The Descent of Man and the Ascent of Faith: Darwinism as Aid to 19th century Apologetics

One of the great myths of the history of science is that Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was strongly opposed by the Christian church. There was indeed much opposition, but what is often neglected is that much of this was on scientific, rather than theological grounds. There were also a number of theologians who positively welcomed Darwinian evolution as an aid to faith.

Darwin’s Theory Not Proven Scientifically at Time of Proposal; Support of Theory by Some Clergy

At the time Darwin’s theory was still highly speculative, a fact that Darwin himself acknowledged. He was confident, however, that further facts and fossil evidence would be found to support his theory. Alister McGrath, the theologian and microbiologist, notes in his book, The Twilight of Atheism, that Bishop Samuel Wilberforce opened his legendary debate with Huxley with the statement that if Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, Christians would have to accept it, no matter how uncomfortable they found it. Furthermmore, while Huxley 31 years later remembered the debate as a great triumph, others were certainly not so sure. Sir Joseph Hooker believed that Huxley had turned the tables on the Bishop. He had failed, however, to deal with the weak points in Wilberforce’s arguments and had not convinced the rest of the people there. Indeed, Wilberforce actually convinced some of the scientists that evolution was actually wrong. One of these was Henry Baker Tristram, who was an early convert to Darwin’s theory. He had applied Darwin’s theory to the development of larks and chats in the Sahara desert. Witnessing the debate, he came to reject the theory. In 1867 the Guardian newspaper attacked the view, first proposed by F.W. Farrar, that the clergy as a whole were enemies of science. Its review of Darwin’s Descent of Man was critical. The reviewer nevertheless stated that viewed man as part of the evolutionary process, and considered that evolution would soon be as uncritically accepted as gravity. It stated that there was no ‘reason why a man may not be an evolutionist and yet a Christian. That is all that we desire to establish’. It then went on to state that ‘Evolution is not yet proved, and never may be. But … there is no occasion for being frightened out of our wits for fear it should be.’In 1874 T.G. Bonney’s book, A Manual of Geology, which argued for the vast age of the Earth, was published by the religious publishing house, the S.P.C.K. ON Darwin’s death in 1882, Huxley considered requesting that he be buried in Westminster Abbey. To his surprise, not only was his request not refused, but Canon F.W. Farrar declared to him that ‘we clergy are not all as bigoted as you suppose’ and asked him to make a formal application. Despite some opposition, Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey with full Christian rites. The following Sunday he was the subject of an appreciative sermon by Harvey Goodwin, the bishop of Carlisle. A memorial fund was set up for him that included not only the scientists Galton, Hooker, Romanes, Tyndall ahnd Herbert Spencer, but also the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. Near the end of the century Asa Grey told the Bishop of Rochester that looking back on the controversy, ‘he could not say that there had been any undue or improper delay on the part of the Christian mind and conscience in accepting, in such sense as he deemed they ought to be accepted, Mr. Darwin’s doctrine’s’. This contrasts strongly with the attitude of some Anglican clergy a few years ago, who issued an apology for the Anglican Church’s ‘misunderstanding’ of Darwin’s theory. Clearly, many of those at the time did not believe it had been misunderstood, or that the opposition had been excessive.

Use of Darwin in Christian Apologetics: Drummond

Some churchmen even viewed Darwin’s theory as an aid to Christian evangelism and apologetics. One of these was Henry Drummond, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland and professor of Natural Science at the Church’s College in Glasgow. In 1871 he hailed Natural Selection as ‘a real and beautiful acquisition to natural theology’, and declared that the Origin of Species was ‘perhaps the most important contribution to the literature of apologetics’ to appear in the 19th century. Taking the laws of nature as his inspiration and model, in 1883 he published Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Drummond used examples from the natural world to illustrate the same processes that he believed were present in the world of the spirit. This confusion between natural and spiritual was condemned by his those readers with philosophical inclinations. Nevertheless, it was also highly successful. This success was partly due to the use of illustrations from Darwin and Spencer, and scientific terminology and concepts such as biogenesis. In the view of Drummond’s biographer, G.A. Smith, his readers were not so much concerned whether he made a convincing case, but simply by the fact that he expressed and reinforced their deep religious convictions using the then dominant intellectual methods.

Darwin’s Theory and God’s Immanence in Creative Process

And Drummon was not the only clergyman who believed that Darwin actually aided faith. Some Christians, such as Charles Kingley, believed that the model of a mechanistic universe in which God only occasionally acted to introduce novelty served to separate the Almight from His creation. It stressed God’s transcendance at the expense of His immanence. For Kingsley and other like him, the doctrine of God’s Fatherhood and His Incarnation also meant that God was actively and creatively involved within His creation as well. In his contribution to the volume of theological essay, Lux Mundi, in 1881, the British theologian Aubrey Moore, used Darwin’s theory to attack the Deist notion of a God, who was not involved with His creation:

‘The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents Him as an occasional visitor. Science has pushed the Deist’s God further and further away, and ata the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend.’
For Moore, there was a simple choice. Either God was present everywhere, or he was nowhere.

Carpenter: Theistic Evolution without Natural Selection

Some of the believers in theistic evolution held something very similar to modern Intelligent Design. Asa Grey himself suggested to Darwin that, as no-one knew the true source of variation, it was wise to believe that the Lord was involved. William Carpenter, a British physiologist, believed he had found proof of this view in his study of the marine shellfish Foraminifera. In his hypothetical family tree, Carpenter demonstrated how a simple spiral shell had become circular through a regular progression. This had occurred following a definite evolutionary course in which each stage was in preparation for the next. He also pointed to the fact that all the members of the series still existed to demonstrate that their evolution could not be explained by Natural Selection. If the various members of the Foraminifera family still existed, then clearly they could not have been produced through a struggle for fitness, as this would have resulted in at least some of the species becoming extinct.

Emergence of Man too Accidental for Random Chance
James McCosh, a professor at Princeton University, wrote extensively attempting to reconcile evolution with Christian belief. One of his arguments that evolution actually pointed to a belief in the Lord came from the evolution of humanity itself. If humanity’s evolution was entirely due to chance, then our existence was an even more remarkable accident than even the atheists believed. On the other hand, it could also show that all these evolutionary accidents through which humanity was formed were hardly accidental. Indeed, humanity had evolved through ‘adjustment upon adjustment of all the elements and the all the powers of nature towards the accomplishment of an evidently contemplated end.’

Wallace: Evolution Argues against Intelligent Life in the Universe

Alfred Russell Wallace was also deeply impressed with the apparently chance emergence of humanity. In his 1903 book, Man’s Place in the Universe, he used it to attack those physicists and scientists searching for earth-like planets on which intelligent life may have evolved. In a similar argument to Stephen Jay Gould’s on the uhniqueness of terrestrial evolutionary history, Wallace suggested that no matter how similar the environment on another planet may be to the Earth’s, it’s own evolutionary history would be very different. Minor differences in the evolutionary history of that planet’s creatures would mean that they would definitely not be like those on Earth, making intelligent life extremely unlikely.

C.S. Peirce: Evolution Proves Existence of Personal God

For the American philosopher of science, C.S. Peirce, the element of chance in natural selection also pointed to the involvement of a personal God. The manufacture of pre-determined features was a purely mechanical process, which excluded development or growth. If the universe was not the result of pre-determined sequence of events, but he creation of a living personality, then it should show spontaneity, diversification and the potential for growth.

Temple: Evolution Proves God the Only Lord

Frederick Temple also argued that Darwinian evolution also demonstrated the existence of a single, creator God. Temple believed that the doctrine of separate creation was vulnerable to HUme’s argument that the universe’s design showed that it could also have been created by a number of separate deities. If Darwinian evolution was interpreted as a single process in which potential was realised in higher organic forms, it pointed to a single Designer.

Thus not only was the reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution more balanced than simple outright opposition, the theory was also used by some clergy to argue for and strengthen their faith. In his book, Darwinism and the Divine, Alister McGrath demonstrates that, in contrast to the received view that Darwinism ended natural theology, such speculation continued after the theory’s adoption. The theological arguments had been changed under the theory’s impact, as Huxley himself recognised and argued, but nevertheless, they continued.

Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero Pt. 2

Yesterday saw the last part of Bill Bailey’s programme exploring the work of the Victorian explorer, Alfred Russell Wallace, and his independent discovery of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. The show followed Wallace’s expedition through Indonesia, Malaya and Sarawak collecting specimens, and the creatures that spurred his discovery of the motor of evolution. In Darwin’s case, this was the famous finches he found in the Galapagos islands. In Wallace’s case, it was the different varieties of macaque and a species of tree-climbing kangaroo. Bailey pointed out the dividing line in that part of the eastern Pacific dividing the types of animals in that part of the world. Still called the Wallace Line after him, it separated animals characteristic of Indonesia and Malaya to the east, while to the west were those of Australia. The macaques Wallace found in the rest of the Indonesian and Malayan islands were grey with tales. On the island of Ternate, they were black without tails. They also had a tuft of hair which Bailey described as a mohican. In a piece of self-deprecating humour Bailey posed for the cameras, showing the apparent similarity between his own features and those of the macaques. Like David Attenborough with the gorillas in Life on Earth way back in 1979, Bailey seemed to get on well with primates. He sat very still while the macaques came up to him, investigated and sniffed him, and accepted him as one of their own. In the Australian ecological zone, Wallace discovered the tree-climbing kangaroos. With their smaller front paws and large hind legs, these animals weren’t well adapted to the arboreal existence. The programme showed a few of them gingerly making their way up the trees, with several mis-steps. This conflicted with the Natural Theology of the day, which, according to the programme, declared that each species of animal had been separately created. When the environment changed, and the animals died out, God simply created a new species of that particular animal which was better suited to its environment. Wallace also noted that some of the animals on different islands differed strongly from their cousins elsewhere. Looking at maps of the sea depth in the Indonesian and Malayan achipelagos near Irian Jaya, he theorised that whwere the sea was shallow there were once land bridges allowing species to cross from one island to another. The ease of access between 5these islands meant that these species remained closely related. The much deeper waters around the other islands meant that these islands were colonised by castaways, which drifted there. Cut off from the rest of the world, the creatures there evolved into markedly more different forms. The question remained of the actual motor of evolution, the process that brought these species into being. A bout of acute malarial fever led Wallace to remember Malthus’ Theory of Population, and he realised that quite small differences in an animal’s constitution could give it an advantage in the struggle for existence, such as larger eyes for finding insects in the case of lemurs. He thus discovered Natural Selection.

Attempt to Restore Wallace to Prominence with Darwin

Bailey was keen to take his hero out from under Darwin’s shadow, and the shadow the maneouvering that had taken place to make sure Darwin was not pre-empted by Wallace. Wallace was delighted when Darwin accepted him as one of his collectors. However, when Wallace sent Darwin a letter discussing his activities and his formation of a new theory of evolution, Darwin sent a polite reply telling him that he was working on his own, and implying that he should stay away in the tropics and not hurry back. When Wallace sent Darwin his letter outlining his theory of Natural Selection, Darwin was shaken. He had spent the last eight years working on barnacles to support his own theory, which he still had not published. Quickly consulting his friends, including the geologist Charles Lyell, Darwin decided to rush his own account, The Origin of Species, into print. He also read out a paper he wrote on evolution to a meeting of the Royal Society with Wallace’s paper. He did not ask Wallace’s permission, and Wallace was not even aware this had occurred until he returned to Britain. Bailey stated that, depending on your point of view, it was either a delicate compromise or a highly shameful episode.Nevertheless, after over a century of undeserved relative obscurity, Wallace was being accorded the honour that rightfully was his. At a meeting in the Natural History Museum, Bailey unveiled a portrait of the great man to hang alongside Darwin’s statue.

Bailey and Wallace in Ternate

It was a fascinating programme. As I said in my review of the first episode, Bailey is an affable, knowledgable host. Not only did the programme have some superb footage of the animals in Indonesia and Malaya, it also showed some equally interesting episodes with the human inhabitants of these islands. Bailey attempted to recreate the style of Wallace’s expedition, including what he ate, and his historic meeting with one of the countries’ rulers. When on his expedition, Wallace was forced to eat what he found in the rainforest. Thus, in another moment worhty of Ray Mears, he was shown eating a fruit bat. Bailey picked delicately at it, while his Indonesian hosts downed it with gusto. Wallace had had to get the permission of the Sultan of Ternate before he could travel there on his collecting mission. So Bailey also sought an audience with his highness. He therefore appeared outside the Sultan’s palace dressed in white linen suit, cravat and panama hat, while liveried courtiers and guards ushered him in. Eventually he was allowed into the Sultan’s presence. As you’d probably expect, the Sultan himself spoke excellent English, and was voluble on the subject of Wallace. Wallace himself appears to have been the subject of local pride.
In a street near the waterfront Bailey found a mural of the eminent Victorian on the wall of a building. Beneath it, in Indonesian, was the legend ‘Alfred Russell Wallace, Ternate scientist born England’. Ternate clearly viewed him as one of their own.

Victorian Society Increasingly Inclined towards Evolution not Mentioned

It was an excellent programme, but as I mentioned in my previous post, I have a few, major objections to it. Firstly, it didn’t mention how Wallace’s theory differed from Darwin’s. Unlike Darwin, Wallace believed that evolution was teleological, working towards higher and better forms of life. He also believed that human intelligence and our moral sense could not have been shaped by Natural Selection, but were the result of the intervention of spiritual entities. The programme stressed that Wallace’s theory was in conflict with Natural Theology and the scientific and religious establishment. It did not mention how scientific and theological opinion in Britain was actually turning away from Natural Theology and embracing evolution. I mentioned some of the reasons for this in my last blog post on the subject. In addition to these there was the influence of John Henry, later Cardinal Newman. Natural Theology was closely associated with William Paley, whose book was the major work on the subject at the time. Paley, however, was linked with the Benthamite Utilitarians. By the 1840s there was a reaction against Utilitarian philosophy. Newman rejected Natural Theology as it reduced the existence and operation of the Lord to a purely scientific question. At the time Darwin and Wallace were working, there was already a large body of opinion, both inside and outside the church, that was favourably inclined towards evolution.

Links between Darwin-Wallace Theory and Lamarckianism

The programme also claimed that ‘Natural Selection’ was a radical theory. This is also open to question. Some of the Lamarckians, like Geoffroy, were also including it as an evolutionary mechanism before Darwin and Wallace. The Lamarckians had also discovered the theory of ‘adaptive radiation’, in which different species emerge as the parent species spreads out to colonise new territories before Darwin. Darwin even had one of their books on his shelf on the Beagle. The programme did mention that an earlier letter Wallace had written about the subject was dismissed as ‘nothing new’. There is therefore the question of how novel Wallace’s and Darwin’s theories actually were. In the case Darwin’s theory, it was still quite Lamarckian as Darwin believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Subtext of Programme against Intelligent Design?

The other problem with the programme is that it seems to be subtly written against Intelligent Design. The view that God creates new, improved species after the extinction of their predecessors sounds close to the modern Intelligent Design view that new species are created through an intelligence generating or inserting new information into the genome. For theists, this intelligence is the Almighty, though the official ID position is that the identity of the Designer is unknown.

Medieval Natural Philosophers accepted Some Speciation due to Natural Forces

Now I have to say, I don’t know how prevalent this theory of speciation by divine action was at the time of Darwin. It sounds like the views of Richard Owen, the great Victorian naturalist whose statue used to stand in the Natural History Museum until ousted by Darwin four years ago. But previous generations of Natural Philosophers had also accepted that some speciation was due to natural forces. Ancient Greek anthropologists, including the medical authority Hippocrates, believed that the different races of humanity and their different temperaments were the result of differing climates and geographical influences. In the Middle Ages authorities such as the 15th century bishop of Paris, Pierre d’Ailly, stated that new species had emerged after the Flood when different animals moved into different environments. The types of animals were roughly fixed, but new species could arise from these types through natural, environmental influences. I have to say, I don’t know if this view was still current at the time of Darwin and Wallace, but it certainly had been present in evolutionary thought before them. It would have been good if the programme had mentioned this. In this case the programme looks less like a simple attempt to restore a forgotten Victorian scientific hero and more like another piece in the attack on Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Wallace still Scientifically Disreputable

As for Wallace himself, Bailey stated that there seemed to be still some reluctance to be seen mentioning him. He said that while he was making the series, he had various scientists sidle up to him saying, ‘If you want any information on Wallace, here’s my card’, while looking around to see that they were not overheard. Bailey wondered why it was that the great Victorian should still be seen as somewhat disreputable and a danger to the careers of contemporary scientists. Though the programme didn’t say it, this might have been due to the fact that Wallace’s own theory of evolution still left explicit room for the operation of the supernatural.

Bailey’s exploration of Wallace and his almost forgotten contribution to evolutionary theory was a fascinating programme, and well worth watching. But it omitted the larger debates on the nature of the evolutionary process and the growing willingness of parts of the Church to accept evolutionary theory in favour of a simplistic narrative of lonely outsider battling class prejudice and religious ignorance. I hope that future programmes on the development of evolutionary theory will correct this view, and do more to place Wallace, Darwin and their predecessors into the context of the wider changes in scientific and theological opinion of which they were apart.

Bill Bailey on Alfred Russell Wallace and the Origins of Evolution by Natural Selection

Last Sunday the BBBC began a new 2-part series in which the musician and comedia, Bill Bailey, followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian biologist, Alfred Russell Wallace to discover how he indpendently came to the theory of Natural Selection at about the same time as Charles Darwin. Russell’s been overlooked as the co-discoverer of the theory. Bailey points out that at the time, Natural Selection was known as the ‘Wallace-Darwin Theory’. It was Russell’s letter to Darwin discussing his theory of Natural Selection that prompted Darwin, after decades of independent research, to finally publish his own results. AS time went on, Wallace receded into the background until finally the theory was completely dominated by the towering figure of Darwin. Bailey went to the Natural History Museum in London to show the great statue of Darwin that was installed four years ago during the Darwin bicentennial celebrations. Wallace, he noted, was nowhere to be seen. He then briefly talked with David Attenborough, who duly paid tribute to Wallace’s genius and perserverance in researching and formulating the theory.

Unlike the aristocratic and university-educated Darwin, Wallace came from a humbler background. His education stopped when he was about 12 or 14, and he was forced to fund his expeditions by selling the specimens he collected. It was during his trip to Indonesia that he began to formulate his theory of Natural Selection by noting how the species very gradually shaded into each other.

It’s a fascinating story. Bailey’s a musician and comedian, as well as Rocker and SF/ Fantasy geek. His shows incorporate music, wittily playing on the different styles and genres. One of the funniest of his pieces about how the Dr. Who theme, when you slow it down, sounds like Belgian Jazz. He then does a Belgian Jazz song, to the amended Dr. Who theme, with vocals in French, about the Doctor defeating the Daleks ’cause they can’t climb stairs. A enthusiast of the theremin, he managed to seriously freak out Jonathan Ross by playing it on his show. In the programme, Bailey’s a genial, articulate and knowledgable host. He’s done some of the same pursuits Wallace did, such as butterfly collecting, and first travelled to Indonesia several decades ago. He fell in love with the place, and the programme shows him not only trekking through the Indonesia rainforest in search of exotic animal and poring over Wallace’s books and specimens, but also staying and talking with an Indonesia family. He talked about how Indonesians also ate dragonflies, downing a kebab skewer of them. He thus followed Ray Mears in eating insects and what westerner’s would consider revolting in the name of bushcraft and cross-cultural understanding.

Criticism of Programme for Presenting Evolution as Leading to Atheism

DEspite that, I have serious reservations about the programme. It’s underlying theme is that evolution naturally leads to atheism, and conflict with the Church. Bailey several times talked about how Wallace would eventually lose his faith, and the Church’s opposition to evolution, or transmutation as it was then called. The show presented a picture very much of the lonely genius ploughing his way to scientific truth against opposition from the religious Establishment.

Yet here and there there are hints to contrary. Bailey noted the setback to Wallace’s own research on evolution with the publication of Chamber’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. As well as angering the Church, it was also scientifically rubbish, with tales of a Platypus being produced by a bird. Bailey notes that the Vestiges was massively popular, and was even read by Queen Victoria. Wallace was afraid that without further research, his own theory of evolution would similarly suffer ridicule.

Philosophical and Theological Trends leading to Acceptance of Evolution

What the programme does not show or mention, is that attitudes at the time were changing. Victorian society was becomming much more open to evolutionary theory. This was due to a number of factors. Firstly, the work of the German explorer Humboldt in South America had made the Victorian public aware of the great variety of species in that part of the world, and the possibility that evolution may have played a role. A further boost came from Hegelian philosophy. Hegel believed that society advanced and evolved through a dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. While his theory was confined to human societies, it nevertheless opened up the Victorian public to the possibility that other aspects of the world also similarly evolved. In the 1820s the Bridgewater Lectures led to Liberal theological opinion in the Anglican Church considering that the world and its creatures may similarly have been produced by natural law. In the 1840s Baden-Powell, the Savillian professor of Mathematics at Oxbridge set out his view considering that the world’s creatures had also evolved in a process similar to the contemporary manufacturing process. Just as the way an article was shaped and formed during manufacture by different industrial processes, so organisms were shaped and formed by the world. And just as the industrial techniques that produce a table, coat or pot are the products of an intelligent creator, so the evolutionary processes that create a living creature also indicated the presence and direction of a supreme intelligence: the Almighty. A number of other Anglican clergy, such as F.D. Maurice, also accepted evolution because it made the creation of the world less mysterious, and pointed to the action of a divine intelligence.

Wallace, Teleology and Spiritualism

Although he lost his Christian faith, Wallace’s own views departed considerably from a completely materialist view of evolution. He was a Spiritualist, who believed that evolution was teleological, working towards a predestined end. He also believed that the higher faculties in humanity – our intelligence and moral sense, could not have been the product of unguided evolution. Because of this there has been interest in him from the Intelligent Design movement. Yet Wallace’s unorthodox opinions were not mentioned in the programme, even if just to dismiss them. It will be interesting to see if they are mentioned in tomorrow’s programme.

In short, Bailey’s series is an excellent programme in many ways as an introduction to Wallace’s life and thought. There are some stunning footage of the plants and animals of the region, and eye-catching animated sections which bring Wallace’s notes to life. The series suffers, however, from the simplistic notion that evolution must always lead to atheism and its doctrinaire and uncritical acceptance of the belief that religion and science are in conflict. Very few historians of science accept this view, but it has been loudly promoted by Dawkins and many of his followers. The programme follows this line, thus distorting and obscuring oen of the most profound intellectual developments of the Victorian Age.