Yes
John F Haught

03/09/2001
Commonweal Page 38-39

Copyright (c) 2001 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All
rights reserved. Copyright Commonweal Foundation Mar 9, 2001

Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?
The Relationship Between Science and Religion Michael Ruse
Cambridge University Press, $24.95, 242 pp.

Few scholars have written more voluminously and more interestingly about
Charles Darwin than the philosopher Michael Ruse. For many years a professor
at Guelph University and now at Florida State, Ruse continues to produce a
steady flow of books and articles on the implications of Darwin's
revolution. He was an expert witness at the famous Arkansas creationism
trial and for many years has been a delightfully irrepressible presence at
gatherings of scholars interested in the relationship of science and
religion. A professed agnostic, he remains fascinated by religion and is
always willing to engage in dialogue-in good humor and without an ounce of
condescension-with theologians whom he is quite happy to call his friends.
Ruse may be the only living human who could write a book as unusual as
this one. In Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? he wants us to understand, as
always, that he remains not only an agnostic, but a materialist and
reductionist to boot. As far as he is concerned, the existence of life and
the emergence of its diverse kinds can be explained quite adequately in
purely naturalist and even materialist terms. There is no need to invoke
the idea of God. And yet, as he argues here in a series of chapters on various
doctrines of Christian faith, it is not unreasonable or silly for Darwinians
to be prayerful Christians as well. As a matter of fact a lot of them have
been, and apparently without experiencing any inconsistency. Ruse points
out, for example, that among the "top ten" evolutionists since Darwin we
will find such ardent Christians as Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ronald
Fisher. And the author himself is conversant with numerous contemporary
theologians who have no difficulty with Darwinian evolution either.

Among the Christian thinkers Ruse admires most is Ernan McMullin, a
philosopher at the University of Notre Dame who has often argued that
evolution is consistent with Saint Augustine's vision of a divine plan
unfolding over the course of time from a seminal potential given in the
creation of the world. Perhaps out of caution Ruse has decided to comment
mostly on traditional interpretations such as "the Augustinian Option,"
and he avoids encounter with the many other more adventurous theological
perspectives on evolution now available. He strategically steers away from
process theology, for example, which long ago made peace with evolutionary
biology. He is content to deal only with rather centrist theological
understandings of Christian faith, and he finds that Darwin's ideas can
live quite comfortably even in this setting.

Ruse, however, has little use for the work of another Notre Dame
philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, who, along with Phillip Johnson, William
Dembski, and other anti-Darwinian Christians, dismisses fundamental tenet
of evolutionary biology as incompatible with "intelligent design." Ruse is
telling the "intelligent design theorists" not to be afraid. Even an
entrenched agnostic evolutionist can see how Darwin and Christianity may
get along, so why can't they?

Ruse still confesses that he agrees with the philosophical assumptions of
Richard Dawkins and other evolutionary materialists. However, this may be
hard to believe after reading such a sincere defense of classic Christian
theology's logical compatibility with Darwinian science. The book's
respectful and sympathetic treatment provides a refreshing alternative to
Dawkins's own notorious tantrums about the stubborn persistence of
theology in the face of all the Darwinian evidence against it. Although Ruse
realizes that the most prominent Darwinians profess to be either agnostic or
atheist, he argues here that it is not at all dishonest for scientifically educated
people to embrace Christian faith and still be good Darwinians.

The author's own philosophical stance has itself evolved somewhat over the
last decade or so. He seems to have pulled back from the debunking of ethics
and religion that he had earlier expressed in an often-cited joint essay
with sociobiologist E. O. Wilson. Arguing that our genes have led us to
devise beliefs conducive to good behavior and hence to the survival of our
genes, they had exclaimed that "the way our biology enforces its ends is by
making us think that there is an objective higher moral code, to which we
are all subject." Although Wilson would continue to view Darwinism as a
definitive demonstration of the illusory character of our most cherished
beliefs, Ruse would not. Distancing himself significantly from Wilson, he
now advances the more temperate view that "not all explanations of why or
how we got to believe things are necessarily such as to debunk the veracity
of the belief systems." Ruse may have always believed this, but it is good
to see him say it so explicitly here.

And yet a major difficulty carries over. The author continues, at least
verbally if not intentionally, to fuse Darwinian science with philosophical
materialism. Thoughtful believers, and not just the academically embattled
defenders of "intelligent design," will find such an alloy logically
incompatible with any genuinely religious sense of God. As long as Darwinism
is taken to be as ineradicably materialistic as it appears to Ruse, it will
remain logically irreconcilable with Christianity. Only if Darwinian science
can be more carefully distinguished from materialist ideology can a
Darwinian be a Christian.

Such a distinction was difficult even for Darwin to make, and it seems no
less the case with many of his disciples. It is almost habitual for some
Darwinians to refer to evolution as a "materialist" theory. Ruse refers to
the "naturalistic philosophy" that underlies evolutionary science, by which
he means, uncontroversially, that evolution is subject to laws of nature.
But then, much more provocatively, he goes on to say that Darwinism is
"the apotheosis of a materialistic theory."

One would hope that Ruse means "methodologically materialistic" and not
necessarily "metaphysically materialistic." He is certainly aware of this
distinction, but he does not always seem as willing as one would expect in
a book of this nature to let Darwinism, as science, slip out of the
materialist clothing it has often worn. Ruse is entirely correct in rebuking
Plantinga for insisting that methodological naturalism inevitably leads us
down the slippery slope to metaphysical materialism. But by referring to
Darwinism as a "materialistic theory" he only adds credibility to
Plantinga's spurious claim.

Apart from this puzzling inconsistency, Ruse's fine book contributes
significantly to the contemporary dialogue of science and religion. Filled
with useful information and sparkling wit, it will provide scientists,
theologians, and lay readers the opportunity to think in fresh ways about
God, Christianity, and evolution.

John F. Haught, author of God after Darwin (Westview), teaches theology at Georgetown University.