The Natural and the divine
Christian Influences in Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection
The current debates surrounding the teaching of Creationism and Evolutionism in public schools have set the two theories so much in opposition that it is difficult to conceive of Christianity and Darwinism as anything but mutually exclusive points of view. But it must be acknowledged that Darwin’s Origin of Species owes much to the Christian background from which it arose. The influence of Christian thinking is indirect: it is traceable mainly in the scientific and rhetorical principles which Darwin employed that characterize a previous, extremely theistic scientific tradition. Thus the Christian influences in Darwin’s Origin are often synonymous with the influences of Darwin’s scientific contemporaries and precursors, all of whom were profoundly Christian in their theoretical outlook. Before we can trace the elements of the Christian in Darwin’s Origin, therefore, we must first conduct an overview of the previous scientific traditions, the backdrop against which the Origin must be examined.
Let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain, that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works, divinity or [natural] philosophy … Our saviour saith, “You err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God”; laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error; first the scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures expressing his power; whereof the latter is a key unto the former… opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon his works. (Bacon, in Moore, 322)
The view of science which dominated Europe throughout the scientific Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was one of a book of nature, in which it was possible to glean some intelligence as to the nature of God. In a typical analogy, natural philosophers referred to God as a cosmic watchmaker, inferring that the universe was structured along a divinely ordered design which humans could investigate and understand, bringing them to a closer conception of God. Theology and science were not diametrically opposed as they are today:
Natural philosophy and religion were not the same realm, of course, but science and theology paralleled each other in being concerned with manifestations of divinity in a universe which was assumed to be permanently divine, increasingly intelligible, and so designed that man could better his lot by improving his understanding of physical phenomena. (Gillispie, 6)
Thus it was possible that even the great Sir Isaac Newton, synthesizer of mathematics and natural science, was also a prolific writer of theological treatises.
Natural laws were set in place by God as part of the harmonious relationships between natural objects, and were evidence of his intervention in his universe; thus, the natural philosophers did not seek to establish the causes of these laws, but merely explored and categorized the ‘appearances’ of nature in a systematic way (Gillispie, 12; see also Shapin). The end of the eighteenth century, however, saw the rise of Geology; a science which, as Gillispie puts it, “was the first science to be concerned with the history of nature rather than its order” (39). The new discoveries of fossil remains of unusual animals in unusual locations – such as sea shells fossilized on a mountain side – presented an incomprehensible discord between God’s book of scripture and his book of nature. Naturalists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, however, did not dispense with the concept of a deity in their attempts to reconcile this clash between natural philosophy and religion.
The arguments of natural theology shaped in the eighteenth century had put the story of creation into sharp relief as the one symbol necessary for all order in nature and all beneficence and moral structure in the universe. (Dupree, 354).
Responses to the conundrum of the fossil record were varied. A first set of theologians and scientists attempted to justify Genesis and the geological record by expanding the Genesis narrative to allow for geologically demonstrated ‘facts’. For example, the discoveries of Hutton and Cuvier in the eighteenth century demonstrated that the earth was considerably older than had been determined by the Genesis narrative, and that the natural history of the earth was punctuated by major geological changes. It is out of this background that a Catastrophic view of history arose, reconciled to Genesis by theologians such as Buckland and Chalmers. Their accounts argued for a ‘gap’ in Genesis, postulated in many different positions in the narrative and demanding a less literal reading of the Bible. These early scientist-theologians argued that Creation had occurred no less than twenty-seven times, each Creation being annihilated by a periodic catastrophe, for example, as seen in the Biblical flood. Some espoused a Vulcan view, believing that fire and geological motion accounted for the extinction of species; some belonged to the Neptune school of thought, which posited floods at various points in history in response to the discovery of fossils of sea-going animals far inland[1]. Still, however, each species remained entirely stable. New species were created at each subsequent time period, to be destroyed en masse and replaced by later, similarly stable Creations. It should be noticed that, during these disputes, the findings of geology were undisputed: the question was not one of the authority of science but rather one of the hermeneutics of Bible study.
Some naturalists, however, were opposed to this idea. Rather, they interpreted the fossil record as allowing for special creation: that is, the continual designing of species by God to fit perfectly into their natural habitats. These arguments were put forward by two extremely influential writers, the natural theologians which formed the background against which Darwin wrote his Origin. These writers argued constantly for the existence of God, claiming that His existence was in fact implied by nature in its perfection. Two of these writers were William Paley and Sir Charles Lyell.
Paley’s Evidences for Christianity and Natural Theology (1802) clearly established arguments which were fundamental to the natural theological position. Paley’s main argument for the interaction of God with nature was based on his notion of contrivance, or the design of something extremely complex which is perfectly suited for its purpose, i.e. the eye for seeing. God has so structured nature, Paley argued, as to let us know that he exists:
It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence, the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his rational creatures…. Wherever we see marks of contrivance, we are led for its cause to an intelligent author… Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD. (Paley, in Vanderpool, 23-24)
Paley’s emphasis was constantly placed on design, and his argument based on contrivance led to the view accepted by natural theologians that “everything in nature was designed as a means to the end we see it accomplishing” (Gillispie, 39). Thus Nature is endowed with a purpose, the accomplishment of which purpose it is designed specifically to accomplish.
Lyell contributed to the natural theological cause by undermining the Catastrophic schools of thought. He based his Principles of Geology (1830) on the immutability of the laws of nature as established once and for all by God. This uniformitarianism did not, however, deny that change took place, but rather that change took place along the lines of divinely ordered, unchanging natural laws. Such a position did not make Lyell an early evolutionist: he believed strongly that each species was separately created by God in a distinct and specific time and place to “endure for an appointed period, and occupy an appointed space on the globe” (Lyell, in Gillispie, 130).
Natural theology as put forward by Paley and Lyell was refined by such writers as Richard Owen, Robert Chambers, and Baden Powell, but all essentially focussed on the uniformity of natural law and the importance of perfected natural design as the visible work of God (Brooke, 45). Thus natural theologians reconciled scientific theories with Christian scripture:
[The literature of natural theology] gave to the Christian believer evidence from nature that stood on the same plane as evidence from Scripture. At the same time it gave to the naturalist, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, a reasonable hypothesis for the observed distinctness in kinds of organisms. It further connected the structure of those organisms to their stations in the economy of nature in a harmonious way. (Dupree, 354-5).
It should also be noted that the Natural Theological arguments made acceptable the idea that creation could be viewed as a process, “which unfolded over time and followed an overall pattern of development from the simpler to the more complex levels of animate being” (Campbell, 1970, 4). This accepted premise of natural theology would soon become central to Darwin’s argument.
It is possible (and this has been, of course, the normal approach to the book) to read the Origin solely as a positivistic work. But to so read it is to reinterpret it from a post-Darwinian perspective. The argument of the book, in its full integrity, did not take that form for Darwin himself… elements of the creationist and positivistic epistemes coexisted in Darwin’s mind in a loose, paradoxical, and curiously unantagonistic way. (Gillespie, 124-5)
Darwin’s Origin of Species, published in 1859, is now seen as a drastic overthrow of the previous scientific and theological traditions. Darwin has been characterized as an atheist, and his work - perhaps more than any other scientific treatise – is seen as conscious boundary between the fields of religion and science. However, a close reading of the Origin and an examination of the hypothesis it suggests demonstrates a closer relationship between Darwin and his natural theological precursors than at first expected.
Scientists do not operate in a vacuum; they are influenced by their scientific peers as well as by the beliefs and norms of their cultures. Thus it should not be surprising to witness Darwin draw heavily from the natural theological position to structure and argue his major theory. As a student of divinity and botany at Cambridge, he was exposed early on in his scientific career to Paley and Lyell, and this strong training in the natural theological traditions can be seen to have influenced his theory of the evolution of species and natural selection. According to Brooke, these influences are seen in five elements of the Origin:
1- in the sense that a pattern of argument may be common to the presentation of the two different theories;
2- in the sense that the one theory defines the problems that the second theory solves;
3- in the stronger sense that certain basic presuppositions of the one theory may be discerned in the other;
4- in the sense that concepts and metaphors drawn from the first may be sued to explicate the basic concepts of the second;
5- in the sense that the application of a new concept may be regulated or constrained by survivals from the old, thereby affecting the content of the new theory. (48-49)
The natural theological legacy in the Origin can, in essence then, be traced in both the content of Darwin’s theory and in its rhetorical presentation. We shall examine the specifically theist material in these two categories.
Darwin created natural selection in the image of God … he understood its action to infuse moral values into nature, not to suck them from nature. (Richards, 63)
The most striking aspect of Darwin’s theory is his concept of natural selection. This mechanism, Darwin argues, acts to select in nature those variations of species which are best suited to their environments, and eliminates those variations which are not. Although the idea of a natural mechanism may seem far distant from any religious principle, this is not entirely the case. “Precisely because the theory of natural selection emerged through dialogue with prevailing concepts of design, there are certain structural continuities between the theory and natural theology”(Brooke, 47).
First of all, “Darwin, while he rejected special creation, retained the notion of creation through law” (Richards, 68), maintaining the crucial natural theological position of uniformity which was seen to prove, not disprove, God’s power. Also central to Darwin’s theory was the natural theological premise that nature was ordered, harmonious, and perfected:
…Darwin shared his contemporaries’ belief in harmony and perfection [characteristic among natural theologians]. … Darwin took for granted that adaptation is perfect and that variation is for the purpose of enabling organisms to accommodate to environmental change… within a few months of reading Malthus, Darwin rejected most of natural theology’s explicit formulations about nature and worked out his own ideas of design and purpose. But until the 1850s he adhered to assumptions that were deeply embedded in the traditional view, and these gave the theory of natural selection a particular structure, the structure of a mechanism of adjustment to change, a means by which the balance of nature is preserved. (Ospovat, 3)
This ultimately means that no species is evolved which is unnecessary or which does not form a part of the great scheme of nature, and no species is preserved which is not suitably adapted to its purpose.
The Christian view of history as an irreversible process, of linear progress instead of an endless cycle, plays a large part in the concept of a “progressive creation through time” (Brooke, 53). This is implied in the theory of selection and evolution. Darwin does not neglect the question of final causes, once overlooked by natural philosophers in the previous century but of central concern to the theologian (Ospovat, 68), and in his focus on a process which achieves a perfected result, he places natural selection in Paley’s structured universe: “the only universe in which natural selection could work” (Brooke, 52).
As well, “[a]t both the verbal and conceptual level, the anthropomorphic concept of ‘purpose’ [in natural selection] is retained” (McGrath, 158). This concept of purpose draws natural selection ever closer to divine action. This is clear in Darwin’s comparison of natural selection to the process of a breeder, who selects variations in order to create a better domestic animal. The ‘natural’ process requires intelligence and foresight in order to produce such favorable ends, resulting in a law which “radiate[s] omniscience, power, and exquisite sensitivity” in its selections of variants (Richards, 69). This breeder analogy is thus highly problematic, as its ambiguity allows for the assumption that natural selection could, in fact, be orchestrated by a divine entity (discussed in McGrath, 157-9).
Finally, Nature in Darwin’s system becomes infused with moralist tendencies. In group dynamics, Darwin argued that morals contributed to the survival of the community, as “moral behavior, arising ultimately from community selection, was directed to the vigor and health of the group, not to the pleasure of its individual members” (Richards, 75). And on the level of the individual, Nature has the ultimate good of creation in mind. While “man selects only his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends” (Darwin, 96), and she ensures that “the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply” (Darwin, 92). Thus working for the happiness of creation in general, natural selection is further personified and endowed with deistic characteristics.
…the [intelligent] design model structures the rhetoric of Darin’s Origin at every turn and continues to provide the grammar of the most well known of Darwin'’ defenders…(Campbell, 1998, 472)
Darwin’s Origin of Species does not read like a technical scientific treatise: it is a carefully constructed text designed with the intention of convincing the reader to the author’s point of view. As John Angus Campbell has often demonstrated, Darwin employs several rhetorical strategies in order to make his theory appear acceptable, intelligible, and common sensical to his readers (see Campbell, 1998). Some of these rhetorical devices allow room for the existence of God in Darwin’s system, while others, derived from their successful usage in natural theological texts, demonstrate the close link between Darwin and the natural theologians So while these rhetorical devices may not necessarily be Christian in their own right, they are based on seminal texts and writers in the Christian natural theological tradition and draw upon theological arguments. As such they are further examples of the theist influences in Darwin’s theory.
Darwin speaks the language of the natural theologians, employing their analogies in his own writing, such as that of “movements of the heavenly bodies being governed by the laws of gravitational forces” used by Whewell (Diamond, 206). But he also responds directly to their works by using the arguments which they had employed to support their ideas in order to support his own. This is a technique borrowed from Paley: the author will “chip away at large objections” to his own work by problematizing the opponent’s own arguments, eventually using his opponents’ arguments to support his own cause until his argument appears indisputable (Campbell, 1998, 471). Many of these arguments are theological in nature, or at least contain theological implications. For example, Darwin uses a case cited by Lyell in proof of God’s interventionism, twisting it to serve the purpose of natural selection; he argues that it would undermine God’s immaculate moral nature if he in fact crafted such gruesome natural devices as employed by the ichneumon fly, but that a rule of natural selection would remove the moral problems associated with such practices by attributing them to secondary laws. The existence of natural selection “was more worthy of God than was the divine guilt that would be created by their absence” (Gillespie, 127): thus, natural selection serves to uphold the transcendence and moral perfection of God!
Darwin’s rhetorical success ultimately arises from a synthesis of the two conflicting schools of profoundly theistic geological thought: catastrophism and uniformitarianism.
The [geological] catastrophists believed in evolution, but vehemently denied the ability of natural causes to bring about evolution. The [geological] uniformitarians denied that there had been cumulative progress in any particular direction, but affirmed the ability of natural forces to bring about random change. In his exposition of the mechanism of natural selection Darwin employed the uniformitarians manner of explanation to establish on naturalistic grounds the evolutionary conclusions of the catastrophists. (Campbell, 1970, 13)
Employing the language, metaphors, and rhetorical tactics from each side, Darwin reconciles the two schools by appealing to both sides: making his argument appear coherent in the language of the one, while appearing to break down the theories of the other. But it is crucial to note that this synthesis did not deny the strong theological backgrounds of either position: “[t]o a public steeped in a theological tradition which taught men to view the adaptations of the organic world as the artifacts of a conscious designer, Darwin presented natural selection under the metaphor of a conscious, choice-making intelligence” (Campbell, 1970, 13). The Origin maintained the theological premises of the catastrophist and uniformitarian arguments, and as a reconciliation between the two schools it often gained its very effectiveness through the use of subtle theological arguments.
While the internal evidence of the Origin … provides clearest evidence of natural theology’s place in Darwin’s persuasive strategy, Darwin’s behavior in the early years of the controversy manifested his intent that the public should see his theory and natural theology as fully compatible. (Campbell, 1970, 10)
Many critics of Darwin’s theories proclaim him an atheist. But just how valid is that claim? The answer is that Darwin himself remains remarkably ambiguous. One thing, however, is clear: Darwin did not rule out a Christian reading of Origin, and in some cases, he even worked hard to promote such a reading. The Origin itself does not shy away from mentioning God: John Angus Campbell has counted 116 references to God, the act of Creation, and special endowment (Campbell, 1998, 497 n.42) throughout the text. It should not be surprising that Darwin’s colleagues believed that “that evolutionary theory more readily supported metaphysical spiritualism than materialism; and … that God was made to feel right at home in this evolving universe” (Richards, 62).
Darwin also took special pains to be sure that a Christian reading of his work was encouraged. He prefaced his editions of the Origin with quotes from Whewell, Butler, and Bacon, all of which link the natural and the divine; in doing so he ensured that the book would be seen as within the theistic traditions of natural philosophy espoused by those writers. He stressed the “nobility” and “grandeur” of his system within the Origin, thus indirectly stressing the omniscience and omnipotence which natural selection ascribed to God. He also requested that Asa Gray, an American colleague, publish a piece which declared that Darwin’s theory was not incompatible with Christian doctrine. Gray’s conclusion was that,
[a]fter full and serious consideration, we are constrained to say that, in our opinion, the adoption of a derivative hypothesis, and of Darwin’s particular hypothesis … would leave the doctrines of final causes, utility, and special design [three theological arguments], just where they were before. (Gray, in Vanderpool, 114)
Whether Darwin’s encouragement of a Christian reading was heartfelt or a ploy to widen his readership, we may never know. It is, however, apparent that even by the time the Origin was published, Darwin had moved away from Christian doctrine specifically, although he had not renounced his still-profound theism. It was only by the time of the publication of The Descent of Man, almost twenty years later, that Darwin openly proclaimed his agnosticism. Yet, as Darwinian theory was swallowed up by proponents of a positivist science, even the most agnostic of his supporters, T.H. Huxley, continued to employ Christian sermon rhetoric and metaphors to push Darwin’s case (Dupree, 363).
In the wake of twentieth-century debates which pitted a Christian position against evolutionary theory, it is perhaps surprising to see such a strong relationship between Darwin’s original writings and the Christian tradition from which they arose. In such a situation, it is crucial to keep in mind that science is a social activity; the influences of Christian thinking - whether pure theism or in the indirect form of ideas put forward by the natural theologians - are inevitable: they surrounded Darwin in his Anglican culture, in the faithful religiosity exhibited by his wife, in the natural theology he studied, and in the ideas embraced by his colleagues.
Darwin’s Origin of Species is not in itself an atheist text: in fact, it is a strongly theist one. Natural theological arguments in the Origin are used not to destroy the idea of a deity at work in the world but rather to perfect the idea of the deity’s interactions with His Creation. Natural selection is personified to the point of deification, exhibiting a moral sense and an intelligence of purpose easily attributed to the divine. Evolution has a purpose and a direction, and operates for the good of all species. Laws are established by the Creator and do not change, and while the laws continue to operate, the Creator is not expressly denied a place in the Darwinian universe. There is perhaps no more perfect example of these devices at work than the concluding paragraph of Darwin’s Origin, which not only demonstrates the exuberant enthusiasm so characteristic of Paley, but also summarizes the rhetorical and structural legacies which Origin of Species owes to its Christian heritage.
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whist this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. (Darwin, 528-9)
Bibliography
Brooke, John Hedley. “The Relations Between Darwin’s Science and his Religion” in: Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief. Ed. John Durant. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Ltd. 1985. 40-75.
Campbell, John Angus. “Darwin and the Origin of Species” in Speech Monographs. Vol. XXXVIII, 1970, 1-11.
Campbell, John Angus. “Intelligent Design, Darwinism, and the Philosophy of Public Education” in Rhetoric & Public Affairs Volume 1 Number 4, 1998. 469-502.
Campbell, John Angus. jacbq@earthlink.net “Some Sources” 1 Feb. 2000. Personal email.
Campbell, John Angus. “Why Was Darwin Believed? The Origin of Species and the Problem of Intellectual Revolution.” Scientific Ethos: Authority, Authorship and Trust in the Sciences. St. John’s College Speakers Series, University of British Columbia. Vancouver, 20 Jan. 2000.
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species (1859). The Harvard Classics, Vol.11. New York: Collier & Son Co., 1909.
Diamond, Phil. “The Natural Theologians and Darwin: a case of divergent evolution in the history of ideas” in Australian Journal of Politics and History, 1986 vol. 26 #2. 204-211
Dupree, A. Hunter. “Christianity and the Scientific Community in the Age of Darwin” in God and Nature: historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Ed. Lindberg, David C. and Ronald L. Numbers. Berkley: University of California Press, 1986. 351-368.
Gillespie, Neal C. Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Gillispie, Charles Coulston. Genesis and Geology A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1970-1850 (1951). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.
McGrath, Alister E. Science & Religion: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1999.
Moore, James. “Geologists and Interpreters of Genesis in the Nineteenth Century” in God and Nature: historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Ed. Lindberg, David C. and Ronald L. Numbers. Berkley: University of California Press, 1986. 322-350.
Ospovat, Dov. The Development of Darwin’s Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838-1859. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Richards, Robert J. “The Theological Foundations of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” in Experiencing Nature. Ed. Theerman, Paul H. and Karen Hunger Parshall. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. 61-80.
Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Vanderpool, Harold Y. Darwin and Darwinism: Revolutionary Insights Concerning Man, Nature, Religion, and Society. Massachussetts: D. C. Heath and Co., 1973.
[1] For an excellent discussion of the geological sciences previous to Darwin see Charles Coulston Gillispie’s Genesis and Geology.