offering a
total theory of everything; because some scientists have encouraged
this claim; perhaps because we all know how reliant we are on
scientific ideas which we barely understand and which make us
nervous of our ignorance; and perhaps because the churches have not
been good at equipping people to see God at work in the
contemporary world - for all these reasons and others, a parody of
science has become a focus for certain forms of social unease. In
so far as the practice of science has its hubristic side, there is
a case for science to answer. In so far as 'Social Darwinism' has
diminished our sense of being human and being in relationships,
there are real problems to address. But first it is important to
recognise that the anti-evolutionary fervour in some corners of the
churches may be a kind of proxy issue for other discontents; and,
perhaps most of all, an indictment of the churches' failure to tell
their own story - Jesus's story - with conviction in a way which
works with the grain of the world as God has revealed it to be,
both through the Bible and in the work of scientists of Darwin's
calibre.
Rapproachment between Darwin and Christian
faith
At a university in Kansas, I asked a biology professor how he
coped with teaching Darwin's theories to students whose churches
insisted that evolution was heresy and whose schools taught
creationism. "No problem," he replied, "the kids know that if they
want a good job they need a degree, and if they want a degree they
have to work with evolution theory. Creationism is for church, as
far as they're concerned. Here, they're Darwinists." Perhaps he was
over-cynical. But he was also pointing to young lives which could
not be lived with integrity - the very opposite of how Christians
are called to live. There is no integrity to be found either in
rejecting Darwin's ideas wholesale or in elevating them into the
kind of grand theory which reduces humanity to the sum of our
evolutionary urges. For the sake of human integrity - and thus for
the sake of good Christian living - some rapprochement between
Darwin and Christian faith is essential.
Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England
owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our
first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you
still. We try to practice the old virtues of 'faith seeking
understanding' and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle
for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just
your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support
of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively
with good science - and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be
true as well.