I guess it’s worth discussing the role of Darwinism within the conservative movement now that 30% (Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo) of the Republican candidates running for president assert that they don’t believe in the theory of natural selection. But this is ridiculous:
Evolution has long generated bitter fights between the left and the right about whether God or science better explains the origins of life. But now a dispute has cropped up within conservative circles, not over science, but over political ideology: Does Darwinian theory undermine conservative notions of religion and morality or does it actually support conservative philosophy?
There seems to be little doubt that ‘Darwinism’ (and I’m not sure why the NYT’s insists on using that term) undermines conservative confidence in their ‘notions of religion and morality’. But, this has much less to do with the details of molecular biology than it does with the curious beliefs of conservative Christians. If you insist on believing in a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation story then naturally you are going to feel threatened by more than mere ‘Darwinism’. Plate tectonics will be just as unsettling. How, we might ask, does continental drift threaten morality? The answer is that is doesn’t threaten it directly at all. Rather, continental drift undermines faith in Biblical inerrancy.
It’s seems beneath serious discussion, as least in a political sense to debate the inerrancy of the Bible. We should strive to respect literalist’s religious beliefs insofar as those beliefs are privately held. But the idea that such nonsense should inform a policy debate within one of the two major American political parties is ridiculous.
For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor.
Again, I don’t dispute that many conservatives feel this way. But it doesn’t even make theological sense. The strong Christian tradition against infanticide dates from the early church fathers’ campaign against the practice in the Roman Empire and has nothing to do with literal interpretations of the Old Testament. What threatens conservatives about the theory of evolution is that is destroys the inerrancy of the Book, and not the details of the theory.
It is the same impulse that led the Church to condemn Galileo and Bruno. The specifics or their astronomical theories didn’t undermine morality, but undermining faith in the accuracy of Scripture possibly could have that effect.
Is it a sad, sad spectacle to watch the Republican Party having an internal debate about the merits of biblical literalism. And it is even sadder to see the arguments being made in favor of ‘Darwinism’.
Mr. Arnhart, in his 2005 book, “Darwinian Conservatism,” tackled the issue of conservatism’s compatibility with evolutionary theory head on, saying Darwinists and conservatives share a similar view of human beings: they are imperfect; they have organized in male-dominated hierarchies; they have a natural instinct for accumulation and power; and their moral thought has evolved over time.
The institutions that successfully evolved to deal with this natural order were conservative ones, founded in sentiment, tradition and judgment, like limited government and a system of balances to curb unchecked power, he explains.
Yeah..yeah…and marriage enforced by a male clergy. I get it.
It’s as disgraceful to see Republican intellectuals trying to use natural selection to justify their cruel policies as it is to see Republican presidential candidates that are unembarrassed to disavow evolutionary theory.
And this crap is on the front-page of the New York Times. It’s just an embarrassment.
