DARWINISM - ITS DUAL ROLE AS PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE

Darwinism is a philosophy of evolution and "un-evolution".  We mean that Darwinism is about how some creatures survive and others go extinct.  Survival and extinction go together - they are two sides of the one coin.  Darwinism is science.  It is also philosophy. Two disciplines can overlap.  One discipline can also be another one at the same time.  Darwinism holds that evolution is not a force or power but just happened.  Things fell into such an order that they began to get more complicated and the best arrangements survived.

 
Christians say that survival of the fittest in Darwinism only accounts for the fittest being here but not for how the fittest came about in the first place. They say that God can design things in seemingly roundabout and awkward ways if he wants as long as it is functional. Our backs are too weak for us but that does not matter as long as we are careful. So we are told. Nobody wants to argue that chance was at work which is why there are design flaws.  The answer to the Christians is the errors deny that it was an intelligence that put us here.  The answer is that we can only look at what is there and not centre on worrying where we came from in the first place.

 

Survival of the fittest really means survival of the most adaptable. It involves natural selection.  If there is a God then there is a selection.  If there is not, the word is just a metaphor for blind force acts like it knows to pick out the strongest and best.  Natural selection or survival of the fittest can refer to cunning or ruthlessness.  It can be many things.  None of them are nice in the end.  The monkey mum raises her children with kindness to turn them into monsters.

 

Christians are like those who would do the following. Imagine a world where a female can only reproduce if raped and killed when the baby is ready.  It would ignore the horrors of this plan, this design, to tell us we need to explain why anybody at all lives in the first place.  This is a terrible distraction and shame on them.

 

Religion says we need to be assured that a loving God has made us even if he used natrual

 

Religion fears that if we think all there is, is unfeeling and cruel natural selection, we should align with it and destroy all who seem to be threats.  You can murder your neighbour if he comes to steal your carton of milk.

 

EXPLANATORY ROLE OF DARWINISM

 

1

Darwinism explains

- creatures having body parts that seem to be mere accessories

- creatures have abilities and powers they do not need - what use is intelligence to a dolphin? Other creatures get by without it - they are just programmed to look after themselves.

2

Darwinism explains why some species are extinct and this seems a better explanation than saying these creatures were destroyed in the universal flood.

3

Darwinism explains why some creatures are found in some parts of the world and not others. It sounds odd to say that God just snapped his fingers and put creatures in one place and not another.

4

Darwinism says that creatures evolved to be able to survive in their environment - they were not made with their needs in mind.

Creationism says that God makes things directly and gives them the faculties to cope with their needs. They are made with their needs in mind. However it is odd to say that you really have needs if there is a God. God can take away your need for food and keep you alive without it. But he makes you need food. He rigs it. So your need is not for food but for God to look after you. If a person has diabetes they need insulin. If a witch causes your diabetes what you need is not insulin but her to stop doing this to you. Talk about needs such as food and drink and shelter etc is really atheist talk.

Somebody wrote, “Natural selection ensures survival of believers but has nothing to do with their beliefs being true.” I would amend that. It should say that it helps only if you believe enough to function in the world. You need to believe that fire burns or you risk not surviving. The most important beliefs are not religious ones but ones that help us be safe.

 

Natural selection is a terrible terrible expression.  There is no such thing.  What in fact exists instead of it is natural rejection.  Most unborn babies are rejected in the womb.  They are miscarried.  The poor died young while the minority rich lived longish lives.  The womb is being passive.  If something goes wrong it will not protect the baby.  This is as passive and impersonal as water flowing down the road.  Nothing is doing it - it is just happening.  Creatures that are lucky enough to be alive are able to select things that help them live but this has nothing to do with nature.  Nature is not making them do it.  By chance they are able to do it.

ANTI-DARWINISM IS BASED ON FEAR

 

Darwinism being based on survival of the fittest supposedly implies that eugenics and racism are acceptable. In fact it proves they are not for it is based on the fact that all races still comprise the human race. There is only one biological race the human race.

 

People make out that animals only kill other animals, especially more vulnerable ones, for food and survival. That is nonsense. Survival implies desperation so why are cats not eating other cats? The urge to use the defenceless for food is there underneath it all and is stronger than the need for food as such. It’s about domination and then nourishment. Cats torture mice for they are bored. And a dog that enters another dogs territory will be attacked. Animals torture and kill for its own sake even as they scavenge for food.  We indulge mostly on animal flesh - usually the animal dies a terrible death - just for indulgence.

 

Darwinism supposedly leads to individualism where nobody cares about anybody else but himself or herself. It supposedly leads to nihilism - the view that there is no point in caring about right and wrong behaviour. What Darwinism actually leads to is existentialism - this is the view that it is up to each person to give her or his life value. As there is no evidence of a divine purpose, we have to find our own purpose. And as even wolves must cooperate, we need each other.

The Darwinian struggle to survive requires that we sufficiently meet a sufficient number of other people and creatures half way. Two people battling over a loaf will leave one dead but agreeing to share keeps both alive. Being the fittest means being able to compromise enough.

You may say this is not about what is moral but about what works! But surely you don’t think morality is morality whether it works or not? A morality has to work to be a morality and has to be about how to make life work.

Even if morality working is not what morality is all about who cares when it works enough?

 

The view that you must believe in God and deny creation in order to be trusted a moral person or to have a reason to believe in morality is very strange.  It is best understood as an outright lie.  Darwinism does not depend on evolution to be true.  It describes the dog eat dog set up we are in.  Do they want to argue that God wants it that way?  That is an argument against morality as we understand it traditionally.  It is not an argument for it. 

 

Religion complains that Darwinism leads the idea of some race or races being more valuable than others.  Evolution or Darwinism never suggest that there is a goal or things getting better.  It is a complex mixture of better or worse.  To argue that God uses evolution or a Darwinist world to make things better implies racism.  It is implicit racism.  There is no purpose so there is no reason to regard another race as less than your own.

 

Quantum Darwinism

 

Some think that ruthless Darwinian competition takes place at the sub-atomic level.  Particles getting the better of other particles is not the same thing at all.  Darwinism is about biological entities.  To say that a particle getting an advantage over another particle is analogous to life forms doing it is like saying the Giant's Causeway is as much an art form as the Mona Lisa.  The sub-atomic level is by no means comparable to what happens on the level we experience - the world of life, water, sky and so on.  Don't start saying a forest is comparable to the tiny chemical particles on it and one can tell us about the other.

CONCLUSION

Darwinism not only is true but rings true.   Darwin is said to have written, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." He didn't write it.  But by survival of the fittest he did indeed mean the most adaptable but to be adaptable you have to be smart in the right way and also strong.  So being strong and intelligent are made more important not less.  If evolution were proven false Darwinism would have to be modified for it is clear that evolution or not nature is about the most adaptable creatures surviving at the expense of the weaker.