Thoughts in a Haystack

For Wales? Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world -- But for Wales, Richard, for Wales!

.....- A Man For All Seasons

So the conflict between Darwin and providential religion leads inexorably into a broader battle. It pitches us into what is often (but wrongly) viewed as a war between reason and religion generally, one that erupted in the eighteenth century and that has intensified ever since. Darwinism is entangled with what I'll call the "enlightenment case against supernaturalism." Evolutionary ideas form a separable part of the case, as well as amplifying other themes within it. It is wrong to give Darwin complete credit as the "anatomist of unbelief." But it would also be wrong to pretend that his ideas are not important to the "delineation of doubt." (p. 131)

... [T]he enlightenment case is not widely appreciated, and most of the brilliant thinkers who have developed it are unread, if not unknown. More exactly, they tend to be unread and unknown in the United States. ...

Darwin, however, is visible. He is in the schools, potentially corrupting the youth and leading them to spurn the precious gift of faith. He serves as the obvious symbol of a larger attack on supernaturalist religion, about which thoughtful Christians know, even if they are not aware of all its details. Their concern is justified, although they may think, wrongly, that the onslaught on their faith is contained and condensed in Darwinism. For the enlightenment case will not surface in the education of their children, at least not until they attend universities, and probably not in any systematic way, even then. (p. 150-51)

Darwin's most militant defenders would insist that [the Enlightenment case and Darwin] take us all the way to secularism, even that they constitute a knockdown case for atheism. I dissent from that conclusion ... [E]ven though the enlightenment case demonstrates that, taken as literal truth, the stories and historical claims of all the religions about which we know are overwhelmingly likely to be mistaken, it does not follow that the world contains nothing beyond the entities envisaged by our current scientific picture of it. The history of inquiry shows that our horizons have often expanded to encompass things previously undreamed of in anyone's natural philosophy. Whether inquiry will ever disclose anything that can satisfy the religious impulse, that can merit the title of "transcendent," is itself doubtful ... It would be arrogant, however, to declare categorically that there is nothing that might answer to our vague conception of the transcendent -- there is too much that we know that we do not yet know. (p. 151-52)

Labels: Kitcher: Living with Darwin

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