The Problem With Worshipping Darwin

Charles Darwin dramatically changed the face of biological science. In fact, he invented a completely new kind of science: the evolutionary kind. All of western civilization knows this. So what’s the problem? The problem is that because this man gave society his ideas, we worship him for it. He is to us as Aristotle was to the natural philosophers, or at least this is true within the average population. Despite advances in evolutionary science, much of society tends to look back to Darwin for knowledge about evolution instead of looking to modern science and this often leads to people not understanding how natural selection actually works.

But before we get into the realm of people misunderstanding the ideas that led from Darwin, let us first look into the problems with misunderstanding the man himself. Our society likes our heroes to be flawless; the most minor of blemishes on their character and all of their previous work is called into question. Darwin has been elevated to Hero status, and the same expectations have been held to him.

A good portion of The Origin of the Species talks about Darwin’s theories and conclusions as they have to do with women. To those of us that know this part of his work, it is clear that Darwin stood in line with his, male, contemporaries at the time in thinking that women were inferior, and that one could prove this scientifically. Evelleen Richards in “Darwin and the Descent of Women” writes that everything that could be seen as supporting sexism or racism now “is either ignored or tortuously explained away and Darwin himself absolved of political and social intent and his theoretical constructs of ideological taint.” It is of my opinion that even if a man is the most corrupt person in all of history, if his theories are logically sound, his theories are logically sound. Darwin’s theories are logically sound in the terms of the time period from whence they came. And even if Darwin were to be quoted as saying “natural selection is a sham,” it wouldn’t affect the theory because the theory is logically sound. Racism or sexism perceived in Darwin’s writing now doesn’t affect the logic of his theories, and it is therefore unnecessary to defend him.

Now we will step back into the problems of understanding natural selection that arise from the worship of Charles Darwin. The chief reason that people don’t buy into evolution and natural selection is that they don’t understand it. Richard Dawkins says in “The Argument from Personal Incredulity” that in many cases people “misunderstand natural selection to be ‘random’ and ‘meaningless’” which it simply isn’t. In fact, natural selection is about as non-random as nature can get. The problem lies in that many people look to Darwin for how the theories work.

Darwin didn’t know about genes, genetics, or DNA. He didn’t know the mechanisms behind inheritance, he didn’t know what traits were being manifested from. We now know that the only random element of natural selection is when errors crop up when DNA is copied and spliced. These are occurrences on the quantum level, where random is the name of the game. Once the traits are manifested, the game changes and everything becomes non-random.

Another pitfall that comes with only looking to Darwin is that holes in Darwin’s theories may not exist anymore in science. Michael Behe is the father of what he calls “irreducible complexity,” the idea of a structure that would be useless if it hadn’t popped into being perfectly formed. Darwin himself says in the Origin that if an irreducibly complex object was found, natural selection would collapse. Behe uses this statement as proof that his examples refute natural selection; that nature requires a “maker.” Even if Behe’s examples didn’t have problems with them, however, his proof wouldn’t be substantial because the “irreducibly complex” problem can be easily solved.

Dawkins gave a wonderful example of how an apparently irreducibly complex system could evolve by evoking the metaphor of a stone arch. An arch, by itself, is irreducibly complex. Take any one stone out of place, and the whole thing comes crashing down. But the arch wasn’t built all at once; it was built supported by a wooden scaffolding, all evidence of which is completely gone. The scaffolding is the support structure that makes the incomplete arch semi-useful. Once the arch is done, the scaffold is broken down, and the arch stands on its own. Apply this to biology. A structure, such as Behe’s flagellum example may appear to be too complex to evolve. However, we do not see the remnants of supporting structures that allowed limited functionality until the flagellum or other structure was completed. Once a fully-functional device is in the gene pool, the supporting structure becomes superfluous and will eventually disappear; an organism without that supporting structure is metabolically superior. This concept of a biological “scaffold” was not surmised by Darwin, and by looking only to him, we miss the totality of evolutionary science today.

Finally, one last thing is missed when we don’t look beyond Darwin when it comes to natural selection. If one were to look at Darwin’s work, they would conclude that the only things that are able to evolve are living organisms. However, this is untrue. Modern science has learned that non-living molecules such as viruses do indeed evolve over time. In fact, theoretically any replicator (such as DNA, RNA, or something human-created) could undergo a form of natural selection and evolution simply through errors in the replicating process. This general knowledge is not only useful in the realms of inorganic life or AI projects, but is absolutely vital in the realms of public health. Knowing how and why viruses and other pathogens mutate is very important. Below is the first of six videos concerning the fight between humans and bacteria and viruses. The video says that such organisms are the only real threat to our species and talks about the downhill battle which humans will certainly lose.

Darwin had no idea about these implications of his theories. Now that we do, it makes little sense to continue looking to the past.

Darwin was an incredibly influential person. He changed the face of all science and rocked old religion to its core. However, the context in which Darwin’s theories and the theories themselves have changed to the point where the Aristotelian worship of the man is hardly necessary. It is time to move on from Darwin and look at the theories instead of the man.

Works Cited

Behe, Michael. “Darwin’s Black Box.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Dawkins, Richard. “The Argument from Personal Incredulity.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

“Evolution Episode 4: The Evolutionary Arms Race.” Posted by Gravitationalist. .

Richards, Evelleen. “Darwin and the Descent of Women.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.