Darwin and atheism (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 09, 2012, 12:38 (4208 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is the quote by Jacques Barzun that nails down the concept atheists have of Darwin:-"In his book Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, Barzun was audacious enough to subject Darwin to a withering barrage of criticism, despite Darwin's heroic status among scientists and academics. Barzun believed in biological evolution. However, he perceptively explained that Darwin's distinctive contribution to European thought was not evolution, which many others had believed before him. No, more importantly Darwin formulated "a theory which explains evolution by natural selection from accidental variations. The entire phrase and not merely the words Natural Selection is important, for the denial of purpose in the universe is carried in the second half of the formula -- accidental variation. This denial of purpose is Darwin's distinctive contention." (2nd ed., pp. 10-11)-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/appreciating_hi065951.html-Since Darwin denied ever having been an atheist, and stressed that his theory was compatible with religion, he clearly allowed for the possibility of design and purpose (though he certainly wouldn't have claimed to know what that purpose might be). So did some of his contemporary theistic believers in evolution, and so do many theistic evolutionists today. What he and they do not allow for is the separate creation of species.-"Barzun declared war on Darwin's theory (but not evolution as such), because he considered it a major influence on "mechanical materialism." He accused Darwinism of undermining belief in mind, consciousness, and purpose."-How do you declare war on Darwin's theory but not evolution as such? Barzun should have declared war on fundamentalist, atheistic interpretations of Darwin's theory. 
 
"He also objected to the tendency to idolize science, stating, "Science as a Delphic oracle exists only in the popular imagination and the silent assumptions of certain scientists. At any given time there are only searchers who agree or disagree."" (336)-I agree.-"Barzun also insisted that Darwinism had produced some rather unsavory offspring, such as racism and anti-egalitarianism." However, "He hastened to clarify that he was not holding Darwin (or Marx or Wagner) individually responsible for Nazism or other abominable movements, but he did insist "that the ideas, the methods, the triumph of mechanistic materialism over the flexible and humane pragmatism of the Romantics has been a source of real woe in our day."" (15-16)-Well, that puts the interpreters of Darwin on a par with the interpreters of the Bible and the Koran, whose ideas and methods have been a source of real woe throughout history, right up to the present day. As for the flexible and humane pragmatism of the Romantics, had Barzun never heard of the flexible and humane pragmatism of materialist humanists?