Site Presented By
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Philosopher Michael Ruse is an ardent evolutionist who thinks creationism is claptrap. So why is he accusing atheistic scientists like Richard Dawkins of being as religious as born-again Bible thumpers?
Aug 6, 2005 | Philosopher Michael Ruse is pretty famous, for someone in his esoteric academic discipline. Ruse is a congenial, blustery, bearded fellow, with more than a hint about him of the English schoolboy he was half a century ago. He seems like he'd be great company over a couple of game hens and a decent bottle of claret, and it's not surprising to learn that he befriends people with opposing views and is widely loved in his field. But just Google him -- or better yet, run an Amazon search -- and you'll quickly learn that the admiration is not universal. (Amazon, in fact, is one place where the dispute between creationists and supporters of evolution reaches both its loftiest intellectual plateau and the depths of puerile name-calling.)
You see, Ruse is a philosopher of science and, to use his phrase, an "ardent evolutionist." He stops a crucial degree or two short of declaring himself an atheist, but he firmly believes in Darwin's theory that evolution (now established as fact) by natural selection (still under discussion, although widely accepted) is the driving force behind the diversity of life on this planet. He thinks that creationists, both of the old-fashioned "young earth" variety and the newfangled intelligent-design model -- which President Bush said earlier this week should be taught in schools -- are spewing dangerous claptrap and are in league, consciously or not, with a sinister right-wing political agenda.
Ruse has devoted much of his career, first at the University of Guelph in Ontario and more recently at Florida State, to battling the creationist agenda in science and philosophy, in the classroom and the political arena. At the same time, he has become increasingly fascinated with the indistinct borderlands between science and religion. He has leapt to the defense of scientists who profess religious faith, in the face of derision from prominent atheistic Darwinians like Richard Dawkins. He has supported Christians and other believers who argue that religious faith and evolutionary science do not necessarily contradict one another, and who have resisted the rising tide of fundamentalism.
In Ruse's 2000 book "Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?" he answered the question forcefully in the affirmative, while making clear he wasn't personally a believer. On the other hand, in his 2003 book "Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?" Ruse answered that question more or less in the negative, politely describing creationism and intelligent design (often simply called I.D.) as intellectual dead ends -- while reasserting that he thought evolutionary thinking could be compatible with theistic religion.
"The Evolution-Creation Struggle"
By Michael Ruse
Harvard University Press
336 pages
Nonfiction
Yet, even in the context of these moderate and nuanced positions and this steadfast rejection of absolutism, Ruse's new book, "The Evolution-Creation Struggle," comes as something of a surprise. On one level, the book is a fairly standard intellectual history of how the 18th century Enlightenment led to a crisis of faith in the Western world, which led in turn to two responses: a turn toward fundamentalist, evangelical religion on one hand, and a turn toward increasingly non-theistic reason and science on the other. The two forces have effectively been in combat ever since, which carries us up to science textbooks, school prayer, abortion and homosexuality, sacrilegious TV sitcoms, the last two presidential elections and the rest of today's "culture wars."
Above and beyond that, Ruse makes a heretical argument in "The Evolution-Creation Struggle" that will not endear him to members of his own team. Creationism and evolutionism, he says, are siblings, born of the same historical crisis, and they provide distorted reflections of each other. "The two sides share a common set of questions and, in important respects, common solutions," he writes. More explosively, he thinks both are essentially theological in character; they are "rival religious responses to a crisis of faith -- rival stories of origins, rival judgments about the meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies -- pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind."
Ruse is drawing a crucial distinction between evolutionary science, narrowly considered -- which need not have any religious or spiritual consequences -- and evolutionism, the secular, atheistic religion he says often accompanies and enfolds Darwinism. Leading evolutionists like Dawkins, Ruse believes, have failed to draw clear distinctions between the two, and have led many to believe that Darwinian science is fatally allied to an arrogant atheism and a hostile caricature of religious belief. In essence, Ruse believes that fundamentalist evolutionists like Dawkins and W.D. Hamilton hold similar beliefs to fundamentalist creationists -- both sides would agree that Darwinism is a "dark theology" that removes ultimate meaning and purpose from the universe and augurs the death of God.
You might say that, in this new book, Ruse is calling for a Reformation within the church of evolutionism. He himself honors the truth claims of science and is "a hell of a lot closer" to atheism than to religious belief. But he thinks evolutionists must purge themselves of reflexive anti-religious fervor, and acknowledge at least the potential validity of the classic Augustinian position that science and theology can never directly contradict one another, since science can only consider nature and God, by definition, is outside nature. Without this consciousness, Ruse suggests, evolutionism is in fact a secular religion, a church without Christ. And if that's what it is, what is it doing in biology class? The current Supreme Court, trending ever rightward on questions of religion in public life, may wish to address this question sooner rather than later.
In the end, there can be no doubt that Michael Ruse is saying these dangerous things because he wants evolutionary science, and even evolutionism, once cured of its excesses, to carry the day. In the main, his argument is pragmatic: Amid America's long-running cultural and religious war, he seeks to identify common philosophical ground where believers and atheists can coexist without sacrificing the integrity of science. If he thinks evolutionists should learn to respect the creationists' faith and develop a deeper understanding of their arguments, that's largely because, as evangelists already know, you have to speak the language before you can convert the heathen. I gleaned all this in two long and cheerful phone conversations with Ruse, the first while he was on vacation in Canada, and the second from his home in Tallahassee, Fla.
Not everybody in the evolutionist camp is going to be happy with this book, are they?
No, they're not. There's a review coming out in Science this week that is -- well, it's not violently hostile -- but it's a little less than overwhelmingly pleased. My feeling is that, having committed myself so openly to Darwinism, and having spent 30 years fighting creationists -- if anybody's got the moral authority to do what I've done, well, here I am.
