If you follow the news, it's hard to avoid the fact that Charles Darwin's two-hundredth birthday has just been and gone. No doubt my old fellows among the brethren have had a few reminders of the evils he brought into the world, as there are always a few people looking to spice up the regular meeting fare with something topical.
As with so many hard-core religious groups, the theory of evolution is an absolute offence to the brethren. It always seems to me a slightly odd way to think, but the approach is that it MUST be wrong, and therefore any evidence will be interpreted in that light. They're not by any means alone: I saw today that apparently the latest statistics say that fifteen percent of people believe Darwin's theories.
Somebody ( I think Stephen Jay Gould) said that the difference with evolution is not that it's hard to understand, but that people go to such lengths to avoid understanding it. Certainly that's the case with many non-believers (in evolution, that is) I know. I continue to find it hard to accept that such a logical proposition can meet such resistance, but when presented with the theory such people seem able to distort it into something they can then demolish to their own satisfaction in straw-man fashion. Quite why they should go to such mental trouble, I'm not sure. It must surely be quite a hostage to fortune for the future, just as the Catholic church found with the theory of heliocentricity.
Personally, I can't recall a time when I actively disbelieved in evolution. I can remember being surprised to find that my brain was somehow compartmentalised, and I was happy to believe in creation and evolution at the same time, quite literally. I don't know how old I would have been. I still don't see why a Creator God shouldn't have chosen to use a sensible means of creation like Darwinism, but I don't think I even thought that far when I was younger.
Mind you, depending on who you ask among the brethren, they are careful not to be too vigourous in their denunciation of Darwin. There is a line of retreat left in that they carefully accept that creatures adapt and change according to the pressures of their environment, so presumably there will be a face-saving way of changing the doctrine if they ever need to face some hard facts that prove the unpalatable.
In a way, the brethren show the essence of Darwinism in their endless changes. The whole group has come a long way since the eighteen-hundreds, constantly adapting to pressures on their beliefs and way of life. It's often not pretty, but change is there when it's needed for survival.
And my favourite snippet from the anniversary news coverage concerned some eminent Victorian woman, who apparently said after reading The Origin of Species that she didn't see why everybody made such a fuss of Mr Darwin - after all, if she'd had the same facts she'd have come to the same conclusion. That, I think, is the reasonable and honest thought anyone must have if they allow themselves to understand (not to take anything away from the genius of the man, of course).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
In 1968 I made known to the Brethren that I agreed with Darwin and disagreed with Jim Taylor. In the course of several months when a long, steady trail of Brethren tried to bully me into recanting, there was one thing that really startled me: there were several brethren that secretly agreed with me on both counts. They couldn’t say so openly, of course.
Here is an interesting comment about 'theory' that I saw recently.
Science uses the word "theory" in a very specific manner, unlike the word's use in common parlance. An idea must meet two stringent criteria in order to be called a scientific theory:
1. It must be a broad idea that connects and explains several other large concepts into a comprehensive whole
2. It must be backed by a lot of evidence, not just thoughts.
Examples are the theory of relativity (physics, astronomy), quantum theory (chemistry and physics), and the theory of evolution (biology). Evolution is backed by evidences from fossils, biogeography, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, comparative molecules (proteins and DNA). All this evidence, including recent advances in cell biology, tell the same story about relatedness and modification through evolution.
Post a Comment