Priests in lab coats

You raise this argument that creationism and evolutionism are essentially two competing religions. That's exactly what creationists say, or at least the sharper ones: "We have two competing belief systems. All we ask is to have our case considered." One could look at this and say, "Wow, Ruse is saying the creationists are right."

I am saying that. I think they are right. I want to qualify that immediately by saying that the creationists play fast and loose. Like a lot of us, creationists slide from one position to another according to the kind of argument they want to make. A major theme of the intelligent design people is that theirs is in fact a scientific position, and I think that's a double whammy.

Inasmuch as the creationists want to say openly that both sides are making religious commitments, I have to agree with them on that. I don't think that modern evolutionary theory is necessarily religious. Evolutionary theory was religious, and there's still a large odor of that over and above the professional science. The quasi-religious stuff is still what gets out into the public domain, whether it's Richard Dawkins or Edward O. Wilson or popularizers like Robert Wright. Certainly Stephen Jay Gould. Whether you call it religious or philosophical, I would say these people are presenting a weltanschauung.

You don't come right out and say this, but some of the things that the secular religion of evolutionism has proposed are more than a little troubling. W.D. Hamilton's stuff about how we should permit infanticide in order to keep sick and disabled people out of the gene pool is pretty hard to stomach.

Oh, it makes my hair stand on end.

I felt like I needed to rush off to the nearest Baptist church and be washed in the blood of the Lamb. Anything to get away from that guy!

One almost does feel like one needs to douse myself with holy water. I do say, somewhat cryptically, that the religion of evolutionism may be more troublesome than it's worth. But one of the things I'm trying to do, at least until the conclusion, is to pull back from moral evaluations.

One of the things that may alarm people in both camps is your idea that evolutionism and creationism are actually brother and sister.

The basic theme of the book is that the Enlightenment brought on a crisis. This is not my personal view -- it's a very standard position in the history of religion. In many respects, the Enlightenment was more troublesome than the Reformation, because for the first time people were faced with the possibility that, well, it's all not true.

This led to twin reactions. On the one hand, the rise of evangelical faith. It's not coincidental that Methodism really takes off in the 18th century. And on the other hand, you've got the rise of reason and progress. In France, the rise of the philosophes. But it was just as much a British and American phenomenon. That's where we're off and running, and from that point it's a question of how these two positions unfurl.

This is a sibling relationship, because they both come from the same parent. So often what they are doing is defining themselves against each other. Hamilton makes my hair stand on end -- but what is Hamilton talking about? He's talking about the family. What is Phillip Johnson talking about? [Ruse quotes Johnson, the founder of the I.D. movement, discussing family morality in a Christian-oriented "rational society."] He too is talking about the family. What I find fascinating is the extent to which one finds that the two sides are talking at each other. This is not a question of one side talking about putting a man on the moon and the other side talking about homosexuality. These two sides are talking about the same issues.

Well, and the rhetoric of both sides is subject to slippage, as you've said. The evolutionists reject creation science by saying it's not science -- but they're just resorting to a dictionary definition of science that, in effect, they wrote. As you say in the book, it's a bit too slick.

What I find particularly troublesome is the extent to which evolutionists and Darwinians say, oh no, we're doing science, and if you do this you have to be an agnostic at minimum, and preferably an atheist. I want to say, "Hang on, if the position implies this, then aren't you taking what I would want to argue is a religious stand -- namely, there ain't no God?" My position is that there isn't a necessary connection between Darwinism and atheism.

One of your central ideas is that there's a slippery philosophical slope that leads from evolution to evolutionism, from scientific naturalism to atheism.

There's no question that there's a slope. Whether it's a slope that, once one gets on it, one finds oneself inevitably carried down it, I think that's another matter. Because you become an evolutionist, it does not necessarily follow that you become an atheist. I stand on that very strongly. There are many good studies showing that the secularists of the 19th and 20th centuries became secularists because of David Hume or Tom Paine -- or because they were felt up by the local vicar and said, "I'm never going there again!" Then they find evolution, and this gives them a satisfactory alternative.

Having said that, there's no doubt that once you start on this slope, unless there are reasons otherwise, a lot of people find it's easier to go downhill than to stay put. A lot of people, having taken God out of their lives six days a week, suddenly say, "Well, on the seventh day I'd rather put my feet up!"

Another point of agreement between the two sides. Creationists will tell you that science and evolution are atheistic, and that evolution leads inescapably to the end of God. That's why they're against it.

Yeah, the fundamentalists on both sides would want to argue precisely that. Although I'm not a believer myself, I just don't think it necessarily follows. On the other hand, Christians and others need to spend a lot more time articulating a position that one can be a Christian and a scientist at the same time and bolster traditional readings of both. We've all become so polarized -- so shit-scared of the situation -- that I don't think we're doing what we should.

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