Edward O. Wilson, one of today’s leading evolutionary scientists, was raised a creationist but has now rejected all that in favour of what he calls "scientific humanism". Noting that a majority of Americans reject evolution, he wonders:
Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of On The Origin of Species, and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favouring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution . . . challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything.
Prof Wilson is mistaken in his historical understanding of the relationship between Christianity and evolutionary theory. The fact is that Christians were among the leading proponents and popularizers of Darwin’s theory in the late 19th century. As David N. Livingstone of The Queen's University of Belfast has documented in Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders, many evangelical Christian scientists on both sides of the Atlantic had little trouble reconciling their conservative theological views to Darwin's new theory. Ronald Numbers, another man who has rejected his creationist upbringing, has shown that so-called scientific creationism was only invented in the 1920s and did not begin to enjoy widespread popularity among fundamentalist American Christians until the 1960s.
Thus, Prof Wilson’s claim that Christians "continue" to resist Darwinian evolution because it "challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity" cannot be right because many Christians did indeed accept Darwinism at the outset. Those Christian biologists and geologists apparently did not agree with Wilson’s assessment that "[e]volution by natural selection . . . changed everything".
What then accounts for the widespread rejection of evolution that only became manifest in the 1960s? Could it have something to do with the claim made by many atheistic evolutionists, now including Edward O. Wilson, that evolution proves there is no God? Could it be that Christians take Wilson et al. at their word and conclude that, if that’s what evolution really says, then it must be wrong? That would imply that Wilson and Richard Dawkins and other atheistic scientists are in large degree responsible for the circumstance they decry.
Substantiation for this view is found in Prof Wilson's article. He writes, "[A]bsence of divine purpose [is] implicit in natural selection". Why does he think that? He doesn’t say: he provides no supporting argument or evidence. Those 19th-century Christian proponents of Darwinian evolution saw no such implication. Wilson says that the reasoning of advocates of intelligent design (ID) is "not based on evidence but on the lack of it". He then provides a tendentious summary of the reasoning behind ID and, of course, rejects it. But at least Wilson acknowledges that ID proponents present a line of reasoning, which is far more than he himself does here.
Wilson asserts that natural selection operates through "blind chance" but, again, presents no argument or evidence supporting this. Perhaps he is making the mistake—and a rather surprising one for a learned scientist to blunder into—of thinking that, because the genetic mutations that form the raw material for natural selection appear random, they are therefore unguided. See this post for a refutation.
Wilson concludes by suggesting that religious faith is inferior to "scientific humanism", by which he really means philosophical materialism. He wonders whether religion and science will ever live in peace with each other, but he thinks not, based on this howler: "There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict." Well, duh, yeah—and science does that, too. Any belief claiming knowledge of ultimate truth—which in some contexts is a useful definition of "religion"—will necessarily divide people. Wilson makes just such claims for his brand of "science".
UPDATE (18 Nov.): Follow-up here.
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You are a cardinal! You love to try & get others into trouble, even if you have to make up lies…NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!