Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (9 page)

This antipathy spills over to suspicion of science itself, with a consequent erosion of support for science. As a result, declarations by Dawkins, Dennett, and others have at least two unhappy results. First, their (mistaken) claim that religion and evolution are incompatible damages religious belief, making it look less appealing to people who respect reason and science. But second, it also damages science. That is because it forces many to choose between science and belief in God. Most believers, given the depth and significance of their belief in God, are not going to opt for science; their attitude towards science is likely to be or become one of suspicion and mistrust. Hence these declarations of incompatibility have unhappy consequences for science itself. Perhaps this is not a reason for those who believe these myths to stop promoting them; if that’s what they think, that’s what they should say. What it does mean, however, is that there is very good reason for exposing them for the myths they are: the damage they do to science.

Like Dawkins and Dennett, Philip Kitcher thinks evolution creates a problem for theists, believers in God. His
Living With Darwin
, however, is far more responsible and evenhanded than the works of Dawkins and Dennett, but also less venturesome.
³⁸
First, he proposes that those evangelical Christians who rally behind intelligent design “appreciate that the Darwinian picture of life (which goes well beyond current evolutionary science) is at odds with a particular kind of religion, providentialist religion.” Providentialist religion is the idea that God “cares for his creatures” and “observes the fall of every sparrow and is especially concerned with humanity.”
³⁹
Now how exactly does “the Darwinian picture” cut against such religion? Well, if we think of the Darwinian picture as including the idea that the process of evolution is
unguided
, then of course that picture is completely at odds with providentialist religion. As we have seen, however, current evolutionary science doesn’t include the thought that evolution
is
unguided; it quite properly refrains from commenting on that metaphysical or theological issue.

So suppose we ask about current evolutionary science: which parts of it, then, are at odds with providentialist religion as thus characterized? As we saw in
chapter 1
, section I, we have at least the following: (1) the ancient earth thesis, (2) the descent with modification thesis, (3) the universal common ancestry thesis, (4) the progress thesis, and (5) Darwinism, the thesis that what drives the whole process is (for the most part) natural selection winnowing random genetic mutation. But as we also saw above, none of these seems to cut against providentialist religion. Clearly that sort of religion is compatible (as Augustine already suggested) with the idea that the earth
is ancient, and indeed as ancient as you please. The same goes for the theses that the diversity of life has come about by virtue of a process of descent with modification and that all creatures are genealogically related. Perhaps these last two are a bit less probable given theism than given naturalism (for the naturalist, these are the only game in town, whereas the theist has other options), but they are certainly not at odds with providentialist religion as such.
⁴⁰
And the same goes for Darwinism. As we have already noted, God could have created life in all its diversity by way of such a process, guiding it in the direction in which he wants to see it go, by causing the right mutations to arise at the right time, preserving certain populations from extinction, and so on.

Exactly what problem, then, does evolutionary theory pose for providentialist religion? Here Kitcher turns to the traditional problem of evil, claiming that current evolutionary science exacerbates that ancient problem:

Darwin’s account of the history of life greatly enlarges the scale on which suffering takes place. Through millions of years, billions of animals experience vast amounts of pain, supposedly so that, after an enormous number of extinctions of entire species, on the tip of one twig of the evolutionary tree, there may emerge a species with the special properties that make us able to worship the Creator.
⁴¹

But it didn’t take Darwin to enable us to see that nature, in Tennyson’s phrase (which antedates the publication of
the Origin of Species
by more than a decade), is “red in tooth and claw”; nor does it take Darwin to enable us to see that the earth is old, and that during much
of its history animals have suffered. So how exactly does evolution exacerbate the problem of evil? Would it be that bit about how the point of the whole process was to produce “a species with the special properties that make us able to worship the Creator”? Kitcher puts it like this:

When you consider the millions of years in which sentient creatures have suffered, the uncounted number of extended and agonizing deaths, it simply rings hollow to suppose that all this is needed so that, at the very tail end of history, our species can manifest the allegedly transcendent good of free and virtuous action.
⁴²

Here there are several problems. First, perhaps our species has arisen at the tail end of history. That’s the tail end of history
now
, however, and there is little reason to think history will be ending anytime soon; who knows how long our history will be? Second, Kitcher apparently thinks that given evolution, Christians and other theists would have to suppose that the point of the entire process was the production of our species; but why think a thing like that? According to the Bible (Genesis 1:20–26), when God created the living world, he declared it good; he did not add that it was good because it would lead to us human beings. There is nothing in Christian thought to suggest that God created animals in order that human beings might come to be, or that the only value of nonhuman animal creation lies in their relation to humans.

Is the thought that God simply wouldn’t use a process of evolution, wasteful and filled with suffering as it is, to bring about any end he had in mind? But this idea ignores too many possibilities. Much in the natural world—just as much in the human world—does indeed
seem the sort of thing a loving God would hate. In the case of the human world, we don’t think God would choose or approve of genocide, hatred, and a whole list of ills our sorry race is heir to. Believers in God don’t think God approves of these things; rather, these atrocities are perpetrated by human beings, and God permits them because he has good reason—one that we may not be able to discern—for permitting them. The same goes for processes in the natural world that cause pain and suffering. Various candidates for these reasons have been suggested.
⁴³

Here is one that is unlikely to become popular among secularists. God wanted to create a really good world; among all the possible worlds, he wanted to choose one of very great goodness. But what sorts of properties make for a good world? What are the good-making properties for worlds? Many and various: containing rational creatures who live together in harmony, containing happy creatures, containing creatures who know and love God, and many more. Among good-making properties for worlds, however, there is one of special, transcendent importance, and it is a property that according to Christians characterizes our world. For according to the Christian story, God, the almighty first being of the universe and the creator of everything else, was willing to undergo enormous suffering in order to redeem creatures who had turned their backs on him. He created human beings; they rebelled against him and constantly go contrary to his will. Instead of treating them as some Oriental monarch would, he sent his Son, the Word, the second person of the Trinity into the world. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He was subjected to ridicule, rejection, and finally the cruel and humiliating death of
the cross. Horrifying as that is, Jesus, the Word, the son of God, suffered something vastly more horrifying: abandonment by God, exclusion from his love and affection: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All this to enable human beings to be reconciled to God, and to achieve eternal life. This overwhelming display of love and mercy is not merely the greatest story ever told; it is the greatest story that
could be
told. No other great-making property of a world can match this one.

If so, however, perhaps all the best possible worlds contain incarnation and atonement, or at any rate atonement.
⁴⁴
But any world that contains atonement will contain sin and evil and consequent suffering and pain. Furthermore, if the remedy is to be proportionate to the sickness, such a world will contain a great deal of sin and a great deal of suffering and pain. Still further, it may very well contain sin and suffering, not just on the part of human beings but perhaps also on the part of other creatures as well. Indeed, some of these other creatures might be vastly more powerful than human beings, and some of them—Satan and his minions, for example—may have been permitted to play a role in the evolution of life on earth, steering it in the direction of predation, waste and pain.
⁴⁵
(Some may snort with disdain at this suggestion; it is none the worse for that.)

Not everyone agrees with this theodicy; and perhaps no theodicy we can think of is wholly satisfying. If so, that should not occasion much surprise: our knowledge of God’s options in creating the world is a bit limited. Suppose God does have a good reason for permitting sin and evil, pain and suffering: why think we would be the first to know what it is?

The real question here is whether this aspect of our world provides believers in God with a
defeater
for such belief.
⁴⁶
That, in turn, depends upon the strength of the case
for
theism: why do people accept theism in the first place? Kitcher suggests it is because sacred texts tell them so: “Providentialist Christians reply that they accept a body of background doctrine, which tells them of a powerful, wise, and benevolent Creator. They endorse this doctrine because they believe in the literal truth of certain statements in the Christian Bible.”
⁴⁷
But this gets things backwards. Christians believe the Bible is trustworthy because they believe its ultimate author is God—but they would have to be benighted indeed if they also believed that there is such a person as God because the Bible says so. The sources of theistic belief go much deeper. Christian theology and current science unite in declaring that human beings display a natural tendency to believe in God or something very much like God.
⁴⁸
According to John Calvin, God has created us with a “
sensus divinitatis
,” a natural tendency to form belief in God; and according to Thomas Aquinas, “To know in a general and confused way that God exists is implanted in us by nature.”
⁴⁹
Of course the vast majority of people around the globe do believe in God or something much like God. This natural inclination might be misleading—just as, I suppose, my natural inclination to believe in other minds, other centers of consciousness, might be misleading—but the point is that believers in God don’t accept such belief just because it is written in a book.

Kitcher turns next to what he calls “the Enlightenment case against supernaturalism” of which he sees Darwinism as a part. This
case consists substantially in three arguments against supernaturalism: the argument from evil, the argument from pluralism, and the argument from historical Biblical criticism. As we’ve seen, neither Darwin nor Kitcher has much to add to the vast literature on the problem of evil; that discussion remains where it was. The argument from historical Biblical criticism is an argument for the unreliability of the Biblical accounts, for example of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. We’ll look further into this argument in
chapter 5
; suffice it to say here that in arguing for the unreliability of the gospels and the Pauline letters, Kitcher relies heavily on the claims of the Jesus seminar and
Beyond Belief
by Elaine Pagels.
⁵⁰
These are interesting and suggestive, but neither is at all mainstream in contemporary Biblical scholarship, and neither represents a consensus or even anything near a majority opinion among contemporary Biblical scholars. And of course showing that the Bible isn’t reliable is a very far cry from showing that there aren’t any supernatural creatures.

The last element of the Enlightenment case against supernaturalism is the argument from religious pluralism: there are very many different and incompatible supernaturalist doctrines: there is Christianity, to be sure, but also Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and some forms of Buddhism, not to mention many varieties of African tribal religion and native American religion. Doesn’t this cast doubt on the truth of any particular supernaturalist doctrine? As Jean Bodin put it, “each is refuted by all.”
⁵¹
Well, of course the vast majority of the world’s population accept supernaturalism in one form or another; thus the argument from religious pluralism isn’t much of an argument against supernaturalism as such and hence doesn’t add much to the
Enlightenment case against supernaturalism. But what about particular supernaturalist belief—Christianity, or Islam or Judaism, for example? This too is well explored territory, but since I’ve written on it elsewhere, I won’t go into the matter here.
⁵²

Briefly, however: Kitcher points out, as others before him have, that most believers accept the religion in which they have been brought up. And that can be worrying: if I had been born and brought up in medieval China, for example, I would almost certainly not have been a Christian. Fair enough; and this can induce a certain cosmic vertigo. But doesn’t the same go for Kitcher? Suppose
he
had been born in medieval China, or for that matter medieval Europe: in all likelihood, he would not have been skeptical of the supernatural. As I say; this can induce vertigo; but isn’t it just part of the human condition? And of course the fact that there are many varieties of supernaturalism can hardly be taken, by itself, to impugn all or even any of these varieties; we have the same problem in, for example, philosophy. Many philosophers disagree with Kitcher on many points including his opinions about supernaturalism; is this in itself much of an argument against his opinions, or against his being perfectly rational in holding them?