I finished reading this book late at night and lay
sleepless and flabbergasted
that someone so obviously intelligent, who understands evolutionary
theory so
well, and is capable of explaining it so cogently, could end up with
the bizarre
conclusions that Francisco Ayala draws about science and religion.
There are two threads to this book. One is Ayala’s argument that
Darwin’s
most significant contribution to science was not the theory of
evolution itself,
or even the origin of species, but the concept of natural selection.
This
discovery, he concludes, completed the Copernican revolution by
bringing the
understanding of the design and diversity of organisms into the
realm of
science.
He suggests that Darwin’s real aim was to solve Paley’s problem of
how
organisms are designed, and that but for certain accidents of
history, and the
concepts of the scientific method prevailing in Darwin’s time, this
might have
been more widely recognized. He even suggests that, had things gone
slightly
differently, some of the twentieth century’s clashes between
religion and
science might have been avoided. He tells the extraordinary story
(extraordinary
to those of us who do not live in the United States) of the battles
over
evolution and religion in American schools, quoting extensively from
Judge
John E. Jones’ eminently sensible conclusions in the Dover Area
School District
case.
The second, and major, thread—the one that inspired the book’s
title—is that
there is no conflict between the science of evolution and religious
belief; this is
why Darwin’s work was a gift to both. This is clearly Ayala’s main
aim: ‘‘to
persuade people of faith as well as other readers that there need be
no antagonism
between evolution and religious beliefs’’.1
To make his case, Ayala devotes a large
part of the book to explaining the basics of evolution in an easy
and engaging way.
He explains Paley’s argument from design and how the theory of
natural selection
makes design possible without a designer; he deals with the problems
of blending
inheritance, the role of randomness and chance in evolution, and
explores the
principles of the scientific method and why evolution by natural
selection is a
powerful theory in the best scientific sense and not, as in everyday
parlance ‘‘just a
theory.’’
In the process, he comprehensively demolishes many
of the claims of both
scientific creationism and Intelligent Design, sweeping away their
appeals to
irreducible complexity, and showing how the literal interpretation
of the Bible on
which so many of their arguments depend is both inconsistent and
false. He cites
various theologians, from St. Augustine on, as affirming that the
story of Genesis
in the Bible was never meant to be a scientific treatise but was a
guide to salvation.
As Pope John Paul II declared in 1981, the Bible ‘‘does not wish to
teach how
heaven was made but how one goes to heaven.’’2
This much makes it clear that Ayala rejects vast swathes of
traditional Christian
belief and biblical teachings. He does not accept that God created
the earth
recently, that He designed each species in its proper place, that He
intervened step
by step in the process of evolution, or that He physically made
humans in His own
image because, as he explains so well, such beliefs would conflict
with everything
we know from science. Yet he declares, firmly, and frequently, that
there is no
conflict between science and religious belief because ‘‘science and
religion concern
non-overlapping realms.’’3
So which religious beliefs does he mean? This is crucial because
Ayala has
stated so clearly that many traditional Christian beliefs are indeed
in conflict with
science. So we might reasonably expect him to draw a clear line
between all those
unacceptable beliefs that are in conflict with science, and the
acceptable ones that
fall into that ‘‘non-overlapping realm.’’ He does not. Indeed, it is
hard to work out
what he does believe: I had to try to infer his beliefs from various
comments that
seemed to give a clue.
For example, he talks about the ‘‘Divine Creator,’’ describes
‘‘humans as special
creatures of God,’’4 and mentions
belief in the immortality of the soul, although he
does not make it clear whether he believes in a soul or not. Perhaps
more
definitively, he describes himself as ‘‘a biologist concerned that
God not be
slandered with the imputation of incompetent design.’’5
This latter is most curious
since he has previously listed many examples of the cruelty, waste,
and sheer
incompetence of some of nature’s designs, from mate-eating spiders
to cats
playing with mice, concluding that the God of love and mercy could
not have
planned all this. He also explains that science has provided much
relief to
theologians, and removed a burden from the shoulders of believers,
by attributing
defects and dysfunctions to the outcome of natural causes rather
than to God.
But then what does he think his creator God did? Is it that his
‘‘God of love and
mercy’’ set evolution going without realising it would end in tears?
If so, then
surely Ayala’s God is not much good at foresight, let alone
omniscience. Did the
God who set evolution going not care what would happen, not know
what would
happen, or find Himself unable to influence it? Nothing that Ayala
says suggests
that his retreat from belief in a designer God in any way avoids the
problem of evil.
Perhaps we might better be able to understand Ayala’s position when
he
demarcates those aspects of knowledge that science can legitimately
deal with
from those it cannot. Happily, he is quite clear about this.
Science, he says
‘‘transcends cultural, political, and religious differences because
these matters are
none of its business’’6 and ‘‘questions
of value, meaning, and purpose . . . are
forever beyond science’s scope.’’7
Unhappily, he is wrong.
It seems extraordinary to me that Ayala can be so
sure about what science
can and cannot deal with when the history of science shows how often
demarcation attempts have failed. Again and again, science has found
a way to
tackle problems that had previously seemed completely unapproachable
by
existing methods. And none of the examples he gives are even
remotely in this
category. The science of gene-culture coevolution has a lot to say
about cultural
differences, as does anthropology and even history; science deals
with political
differences in its study of human behaviour, social psychology, and
economics;
and as for religious differences, memetics and evolutionary
psychology both
have a great deal to say about how people become infected with
religions, how
those religions affect their lives and societies, and why people are
religious in
the first place. The same can be said of scientific work on
religious experiences,
and religious inspiration, which he also places on the far side of
the non-overlap.
Perhaps more sense can be made of this if we take him not to be
saying that
science cannot study these things but that we cannot derive values,
meaning or
purpose from science. This is trickier. Take, for example, the
problem of animal
suffering, a real problem in this age of factory farming and
laboratory testing. The
mystery of consciousness is such that we simply do not know whether
a chicken
suffers from being kept in a small cage, or how much a cow suffers
from having
her calf taken away from her. Can we find out? I expect we shall,
for in my lifetime
I have seen neuroscience appear as an entirely new field and solve
all kinds of
problems concerning the mind that appeared intractable before. I
expect we shall
one day find measures, whether based on brain scans, behaviour, or
chemistry,
that will tell us just how much an animal is suffering. Then we will
be able to use
science to address questions of value.
But—you might object—science cannot say why we should want to reduce
suffering in the first place; surely that is a value right outside
of science, isn’t it?
Again, I say no. Evolutionary theory itself explains why humans, as
well as many
other species, are capable of empathy and caring. Even rats will
work to reduce
the observed suffering of another rat. Our values emerge from the
kind of evolved
creatures that we are.
So what about meaning and purpose? Do we just invent those for
ourselves in a
pointless universe, or does religious belief reveal the true meaning
and purpose of
life? Ayala quotes Richard Dawkins as saying that ‘‘the universe
that we observe
has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at
bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless
indifference,’’ criticising
him, and others, for their denials. They have a right to think as
they wish, he says,
but they should not ‘‘share the creationists’ conceit that science
makes assertions
about values, meanings, and purposes.’’8
But Dawkins never claimed it did.
He simply pointed out how the universe looks when you know some
science: it
looks as though there is no designer, no plan, no inherent meaning
and no
ultimate purpose. This does not mean these things cannot be, and
certainly not
that science can disprove their existence. It does mean that you
need to have a
rather good reason for believing in them. Nothing in this book
suggests to me that
Ayala does.
Endnotes
1 Francisco J. Ayala, Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion
(Washington, DC: Joseph Henry
Press, 2007), 201.
2 Ibid., 168.
3 Ibid., 162.
4 Ibid., 106.
5 Ibid., 160.
6 Ibid., 173.
7 Ibid., 163.
8 Ibid., 174.
Author Posting. (c) 'Center for Theology and the
Natural Sciences', 2008.
This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by
permission of 'Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences' for
personal use, not for redistribution.
