Darwin Versus Chesterton

 Just the Facts, Ma'am

There is an interesting essay by Denyse O'Leary in the book God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards.  The book represents a collection of essays which give a defence for Intelligent Design"ism"--by which we mean the argument that Intelligent Design offers a reasonable, if not a better, explanation for the beginning and existence of the world than Darwinian evolution theories.  The essay is entitled "Everything Old is New Again: The Older Catholic Apologists' Responses to Darwin." 

The author puzzles over why the Roman Catholic church cuddles up to Darwinism.  She observes that the media, including Roman Catholic media, defer to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as representing the official church position.

And the Academy, for its part, assures us that Darwinism (survival of the fittest, without evidence of design) is the best way to interpret the creation of the Lamb of God who was crucified to take away the sins of the world. Denyse O'Leary, "Everything Old Is New Again", God and Evolution, p.167.

She notes that this was not always the case.  A century ago Darwinism was being vigorously denounced by such English writers and intellectuals as G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and St. George Jackson Mivart.  These protagonists, she tells us, rejected Darwinism on rational grounds--including its striking absence of key evidence for Darwin's beliefs.  But absence of evidence--which she assures us continues to this day--has not stopped Darwinism triumphing in the West to the point where it has become virtually the established religion.  This historical development was not what Chesterton and his colleagues expected at all.


Chesterton had gone merrily about skewing Darwinism at every turn.  He confidently expected that Darwinism would die out in his own lifetime.  It was too bizarre and too bereft of evidence not to.

But things did not work out at all as Chesterton hoped.  Every download of science media releases offers more and yet more "evolutionary psychology" folly based on Darwinism, to say nothing about further paltry claims in biology. (Ibid., p. 176)

O'Leary professes herself perplexed as to how this has come about.  She points out that Chesterton, Belloc and other Roman Catholic apologists had no problem at all with the idea of a common ancestor for man, or that the process of evolution (in the sense of the gradual emergence of more and more complex species until finally man appears upon the scene) is correct, or that the creation account of Genesis should be regarded as historical narrative.  These apologists had no use for literal 24 hour days of creation. They were willing to concede a long, very long period of gradual shaping of the cosmos (because Darwinian "evidence" implied so).  But they insisted upon divine guidance of the evolutionary process, and rejected the blind chance of Darwinian evolutionism. They sought to present facts and evidentially-based reasons to convince their opponents. 

She concludes that Chesterton and Belloc were naive on these matters.

Like Chesterton, Belloc grossly underestimated the power of publicly funded believed hatched by tenured professors at universities, fronted in Sunday paper features and documentaries and litigated by pressure groups.  The [Darwinian] thesis can tell us how anything from ample bosoms to gay lifestyles is somehow selected by Darwinian means.  Lack of evidence is no barrier to belief.  (Ibid., p. 178) 

Here is the heart of the matter. Darwinism did not die out, despite its laughable paucity of evidence, because from beginning to end it is a religion. Evidence is irrelevant. Evidence is a wax nose to twist into shape to conform to the cosmology. Evidence is recognized by whether the evolutionist designed net catches it in the first place. Evidence, in this debate,  is only what the evolutionist says it is.

Post modernism recognizes this circularity.  It happily calls Darwinian evolutionism as a "just so story we tell ourselves" for other, ulterior reasons.  To that extent pomo has been a useful idiot.  O'Leary recognises this, but dimly:

. . . Darwinism is, as the early Catholic writers recognized, the creation story of atheism.  It enables atheism to function as the normal stance of science.  Today, 78 percent of evolutionary biologists are pure materialists: No God and no free will. . . . So, clearly, the older Catholic writers failed in their quest to bring reason and evidence to the table--almost. (Ibid., p. 184)

 Darwinism has never been about evidence.  Nor will it ever be.  That's why the Intelligent Design movement will always be a lame horse at the starter's gate.  This is not unique to Darwinism--it is the way things always will be, and always have been.  We are creatures.  We cannot cease being creatures.  As such all our knowledge is creaturely knowledge--it is shaped, moulded, informed, and conditioned by who and what we are.  All creaturely knowledge is circular--inescapably so.  To appeal to some objective evidence that would bind all creatures, regardless of their pre-dispositions, beliefs, axes to grind, prejudices and assumptions is simply naive.  It denies our status as creatures. 

The real issue is not whether our knowing is circular.  That is a given.  Finite derived beings, such as man, such as any other created sentient creature, see as they are made or constituted to see.  The real issue is whether our circular reasoning will be vicious or virtuous.  The only way our creaturely, circular reasoning can be virtuous is to presuppose the existence of the all creating, all governing, all conditioning Living God.  Only then is there a foundation to believe that our learning, discovering, researching will have any congruence with the truth, with things as they actually are.  Our knowing is willingly preconditioned to the outset to be conformed to the pre-interpreting, all-structuring, creating and sustaining Word of God. 

But if we deny the existence of the Living God from the outset, all our reasoning is vicious or self-destructive.  Hume understood this--and his conclusion was that we cannot know anything with any certainty.  Others, finding this conclusion somewhat distressing, sought to redeem us from such a destructive plight by making a virtue out of not knowing anything for certain--hence emerging pomo theories. 

But "old-school" Unbelieving objective science is an oxymoron.   Darwinist "evidence" is a vicious tautology. 

Tautologies depend upon definitions and assumptions, not evidence.  Hence, Chesterton, Belloc and others could not win.  They were fighting the wrong battle.  The battle was never about evidence and facts, but about interpreted evidence and pre-interpreted facts.  The presuppositions are everything--for they determine what constitutes evidence, in the first place, whether it will be admitted to the bar for consideration, and how it will be interpreted, once admitted.  It is faith (whether Belief or Unbelief) that is the ground of reasons. 

As Augustine so perceptively put the matter: I believe in order to understand.   He could have added, for the Unbeliever there is a viciously circular alternative which always operates: I disbelieve in order to understand nothing as it truly is.