[In part I the writer pointed out that Darwin has been targeted by religionists irrespective of their background. A critical analysis of the Lamarckian concept of evolution was given as a premise to the Darwinian leap.]
One by one. First, yes, the primary factor is the vastness of data collected by Darwin. He had collected an enormously large volume of samples of plants and animals- both living as well as fossilized- during his voyage on the Beagle in the years 1831-36 and shipped home in crates after crates. That made it impossible to argue—“How much has he seen of this vast world created by God”. And while fighting scientific facts with theological fictions the loss of this argument is very frustrating.
Let us recall, Humboldt had also similarly collected an enormous amount of samples. But since he did not undertake any elaboration of a theory out of that, the Christian fundamentalists of his time or those belonging to Islam and Hinduism paid least attention to him.
Secondly, like Newton (unconsciously) and Laplace or Lamarck (consciously) Darwin never maintained that the proper understanding of the characters, varieties and transmutation of the organic world did not need any God hypothesis. Had he said so, the Christians and consequently the others too might have a wide space to declare warfare with his theory. Instead, while Thomas Henry Huxley or Ernst Häckel argued volubly against the religious creation stories, Darwin remained mostly mum and in some pages of his Origin, he mentioned the word Creator with a modicum of respect.
That was a big trouble spot, wasn’t it? Thirdly, what he did instead was worse still. He rendered that great venerated omnipotent omniscient…omniqualified creator a nothing-useful and ludicrous
being. In the wake of explaining the process of transmutation of species the idea of God came to a pass where it lost all prestige irretrievably.
Let us elaborate the situation: Till then the idea of immutability of the plants and animals had been deeply moored with the religious dogma and doctrines. Even those who had been talking of evolution were yet to attack the issue. On the other side the theologians were going to reschedule their position with newer approaches. In particular, a group of Christian clerics who came to realize that the discoveries of Copernicus Galileo Kepler and Newton had shattered the infallibility of the Bible, began to change tactics and take recourse to a new approach in defence of the basic religious doctrine termed Natural Theology.
Scientists like Newton were the foster parents of this theory. They pointed to the law governed regularity of the natural phenomena of the world and claimed those as the manifestation of the providential wisdom. The good lord had arranged everything in an ordered manner, pushed the planets and stars with the First Impulse in perpetual motion and went aside.
They argued: don’t take the Bible literally. View it as some aphorisms. It is immaterial whether God had created this world in six days. What is important is who else created this vast system if not God. There are three different kinds of habitats for the living systems: the land surface, hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. This benevolent arrangement in the entire creation—is it not a proof of Providence? In other words, nature upholds the best evidence in support of the existence of God.
William Paley, a Christian clergy, scarcely known today to the Indian public, had written two interesting treatises on this subject: Evidences of Christianity (1794) and Natural Theology: Or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). These books had exerted a quite strong impact on the European intellectuals in the 19th Century. Darwin too had read these books in his student days and was more or less entranced. These texts took recourse to an interesting logic in defence of the glory and action of the Almighty known as the Argument of Design.
What did it say? It argued thus: When we see something beautiful and artificially built, we tend to discover a design therein. Obviously we assume that somebody has planfully fashioned it. The presence of a design naturally presupposes a designer. While walking on the road, if we see a rock we are least interested. But a clock surely attracts our attention. Its subtle mechanism with three hands of different sizes, the springing coil and its lever, etc. (we are talking about the old mechanical clock and not the digital one) testifies that somebody has built these with a plan, whom we may call the designer of the clock. Extending this line of argument, if we consider nature- it seems to be planned and arranged to nicely sustain life. Similarly, the organs in the human body are so useful and fitting in with one another that they also seem to be preplanned. Naturally there seems to be a grand designer behind the entire cosmos.
That is God. Now see what Darwin did to that idea through his proposed theory of organic transmutation. He uttered not a single pungent word about God. But his theory went to thoroughly dislodge His Highness from the chair of creator!
How? In course of reading Charles Lyell’s three volumes of Principles of Geology while on board the Beagle, as well as from his large scale observation and collection of plants and animals—both live and fossils—Darwin came to the realization that the number of species beings that had perished in the long wake of evolution far exceeded those that had survived. In fact, subsequent to Darwin it came to the knowledge of mankind that there had been five major cases of mass extinction since the beginning of life. What is the significance of these facts? Darwin’s theory pointed out that the designs of most of these flora and fauna—whether executed by the so-called grand designer or not—were either defective or less effective for the changing global panorama. Around 80% of the organic beings designed by God could not survive, that is to say, could not match the terrestrial situation. Few fit with the given condition.
Let us once again recall the case of a watchmaker. If a watchmaker makes watches of a sort out of which 95 per cent go wrong and only a few run correctly, will anybody purchase watches from him? Similarly, the God was found to be such a great designer who made most of the design of the plants and animals faulty. Then how could people regard God as the omniscient, omnipotent grand designer? These arguments too appeared on the scene. If you admit the existence of fossils, accept Darwin’s theory, subscribe to natural selection, you can no longer stick to the design argument. Not only this, in view of the emerging fossil picture, the very design argument became a powerful antithesis for the existence of God.
When Darwin wrote the autobiography at the far end of his life, with respect to his mental evolution on the question of religion after the five year voyage of Beagle, he stated: “Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” [Barlow (ed.) 1993, p. 87]
Of course this is rejection of faith from a negative end. He had arrived at a mindset where he could no longer reconcile with the idea that owing to their disbelief, his father, brother and almost all his best friends would be incarcerated in the inferno after death. And the interesting thing is that as long as he continued to subscribe to the faith, this canon of the church did not bother him. But now he saw through. And he also realized how religion made people blind. Side by side, he found that the theory of natural selection had rendered the argument of design irrelevant: “The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domestic Animals and Plants, and the argument they gave has never, as far as I can see, been answered.” [Ibid, pp. 87-88]
What he meant by this, his son Francis had made clear in a footnote to his previously mentioned book, reproduced here: “My father asks whether we are to believe that the forms are preordained of the broken fragments of rock which are fitted together by man to build his houses. If not, why should we believe that the variations of domestic animals or plants are preordained for the sake of the breeder?” [Ibid, p. 88f]
Francis then cited a paragraph from Darwin’s aforementioned books: “But if we give up the principle in one case…no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided.” [Cited, ibid]
The fact that nobody was able to answer the point Darwin had raised in his book, strongly induced a conjecture in my mind, which I find very difficult to dispel. Sukumar Ray, the Bengali poet, had he been born in England of that time, might have scrawled the following rhyme:
Charlie the young and docile boy,
Throws up and catches Him as a toy!
The author is a science writer. He is the General Secretary for Centre for Studies in Science and Society [CESTUSS], Kolkata.
Sources:
Pietro Corsi (2009), “Evolution pioneers: Lamarck’s reputation saved by his zoology”; Nature 461, 167 (2009).
J. B. Lamarck (1914), Zoological Philosophy: An exposition with regard to the Natural History of Animals; Macmillan & Co., London.
Georgi Plekhanov (1976), “On the So-called Religious Seekings in Russia”; Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. III; Progress Publishers, Moscow.
Jacques Roger (1986). “The Mechanist Conception of Life”. In David C. Lindberg, and Ronald L. Numbers (1986 eds.), God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. University of California Press.
