Darwinism and the argument from design: suggestions for a reevaluation.

Abstract

Considering the amount which has been written on the clash between Darwinism and religion, one could be forgiven for assuming that the basic outlines of the debate are well understood. Works such as Charles C. Gillispie's Genesis and Geology' have highlighted the theological preoccupations of the pre-Darwinian British naturalists, and a host of books and articles have recounted how the theory of natural selection undermined the earlier comrmitment to the belief that nature was designed by God. As a result, every history of science undergraduate knows that William Paley's Natural Theology of 1802 established the claim that the adaptation of each species to its environment indicated that it was designed by a benevolent Creator, an approach developed ad nauseam in the Bridgewater Treatises of the 1830's. Darwin read Paley while he was at Cambridge and was impressed with the universal significance of adaptation, but his theory of natural selection provided a completely mechanistic alternative to design as an explanation of the phenomenon. After the Origin of Species appeared, naturalists such as the American botanist Asa Gray rushed to the defense of design and tried, unsuccessfully in the end, to adapt the basic idea of evolution to their belief in a benevolent Creator. This pattern has been described over and over again in most accounts of the Darwinian debate, from John C. Greene's The Death of Adam through to more modern accounts, such as those of Robert Young and David L. Hull.2