Removing God from Biology

2019 ◽  
pp. 130-147
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Final Cause ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Christian Origins

The Scientific Revolution changed the root metaphor of science from that of an organism to that of a machine. Mechanism. This meant the expulsion from science of final-cause thinking. For two hundred years, biology resisted this demand. Adaptations like the hand and the eye must be understood in terms of ends. This led Immanuel Kant to state that ‘there will never be a Newton of the blade of grass’. Biology will forever be different, meaning—since the best explanation seems to be divine intervention—God-infused. Charles Darwin challenged this with his mechanism of natural selection, showing that the hand and the eye can be understood in causes of the same nature as those found in the physical sciences. This does not as such refute the existence of God. Moreover, close inspection shows that today’s evolutionary thinking still owes much to its Christian origins.

scholarly journals Why did the stegosaurus have plates, or is biology second-rate because it thinks in therms of ends?

2019 ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Constant Temperature ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
The Body ◽  
Functional Explanation ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Final Causes

There is something distinctively different about explanation in the biological sciences, as opposed to explanation in the physical sciences. In the former one has functional arguments, arguments making reference to what Aristotle called “final causes.” As in: “The function of the plates on the back of the Stegosaurus was to keep the body at a constant temperature.” Since the Scientific Revolution, such explanations have been forbidden in the physical sciences. Does this then mean that biology is second rate, as is suggested by many including Immanuel Kant? It is argued that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection explains why there is need of functional explanation in biology and that once this point is grasped, there is no reason to judge biology second rate.

Plato Redivivus

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 114-128
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Garbage Disposal ◽  
New Good ◽  
Louis Agassiz ◽  
William Whewell

This chapter traces the triumph of the Kantian perspective. From the time of the Scientific Revolution to the present, vocal representatives are characterized as the Platonic approach or tradition and of the Aristotelian approach or tradition. Before the Origin, there were those like William Whewell and Adam Sedgwick, professor of geology at Cambridge, who simply put down the origins of new species to divine intervention. The fossil record shows that there has been a turnover of forms, and extinction is almost certainly due to natural causes. But when it comes to new forms, God intervenes miraculously. After the Origin, there were those who felt the same way. Louis Agassiz, Swiss-born ichthyologist and professor at Harvard, could never accept evolution, even though his students stepped over the line pretty sharpishly. The preferred option though, for those who were Christians believing in a Creator God, was some form of guided evolution. God puts direction into new variations and hence natural selection has at most a kind of garbage disposal function—it gets rid of the bad forms but does little or nothing to create new, good forms.

Fatal asymmetries

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Luis Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Artificial Selection ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In Descent of Man, Charles Darwin noted the impact of political institutions on natural selection. He thought that institutions such as asylums or hospitals may deter natural selection; however, he did not reach a decisive answer. Questions remain as to whether the selective impacts of political institutions, which in Darwin’s terms may be referred to as “artificial selection,” are compatible with natural selection, and if so, to what extent. This essay argues that currently there appears to be an essential mismatch between nature and political institutions. Unfitted institutions put exogenous and disproportionate pressures on living beings. This creates consequences for what is postulated as the condition of basic equivalence, which allows species and individuals to enjoy similar chances of survival under natural circumstances. Thus, contrary to Darwin’s expectations, it is sustained that assumed natural selection is not discouraged but becomes exacerbated by political institutions. In such conditions, selection becomes primarily artificial and perhaps mainly political, with consequences for species’ evolutionary future.

‘Short-Spanned Living Creatures’: Evolutionary Perspectives in Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Aaron Green
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Simple Structure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives

Abstract In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.

scholarly journals On James Sterba’s Refutation of Theistic Arguments to Justify Suffering

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Bruce R. Reichenbach
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evils ◽  
Consistent Application ◽  
Moral Requirements

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would address such evils, while protecting significant freedoms and rights to which all are entitled. I respond that his argument has important ambiguities and that consistent application of his moral principles will require that God remove all moral and natural evils. This would deleteriously restrict not only human moral decision making, but also the knowledge necessary to make moral judgments. He replies to this critique by appealing to the possibility of limited divine intervention, to which I rejoin with reasons why his middle ground is not viable.

The Ontological Argument Revisited: A Reply to Rowe

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Eric Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Logical Analysis ◽  
Existence Of God

Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument is perhaps the most intriguing of all the traditional speculative proofs for the existence of God. Yet, his argument has been rejected outright by many philosophers. Most challenges stem from the basic conviction that no amount of logical analysis of a concept that is limited to the bounds of the “understanding” will ever be able to “reason” the existence in “reality” of anything answering such a limited concept. However, it is not the intent of this paper to prove or disprove Anselm’s argument. Rather, in this paper we concern ourselves with arriving at a sound interpretation of Anselm’s leading critic—Immanuel Kant. Kant put forth perhaps the most vaunted criticism of Anselm’s argument. However, Kant has been perhaps the most misunderstood objector to Anselm’s argument. This paper confirms that charge, simultaneously offering what I believe to be a sound interpretation of Kant’s criticism.

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