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When a worldview competes with religion (Darwinsim is a 'secular religion')
Charlotte Observer ^ | 24 Oct 2005 | CARLIN ROMANO

Posted on 10/24/2005 5:45:16 PM PDT by gobucks

Without any obvious planning by a higher power, the emergence of Michael Ruse as the foremost philosopher of evolutionary theory now seems scientifically confirmable.

Even before his newest book, works such as "The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw" (1979); "Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology" (1996); "Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?" (1999); "Can a Darwinian Be a Christian: The Relationship Between Science and Religion" (2001); and "Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?" (2003), suggested an innate reluctance to adapt to other subject matters.

The consequence -- a formidable one amid the explosion of sages debating the merits of "intelligent design" as the "Scopes II" case leaps to front-page attention -- is that he actually knows what he's talking about. More important, he knows historic aspects of the controversy that others should be talking about before assuming the position -- cliched Red or Blue -- they favor.

Ruse, a professor of philosophy at Florida State University, makes clear that he's a strong supporter of evolution as a scientific theory. He rejects biblical literalism and intelligent design.

Evolution as worldview

Unlike many pro-evolution types, however, he agrees with creationists and intelligent-design advocates that evolution often operates as not just a scientific theory about species, but also as a worldview that competes with religion. Any fair history of evolution, Ruse says -- he prefers to call the ideological strain "evolutionism" -- reveals it to be a Trojan horse carrying an ideology of "progress" that can't be deduced from Darwin.In "The Evolution-Creation Struggle," Ruse concentrates on the cultural history of evolutionary theory. The first stage began in the mid 18th-century, he explains, when evolutionary theory amounted to a "pseudoscience" like phrenology, wrapped in exhortations about moral progress.

With "The Origin of Species" (1859), Ruse states, Darwin yanked evolutionary theory toward "professional" science by focusing on empirical evidence and suggesting an explanatory model -- natural selection in the struggle for existence -- to account for its mechanics. It required no designer, just a theory of functional development.

Where Darwin failed

What many laymen don't understand, Ruse says -- particularly secular humanists whose image of science's logical rigor exceeds that of many philosophers of science -- is that Darwin's model did not succeed in making evolution a "professional" science in the 19th century.

As Ruse details in "The Evolution-Creation Struggle," various theorists explained evolutionary change by notions as odd as "jumps" (one might label them "leaps of fate") or the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

In Ruse's tale, Darwin's strictly scientific approach to evolution was hijacked in the 19th century by the Victorian reformer Thomas Henry Huxley, who became known as "Darwin's bulldog."

A rival `church'

Huxley, Ruse argues, felt he needed to build a rival "church" to defeat archaic Anglican and Christian beliefs, and put man, not God, at the center of life.

Evolution became his "cornerstone." With the help of philosopher Herbert Spencer, who extended "survival of the fittest" thinking to social theory, Huxley promoted evolutionary thinking as a worldview hostile to sacred religious truths. Ruse cleverly capsulizes this in an analogy: Huxley was to Darwin as Paul was to Jesus.

The upshot in the 20th century, Ruse relates, was a third phase of evolutionary theory, neo-Darwinism, in which scientists brought greater coherence to it by uniting Darwinian selection and Mendelian genetics, but retained Huxley's value-laden commitment to "progress" and hostility to religion. Ruse cites Richard Dawkins as a scientist who fits that mold.

Readers eager to understand this story in its nuances should turn to "The Creation-Evolution Struggle." The book undermines the notion that the evolution/creation dispute is simply hard science versus mushy religion. Simplistically, it may be, but not simply. As Ruse shows, it's often more like secular religion versus non-secular religion, even if most of the "professional" science remains on the evolution side.


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: crevolist; darwin; evolution; god; intelligentdesign; secularhumanism; worldview
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Ahhh. An honest philosopher at last!!

Unlike many pro-evolution types, however, he agrees with creationists and intelligent-design advocates that evolution often operates as not just a scientific theory about species, but also as a worldview that competes with religion.

1 posted on 10/24/2005 5:45:34 PM PDT by gobucks
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To: gobucks

Change the subtitle - it should be "Science as a secular religion".


2 posted on 10/24/2005 5:55:57 PM PDT by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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Comment #3 Removed by Moderator

To: PatrickHenry; <1/1,000,000th%; balrog666; BMCDA; Condorman; Dimensio; Doctor Stochastic; ...

undermines the notion that the evolution/creation dispute is simply hard science versus mushy religion ping


4 posted on 10/24/2005 6:03:21 PM PDT by shuckmaster (Bring back SeaLion and ModernMan!)
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To: balrog666

Sorry, but Ruse clearly uses the label 'evolutionism', not 'science' in the generic.

Darwinism and evolutionism pretty much mean the same thing thus...


5 posted on 10/24/2005 6:05:48 PM PDT by gobucks (Blissful Marriage: A result of a worldly husband's transformation into the Word's wife.)
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To: gobucks
Readers eager to understand this story in its nuances

We don't need any nuances. Oldances were good enough for the Founders, they are good enough for us.

6 posted on 10/24/2005 6:08:51 PM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the law of the excluded middle)
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To: shuckmaster
undermines the notion that the evolution/creation dispute is simply hard science versus mushy religion ping

Not very much. A few people like Dawkins more or less agree with Ruse and give him his arguments.

But for most of us the issue is about whether to let creationism interfere with science and science education.

7 posted on 10/24/2005 6:13:33 PM PDT by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: gobucks

"Darwinism and evolutionism pretty much mean the same thing thus"
No, they don't. Hasn't anyone on FR ever heard of Punctuated Equilibrium? Guess not...


8 posted on 10/24/2005 6:30:44 PM PDT by MadManDan
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To: shuckmaster

I have never known a Philosophy of Science guy that had any earthly understanding of what science actually does. Sometimes I think they are afraid to find out.


9 posted on 10/24/2005 6:32:18 PM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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To: All

ping


10 posted on 10/24/2005 6:33:15 PM PDT by PetroniusMaximus
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To: GarySpFc

Ping


11 posted on 10/24/2005 6:38:11 PM PDT by GarySpFc (Sneakypete, De Oppresso Liber)
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To: gobucks

Thomas Huxley wasn't the only atheistic philosopher that really liked Darwin's theory. Karl Marx wrote Charles Darwin and asked him if he could dedicate the second volume of Das Capital to Darwin...Darwin refused.


12 posted on 10/24/2005 6:38:16 PM PDT by Mogollon
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To: Mogollon
"Thomas Huxley wasn't the only atheistic philosopher that really liked Darwin's theory. "

Actually, Huxley was never more than luke warm about Natural Selection. Natural Selection didn't become the accepted mechanism for most evolutionary biologists until the 1930's when Darwin was joined with a more mature version of Mendelian genetics.

As for Marx, he grabbed onto evolution only because he misread Darwin's idea of a struggle for existence in nature (which is undeniable) with class struggle. Darwin, a free market Whig, had never intended his theory to be used in political philosophy.
13 posted on 10/24/2005 7:01:42 PM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: CarolinaGuitarman
As for Marx, he grabbed onto evolution only because he misread Darwin's idea of a struggle for existence in nature (which is undeniable) with class struggle.

Are you sure? What you said fits more the National Socialism with its stress on race struggle.

Marx system is derived from Hegel and sees conflicts as the way for the Absolute to come into harmony, unity and perfection (in future Communist society). When the main work of Darwin was published in 1859 the views of Marx were already formed.

14 posted on 10/24/2005 7:15:58 PM PDT by A. Pole (Halloween's lesson to children: "give me some candy, or I'll vandalize something.")
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To: gobucks

I remember hearing about an evolutionary scientist who when asked why he believed in evolution, he replied, "Because the only alternative is creation."


15 posted on 10/24/2005 7:16:53 PM PDT by boatbums
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To: A. Pole
" Are you sure? What you said fits more the National Socialism with its stress on race struggle."

Pretty sure. Marx was looking for something, ANYTHING, from science to make his ideas appear scientific. He may have gotten the main inspiration for his ideas about class struggle from Hegel's dialectic, but he saw Darwin as somehow giving it a scientific sheen. He was completely wrong, but that's not a first for Marx. :) I don't see that Marx actually USED any of Darwin's points in the formulation of any of his ideas (they were, as you have stated, already formed before Darwin published). Whatever one thinks of Darwin's theories, he was not a political radical; in fact, they made him very uncomfortable.

I realize that Marx published his Communist Manifesto 9 years before Darwin published the Origin of Species; in fact, it's one of the reasons I get annoyed when people try to blame Communism on Darwin.
16 posted on 10/24/2005 7:26:01 PM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: gobucks

YEC INTREP


17 posted on 10/24/2005 7:29:48 PM PDT by LiteKeeper (Beware the secularization of America)
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To: MadManDan
What does Punk Ek have to do with Darwinism and Evolutionism not being the same? It would be simpler to say that evolutionism doesn't exist except in the minds of creationists.

What the creationists seem to miss in all this is this tiny little line:

Ruse says -- he prefers to call the ideological strain "evolutionism" -- reveals it to be a Trojan horse carrying an ideology of "progress" that can't be deduced from Darwin" [underline mine]

The concept of 'progress' which is not contained in the ToE and not promulgated by any evos here or elsewhere is something that only exists today in creationist propaganda.

What is also missed by the creos here is the fact the article refers to Huxley and others who 150 years ago decided to make evolution a world view rather than a science. This is a classic case of the genetic fallacy.

The concept of evolution as progress does not inhabit Dawkins cranium as Ruse claims. Dawkins however considers Atheism progress. Dawkins considers the removal of religion as progress. He uses evolution as a tool, as did Huxley in his time. The manner in which Dawkins uses evolution does not mean that the study of evolution or the Theory of Evolution is in any way a religion.

18 posted on 10/24/2005 7:39:48 PM PDT by b_sharp (Tagline? What tagline?)
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To: furball4paws
"I have never known a Philosophy of Science guy that had any earthly understanding of what science actually does. Sometimes I think they are afraid to find out.

Shall I introduce you to one?

19 posted on 10/24/2005 7:42:14 PM PDT by b_sharp (Tagline? What tagline?)
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To: b_sharp

Sure. I admit that my data set is small.


20 posted on 10/24/2005 8:49:56 PM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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