This is an excellent short article by Janet Browne (the Janet Browne who wrote the best biography of Darwin I’ve read, Voyaging(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) and The Power of Place(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), both well worth reading) that discusses the reception of the theory of evolution by his contemporaries, and acknowledges the invaluable assistance of Huxley, Hooker, Gray, and Lyell. One important point is that opposition to his ideas was not driven by the crude Biblical literalism that we encounter so much today, but a more general conflict with a more enlightened religion that found no place for a personal god in a world where life was the product of rather callous and impersonal forces, and of course, with a religion that was a force for controlling people’s minds.
Scholars nowadays agree that The Descent of Man offered a far-reaching naturalistic account of human evolution but did not change many minds. The people who already accepted evolution continued to believe. Those who did not continued to disbelieve. Few readers wished to shrink the gap between mankind and animals quite so dramatically, however. If these ideas were accepted, wrote the Edinburgh Review, the constitution of society would be destroyed.
A lot of people seem to want to argue that it’s just fundamentalism that’s a problem—but that’s only one narrow aspect of the problem that’s common in the US. It was not a major issue in 19th century Britain.
(via Thoughts in a Haystack)
PZ: I think it depends on what you mean by “the problem”.
If by “the problem” you mean resistance to and rejection of evolutionary theory in general, then without a doubt religion in general, particularly the prophetic monotheistic relgions, are all part of the problem.
If by “the problem”, though, one means actively campaigning to remove evolutionary theory from the culture and supplanting it with supernatural explanations, then one is really talking about militant fundamentalism, which Kevin Padian has identified as the greatest problem of the 21st century.
When we compare the two, I know which one I regard as the greater threat.
Peace…Scott
I don’t regard the lesser threat as tolerable just because it’s lesser. In the 21st century we cannot continue to thrive when much or most of the population insists that black is white because of a stubborn adherence to Bronze Age myths. A higher general mental level than that will be needed to surmount the challenges ahead.
I regard it as tolerable because it is not a threat. As Scott pointed out, it is mainly fundamentalists that are trying to mandate science out of science classrooms; if other religionists want to coddle their beliefs without infringing on us, who cares?
Haven’t needed it until now. What challenges do you think require the elimination of religion? What evidence do you have that religion will prevent us from facing these challenges?
I argue that Atheism has never been a cause of any global turmoil whatsover.
Snygetz, I’m afraid I must again insist that the general religion-inspired ignorance of much of the world’s (and expecially inexcusably, the US’s) population does not arise from those attempted fundy-inspired mandates but simply from the depression of mental functioning, and resistance to scientific and especially evolutionary thinking, that are caused by the more usual sort of non-fundy childhood religious indoctrination. That’s what PZ is pointing out- this mental resistance demonstrably operates in the absence of a powerful fundy movement.
Shygetz –
The challenge? Elimation and/or treatment of diseases with knowlegde gained from stem cell studies.
The evidence? Dubya and his restrictions on these studies.
There is nothing like holding back the advancement of medicine based on myths, folklore, and nonsense.
You know, Steve, you may find this hard to believe but as a high school teacher I encounter the ‘lesser threat’ all the time, and I know that it can be a problem. I also know how to manage it so that my classroom can continue to function, and part of that is my attitude.
The student who expresses their religious views typically does not intend to be a nuisance. When it happens, I use it as an opportunity to reinforce something all of my students are taught from the very beginning: that science excludes supernatural explanations, and why. I’m glad, rather than irritated, when I receive that opportunity.
I might also add that, despite spending more time on evolution than any other colleague of my personal acquaintance (about 25 percent of the school year) I have never had a problem. When I compare that with my colleagues, who often spend little or no time on evolution, but rush through it in an attempt to avoid controversy, I am struck by the fact that they have a lot more problems than I do.
What’s the difference? In part, I think, it’s attitude. I approach evolution cheerfully, enthusiasticaly, confidently. I don’t view the student’s belief systems or prior knowledge as a threat, but as an opportunity. I commend that attitude to anyone who wants to listen.
Peace…Scott
Ed Babinski wrote a really good article on the topic of “forgotten Christian defenders” of Darwin — the educated theologians of his day.
And Steve, I must respectfully disagree. You seem to think that religion in all its forms depress the ability of people to be educated. I have seen no evidence of that. I know many ignorant agnostics/atheists, and many educated religionists (and vice versa, of course). I have seen no reliable evidence showing that all “this mental resistance demonstrably operates in the absence of a powerful fundy movement.” Why, because of Darwin’s contemporaries? I doubt it; science is always wary of big new ideas. Perhaps you would like to expound upon Einstein’s religion-inspired ignorance in his belief in a steady-state universe. Or, you could write it off to his reluctance to embrace evidence for a big new idea. The point is, in both cases, the moderate religionists were brought around by the evidence, just as science should work.
Hawkeye–Are you kidding? You’re using GWB’s actions as being indicative of the values of the typical non-fundamentalist religionist? Where is your evidence for that?
There’s no use even arguing with someone who’s so full of crap that he’s still trying to peddle the bogus “Einstein was religious” line. Einstein had nothing but contempt for any form of religion involving dogma, meaning 99.9% of it and 100% of the popular varieties.
Steve, I direct you to the “God does not play dice with the universe” quote by Einstein against QM.
That one’s a perennial in the creationist quote-mining industry- do you really want to place yourself on that level? It’s well documented that that quote doesn’t signify what you think it does. I believe you can find a blurb on it in the T.O. Index of Creationist claims, if memory serves.
In 1940, Einstein published a letter repudiating the appropriation of his ideas to support religion, and specifically stated that he was not a believer in the sense everyone was assuming. Here are a few letters he received in reply.
Charmingly ignorant, isn’t it? They got worse.
Now that he’s dead and unable to reply, it’s safe for the religious vultures to creep out and stick his corpse on their banner and claim he was one of them all along.
Sorry, to expand on my previous post, PZ wasn’t just condemning organized religion, he is condemning belief in the supernatural in general. Indeed, you yourself (Steve) railed against “general religion-inspired ignorance”, not dogma-inspired ignorance. Therefore, Einstein’s more general personal religiousness is relevant. If it’s about dogma, there are many denominations in the US that are very non-dogmatic, so you should specify more clearly than non-fundamentalist.
And nice ad hominem, by the way. Maybe if you make fun of me, I’ll shut up and people will think you’re cool.
Oh, and doesn’t that last response sound an awful lot like what people say about Dawkins nowadays? “Oh, you’re hurting the Cause by not accepting our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
What percent of the population adheres to some ultra-sophisticated form of religion shorn of dogma? .01%? Nice try. Of course I don’t expect you to shut up- something idiots rarely know when to do- but that won’t stop me from making fun of you. Anybody still trying to play that Einstein gambit is either a moron or a liar- take your pick.
Einstein’s Spinozist variety of religion, if it can even properly be called religion, specifically excluded any idea of a personal God.
Here’s some interesting reading from 1927.
Popular Science Magazine – The Conflict Between Science and Religion
Cool post.
I like this one the best.
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Novelist
THE scientific and religions positions are irreconcilable. This is the fault not of religion, but of the religionists. They have made the spirit subservient to the letter, the fact to the word.
From the moment the Bible or any other heterogeneous compilation of commentary, observation, and opinion is made final arbiter, reason must resign the debate.
Science says, “In the beginning was the Fact.” The religionists say, “In the beginning was the Word.” There is not even a parting of the ways between them. They have never been together.
I think it is based on his belief that there is a “spirit” behind the universe, which is also supported by other comments. This places him firmly in the camp of people who believe in sky fairies of various flavors, as there is no physical, repeatable evidence of a “spirit” behind the universe. I never said he believed in a personal God, but you conveniently built that strawman so you could insult me.
Again, where is your evidence? Do you rescind your previous comment against religion, and amend it to only include dogma? How much dogma is too much dogma–are the UU too dogmatic? Are they to be counted among the enemies of science now? What about those who believe in a personal God, but do not believe in the factual inerrance of the Bible–are they threats?
And PZ, where I think the comparison breaks down is that the previous commenter was trying to take Einstein to task for not being Christian, while many current detractors of Dawkins’ (and your) style take you to task for lumping moderate Christians and fundamentalists together in some of your anti-religion rants while some are trying to recruit moderates in the struggle against fundamentalism.
I am reminded of the story that James Mill once told his son, John Stuart Mill, when the latter was a boy: “There is no God…but this is a family secret.”
Einstein by his own account was a Spinozist pantheist. So not even a “spirit”; Spinoza’s “God” is simply everything that is. Again, if this can even properly be called religion at all (which is very doubtful), it bears no resemblance whatseover to what is meant by “religion” by the overwhelming majority of people who regard themselves as religious.
What % of the US population are UU’s? Could you possibly make a more irrelevant comment? (Not to mention that as an ex-UU I know from personal experience that too many UU’s have addled beliefs of one kind or anoehr that are indeed incompatible with science- the secular humanist element of UUism is in full retreat.)
Shygetz,
You asked and I provided. You wanted an example of religion holding us back from challenges. “Typical” vs “non-typical”, “fundamentalist” vs “non-fundamentalsist” , etc etc was not a point brought up in your original challenge.
Hawkeye, I asked for a challenge that called for the elimination of religion, not for the elimination of fundamentalism. Your challenge does not call for the elimination of religion, merely the repudiation of one minority religious viewpoint.
Steve, UUs are religionist, and non-dogmatic (at least, for most values of dogmatic). Your thesis is that religion must be destroyed to meet certain unspecified challenges in the undeterminate future for the unproven reason that all religion is a threat to science (albeit a lesser threat than fundamentalism). If your thesis is true, and religion itself is a threat to our ability to meet future challenges due to its inherent irrationality, then your argument itself is a threat to our ability to meet these future challenges, due to the fact that it is unsupported by any observed fact and belief in it is, therefore, irrational.
Einstein did write that he believed in Spinoza’s God; he also wrote that “His [the scientist’s] religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.” However, as PZ correctly pointed out, the man is not here to defend himself, so I will yield the point as irrelevant to the larger argument. I can point out other celebrated scientists who have accomplished more for science than you (or I, or PZ), even “hampered” with this terrible threat to our future. So, my overall point still stands–where is your evidence that non-fundamentalist religion is a terrible threat to our future?
Yes, some scientists manage to function at a high level despite clinging to irrational beliefs, by way of cognitive dissonance. (All too often though, in spite of their personal accomplishments they do collateral damage to the cause of science by way of extracurricular activities like Francis Collins’s promotion of the nonsense of theistic evolution. But surveys consistently show that most scientists have discarded such beliefs. The extreme over-representation of unbelief among US scientists with respect to the general US population is clearly significant.
Sure, it’s true that most scientists are agnostic/atheistic. But you still haven’t provided any reliable evidence that there are challenges (what are they) in the future (when) that we will be unable to meet unless we overthrow all religion (why not? We’ve met all the substantial challenges until now even with this monkey on our back).
By the way, you should be careful about using irrational as a damning insult. Even among the scientists, very few people could survive a visit from the rationality police unscathed. I’m not a religionist, but I do irrational things on occasion, as I imagine most (if not all) humans do.
And by the way, in talking of belief or unbelief among scientists, we’ve wandered far off the track. The discussion PZ started was about the inhbition of the widespread acceptance of scientific ideas by widely diffused forms of religion that, nonetheless, were often a great deal more refined than Ted Haggard’s. Looking over what you’ve written above I don’t think you’ve even begun to address this point yet. I don’t see how anyone not living in a cave could fail to notice that religion acts as a depressant of the intellectual level of the general population.
I fail to notice it, Steve. Supply evidence for your supposition that all religion acts as a depressant of the intellectual level of the general population. Good luck figuring out a test for that hypothesis.
To elaborate my point, PZ made an unsupported assertion that you expanded grossly upon. The only necessary response (that is, to a rational audience) is to demand support for PZ’s assertion, and to demand even more support for yours.
I thought the very significant negative correlation between educational attainment and religious belief was rather well known.
The more important question, which no one has yet raised: where do you draw the line between “fundamentalist” and “non-fundamentalist” religion?
Personally, I don’t think there is one. Among committed believers, there are only fundamentalists and potential fundamentalists. Everyone else is just faking it for the social approval.
Members of the first group are actively advocative or violent, and members of the second group often become so with time and “provocation” of some kind, but I’d argue that the third group is potentially the most dangerous of all.
P.S. And notice in this case it really doesn’t matter which way the arrow of causation points. Whether becoming more educated predisposes one to discard religion, or discarding religion aids intellectual functioning and thus makes high educational attainment more likely, it tells against your position either way.
Steve:
If the rather high anecdotal correlation between religious kookiness and the laughable inabillity to produce coherent English is any indication.
I don’t really think that shameless lying for Jesus is indicative of much interest in education, either.
And ignorance pretty much speaks for itself.
I think this image about covers it:
http://priceless420.com/Pr072506growup.jpg
Y’know, the problem isn’t necessarily that religion makes people stupid, or ignorant, or uneducated. The problem is that it trains people to believe something for some reason other than that there appears to be evidence for it – strongly, without doubt, with a great deal of smug certainty even. Teaching irrational belief to mass numbers of the population can’t possibly be helpful in making the general run of people able to distinguish between evidence and hopes&wishes. And we can’t make science-based policy decisions on hopes&wishes.
Goddamnit.
“Einstein’s Spinozist variety of religion, if it can even properly be called religion, specifically excluded any idea of a personal God.”
This belief-structure is usually referred to as Bhuddism.
The Descent of Man sure contains a lot of idiocy. He explains how the savage races will be eliminated, praises his cousin Francis Galton (father of Eugenics and inspiration for Hitler) and explains why women are intellectually inferior.
For some reason, evolutionists get all snippy to even have this pointed out.
How interesting, Christiantroll. Here’s a link to the chapter on “The Races of Man”. Perhaps you could point us to the parts that support your allegations.
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_07.html
Since you have it handy, look up the references to Francis Galton, “savage” races, women, and intelligence in the index. Lot of choice stuff.
Then get back to me! (hehehe)
Thanks for confirming what I already knew, troll, which is that you’ve never read the book but only what some creationist liar or other has told you about it. I guess you object to “racist” stuff like the following passage:
Now that I’ve given you a convenient online link to the whole book, feel free to come back after you’ve read it. Assuming you CAN read.
Time out from the belief wars for a sec –
“
A lot of people seem to want to argue that it’s just fundamentalism that’s a problem–but that’s only one narrow aspect of the problem that’s common in the US. It was not a major issue in 19th century Britain.”
True, but in early 19thC. Britain there was also a tendency to expect that if democracy was accepted, in any substantial universal male suffrage way, that the constitution of society would be destroyed. To some degree this was part of a generalized social anxiety as all the old verities in every corner of life were perceived to be slipping away – sort of the dark side of the optimistic belief in Progress. Certainly religious attitudes played a major part in such a view – no shortage of wailing that German philosophy and higher criticism would lead to atheism which of couse would lead to utter moral breakdown , yadda yadda yadda – but it also seems more like an overall response to social and cultural change.
Or so I’ve read – I’m no historian; am just taking this from The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 by Walter Houghton way back in 1957 . . .
Einstein’s: “God does not gamble” or whatever you want to use as the translation was scarcely more a religious statement than the woman’s in that sex exclamation cartoon from a few weeks ago. Try reading up on Einstein and Spinoza, for example.
Dan: I solve that little problem by discussing how being wrong comes in degrees. If you say the earth is disk shaped, you’re mistaken. If you say that the earth is spherical, you’re also mistaken, but less so. (You can even work out the approximate degree to which each is wrong!)
As it happens, the above argument can be developed into an argument against subjectivism, too, though I won’t do that here.
Steve,
Darwin *does* say a lot of pretty offensive things in the “Descent of Man”; the thing is not to deny that he said them but to remember that despite being a scientist, Darwin was an 19th century upper-class white male and was influenced by the “common knowledge” of his time. (Reading Mencken, another hero to many of us, is pretty painful for much the same reason) However, despite making us wince, they don’t really affect the science.
Some chestnuts from DoM:
“Apes are much given to imitation, as are the lowest savages” (So, “savages” are ape-like and only capable of “monkey see, monkey do”?)
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” (negros and australians are ape like?)
“Man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius” (pretty typical 19th century idea)
Of course he says some offensive things; he was a man of his time. On the whole, though, he was if anything a bit above average (as the sentence I quote suggests) for his time and place, which was not conspicuous for enlightened attitudes about “lesser breeds”.
All of which, of course, has very little to to with his contributions and less than nothing to do with the state of biology in he year 2006 C.E.
Too bad the writer of this letter is probably not still alive today. Science would have yet another surprise for his precious worldview.
Hey Labonne, I notice that you ignored Darwins references to Galtons “excellent work” in the Descent of Man.
You do know who Francis Galton was, don’t you?
With respect to the bilious exchange between Steve LeBonne and Christensen regarding Darwin’s views on race:
When I encounter this creationist trope, I like to remind people that Darwin shares his date of birth with the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. I then point out that, like Lincoln, Darwin abhorred slavery but that Lincoln, like Darwin, held views that wouldn’t pass muster. Consider this passage from one of the Lincoln/Douglas debates:
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
I then conclude that Lincoln, like Darwin, was a man of his time but that it would be a distortion of history to paint the Great Emancipator as some sort of a recrudescent racist, and that tarring the progressive Darwin with the same brush is just as absurdly out of context.
There’s a nice article here comparing the two:
http://www.darwinday.org/englishL/newsviews/darlin.html
Peace….Scott
Darwin was significantly out of tune with his era on at least two broad social issues, in ways that our enlightened age now finds congenial:
* the nature and rights of ‘savages’. Darwin was an active member and funder of the British Abolitionist society. He had great sympathy for the ‘savages’ based on personal experiences during the Beagle’s global voyaging – and savage was the apt term for the lives of many of them. The Darwin’s quote via Badger about the ‘extermination of the savages’ in the near future is, when read in context, an expression of regret about what seems inevitable – it’s not a recommendation or celebration of extermination. Darwin did not rank the races as racism requires; he uses the term subspecies interchangeably with race and argues for their origin as very likely due to sexual selection.
* the nature and relations of the sexes. Female choice was (is) a radical notion and was in no way popular in Victorian Britain. But an interest in it follows necessarily from the fundamentals of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, which is what his book THE DESCENT OF MAN is really all about (thus its subtitle: “…and Selection in Relation to Sex”. (The idea of males being more pugnacious and energetic similarly follows from this theory.)
Jared Diamond summarized these two issues in a chapter of his earlier book THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE:Sexual Selection and the Origin of Races.
Such unpopular views are inexplicable in the post-modern social-reflex view that major ideas emerge entirely as a result of large social shifts. Such a view is arguable perhaps in its classic application to explain Darwin’s competitive Natural Selection as an echo of Britain’s capitalist competitors. But it fails for Darwin’s Sexual Selection and his disinterest in racist rankings.
As for Francis Galton, Darwin’s half-cousin, he was a polymath and his work has enduring utility – he invented the statistical concepts of correlation and regression, and psychometrics and historiometry. So which was Darwin acknowledging? Galton also invented eugenics. Note that in Britain this pertained entirely to intelligence – racist implications were later added by continental Europe and America. What’s up with that?
Not really. Less technologically advanced certainly (and politically organized on a much smaller scale), but it isn’t clear how their warring was any more “savage” than that of Europeans.
Yeah, but it was the *way* he said it that got me — comparing the genocide of tribal humans to mere extinction of apes is pretty callous even if he isn’t claiming that either is a good thing.
Not true. Read the ending of the quote I gave. He is claiming that Blacks/Australian natives are closer to non-human primates (their elimination would “widen the gap” between Cacausians and non-human primates)
Yes, I agree that Galton has been unfairly maligned. Even his discredited work on eugenics in no way advocated death camps or other things one associates with the Nazi interpretation of eugenics.
Hi Badger,
Good full response. The most substantive issue seems to me to be Darwin’s ‘ranking’ of races. A close reading of the quote you provided does imply a ranking, I concede. And elsewhere in Darwin’s later writing about species he also breaks his early rule to never refer to one as ‘higher’ or ‘lower’. So consistency is an issue.
But Darwin wrote much, and I’ll generalize that regarding evolution and human racial differences his core attitude is embodied in the first sentence of this quote from the DESCENT (Ch.7 per LaBonne’s handy link above), and his uncertainty on mental evolution is apparent in the second sentence:
— so he thinks no race stands out as better-adapted physically in any general way. (If one wants to invoke skin color and sunlight, J. Diamond & others note that Tasmanians are among the darkest-skined peoples – and lived for at least the last 10KY south of Australia at a latitude comparable to Chicago).
As to “mental evolution” – well, the evolutionary psychologists are still at odds on that within primates and specifically hominids, though it’s now an article of faith that humanity shares a single cognitive structure. Chuck D’s observations are often pertinent still.
“
Not really. Less technologically advanced certainly (and politically organized on a much smaller scale), but it isn’t clear how their warring was any more “savage” than that of Europeans.”
To what extent, though, is this a question of changing meanings? Was he using this in exactly the same way as we are hearing it, here in the early 21st century blog-reading world?
And remember, most of us spend most to all of our time interacting with people who are fairly similar in terms of technological, political, and cultural matters. Doing otherwise can be a bit of a shock.
‘Savage’ certainly varies in meaning. My impression is that Darwin used it as the alternative to ‘civilized’ – which latter would described Europeans and Chinese, who have long histories of living in complex urban societies.
Addendum on humanity’s ‘single cognitive structure’ – well, men & women may differ, it’s rumored. (The alternative is that we’re the same, only women are better…?) But differences outlined in books such as THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE (Simon Baron-Cohen) don’t do well as citations even for Harvard Presidents. And some skepticism is apt, given such complications as those which PZ discusses in the recent entry ‘a simple story gets complicated’ about monogamy among voles.