Darwin and Fundamentalism (Postmodern Encounters) - Softcover

Wyn Davies, Merryl

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9781840461770: Darwin and Fundamentalism (Postmodern Encounters)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840461772 ISBN 13: 9781840461770

Publisher: Icon Books, 2000

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Charles Darwin evolutionized the western view of human development and inaugurated a paradigmatic shift that has reverberated throughout science ever since. His work and conclusions surrounding evolution, however, have been employed in areas utterly distinct from biology to become justifications for ideology across the politial spectrum. This rise of fundamentalism, both political and religious, has been a harrowing reminder that liberal democracy cannot hope to automatically succeed irrespective of cultural context. This book examines the use of Darwinist ideas in a plethora of regimes, and considers his legacy and reception outside the scientific community in which he ostensibly worked.

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About the Author:

Merryl Wyn Davies, writer and anthropologist, is a former television producer who worked for BBC religious programmes. She is the author of "Knowing One Another: Shaping an Islamic Anthropology".

In August 1999, the state Board of Education of Kansas in the United States voted by a narrow margin to permit the removal of evolution from the teaching curriculum. This was not an isolated case. In thirteen American states, from California to Maine, there have been challenges to the teaching of evolution. In some states the demand is for equal treatment for the burgeoning field of creation science, the scientific inquiry to substantiate the King James Bible account of creation contained in the Book of Genesis. Alabama requires a disclaimer to be printed on the front of biology and geology textbooks, stating that evolution 'is theory not fact'. Illinois has put evolution in the category of 'controversial issues', allowing local school districts to decide for themselves how the subject will be taught. Organised challenges to Darwin are not confined to the classrooms. The Internet carries hundreds of sites devoted to partisan controversy over the means, meaning and import of creation vs. evolution.

The current battle between Creationists and Evolutionists is presented, in the media and by scientists, as a rerun of the initial controversies that greeted the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Darwin's theory of evolution, transformation and adaptation within the course of time was a watershed in intellectual history. It has become a basic premise of our common understanding. Yet, for many people it is not the ultimate answer to everything. In particular, evolution attracts the wrath of Christian fundamentalists. But are the Christian fundamentalists the only people who question Darwin and evolution? Is the battle between evolution and fundamentalism a battle between the light of reason and the darkness of dogma? Is science really being persecuted by religion? The angry rhetoric and impassioned fight over public policy places Darwin on a par with Galileo, constantly raising the spectre of the Inquisition. Is this a realistic perception? Can scientists be as fundamentalist as their Christian opponents? Can we recognise a scientific fundamentalism that operates in the same manner as Christian fundamentalism? If we cannot - why not?

We have become comfortable with the idea that this clash of Christian fundamentalism and Darwinism is the real nub of the debate between religion and science. Darwin, Darwinism and Darwinistic thought are different viewpoints as much within science as between science and Christian fundamentalists. To see these concerns as only affecting Christian fundamentalists is to marginalise and silence a diversity of moderate but equally pertinent positions. A true appreciation of the historic context of Darwin, the socially constructed nature of science, and theologically and historically informed understanding of religion, which is much more than simply Christian fundamentalism, suggests that we are being hijacked by two extremist positions. The legitimate questions about the relationship between science and religion, what it is reasonable to believe as science and as religion, are not just obscured but rendered inarticulate by two radical, partisan misconstructions.

It is simplistic to begin at the beginning. In this debate, that is how all the problems arise. Science as evolution, as well as Christian fundamentalism, comes to origin and creation with a clear context and agenda. So let's begin with this agenda.

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