Can A Darwinian Be A Christian? - Review

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2001 by Gregg Easterbrook

CAN A DARWINIAN BE A CHRISTIAN? The Relation Between Science and Religion by Michael Ruse Cambridge University Press $24.95

THE CENTURY-AND-A-HALF OLD struggle between evolution and faith seems to be entering a new phase, in which the argument no longer concerns whether natural selection is real but rather what the reality of natural selection means. Religious leaders have begun to make their peace with natural selection as fact; Pope John Paul II five years ago called evolution "more than just a theory," and few mainstream Protestant denominations today contest Darwin, if only because they do not wish to sound like Luddites. When the Kansas State Board of Education two years ago recommended that some Darwinian ideas be dropped from school curricula, its members were promptly voted out of office, indicating that even evangelicals, a big voting bloc in Kansas, are losing patience with trying to deny Darwin. Barring some really unexpected fundamental discovery, it now seems inarguable that living things evolve.

Yet, even as natural selection becomes entrenched, there remain deep mysteries of creation against which scientific understanding has made no progress at all--especially the origin of life, which Darwinian theory can't account for. Science continues to illuminate aspects of the natural world in which consciousness and complexity seem, if not necessarily divinely guided, pretty damn hard to explain based on chance forces. Even as natural selection prevails as the key to fathoming important aspects of our biology, there remain nagging questions about whether existence reflects something like the purposefulness that faiths teach.

Not surprisingly, there has recently been an outpouring of books on evolution and the faith/science boundary. Evolution's Workshop by Edward Larson, which details the history of the Galapagos, is an outstanding contribution. Larson, of the University of Georgia, is becoming one of the leading historians of his generation: His previous work, Summer for the Gods a study of the Scopes trial, won a Pulitzer in 1997, and Evolution's Workshop is at least its equal.

Larson begins by reminding us that Charles Darwin was far from the first to wonder at the unusual ecosphere of the Galapagos, just the first to fathom what it meant. The first European to gaze at the islands, Tomas de Berlanga, a Spanish bishop, arrived there in 1535--three centuries before the HMS Beagle--and pronounced the Galapagos cursed by God because they had no fresh water and no large mammals. Because the islands defied established ideas about the natural order, Larson writes, the Galapagos became a subject of European fascination from that point forward. The Galapagos even figured prominently in a popular British book of natural history published in 1684, predating Origin of Species by 200 years.

While the lack of fresh water is what dismayed the first sailors to call on the Galapagos, it was the strangeness of the fauna that puzzled naturalists and clergy. "Since medieval times," Larson writes, "Europeans had seen the natural world as a vast spiritual allegory created by God to instruct humans." But the New World ecology did not compute. Augustine thought dogs were created to bark to protect their masters; when Columbus encountered the mute dogs indigenous to the Caribbean, he was startled--why would the Maker design a dog that couldn't bark? Vespucci, finding numerous new species in South America, said it made him wonder how two of every creature could possibly have fit into the Ark.

Most strangely to European eyes, the New World held few large mammals. Since horses and cattle were the species of highest utility to Homo sapiens, their absence from an entire hemisphere called into question standard assumptions about divine intent. One pope would declare that New World peoples must all be vegetarians, since God had denied them proper meat. The Galapagos seemed especially disfavored in this regard, populated only by birds and reptiles--the Maker's lowest handiwork, as readers of Genesis know. How did Galapagos creatures arrive on outcroppings so far from the mainland? Why did they seem slightly different from island to island? Europe's sailors came to terms with the Galapagos giant tortoise, after learning it was an ideal provision--taken aboard ships, the tortoises could live for weeks without food or water, then be cooked into tasty fresh stews. Europe's scientists and clergy found the islands deeply disturbing.

By the early 19th century, the French naturalist Georges Cuvier would attempt to resolve some paradoxes of species discoveries by proposing a theory of multiple creations--God made life not once but several times, choosing different creatures in response to environmental change. One of Cuvier's examples was the Galapagos where, he supposed, the Maker must have formed only those that could survive in the unusual conditions.

Multiple-creation theory backed by the Galapagos was a common subject for discussion in European universities when the British Navy tasked the Beagle to conduct a mapping expedition along the South American coastline. Captain Robert Fitzroy despaired of his assignment, for he was to be the only gentleman aboard. Fitzroy asked to bring along a well-bred guest so that he would have someone to talk to; he found the young Darwin, then in the early stages of study for the Anglican priesthood. (Darwin hoped to be a university cleric, not a parish priest; at the time, almost all academics at Cambridge and Oxford wore the collar.) Darwin talked his father into paying passage for his manservant, one Syms Covington; that the founder of evolutionary theory chased Galapagos mockingbirds while accompanied by a butler is something history tends to gloss over. Preparing for the voyage, the sheltered Darwin excitedly bought rifles and pistols for protection from wild beasts.