by Michael Ruse
Cambridge University Press, 242 pp., $24.95
Creationism versus Natural Selection
Michael Ruse, the author of Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? , is a well-known philosopher of biology and has been writing about evolution for many years. In 1981, he testified at a trial in Arkansas over the constitutionality of a law requiring the teaching of creationism in public schools. His testimony helped a federal judge rule that creationism was not a scientific theory, but a religious position.
Creationism is the belief that the world and life were created by God in the way that is described in Genesis. Creation science, a term coined in 1979, offers scientific evidence and arguments in favor of creationism and against evolution.
A significant number of people disdain creationism, but believe in the theory of intelligent design. According to this idea, life is too complex to be explained by evolution and must be the result of the actions of an intelligent designer. Michael Behe, an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, explains this theory in his book, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (The Free Press, 1996). The intelligent designer is not referred to as God in order to emphasize that the theory is based upon observations, not divine revelation.
As you would expect in a book on religion and evolution, Mr. Ruse analyzes the theory of intelligent design. His conclusion is that the theory, like creationism, is a religious posture, not a valid scientific hypothesis. I hope, in this review, to shed light on this controversy, and, more generally, the conflict that exists between evolution and religion.
A famous example of evolution, which is used in elementary school text books, is the story of the English pepper moth of the 19th century. Pollution from factories caused the trunks of trees to become covered with soot, changing their color from light to dark. As a result of this change, it became easier for birds to see and eat the light-colored pepper moths, and, as a further consequence, the pepper moth changed from being light-colored to dark-colored. This explanation for the change in the color of pepper moths is called natural selection.
But the main theme of evolution is not variations within species, but the entire growth of the tree of life. Multi-cellular life did not evolve from single-celled organisms until 700 million years ago, and the oldest fossils of insects are only 450 million years old.
It is one thing to explain why pepper moths changed color—there were always dark-colored pepper moths—but it is quite another thing to explain how pepper moths came to exist, and for that matter, how mammals acquired the ability to breath, see, and digest food.
Another argument against evolution and its fellow-traveler natural selection focuses on the complexity of individual proteins, rather than the complexity of body parts and biological functions. Proteins are built up from 20 different amino acids. Lysozyme, for example, is a small protein that helps fight bacteria. It consists is a single chain of 129 amino acids that is folded and shaped to form the lysozyme molecule.
Those who believe that natural selection is a reasonable and compelling mechanism for evolution frequently assert that variations in organisms, upon which natural selection operates, are random.
Because of this emphasis on randomness, critics of natural selection liken the evolution of a single protein, such as lysozyme, to dealing from a shuffled deck of 20 amino acids cards 129 times. This would make the chance of getting lysozyme from natural selection 1 in 20129. Mathematical improbabilities with hundreds of zeros to the left of the decimal point are a stumbling block to believing in a mechanism that purports to explain something that took place in around 109 years, which is only 9 zeros to the right of the decimal point.
The anti-evolutionist have a new twist on these arguments. Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution argues that biological systems, such as the operation of bacterial flagella or the biochemistry of eyesight, are composed of several well-matched, interacting parts. The absence of any one of the interacting parts would make it impossible for the system to work. Such systems are irreducibly complex, the argument goes, and cannot be produced by slight, successive modifications of a system with fewer parts because if there were fewer parts the irreducibly complex system would not work.
Mr. Ruse counters with the observation that it is not the case that biological systems are irreducibly complex, it is simply the case that we don’t know the precursors to the biological system. Mr Ruse argues that not knowing what the precursor of an irreducibly complex system was doesn’t mean that such a precursor did not exist. The precursor of the system was not as well adapted to its environment as the fully evolved system so it became extinct.
The author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution criticizes pro-evolutionists like Ruse with the following analogy. The book likens the theory of intelligent design to an elephant that was found in a room with a man who had been crushed to death. A team of detectives/scientists enters the room and tries to figure out who killed the man. The detectives/scientists irrationally ignore the obvious culprit—the elephant. The pro-evolutionists, like Ruse, believe the obvious culprit—the elephant—stands for natural selection.
The Concept of God
Mr. Ruse’s objection to the theory of intelligent design is that it is simply a version of the proof of God’s existence put forward by Archdeacon William Paley in 1802. Just as Paley’s reasoning was unsound, so too is the reasoning behind the theory of intelligent design.
Paley reasoned that a watch implies the existence of a watchmaker. For the same reason, the existence of a complex organ, like the mammalian eye, implies the existence of a maker or designer of the organ. This maker or designer, Paley concluded, is God.
Mr. Ruse considers Paley’s reasoning fallacious because it does not explain what motivated God to design the organ. It also does not explain how God became so well-designed and complex Himself as to be able to do such a thing.
The problem with Mr. Ruse’s analysis of the theory of intelligent design and the theory itself is that not all people who believe in God believe God possesses intelligence. Mr. Ruse supports the idea that God is intelligent by citing Chapter 1, Verse 27, of Genesis: “God created man in His image.” He interprets this to mean that God is a rational being, since man is a rational being.
I went to a Catholic college in the 1960s. In those days we all had to take courses in theology and philosophy, which were based, for the most part, on medieval metaphysics. I was never taught that intelligence was an attribute of God. We were taught that God was “totally other.” To quote Saint Augustine, “If you can comprehend God, it is not God.”
The God of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine is an infinite being, unlike man, who is a finite being. Intelligence, which is similar to rationality, is a human characteristic. Why there are finite beings when there is a being which is infinite, we were taught, is a mystery.
We were also taught that the argument for God’s existence based upon order in the universe, i.e., Paley’s argument, is spurious because order is subjective and has no status in being. Order, according to the scholastic philosophers, lies in the mind of the beholder and does not require a cause.
The advocates of intelligent design, in attributing intelligence to God, are thinking of God as if He were a finite being. Ruse is projecting this flawed concept of God onto all of Christianity. The naivete of this reminds me of an anecdote told by William James’ sister. One day the great philosopher was explaining to his 5-year-old son that God was everywhere. His son replied, “Is it a skunk?”
Religion in America is mostly revealed religion, and faith is a positive response to revelation. The God of faith is different from the God of philosophy or speculation, because He is the subject of Christian dogmas such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. Having faith in a personal God is not the same as attributing to God the faculties of a human being.
Materialism and Naturalism
It is surprising, in a book about religion and evolution, that Mr. Ruse does not provide a clear explanation of naturalism. Naturalism is akin to atheism and agnosticism, but more reasonable because it leaves the definition of the supernatural being to those who say a supernatural being exists. Atheists and agnostics have concepts of God that are hardly better than thinking God is a skunk.
Even more strange, Mr. Ruse does not define naturalism himself but quotes Philip Johnson on the subject. Mr. Johnson is the author of books with the revealing titles, Darwin on Trial, and Reason in the Balance: The Case against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education. Mr. Johnson, the opponent of evolution, and Mr. Ruse, the defender of evolution, have something in common: they don’t know the difference between naturalism and materialism.
Nature includes man and therefore includes man’s freedom and knowledge. Although we know perfectly well what freewill and knowledge are, it is quite another matter to be able to explicate these aspects of our existence. It seems clear to me that freewill and knowledge cannot be given rational definitions. Knowing, for example, that an object before you is blue means more than the fact that light is entering your eye and a signal is going to your brain. It means being aware of the blueness of the object.
Naturalism says that there is no supernatural being. Materialism means that all that exists is fundamental particles and energy. Naturalism does not attempt to provide an answer to the question, “What is man?” Materialism, if it has any rational meaning at all, is an attempt to answer this question.
Mr. Johnson”s books say that evolution is based upon naturalism and that naturalism is based upon materialism. Mr. Johnson tars evolution with the brush of naturalism and then tars naturalism with the brush of materialism. Mr. Ruse, the advocate of evolution, lets him get away with it.
Mr. Ruse is not a materialist. In discussing human consciousness and freedom he admits that no one “seems to have the answer.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain the question no one has an answer to, but we can surmise that the question is “What is man?”
The Human Soul
Mr. Ruse may think he is a materialist because he doesn’t believe human beings have souls. Whether man does or does not, of course, depends on your idea of what the human soul is.
Mr. Ruse thinks that the existence of the human soul is an essential part of Christian doctrine. The soul, Mr. Ruse says, is what continues to exist after man has died and makes possible the hope for immortality. According to Ruse, it is the soul that makes man rational, and, therefore, similar to God, as I said before.
The idea that when a person dies the soul separates from the body came from the Greek philosophers, centuries before Christ. Christian philosophers, like Thomas Aquinas, emphasized the unity of man. They believed that man is one being, not two beings. According to Aquinas, man is a composition of two incomplete beings: a material incomplete being and an immaterial incomplete being. Furthermore, the immortality of man is not the object of Christian hope. Christians hope for salvation which comes, not when man dies, but when time itself ends.
It is popularly believed that when a human being is conceived God infuses the embryo with a human soul. This view is not consistent with the doctrine of original sin, which plays a central role in the salvation history of a Christian.
After committing their famous sin, Adam and Eve became subject to the human condition, as we know it, and lost sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace, not intelligence, is the gift from God that makes us like God, according to Christian doctrine. The guilt of original sin was passed onto all of humanity by sexual procreation. The sacrament of Baptism removes the stain of original sin by giving the baptized individual sanctifying grace. If God infused embryos with souls, it would not be procreation that communicated the stain of original sin to children, but God Himself.
Conclusion
Mr. Ruse claims in the preface that his strong disagreements with the author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution have not translated into personal animosity. This is not true, because Mr. Ruse makes some pretty nasty comments about Mr. Behe’s character. What happened is that Mr. Behe, in his book, offered some encomiums to the discoveries of molecular biology, but Mr. Ruse mistakenly thought Mr. Behe was praising his own contributions to science. Only great enmity can explain such an obvious error.
Why is Mr. Ruse so angry? My guess is that he really doesn’t understand why the theory of intelligent design is unreasonable. He knows it is against the rules of science, but he can’t give any reason for following the rules. I have been suggesting that the unreasonableness of the theory of intelligent design lies in the concept of God that underlies this theory.
As to the question posed in the title of Mr. Ruse’s book, the answer depends on what Christians actually believe, not what Mr. Ruse thinks they believe. The idea that the human soul is a substance that is infused into a human being at conception and survives death, strikes me as being both unscientific and contrary to Christian beliefs.