by Nancy Pearcey
At Stanford University in the spring of 2005, I
had my first experience of being picketed. Organized by a campus
group calling itself Rational Thought, the picketers carried
signs protesting the presence of Intelligent Design (ID)
proponents on campus. Several local atheist groups joined the
controversy, sparking colorful stories in the local
newspapers.
Before me at the podium was Michael Behe, author of Darwin's
Black Box, speaking on the scientific evidence against
evolution. I followed by explaining the cultural and
philosophical implications of evolution. As I spoke,
astonishingly, some of the protesters softened their hostility
and actually began to engage with what I was saying. The gist of
my talk was that Darwinism undercuts the very possibility of
rational truth–an argument that seemed unsettling to
atheist students who had organized a group specifically to
promote rational thought!
To understand how Darwinism undercuts the very concept of
rationality, we can think back to the late nineteenth century
when the theory first arrived on American shores. Almost
immediately, it was welcomed by a group of thinkers who began to
work out its implications far beyond science. They realized that
Darwinism implies a broader philosophy of naturalism (i.e., that
nature is all that exists, and that natural causes are adequate
to explain all phenomena). Thus they began applying a
naturalistic worldview across the board–in philosophy,
psychology, the law, education, and the arts.
At the foundation of these efforts, however, was a naturalistic
approach to knowledge itself (epistemology). The logic went like
this: If humans are products of Darwinian natural selection, that
obviously includes the human brain–which in turn means all
our beliefs and values are products of evolutionary forces: Ideas
arise in the human brain by chance, just like Darwin's chance
variations in nature; and the ones that stick around to become
firm beliefs and convictions are those that give an advantage in
the struggle for survival. This view of knowledge came to be
called pragmatism (truth is what works) or instrumentalism (ideas
are merely tools for survival).
Darwinian Logic
One of the leading pragmatists was John Dewey, who had a greater
influence on educational theory in America than anyone else in
the 20th century. Dewey rejected the idea that there is a
transcendent element in human nature, typically defined in terms
of mind or soul or spirit, capable of knowing a transcendent
truth or moral order. Instead he treated humans as mere organisms
adapting to challenges in the environment. In his educational
theory, learning is just another form of adaptation–a kind
of mental natural selection. Ideas evolve as tools for survival,
no different from the evolution of the lion's teeth or the
eagle's claws.
In a famous essay called "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy,"
Dewey said Darwinism leads to a "new logic to apply to mind and
morals and life." In this new evolutionary logic, ideas are not
judged by a transcendent standard of Truth, but by how they work
in getting us what we want. Ideas do not "reflect reality" but
only serve human interests.
To emphasize how revolutionary this was, up until this time the
dominant theory of knowledge or epistemology was based on the
biblical doctrine of the image of God. Confidence in the
reliability of human knowledge derived from the conviction that
finite human reason reflects (to some degree at least) an
infinite divine Reason. Since the same God who created the
universe also created our minds, we can be confident that our
mental capacities reflect the structure of the universe. In
The Mind of God and the Works of Man, Edward Craig shows
that even as Western thinkers began to move away from orthodox
Christian theology, in their philosophy most of them still
retained the conception that our minds reflect an Absolute Mind
as the basis for trust in human cognition.
The pragmatists were among the first, however, to face squarely
the implications of naturalistic evolution. If evolutionary
forces produced the mind, they said, then all are beliefs and
convictions are nothing but mental survival strategies, to be
judged in terms of their practical success in human conduct.
William James liked to say that truth is the "cash value" of an
idea: If it pays off, then we call it true.
Pragmatism Today
This Darwinian logic continues to shape American thought more
than we might imagine. Take religion. William James was raised in
a household with an intense interest in religion. (In the Second
Great Awakening his father converted to Christianity, then later
converted to Swedenborgianism). As a result, James applied his
philosophy of pragmatism to religion: We decide whether or not
God exists depending whether that belief has positive
consequences in our experience. "An idea is 'true' so long as to
believe it is profitable to our lives," James wrote in What
Pragmatism Means. Thus "if theological ideas prove to have a
value for concrete life, they will be true."
Does this sound familiar? A great many Americans today choose
their religion based on what meets their needs, or "affirms"
them, or helps them cope more effectively with personal issues,
from losing weight to building a better marriage. I was recently
chatting with a Christian who is very active in her church; but
when the topic turned to a mutual friend who is not a believer,
her response was, "Well, whatever works for you." Of course,
there is a grave problem with choosing a religion according to
"whatever works for you"–namely, that we cannot know
whether it is really true or just a projection of our own needs.
As Lutheran theologian John Warwick Montgomery puts it, "Truths
do not always 'work', and beliefs that 'work' are by no means
always true."
If James's religious pragmatism has become virtually the American
approach to spirituality today, then Dewey's pragmatism has
become the preferred approach to education. Virtually across the
curriculum–from math class to moral
education–teachers are trained to be nondirective
"facilitators," presenting students with problems and allowing
them to work out their own pragmatic strategies for solving them.
Of course, good teachers have always taught students to think for
themselves. But today's nondirective methodologies go far beyond
that. They springboard from a Darwinian epistemology that denies
the very existence of any objective or transcendent truth.
Take, for example, "constructivism," a popular trend in education
today. Few realize that it is based on the idea that truth is
nothing more than a social construction for solving problems. A
leading theorist of constructivism, Ernst von Glasersfeld at the
University of Georgia, is forthright about its Darwinian roots.
"The function of cognition is adaptive in the biological sense,"
he writes. "This means that 'to know' is not to possess 'true
representations' of reality, but rather to possess ways and means
of acting and thinking that allow one to attain the goals one
happens to have chosen." In short, a Darwinian epistemology
implies that ideas are merely tools for meeting human
goals.
Postmodern Campuses
These results of pragmatism are quite postmodern, so it comes as
no surprise to learn that the prominent postmodernist Richard
Rorty calls himself a neo-pragmatism. Rorty argues that
postmodernism is simply the logical outcome of pragmatism, and
explains why.
According to the traditional, common-sense approach to knowledge,
our ideas are true when the represent or correspond to reality.
But according to Darwinian epistemology, ideas are nothing but
tools that have evolved to help us control and manipulate the
environment. As Rorty puts it, our theories "have no more of a
representational relation to an intrinsic nature of things than
does the anteater's snout or the bowerbird's skill at weaving"
(Truth and Progress). Thus we evaluate an idea the same
way that natural selection preserves the snout or the weaving
instinct–not by asking how well it represents objective
reality but only how well it works.
I once presented this progression from Darwinism to postmodern
pragmatism at a Christian college, when a man in the audience
raised his hand: "I have only one question. These guys who think
all our ideas and beliefs evolved . . . do they think their own
ideas evolved?" The audience broke into delighted applause,
because of course he had captured the key fallacy of the
Darwinian approach to knowledge. If all ideas are products of
evolution, and thus not really true but only useful for survival,
then evolution itself is not true either–and why should the
rest of us pay any attention to it?
Indeed, the theory undercuts itself. For if evolution is true,
then it is not true, but only useful. This kind of internal
contradiction is fatal, for a theory that asserts something and
denies it at the same time is simply nonsense. In short,
naturalistic evolution is self-refuting.
Clash of Worldviews
The media paints the evolution controversy in terms of science
versus religion. But it is much more accurate to say it is
worldview versus worldview, philosophy versus philosophy. Making
this point levels the playing field and opens the door to serious
dialogue.
Interestingly, a few evolutionists do acknowledge the point.
Michael Ruse made a famous admission at the 1993 symposium of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Evolution
as a scientific theory makes a commitment to naturalism," he
said–that is, it is a philosophy, not just facts. He went
on: "Evolution . . . akin to religion, involves making certain a
priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be
proven empirically." Ruse's colleagues responded with shocked
silence and afterward one of them, Arthur Shapiro, wrote a
commentary titled, "Did Michael Ruse Give Away the Store?"
But, ironically, in the process, Shapiro himself conceded that
"there is an irreducible core of ideological assumptions
underlying science." He went on: "Darwinism is a philosophical
preference, if by that we mean we choose to discuss the material
Universe in terms of material processes accessible by material
operations."
It is this worldview dimension that makes the debate over Darwin
versus Intelligent Design so important. Every system of thought
starts with a creation account that offers an answer to the
fundamental question: Where did everything come from? That
crucial starting point shapes everything that follows. Today a
naturalistic approach to knowledge is being applied to virtually
every field. Some say we're entering an age of "Universal
Darwinism," where it is no longer just a scientific theory but a
comprehensive worldview.
It has become a commonplace to say that America is embroiled in a
"culture war" over conflicting moral standards. But we must
remember that morality is always derivative, stemming from an
underlying worldview. The culture war reflects an underlying
cognitive war over worldviews–and at the core of
each worldview is an account of origins.
Biosketch: Nancy Randolph Pearcey is the Francis A. Schaeffer scholar at the World Journalism Institute. Having studied under Schaeffer at L'Abri in the 1970s, Pearcey earned an MA from Covenant Theological Seminary, followed by further graduate work in philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. She has authoried or contributed to several works, including The Soul of Science and How Now Shall We Live? Her latest book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity won an Award of Merit in the Christianity Today 2005 Book Awards, and the ECPA Gold Medallion Award for best book of the year in the Christianity & Society category.
We claim no rights to this fine article and its origin, as far as we can see, is from Apologetics Science.