Going Backwards on Darwin and Religion

Brian Tamanaha

Darwin's 1859 publication of The Origin of Species incited a wicked backlash from religious quarters in the United States, pitting science directly against religion. But within three decades an accommodation had been achieved, as Richard Hofstadter described in Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944):

Joseph Le Conte, in his Religion and Science, a collection of Bible-class lectures, followed [Asa] Gray in maintaining that the argument from design could not be changed by any possible answer to the question whether there had been transmuation of species or what the process of evolution might be. Science, he urged, should be looked upon not as the foe of religion, but rather as a complementary study of the ways in which the First Cause operated in the natural world. Whatever science might learn, the existence of God as First Cause could always be assumed.

A key factor in the reconciliation was the role played by leading religious figures like Henry Ward Beecher, publisher of Christian Union, in accepting evolutionary theory as scientifically sound. Finding that there was no necessary inconsistency, Beecher remarked that "design by wholesale is grander than design by retail."

By the 1880's, the lines of argument that would be taken in the reconciliation of science and religion would be clear. Religion had been forced to share its traditional authority with science, and American thought had been greatly secularized. Evolution had made its way into the churches themselves, and there remained not a single figure of outstanding proportions in Protestant theology who still ventured to dispute it. But evolution had been translated into divine purpose, and in the hands of skillful preachers religion was livened and refreshed by the infusion of an authoritative idea from the field of science.

More than a Century later this mutually agreeable understanding is in danger of falling apart. Evolutionary theory is again under siege, though the tenor of the attack is different. Rather than being challenged as inconsistent with biblical teaching, and therefore wrong, the theory of evolution is now being challenged by Intelligent Design advocates--a cleaned up version of creation "science"--as a weak scientific theory (despite piles of empirical support). The attack is on scientific turf, not religious turf, or at least that is the claim by ID folks, although they have little (or no) science to offer and candor presumably would compel them to admit that they are motivated by religious reasons.

This raises the question: why has a sensible way to reconcile faith and science that has worked for so long become unacceptable to many religious leaders in this country? This is not like the other ongoing battles over religion in the public sphere and the separation between state and church (school prayer, Decalogue displays, funding for parochial schools), all of which raise debatable issues of public and private values.

The validity of evolutionary theory is about scientific knowledge. It's not a debate over values.

They have gone a bridge too far. School boards and state legislatures that legally require that ID be mentioned in biology classes, as a number have done and more are considering doing, are abusing the coercive power of the state. It is no longer about defending religious values in society, which is a noble cause, but about aggressively insisting that others pay heed to their dogma.
Posted 11:03 PM by Brian Tamanaha [link]