- Reading Number Two -

 

How Darwin Smuggled Intelligence Into His Theory of Evolution

 

 

Yes, Darwin was a smuggler—a deceiver, as we shall see in today’s reading. But remember: as atheists we are the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls. So we can make up our own morality. Maybe that’s why we’re atheists in the first place, eh?

 

                  

Here Darwin begins comparing natural selection with the efforts of human breeders, who use their intelligence to breed animals and plants. And natural selection actually comes out looking better, because...well, it has more time! (We’re supposed to forget about the fact that it has no intelligence. Yes, it’s difficult, but as atheists, we can do it. You just need to exercise your ability to have blind faith!)

 

...Man can act only on external and visible characters: Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends..

 

Every time I read this, I feel fully convinced that Nature is more intelligent than humans! I know it doesn’t make any sense, but Darwin’s rhetoric is just so powerful! That’s the important thing. Let’s have some more of that rhetoric:

 

...How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! How short his time, and consequently how poor will be his results, compared with those accumulated by Nature during whole geological periods! Can we wonder, then, that Nature's productions should be far "truer" in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?

 

Yes, Nature is a smarter designer because, um...she has more time. Not only smarter, but “infinitely” smarter.

 

It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers,* at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long-past geological ages that we see only that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.

 

Don’t you just feel awed when you read such overblown rhetoric? I know I do. Yes, it’s only metaphorical, but look how brilliant Darwin is. He knows we can’t get away from the need for an intelligent designer, so he conjures up Nature as the omnipotent, omniscient creator, capable of “selecting” improvements that will lead to the evolution of higher beings. This placates that really irritating feeling we have that there must be an intelligent designer, but at the same time we can feel satisfied that Nature is not a God we have to worship. Just a sort of...I don’t know...impersonal demigod or something. Like the Star Wars Force. No real gods there. What a relief.

It’s really quite artful the way Darwin can play both sides on a topic like this. On the one hand he paints a picture of Nature doing all these seemingly intelligent things—scrutinizing, selecting, crafting her “workmanship,” etc. But at the same time he assures us that he doesn’t mean it literally, he’s just speaking metaphorically, But he accomplishes his goal. The pictures his rhetoric so skillfully paints in our head end up convincing us that yes, it must be true that nature can do all the same things an intelligent designer can. Once again Darwin shows his, shall we say...flexibility.