A life-long atheist now believes in a divine Creator and attacks Darwinism

(Note: Two readers in so-far unposted comments have challenged me on the following point: if, as I agree, natural selection leads to changes within a species, why couldn’t it lead to new species? I will try to reply to them soon. Below, Alan Roebuck, giving some acute advice on how to reply to the challengers, explains how it is that Darwinists so easily extrapolate from small changes to big changes.)

Gintas writes:

Here is a new book by former-atheist-but-now-theist Antony Flew: “There Is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.” From this blog post, an excerpt:

Moving on now from the parable, it’s time for me to lay my cards on the table, to set out my own views and the reasons that support them. I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source.

Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Science spotlights three dimensions that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature. But it is not this alone that has guided me. I have also been helped by a renewed study of the classical philosophical arguments.

Thucydides writes:

Steve Sailer has some excellent pieces on Darwinism here.

Every culture has had a creation myth; Darwinism itself serves this function for anti-religious Enlightenment liberals. It purports to provide an explanation of how things came to be, without resort to a deity. Never mind there are huge problems with it, as

Darwin himself recognized. He was troubled about the fossil record, and hoped answers might be forthcoming. The Cambrian explosion, in which most major phyla appeared fully developed in the relative blink of an eye in geological time is impossible to reconcile with the idea of variation and selection, which would have to take place over very extended time periods. Efforts to explain this away by the likes of Stephen Jay Gould have been laughably inadequate.

The neo-Darwinians (neo, in recognition of the fact they depart considerably from Darwin) also misinterpret the theory as supporting their substitute religion, the belief in human progress. Of course, evolution isn’t “going” anywhere: it isn’t headed towards “better” forms necessarily. It may well, according to its own terms, move to what we would consider simpler, more primitive forms.

The real problem for the left is that their doctrine of the absolute natural equality between individuals and groups cannot survive Darwinism. Random variation and selection simply could not yield up equality. So with their usual indifference to intellectual scruple, they draw on the doctrine selectively depending on the purpose at hand.

“Albert Nock” writes:

I am someone who both believes in Darwinism and in the absence of any moral truths. My position is not shared by even a substantial minority of Darwinians, which is one reason why I get irritated when other people say it is entailed by Darwinism (or libertarianism). When I advocate it, they vehemently disagree with me. I also disagree that Darwinism entails a lack of belief in moral truth. I arrived at that via Hume’s is-ought distinction. To most Darwinists the positive evidence simply by far weighs in favor of evolution, with normative issues a different area (Gould, who your commenters give too much credit with regard to his science, coined the phrase “non-overlapping magisteria”). Talk of good and bad (objectively in a moral sense, not “for” something as an athlete’s injury might be for another team) is not helpful in understanding how organisms evolve, they instead consider those issues to be useful for us to decide how to live our own lives and/or organize society. It is my hope that a real thorough-going atheism will smash the delusions that leftist “atheists” cling somewhat religiously though I can’t say I consider this likely.

It is not only the Catholic Church that sees evolution and Christianity as compatible. I myself had ultra-Calvinist beliefs in the manner of Fred Phelps and saw no contradiction between them and Darwinism. [LA replies: I place no value on any appeal to authority in this issue. Even if everyone in the world believed Darwinism to be true, that wouldn’t make it true.] Hardly any Mormons were creationists years ago, until they began associating more with Evangelicals. Razib has more on that shift here

I do think that the type of person who takes a great interest in evolution is more likely than average to reject religion, but I would not emphasize any causal relationship there. Men tend to think a certain way (more reductionist rather than holistic) and also tend to be score higher on the disagreeable axis of personality profiles. Scientists tend to be disagreeable and social support binds one to a community and shared religious beliefs. A disagreeable reductionist is then especially likely to believe in evolution but not God. Atheism existed before Darwin, but the Church was a stronger force back then which inhibited it. In the Soviet Union Lysenkoism dominated, which was more Lamarck than Darwin, and religion was simultaneously repressed. If Darwinism had come to prominence in the Middle Ages it would likely not be considered so hostile to religion.

I also disagree with you on the English being especially atheist, and relating this to their anti-philosophical or utilitarian bent. A chart showing the degree to which European nations are theist/mysterian/atheist can be found here in this post. England is more godly than the land of anti-emprical rationalist philosophers, France as well as every Protestant nation other than Germany (which has a great many Catholics) and Finland. Remember that America is still in many respects a characteristically English nation.

Alan Roebuck writes:

Got some comments about VFR’s latest Darwinism post. Will keep ‘em as short as possible.

First, when VFR discuss Darwinism, it ought to be primarily concerned with the widespread effect of this idea on society. Intellectuals enjoy forming their own idiosyncratic versions of popular doctrines, but what matters for the proper ordering of society is what John Q. Public believes. And what he believes about evolution is largely formed by the scientific establishment, unless he is John Q. Evangelical.

Therefore the primary interest in evolution of proper traditionalist conservatism ought to be the theory as defined by its proponents.

“Evolution” is a slippery term that can refer to any kind of change over time. But that’s not the “evolution” that is being disputed. What we’re talking about here is Darwinism, which by definition is a theory of change that was not caused by any intelligent agent, not even in a mysterious way detectable only by religion. [LA replies: Yes, of course, and I constantly make that point.]

That’s why Darwinism is incompatible with any meaningful theism. (“Theistic evolution” is simply the attempt to deny this incompatibility.) This incompatibility is definitional, and will not go away until one of the two sides abandons its current position. [LA replies: But what about all the people who profess to deny the incompatibility, including both religious people who want to be respectable in the modern world, and scientists who want to stay on good terms with the religious?]

As to the question of whether natural selection (i.e., the mechanism of Darwinism) can produce new species: it depends on what you mean by “species:”

When John Q. Public (and, I suspect, Larry Auster) uses the word “species,” he means something radically and essentially distinct from every other species. In other words, two different species have different substances, different essences. But Darwinists deny this “essentialism.” For them, a squirrel and a bat differ only in their specific physical attributes, and so if the one evolves into the other, nothing radical took place. Just a rearrangement of matter, nothing else. [LA replies: Mr. Roebuck is right. I never saw this before. The reason the Darwinists, starting with Darwin himself, so easily extrapolate from adaptations within a species, which is an observed fact, to the appearance of a new species, which has never been observed, is not that they’re being dishonest, but that they don’t particularly care about the concept of species, or, rather, that they deny the concept of species altogether. Since biological form, as the Darwinists see it, is forever changing, and since there are no limits to the extent of the changes that can and do take place and will forever keep taking place, therefore the very concept of a species, meaning a distinct, unique type of living being with a stable identity, would not exist for them. “Species” for them would be at best a conventional or provisional term, not denoting anything essentially real. The other day I said Darwinists are nominalists; but now I see that the statement was truer than I realized.]

[Or, as Mr. Roebuck shows in the next paragraph, “species” may be for the Darwinists a merely functional term, having to do with which animals can mate and produce offspring with each other. But since life forms have no consistency and are always changing, the rules determining which animals can or cannot reproduce with each other would not be based on anything essential and would be changing all the time anyway.]

In fact, the most common definition of species used by biologists is “a group of living organisms that are capable of interbreeding.” By this definition, then, great Danes and Chihuahuas form different species.

So saying, “Natural selection cannot produce new species” to a Darwinist is tantamount to saying “driving a car can never take you from Los Angeles to New York.” Of course it can, because there’s no essential difference between driving to the supermarket and driving across the country.

So the more accurate way to say, “Natural selection cannot produce new species,” is to say, “Natural selection cannot generate the new information needed to create entirely new organs such as eyes or wings.” The Darwinist will still deny it, but at least the assertion is properly formed, and since we have never observed this process happening in front of our eyes, it is a defensible claim.

George R. writes:

Someone calling himself Albert Nock writes:

“If Darwinism had come to prominence in the Middle Ages it would likely not be considered so hostile to religion.”

In fact the educated classes in the Middle Ages were familiar with Darwinism, because Aristotle, who discussed the same theory (before he refuted it) was revered in all the universities at that time.

Consider this passage from Aristotle’s Physics Book II:

“A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but out of necessity? … Similarly if a man’s crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this …but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in natures, e.g., that our teeth should come up of necessity—the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food—since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose ‘that there is purpose?’ Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come about for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his ‘man-faced ox-progeny’ did.” [emphasis mine]

So you see, Darwinism is misnamed. It should be called Empedoclesianism, after the guy who came up with it about 2,500 years ago.

LA writes:

Reader Robert S. sent a discussion on “How to define a species” that evidences exactly the “functional” attitude I was talking about. The author, Steve Mack, says that if two individuals can produce a fruitful offspring, then they’re of the same species, and if there is enough gene flow between two populations, then they are of the same species. Even when Mack talks about the differences and similarities between humans and apes, he discusses them purely in terms of whether the two species have the same number of chromosomes, and he seems to imagine no hard and fast line between the two species:

It is hard to say what a mating between humans and the various ape species would produce, for obvious reasons, and this brings up a final point, that many of the barriers to speciation are not purely genetic, and may be behavioral.

For Mack, the only relevant types of questions are: Can they produce offspring? Is there enough gene flow? Do they have the same number of chromosomes? And does their behavior differ? He has no notion of the whole, of the organism AS an organism. This is the reductionist mindset of the modern world which I believe is a form of darkness.

However, Mack’s phrase, “many of the barriers to speciation,” is ambiguous. Speciation means a new species branching off. But that’s not the topic here, but rather two species mating. So maybe he meant barriers to mating, barriers to humans and apes being one species.

Jake F. writes:

I love the fact that your readers know about Empedocles and that you promote this knowledge on your site. I have told people over and over again that Darwinism isn’t a new theory born in the Enlightenment and based on the advance of science, but an ancient theory that was advanced and refuted back in the Classical period. Back then, religion wasn’t its main enemy: rationality was, and rationality defeated it. And for some of us, so it is today.

I would like to make explicit something that’s only implicit in this post: The problem of species is just another case of the problem liberal men have with races and nations. The boundaries of these things are tough, probably impossible, to define, so they behave as though the boundaries don’t legitimately exist.

If they tried to do the same thing with something as intuitive as color, they’d be seen as laughable: red is red, even though the boundary between it and yellow is fuzzy. They should see the same thing with “the white race” and “the American nation” and “the species called “dog”,” but they don’t.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 01, 2007 02:03 PM | Send