Darwin at 200: New report from Theos doesn’t ‘reclaim Darwin’ at all

Christian think-tank Theos just released their report “Reclaiming Darwin”, a rallying-cry to religious people everywhere to reject creationist nonsense and enter into a dialogue to think about how science and religion coexist. Which would be an innocuous cause if it weren’t for the fact that the report itself is used to perpetrate the myth that all modern evolution researchers are soulless and fundamentally cynical of other human beings.

After reading the seventy-two page document on its release – yes, I do have too much time on my hands – I was initially struck by how mind-numbingly moderate it was. Much was made of the fact that Darwin did reject his faith but died an agnostic (true) and that early twentieth century researchers of evolution such as Ronald Fisher and Theodosius Dobzhansky were practising Christians (also true, but completely irrelevant as well as crushingly dull when compared to the wonderful results they found).

Then things get suspicious in their chapter “Darwin in the crossfire”. Modern evolution leaves itself open to creationism, it argues, as “those most eager to defend Darwin” place too much emphasis on humans programmed by their genes to be selfish and self-centred, with no space for morality or compassion. This apparently turns people away from accepting the theory:

Consequently, everything we might think of as distinctively human is demolished. Morality (in as far as we can still talk about it) becomes calculating and fundamentally self-interested, ethical systems arbitrary, agency an illusion, and human beings completely irrelevant and accidental.

Hopefully you have already spotted two problems with this argument.

The first is that it focuses on one specific evolutionary biologist. All the references for this argument are with regards to Richard Dawkins and his books. Although he is probably the most famous evolutionary biologist alive today, that does not mean that he suddenly becomes representative of all views on controversial areas of science, as much as Theos may like to believe.
Secondly, are his (and other biologists) views really that depressing? If so, then why is he so respected and well liked around the world? Maybe, God forbid, this isn’t the whole story? Dusting off my own copy of The Selfish Gene I read this in the introduction:

One of the dominant messages of The Selfish Gene…is that we should not derive our values from Darwinism, unless it is with a negative sign. Our brains have evolved to the point where we are capable of rebelling against our selfish genes. The fact that we can do so is made obvious by our use of contraception.

Or this, from his closing paragraph:

We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism…something that has never existed before in the history of the world.

Unsurprisingly, in order to try and one-up the famous atheist, Theos have cherry picked comments and views that support their hypothesis and ignore any conflicting ones. Counter-arguments and the underlying science are completely ignored. As the book demonstrates, it is a shocking but inescapable fact that selfishness and cheating are likely to evolve in the wild, as ruthlessness ensures the survival of species in a violent environment. (When challenged on this point, the geneticist John Maynard Smith pithily replied “What should we have done, fiddled with the equations?”) Humans have shown to be a clear exception to this base instinct though; why else have we come up with the National Health Service, blood transfusions and those huge bags of Doritos, ready-made for sharing?

This makes the main argument of Theos’ report completely invalid. Even worse, the notion of modern evolution theory depicting humans as cynical bastards is being spread not by us evil scientists, but instead by vacuous think-tanks with no idea of comparing evidence, purely for petty point-scoring. Well played, folks.

2009 is Darwin’s year, where universities and scientists across the world are busting a gut to tell the world about Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) brilliant idea. This is even more important when its ignorant bastard son, creationism, is making an unwanted resurgence. I don’t give a toss about religion but I do get angry when it is used as an excuse to spread false ideas at this crucial time. If you really do care about Darwin’s ideas, ignore this hyperbole and instead check out one of the many events being held this year. Your brain will thank you.