Living With Darwin -- an initial review
Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith. Philosophy in Action. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Charles Darwin is a figure that dominates modern life. He’s a figure who polarizes our culture, even if we haven’t the slightest idea what he taught. To some he is a hero of science and saint to those who hold reason in highest regard, but to others he is the devil incarnate and the epitome of atheism’s dangers. Philip Kitcher’s new book, Living with Darwin, is a readable and challenging treatise that will prove disconcerting to just about everyone involved in the current debates, including those of us who seek to build bridges between evolution and faith.
Philip Kitcher is a philosopher – John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University – and a writer of numerous books dealing with science and religion. He is both sympathetic to religious claims and a partisan for reason. He is a Darwinist at heart, even a secularist, and yet he understands why religion holds such importance in the most modern of cultures.
The book raises the question of why Darwin is such a controversial personage. Why is evolution seen as such a threat? Yes, he was buried with honors in Westminster Abbey in the shadow of Newton’s own monument, but what of the Darwin who holds center stage today and has become such a reviled figure.
When it comes to the scientific debate, Kitcher takes on creationism and intelligent design and shows them to be not bad science or pseudo science but dead science. Genesis Creationism and Novelty Creationism have been tried and even reigned supreme, but they have been found wanting and thus overthrown by Darwin’s theories and those that have built upon him.
Intelligent Design has replaced Scientific Creationism as the rallying point today, although in many ways it provides cover for a still popular “Genesis Creationism” or “young earth creationism.” At places like Dover, PA, however, it was the ID folks who took center stage.
Their challenge is to make a case for Intelligent Design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Evolution (especially its Darwinian form). It does so, Kitcher suggests, but making two basic claims. First, there are aspects of life and its history that cannot be explained by way of natural selection as conceived of in Darwinian terms. Second, it suggests on the positive side that these aspects of life must be understood as the effects of another causal agency – that is intelligence. Although on the surface the ID people make no official religious claims, the people involved are by and large Christians with a Christian agenda standing behind them.
The book deals straightforwardly with these challenges to Darwin and demonstrates in short order how they fall short. He deals with William Dembski and Michael Behe, the two leading experts in this field, and offers compelling arguments in response. One of the major challenges posed by the book is philosophical – if as is claimed the planet and its inhabitants are here as the result of intelligence, then why is their pain and suffering? Why is the human genome so messy – with lots of junk left behind in our DNA that is the fodder for disease and disability? Indeed, why is predation so prominent in our world, would not a loving creator chose a more efficient and less painful manner of life?
Kitcher’s perspective is similar and yet different from other challengers, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He poses challenges, but also understands why religion is found compelling by so many – including intelligent people. It provides something we feel is needed in our lives. And it is the fear that Darwinism will undermine this religious faith that propels the resistance. Parents wish to protect their children from this threat to their salvation.
As one who seeks to reconcile evolution and faith, I found myself in agreement through much of the book. It was near the end of the book that I found the tide turning against me as well. I have tried to understand all of this as fruit of divine providence. It is the way God has chosen to work. But Kitcher makes it clear that the ID folk are right about one thing, Darwin is subversive. Evolution by its nature is full of suffering and inefficiency. It raises questions as to why it took so long for the crowing achievement of creation to come forth.
Recognizing the good that religion provides, Kitcher finds it necessary to show how the enlightenment project of Hume and Darwin, among others, has made providentialist and supernaturalist religion untenable. In its place he suggests a non-supernatural spiritual religion. It is, in his mind, the only real choice left. And the figures he chooses to put forward as exemplars are people such as Elaine Pagels, John Shelby Spong and Robert Funk and his Jesus Seminar. He would rather we choose secularism, but he recognizes that there are dreams and aspirations that the bareness of atheism’s claims fail to accommodate.
Kitcher’s is not a word of comfort to those who would reconcile a dynamic supernaturalist faith with the science of evolution. His is a challenge, however, that is undertaken with forthrightness but not with the mean spiritedness of a Harris or a Dawkins. I’m not willing to go the whole way with him, but I do recognize the importance of his witness.
My only real qualm is an occasional misrepresentation of evangelicalism. This is seen most specifically in his claim that evangelicals who are inclined to adopt ID are users of the King James Version (and he uses a King James Study Bible as a foil at several points). This is not actually true. Most evangelicals use one of many modern translations and only the most conservative continue to revere the KJV. But that is minor. I would that he had wrestled with a Jurgen Moltmann, a John Polkinghorne, or an Alister McGrath, all of whom are opponents of ID and yet strong supporters of a strong relationship between faith and science.
Still this is an impressive book and worthy of a close read, especially by those like me who are not specialists in the field of science. It is good to be reminded that Darwin is subversive even to the faith of one such as me. The challenge may not be fatal, but it does require further attention.
Charles Darwin is a figure that dominates modern life. He’s a figure who polarizes our culture, even if we haven’t the slightest idea what he taught. To some he is a hero of science and saint to those who hold reason in highest regard, but to others he is the devil incarnate and the epitome of atheism’s dangers. Philip Kitcher’s new book, Living with Darwin, is a readable and challenging treatise that will prove disconcerting to just about everyone involved in the current debates, including those of us who seek to build bridges between evolution and faith.
Philip Kitcher is a philosopher – John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University – and a writer of numerous books dealing with science and religion. He is both sympathetic to religious claims and a partisan for reason. He is a Darwinist at heart, even a secularist, and yet he understands why religion holds such importance in the most modern of cultures.
The book raises the question of why Darwin is such a controversial personage. Why is evolution seen as such a threat? Yes, he was buried with honors in Westminster Abbey in the shadow of Newton’s own monument, but what of the Darwin who holds center stage today and has become such a reviled figure.
When it comes to the scientific debate, Kitcher takes on creationism and intelligent design and shows them to be not bad science or pseudo science but dead science. Genesis Creationism and Novelty Creationism have been tried and even reigned supreme, but they have been found wanting and thus overthrown by Darwin’s theories and those that have built upon him.
Intelligent Design has replaced Scientific Creationism as the rallying point today, although in many ways it provides cover for a still popular “Genesis Creationism” or “young earth creationism.” At places like Dover, PA, however, it was the ID folks who took center stage.
Their challenge is to make a case for Intelligent Design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Evolution (especially its Darwinian form). It does so, Kitcher suggests, but making two basic claims. First, there are aspects of life and its history that cannot be explained by way of natural selection as conceived of in Darwinian terms. Second, it suggests on the positive side that these aspects of life must be understood as the effects of another causal agency – that is intelligence. Although on the surface the ID people make no official religious claims, the people involved are by and large Christians with a Christian agenda standing behind them.
The book deals straightforwardly with these challenges to Darwin and demonstrates in short order how they fall short. He deals with William Dembski and Michael Behe, the two leading experts in this field, and offers compelling arguments in response. One of the major challenges posed by the book is philosophical – if as is claimed the planet and its inhabitants are here as the result of intelligence, then why is their pain and suffering? Why is the human genome so messy – with lots of junk left behind in our DNA that is the fodder for disease and disability? Indeed, why is predation so prominent in our world, would not a loving creator chose a more efficient and less painful manner of life?
Kitcher’s perspective is similar and yet different from other challengers, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He poses challenges, but also understands why religion is found compelling by so many – including intelligent people. It provides something we feel is needed in our lives. And it is the fear that Darwinism will undermine this religious faith that propels the resistance. Parents wish to protect their children from this threat to their salvation.
As one who seeks to reconcile evolution and faith, I found myself in agreement through much of the book. It was near the end of the book that I found the tide turning against me as well. I have tried to understand all of this as fruit of divine providence. It is the way God has chosen to work. But Kitcher makes it clear that the ID folk are right about one thing, Darwin is subversive. Evolution by its nature is full of suffering and inefficiency. It raises questions as to why it took so long for the crowing achievement of creation to come forth.
Recognizing the good that religion provides, Kitcher finds it necessary to show how the enlightenment project of Hume and Darwin, among others, has made providentialist and supernaturalist religion untenable. In its place he suggests a non-supernatural spiritual religion. It is, in his mind, the only real choice left. And the figures he chooses to put forward as exemplars are people such as Elaine Pagels, John Shelby Spong and Robert Funk and his Jesus Seminar. He would rather we choose secularism, but he recognizes that there are dreams and aspirations that the bareness of atheism’s claims fail to accommodate.
Kitcher’s is not a word of comfort to those who would reconcile a dynamic supernaturalist faith with the science of evolution. His is a challenge, however, that is undertaken with forthrightness but not with the mean spiritedness of a Harris or a Dawkins. I’m not willing to go the whole way with him, but I do recognize the importance of his witness.
My only real qualm is an occasional misrepresentation of evangelicalism. This is seen most specifically in his claim that evangelicals who are inclined to adopt ID are users of the King James Version (and he uses a King James Study Bible as a foil at several points). This is not actually true. Most evangelicals use one of many modern translations and only the most conservative continue to revere the KJV. But that is minor. I would that he had wrestled with a Jurgen Moltmann, a John Polkinghorne, or an Alister McGrath, all of whom are opponents of ID and yet strong supporters of a strong relationship between faith and science.
Still this is an impressive book and worthy of a close read, especially by those like me who are not specialists in the field of science. It is good to be reminded that Darwin is subversive even to the faith of one such as me. The challenge may not be fatal, but it does require further attention.
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