Why should I, a committed believer in the Gods and the Sacred, support a guy who has been used by atheists to debunk the existence of a sacred realm of any sort?
It's actually pretty easy.
Because Darwin showed first that nature does not need a Divine Craftsman somewhere up above to bring forth the wonderful diversity of life we are blessed with on this planet. For the 'modern' mind, until Darwin the world was just a mechanical object, creativity being lodged elsewhere, in a transcendent deity and in the human mind to the extent it shared more in common with that deity than with the world. After Darwin, the argument among informed parties is between those of us who see the Sacred in the world, and those who attribute it's abundance and beauty to chance and determinism. We advocates of Divine Immanence can at least hope for a seat at the table.
Second, Darwin situated us in the world, as its products every bit as much as butterflies, redwoods, and nematodes. We could no longer argue a deep and unbridgeable gulf separated and elevated us above everything else on this planet. That even scientists who accepted evolution still long argued that animals could not think or have subtle emotions, or even consciousness, says volumes about how deeply this disease of transcendent human uniqueness had afflicted even reasonably rational men (and some women).
It says much about the weak character of those who said because Darwin had argued for our emerging from the apes, he had eliminated any reason for moral principles applying to human beings. Darwin himself thought otherwise, that it would lead to extending moral principles to embrace our distant relatives.
In this very important regard Darwin was a much more spiritually wise man than a geat many of his critics. Not much has changed
Second, Darwin situated us in the world, as its products every bit as much as butterflies, redwoods, and nematodes. We could no longer argue a deep and unbridgeable gulf separated and elevated us above everything else on this planet. That even scientists who accepted evolution still long argued that animals could not think or have subtle emotions, or even consciousness, says volumes about how deeply this disease of transcendent human uniqueness had afflicted even reasonably rational men (and some women).
It says much about the weak character of those who said because Darwin had argued for our emerging from the apes, he had eliminated any reason for moral principles applying to human beings. Darwin himself thought otherwise, that it would lead to extending moral principles to embrace our distant relatives.
In this very important regard Darwin was a much more spiritually wise man than a geat many of his critics. Not much has changed
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I thought about doing that, Maya. Actually, this morning I went back intending to do just that, figuring whomever it was had had time to see my opinion of their drivel, but clasqm had already written an intelligent response that wasn't as peeved as I was when I read it.
But I am disappointed that what could be a juicy discussion of Darwin, evolution, and spirituality got off on an utterly irrelevant note.
One other interesting point to me about Darwin. His approach to ethics was strongly influenced by the thinking of David Hume and Adam Smith. They located ethics, or their foundation, (the "moral sentiments," as Smith put it) in our perception of ourselves, and by extension, others. They called it a sympathy based approach.
In my view this is the ONLY modern approach to the subject that seems to be deeply harmonious with a spiritual approach that is immanent in nature, and does not consist of laws or abstract principles as its startng oint. These latter theories mostly seem to me to reflect in secular terms a monotheistic command based way of looking at the world or, with utilitarianism, one that is ultimately atomistic and not enmeshed in relationships.
Perhaps that is why so many read Darwin as undermining morality rather than extending it. They could not see outside their own little box
I think your post is spot-on, Gus. I don't believe in a creator or a creatrix; I believe that consciousness/ deities / spirit is/are an emergent property of the universe, and that this is a very liberating thought.
I love you blog! I have come across it a couple of times, and each time I have agreed with what you have had to say. I too think Darwin is fantastic. I watched a special on him the other day, and he was an amazing man. He had the bravery to believe in something that was terrifying in his time. He actually had to hide his journals on his theory for years.
Darwin accepted nature in all it's majesty. He was a great man with an open mind in a time where an open mind would get you killed.
I didn't know that about Darwin's ethics -- I remember Hume gives an example of sympathy that is very striking. He notes that if we sees insruments laid out for surgery, the sight excites fear and pain and empathy with the patient even if that unfortunate is unknoown to us.
Such subtle and warm observations.
In his talk the other evening at Darwin's home the philosopher AS Greyling pointed out that Darwin's ideas were at least a century before their time and so challenging that even today we are not ready to look at them and to begin recognising that most of our ideas about 'humn nature' are not just flawed but wrong. A friend of mine was there and remarked on how little we know about Darwin other than an elementary notion of his theories on evolution. His antipathy towards and critique of slavery was another breakthrough for the time.
Marya
And just because I can't resist it -- the last line from Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a sentence I have copied into a notebook of great insights:
'There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst 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.'
Marya
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.