The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies Charles Darwin [Hardcover]

The book's underlying argument: because science prescribes to methodological naturalism, Darwin, by following this methodology, proposed the theory of natural selection thereby leaving God out. "That evolution must be godless to be scientific is the Darwin Myth, so profoundly misleading that it must be called a great lie,..." (pxi) According to the author then, this myth has supposedly distorted our understanding of the scientific evidence and the debates surrounding evolution (but not any scientific debates). So the author's core complaint here is with methodological naturalism generally, and Darwin's adherence to it in formulating the theory of natural selection.

Simply stated, methodological naturalism mandates that hypotheses or the causes behind phenomena are to be explained using only natural processes. Supernatural or theistic explanations are not admitted at the outset. It's not that scientists don't believe there is a God; it's just that introducing 'Him' into the explanatory process is irrelevant. The reason for this is that methodological naturalism has been enormously successful in providing explanations, in furthering research and in providing practical engineering applications for example. Science, per definitionem *is* methodological naturalism.

Even though science arose out of disciplines more mystical in nature (as in alchemy becoming chemistry for instance), the superstitious side sent countless individuals down nonproductive alleys and dead ends. Supernatural explanations (if there is such a thing) are unproductive. They really don't explain anything. In spite of there always being some things currently deemed supernatural or inexplicable, they may or may not be explained in the future as some unusual natural phenomena. But it doesn't follow that because science doesn't currently have an answer, that the explanation *must* resort to a supernatural one.

Additionally, the idea that a supreme being created everything or intervened is not the only supernatural hypothesis one could propose. The list could be endless: from lesser gods to evil spirits, demons, Satan, goblins, mind control, psychic energy, aliens? etc. How would one eliminate the panoply of possibilities? How would one, by empirical means determine whether a particular event is the work of God or Satan for example?

The author complains about the Origin's 4th edition containing a reference to the creator as being merely a sop--a concession to appease the religious--but it actually shows that it makes no difference to Darwin's basic argument whether a creator is added in or not. Darwin is just saying that once life got started, it diversified via the process of natural selection without *any* interference from God. He doesn't really discuss the origin of life from non-life (abiogenesis). This point is continually lost on creationists discussing origins or Darwin or evolution.

A reasonable job is done in providing a biographical portrait of Darwin and the genesis of his theory. We are told that we're going to get a more honest rendering; one that is without the usual heroic Whig history that usually issues from other Darwin biographers (who are Darwinists no doubt). He gives us the 'straight goods' on some items in Darwin's autobiography. One has to wonder how these biographers get it so wrong whereas this Discovery Institute senior is giving us a truer, nonpartisan? account. But Whig science history is appropriate here as Steven Weinberg comments; "What Herbert Butterfield called the Whig interpretation of history is legitimate in the history of science in a way that it is not in the history of politics or culture, because science is cumulative, and permits definite judgments of success or failure." ([...])
So one really can say whether a scientist in the past got it right or wrong. Darwin got it right.

The author examples Mivart's (a contemporary of Darwin) problems he had with Darwin's theory using the flounder's eyes example where, after being born, one eye migrates to the other side of this fish. Mivart can't see how this could possibly happen by natural selection. There's a great answer now and the author is just pointing out the old God-of-the-gaps argument here: we can't explain it so God must of done it. But note that this hasn't explained it either. Why wouldn't God just 'make' a flounder with eyes already on one side so it doesn't have to migrate to one side after it was born? Anyway, Google: Odd Fish Find Contradicts Intelligent-Design Argument.

Trying to say that others previously came up with the idea of evolution and Darwin contributed nothing significant seems disparaging to his contribution and his theory. Lucretius (99-55 BC) didn't believe in new species arising from older ones. He denied that land animals evolved from aquatic ones. Species were born from the earth period. Darwin's grandfather Erasmus (who wrote Zoonomia), had no self-governing systems of how species change such as reproduction, selection, variation and inheritance. Lamarck was wrong. With Vestiges of Creation by Robert Chambers, life spontaneously generated and it was progressive in nature with (Caucasian) Man at the top. Chambers had no transitions; species just suddenly appeared in leaps. There was no discussion of adaptation and variation. If Darwin's theory was like previous ones, why did it hit like such a bombshell then? It's not simply about sales-pitching your idea or having influential friends.

Near the book's end, the tired rhetorical Hitler card is played and 'Darwinism' is indicted for the Nazi atrocities; but this is entirely irrelevant to the veracity of Darwin's theory, his place in science history and the theory's importance within evolutionary biology today. The author's implicit religious undertow here is that we need an absolute moral compass (based on the Bible and Christianity I would guess) to guide our lives. Darwinism--that godless form of natural selection--not only fails to provide one, it supposedly has undermined previous (religious) ones. It also can't explain the origin of our exalted traits such as reasoning, aesthetics or morality. So we supposedly need a more-inclusive theory that does include these: supernatural selection?

Darwin, and all of science for that matter, didn't take God out; just the miracle part was removed. It's not godless natural selection; it's miracle-free natural selection.

Biographies of Darwin tend to either demonize the man or present him as a secular saint. Benjamin Wiker, a Catholic theologian and member of the Discovery Institute, tries to present in this slim volume a biography of Darwin that at once affirms the man while at the same time criticizes the theory. It is an admirable attempt, but in the final analysis it falls a little short. Nonetheless, the book is by no means as hostile to Darwin as the subtitle implies.

Darwin the man was much as he portrayed himself to be: humble, caring, a devoted father, and a devout Whig with liberal political sympathies. Unwilling to live as a wealthy gentleman, unable to work as a doctor, and ultimately bored by the prospect of becoming a clergyman, Darwin "found" himself as a naturalist. One of the many little "lies" that he told in his autobiography was that he was hired as a naturalist for his famous voyage on the Beagle: in fact he was a gentleman companion on the trip, but such stretching of the truth is common in an autobiography. It is certainly true that Darwin was a celebrated scientist by the end of the trip, thanks in no small part to his natural theology teachers John Henslow and Adam Sedgwick.

But Darwin did promote one myth about himself that this little biography correctly notes. His famous theory was not a result of a careful examination of the scientific evidence. Rather, the theory came before the facts, and Darwin's argument for "natural" selection was a deliberate attempt to exclude the divine from the natural world altogether. Of course, the whig theory of history now paints Darwin as the sober scientist, and his opponents like Wilberforce as committed defenders of biblical inerrancy, but this simplified view of history is only held by protagonists in a cultural debate. The reality is that even Darwin's friends and supporters often felt natural selection was inadequate to account for the facts of evolution, and the "Whig" theory of history (scientific progress displaces superstition) was as much a cause of Darwin's theory as it was an explanation for its success.

All of this is moderately interesting, and for the most part rather well documented in the historical record. But the subtitle misleads readers. The problem is not that Darwin might have told some lies: most of us do for one purpose or another. The problem is that Darwin probably did not recognize what he said as lying. He believed in his grandfather's theory of "transmutations;" he believed (not exaggerated) the originality of his own contributions, and he believed that his science displaced God, even if he allowed Asa Gray to popularize his theory with a theological pastiche. The reason Darwin believed all this was that he was a man of his age. He accepted Malthus, just as many intellectuals have since, and on even less evidence. He was a third generation skeptic among a 19th century party that viewed religion as superstition, albeit appropriate for the lower classes and women. And despite his aversion to slavery, his acceptance of class and race distinctions made it all too easy for Darwin to see in humanity proof of evolution and to classify people as lower and higher.

What this book really does then is not expose Darwin's "lies"--there were none. It simply shows he was a man of his age. Indeed, Wiker correctly notes that a theory of evolution would almost certainly have arisen even if Darwin had died before completing his manuscript. But what Wiker glosses over is that Darwin's theory is intellectually dependent on more than just Whig philosophy, Lyell's geology, and Malthus. It was also dependent on a particular trend in Anglican theology which tried to distance God from the evils of this world. This trend is what made Darwin so acceptable to so many who did not share his skepticism. In short, Darwin's skepticism and the naturalist philosophy he tied to his science are bound firmly with a particular view of theology. Indeed, it is a type of theology which is still popular today and this explains why Darwin's ideas, unlike say Marx and Freud, have not fallen by the wayside. In the final analysis, what makes this a nice little book is that it correctly shows that science is a human enterprise and does not occur in a cultural vacuum. It is a lesson well worth remembering.

Wiker mostly is interested in discrediting evolutionary biology, and in this pursuit this book offers nothing new. Wiker's claim to fame is that he attributes Darwin's discoveries to his rampant atheism.

I have read several biographies of Charles Darwin, but this is the least compelling, written clearly to discredit the man and the evolutionary biology that he initiated. The motive of Darwin, in The Origin of the Species and other works, according to Wiker, was to give support for Darwin's strongly-held atheistic beliefs, and to apply a deadly thrust to theistic beliefs. Of course, only an individual of limited mental capacity could reason that if Darwin had ulterior motives in his research, the results should be rejected. Evolutionary theory has been validated literally thousands of times and never has been contradicted. It is now the basis for all of biological theory. Moreover, Darwinian evolution in no way undermines a belief in God, although it is incompatible with some religious cosmologies, including the fact that the Universe is many billions of years old and humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor.

The fact is that Darwin was a believer for most of his life, and his faith was shattered only when his beloved daughter Annie was taken from the world a the age of ten. Darwin later likened this event with what appeared to be the egregious horrors in the battle for survival exhibited by many natural species. Certainly Darwin was never hostile to religion. His wife was deeply religious and Darwin himself was involved in religious practices to the end of his days.

Darwin was ill and wracked with pain most of his life, but he was a rather upstanding, highly moral, scientist, father, and husband. Darwin regretted his agnosticism, and always considered himself as a believer in a higher being, his agnosticism being only a scientist's reaction to the lack of proof of the exisence of this higher being. Nor was Darwin himself ever a supporter of what came to be known as "Sccial Darwinism," a highly popular but pernicious political doctrine.

I have not read Darwin's autobiography, but the Rev. Paul Fayter reports on his web site the following facts, which confirm my analysis:

Near the end of his life, Darwin thought it impossible to conceive that "this immense and wonderful universe" was "the result of blind chance or necessity." No, it still seemed that the world had been willed into being. "I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man," he wrote in his autobiography, "and I deserve to be called a Theist." At the same time, Darwin believed that "the mystery of the beginning of all things" was simply unsolvable; and so he also declared, "I for one must be content to remain an agnostic."

I do not believe in ad hominem argument, and I am willing to believe that those who detract from Darwin's image as a decent person are motivated purely by their love of God, and do not suffer from the bigotry and limited intelligence that they appear to reveal. However, this does not absolve them from responsibility for their errors. The love of God is not an excuse for egregious and blatant error.

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