That's Daniel Dennett's terminology, not mine. In general, I don't think scientific ideas are "dangerous." The problem I have with Darwinism is that, as a theory of biology, it is incomplete. For another thing, it assumes too much — i.e., that "everything in nature supervenes on the physical," meaning that "matter in its motions" is all that there is; that biology reduces to chemistry; that a random system produces order; etc. Indeed, to me each and every one of these premises is questionable. Notwithstanding, many people do not want to question them.
But it's okay, for this sort of methodological reductionism is presumably useful to the conduct of science. As Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has written (in "The Designs of Science," First Things 159, January 2006),
If the Darwinist, taking up Descartes’ and [Sir Francis] Bacon’s project of understanding nature according only to material and efficient causes, studies the history of living things and says that he can see no organizing, active principles of whole living substances (formal causes) and no real plan, purpose or design in living things (final causes), then I accept his report without surprise. It is obviously compatible with the full truth that the world of living beings is replete with formality and finality. It comes as no surprise that reductionist science cannot recognize those very aspects of reality it excludes — or at least, seeks to exclude — by its choice of method.... [emphasis added]Schönborn's remarks regarding randomness are astute and to the point:
The role of randomness in Darwinian biology is quite different from its role in physics, quantum theory, and other natural sciences. In those sciences randomness captures our inability to predict or know the precise behavior of the parts of the system (or perhaps, in the case of the quantum world, some intrinsic properties of the system). But in all such cases the “random” behavior of parts is embedded in and constrained by a deeply mathematical and precise conceptual structure of the whole that makes the overall behavior of the system orderly and intelligible.Randomness in organic and inorganic systems is tractable by means of probability theory. As the mathematician Hillel Furstenberg points out (in Divine Action and Natural Selection, 2009), "Probability theory uses human ignorance systematically to create a useful scientific discipline. This in itself is something of a miracle. There remains, however ... a clash between our perception of chance events and the presence of intelligence."The randomness of neo-Darwinian biology is nothing like that. It is simply random. The variation through genetic mutation is random. And natural selection is also random: The properties of the ever-changing environment that drive evolution through natural selection are also not correlated to anything, according to the Darwinists. Yet out of all that unconstrained, unintelligible mess emerges, deus ex machina, the precisely ordered and extraordinarily intelligible world of living organisms. And this is the heart of the neo-Darwinian science of biology....
Yet because chance events occur in nature does not mean there is no intelligence in nature.
Furstenberg usefully points out that "when the religiously inclined person attributes a chance event to Providence, he is regarding the event not as Divine whim, but as manifestation of Divine intelligence. It is seen as part of some larger scheme whose rationale escapes the human observer, but is confidently believed to be present. [Thus] there is no real clash here between our state of ignorance and the intelligent workings of an omniscient Deity."
Schönborn continues:
If [the Darwinian biologist] takes a very narrow view of the supposedly random variation that meets his gaze, it may well be impossible to correlate it to anything interesting, and thus variation remains simply unintelligible. He then summarizes his ignorance of any pattern in variation by means of the rather respectable term “random.” But if he steps back and looks at the sweep of life, he sees an obvious, indeed an overwhelming pattern. The variation that actually occurred in the history of life was exactly the sort needed to bring about the complete set of plants and animals that exist today. In particular, it was exactly the variation needed to give rise to the upward sweep of evolution resulting in human beings. If that is not a powerful and relevant correlation, then I don’t know what could count as evidence against actual randomness in the mind of an observer....To me, the "danger" in Darwinism consists of taking an incredibly reduced theory and then blowing it up into a complete cosmology of the universe. Strictly speaking, this is NOT science! But many people today are attracted to the theory because of the cosmology.......I have simply related two indisputable facts: Evolution happened, … and our biosphere is the result. The two sets of facts correlate perfectly. Facts are not tautologies simply because they are indisputably true. If the modern biologist chooses to ignore the indubitable correlation, I have no objection. He is free to define his special science on terms as narrow as he finds useful for gaining a certain kind of knowledge. But he may not then turn around and demand the rest of us, unrestricted by his methodological self-limitation, ignore obvious truths about reality, such as the clearly teleological nature of evolution. [emphasis added]
I particularly like the way Schönborn points out the "reduction" in methodological naturalism in general and Darwinian theory in particular: that it deliberately omits all consideration of formal and final causes in nature from its investigation. Only material and efficient causes fall within the scope of the method. By banning final causes, nature can be only "apparently," but not really purposeful. Ditto biological evolution.
Darwinist cosmology is as deracinated as it is nihilistic.... As such, it's the cosmology that is "dangerous," not so much the theory as science. JMHO FWIW.
Thank you so much for writing, Does so!
It strikes me as ironic that such a disciplined area of gathering knowledge would be so inclined to overstate its own findings.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights and those wonderful excerpts!