When I first ran across David Stove I was reading an account of his writings in the Weekly Standard magazine

Review of David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales

When I first ran across David Stove I was reading an account of his writings in the Weekly Standard magazine. Creationists are familiar with criticisms of evolution and Stove, a non-creationist but still a Darwinian critic, adopts a new focus to these criticisms. If Darwinism were true, Stove says, “there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation can be winners.” Yet, evolution does not describe human life – so much so that Stove calls Darwinism a “slander” on humanity.

There are three responses offered to cope with what he calls “Darwin’s dilemma.” The “cave man” approach suggests that at one time there was a competition among humans but this is not currently so. Stove’s response is to point out that Darwinism must describe how life is now or else it is not true. Another response, the “hard man” is most familiar to us as Social Darwinism. The hard man says there cannot and should not be such things as hospitals and unemployment relief because they interfere with the natural competition that would define natural selection – competition that weeds out the unfit. This natural competition should be inevitable, yet Darwinists write as if it is not inevitable and, in fact, the presence of hospitals and other altruism undermines their theory. It is also unpopular – perhaps even “politically incorrect” – to speak as a hard man social Darwinist despite deep feelings this line of thinking is correct. The “soft man” approach simply denies that there is any contradiction between Darwinism and charity, in essence avoiding the issue.

Altruism is a particular problem for Darwinists. This was first brought to my attention in an issue of ARN (Access Research Network) journal where Alvin Platinga [1] writes of Herbert Simon's article, "A Mechanism for Social Selection and Successful Altruism." Why, asks Simon, do people like Mother Teresa do the things they do? Why do they devote their time and energy and even their entire lives to the welfare of other people? Of course most of us display this tendency to some extent but don’t go to the extremes of sainthood. Simon’s explanation is that people like Teresa are “docile” individuals that display “bounded rationality” that disallows them from distinguishing between altruistic behavior and socially prescribed behavior that contributes to fitness. Platinga offers another take on this viewpoint.

No Christian could accept this account as even a beginning of a viable explanation of the altruistic behavior of the Mother Teresas of this world. From a Christian perspective, this doesn't even miss the mark; it isn't close enough to be a miss. Behaving as Mother Teresa does is not a display of bounded rationality--as if, if she thought through the matter with greater clarity and penetration, she would cease this kind of behavior and instead turn her attention to her expected number of progeny. Her behavior displays a Christ-like spirit; she is reflecting in her limited human way the magnificent splendor of Christ's sacrificial action in the Atonement. (No doubt she is also laying up treasure in heaven). Indeed, is there anything a human being can do that is more rational than what she does? From a Christian perspective, the idea that her behavior is irrational (and so irrational that it needs to be explained in terms of such mechanisms as unusual docility and limited rationality!) is hard to take seriously. For from that perspective, behavior of the sort engaged in by Mother Teresa is anything but a manifestation of “limited rationality”. On the contrary: her behavior is vastly more rational than that of someone who, like Cecil Jacobson, devotes his best efforts to seeing to it that his genes are represented in excelsis in the next and subsequent generations.

Stove says “altruism ought to be non-existent, or short-lived whenever it does occur, if the Darwinian theory of evolution is true.” But, he says, altruism is not destroyed and instead is common in the animal world in its parental form. In humans, most altruism occurs outside the realms of the family. Friendship, for instance, basks in altruism as does the most blatant form of altruism, Christ’s death on the cross not to mention the martyrdom of his followers. Stove’s conclusion to this problem is succinct: if your biology makes a “problem” out of the existence of altruism then there is something wrong with your biology and not the people who are altruistic.

What could explain this? As I drove home from my second-shift job at a call center in Madison, Wisconsin, it occurred to me that if humans were indeed created as a Biblical “kind” with no ability to evolve past our species, then there would be no need for Darwinian competition. In that case our moral instinct would serve the purpose of pushing us to maximize the enjoyment of life for everyone, even sometimes at the expense of our own welfare. The moral instinct we have guides this necessary behavior although our sinful predisposition causes us to behave in harmful ways (war, for instance).

Stove saves his most blistering attacks on Richard Dawkins primarily because of his theories of selfish genes. Sociobiology has become a religion, Stove says, one that proposes “there are on earth millions of invisible and immortal non-human beings which are far more intelligent and capable than we are.” Dawkins, quoted by Stove, says we are robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. Edward Wilson says much the same thing. This is pure baloney, obviously, but displays the evolutionist tendency toward their brand of theology. In fact, this is a naturalistic version of “the devil made me do it.”

So what might Stove think explains nature if not evolution? Certainly the idea of gradual changes that surmount to produce the line of descent from amoeba to fish to man must presuppose a reason for each change to survive and this in turn suggests Darwinian competition. And this in turn suggests Darwinism. Yet, if Stove is right, what of Darwinism and evolution? Surely Stove can suggest, along with Stephen Gould, that evolution happened whether through Darwinism or not. This is pure bluster, though. Without Darwinism, what is the meat on the bone of evolution to give it its bulk?

These problems are not the only ones Darwinism faces. Among the others are the origins of consciousness and the soul, the origin of morality, and the origin of religion. When faced with attempts to explain these facets of humanity, evolutionists are not afraid to indulge in mythmaking. Roger Lewin proposes that just as language may have evolved as a tool for creating better models of reality in our mind, consciousness “may have evolved as an aid to understanding – and predicting more accurately – a complex social environment.” [2] Because the lives of higher primates are more complicated, more demands are put on them and therefore “consciousness . . . began to evolve in this highly competitive social setting.” Yet, it seems that the harshness of our social settings is a result of our consciousness, not a cause of it. A highly emotional presidential race, for instance, would be impossible without our consciousness while animals appear to cope with life’s demands without it.

This assumption of materialism sometimes goes to ridiculous lengths. Robert Lawrence Kuhn assembled a cast of scientists and philosophers to debate the existence of the mind and the possibility of its existence not being controlled by the brain. Among Kuhn's guests were Barry Beyerstein (described as a skeptic who does not believe in anything nonphysical) who at one point in the discussion said:

The brain and the kidneys are both physical organs. Both have anatomical structures and physiological processes that generate particular things. And, yes, the output of one is urine and the output of the other is thought. [3]

This is clearly preposterous. The kidneys output urine in accordance with their genetic design and location within the body. They have no choice other than to produce what they are made to produce. The brain obviously does not work this way. Humans have free will and can change their brain patterns to some degree as they see fit. This is mere mythmaking.

The origin of religion poses another problem for evolutionists. I have seen, in debate, an atheist attempt to explain religion as originating in primitives’ needs to explain natural phenomenon. Emma Goldman expresses a typical sentiment.

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea. . . . Thus the god idea revived, readjusted and enlarged or narrowed, according to the necessity of the time has dominated humanity and will continue to do so until man will raise his head to the sunlit day, unafraid and with an awakened will to himself. In proportion as man learns to realize himself and mold his own destiny, theism becomes superfluous. How far man will be able to find his relation to his fellows will depend entirely upon how much he can outgrow his dependence upon God. ^{^[4]}

This is typical atheist mythmaking, one that originates out of a desire that theology go into the thrash heap. In my study of primitive religions, I have found that many religions have deities that revolve around natural occurrences. It would, however, be a mistake to assume they all do and it would be a mistake to assume these religions originated out of fear of nature. This belief, of course, is part of the atheist mythos that explains how man, once he understands science, dismisses religion as bogus primitive superstition.

Nor have any recent attempts to explain the origin of religion held water. Recently Steven Pinker reviewed a few of these after finding that over 90 percent believe in a god or universal spirit, prompting him to recognize “humanists have their work cut out for them.” [5] Religion gives comfort, he says, but this explanation doesn’t explain why the mind must need comfort from things that are false. Religion can’t be explained by the theory that it brings a community together, neither can Pinker find that evolution is the source of moral yearnings. He does recognize religion has some benefits to those who cause others to believe, but this doesn’t explain the whole of religious yearnings. He also suggests religion is an adaptation, but can’t see what the adaptation is for religion much less the adaptation value of humor. Could it be people, even humanists, are religious because it satisfies a deep yearning in their souls that cannot be wished away?

Richard Dawkins wrote an essay asking what good religion is, an essay published on a secular humanism web site. The essay is a masterful work in thought. Dawkins opens: AAs a Darwinian, the aspect of religion that catches my attention is its profligate wastefulness, its extravagant display of baroque uselessness.@ Dawkins asks what religion is good for and runs the possible gauntlet of answers. Does it relieve stress? His answer is Ano.@ Is religion a placebo? Again, he answers in the negative. Finally he concludes that evolution has no survival value and the only value to religion is religion. [6]

Richard Taylor, in his debate with William Lane Craig, relates the common evolutionist hypothesis for the origin of morality.

Is the basis for morality natural or supernatural? It is neither. The basis for morality is conventional, which means the rules of morality were fabricated by human beings over many generations. These rules are: to abstain from injury, to abstain from lying, theft, assault, killing, and so forth. These rules were not the invention of God. No one in this room imagines that if there were not a God to tell us these things, we would not know any better. [7]

This would be a valid hypothesis if it weren’t for the fact that people judge society by moral rules instead of being passive recipients of inherited cultural norms. What is even more amazing is that no atheist would accept that we are moral because we have, in the past, burned witches, practiced slavery, practiced censorship, and so forth despite the fact these were acceptable practices at one point. It is true we have overcome these habits but it is more the moral sense that has brought us out of these habits rather than moral habits being formed from our denial of these habits.

These suppositions, and probably many more, are the fairytales of evolution. Stove was right when he said that sometimes scientists maintain theories that don’t make sense, and this is because they have no other theories to believe in. Clearly evolution is one such fruitless theory.