Darwin's Straw God Argument

Abstract

In the controversy between Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design, the fonver is commonly portrayed as science and the latter as theology or phitosophy. Yet Charles Darwin's "one long argument" in The Origin of Species was heavily theological. In particular, Darwin argued that the geographical distribution of living things, the fossil record, vestigial organs, and homologies were "inexplicabte on the theory of creation," but made sense on his theory of descent with modification. In this context, "The theory of creation" did not imply young-earth creationism, but a God conceived by Darwin to create all species separately, arbitrarily, and perfectly. In the many instances when the evidence was not sufficient to support his positive case for descent with modification, Darwin would simply declare that the only altemative-the "theory of creation"-was not a scientific explanation. Darwin's followers often argue similarly. Thus, arguments for Darwinian evolution, in both its ordinal and modem forms, are commonly bound up with arguments from theology and philosophy.