Law of the Jungle or Divine Plan?

12th February 2009 marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, one of the scientists with the most influence on our world view. On 24th November 1859 – 150 years ago – Darwin’s seminal work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” was published. It made Darwin famous overnight – as well as notorious. His theses contradicted the story of creation in the Bible. They promoted materialistic thinking, helped the sciences to turn away from religion, widened the chasm between science and the church and demanded a thorough rethinking, which was painful for many.

Simple observations put everything in question …

Three very simple assumptions, which all could understand, led to a change in the thinking of biologists:

• The individuals in a population of organisms are never completely alike. There are always (minor) differences – variations.

• Every population produces more offspring than its natural environment can support. A large portion therefore do not get to reproduce.

• The best adapted, that is, the “most fit” individuals have the best prospects of passing on their hereditary traits to their offspring. Thus a  natural selection ensures that mainly the organisms best adapted to their surroundings reproduce themselves, while the less suited are eliminated. Hence the much quoted slogan about the “survival of the fittest”.

According to Darwin’s theory, organisms evolved and adapted better to their habitats over the course of many generations in the interplay between variation and selection. In small and smallest evolutionary steps thereby new species were formed until finally, from simple “primordial organisms” (eobionts), the entire inestimable abundance of life, that we marvel at today, had arisen. This evolution will continue without end for as long as the earth remains habitable.

The book “Origin of Species” was barely published before it sparked fierce ideological discussions, which revolved especially around a topic that Darwin hardly addressed: Where does man come from?

Indignation about the "destruction of God's plan"

At the end of his work Darwin suggests only with one sentence that man too should be regarded as a part of nature: “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”

Already years before Darwin in February 1871 published another landmark work “The Descent of Man”, fiery criticism had met the question of the origin of the species that is man. The Bible makes it clear that man arose directly from the hand of God; there was no doubt for the believers of Abrahamic religions.

Now man is pushed from his throne as “crown of creation” and is compelled to see himself in a new way as part of nature. In the Darwinian view of the world, man can claim no higher status than that of a highly developed primate with an especially large brain. High moral standards or a strong sense of responsibility are not guaranteed from an “intelligent ape”. On the other hand, ruthlessness and a propensity to violence can be explained and justified as a consequence of the struggle for existence.

Devout Christians were appalled by what they regarded as the “destruction of God’s plan”. Natural philosophy and religion lay siege to each other. Whereafter should man take his guidance? Which is relevant: the “Holy Scriptures” or the “law of the jungle”, the “warfare in nature”?

New theories, no agreement 

One hundred and fifty years after the first publication of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” the controversy over the evolution theory has not subsided.

Since then a lot of research has been done, and new insights, as for instance genetics, have radically altered Darwinian approaches.

In Darwin’s time, the inheritance of acquired characteristics was regarded as self-evident; today this assumption is seen as disproved. One speaks instead of the “synthetic theory of evolution” and proceeds from the following evolutionary factors:

• Random mutations (genetic changes) are an important cause of the variations postulated by Darwin.

• In sexual reproduction there is a recombination of genes. Varieties of plants and animals have been cultivated for many centuries, but the laws of heredity were only discovered in the 19th century.

• Selection, i.e. the difference in reproductive success of individuals in a population is a consequence of how varied they are suited.

• Additional fluctuations that are not due to selection are described as genetic drift.

• Isolation or separation also plays a part in evolution: populations of the same species are separated (for example on islands) and then evolve into new species.

There are still other approaches, although not all are accepted by all researchers. By way of example, cultural influences, such as diet or traumatic experiences in childhood, can apparently cause permanent change to the brain genetic makeup. With bees, for instance, feeding determines whether a worker bee or a queen transforms from the larva. With man, the culture of livestock dairy farming has probably triggered a genetic change that makes lactose also tolerable by adults. Indians do not seem to have developed such lactose tolerance.

Evolution – just a game of chance?

Since mutation (change in the gene), which is so important for evolution, arises according to current theories purely by chance, today’s biodiversity would be due to a game of chance: to the interplay between mutation and selection. If during an important phase of development just some “random” mutations had proceeded differently, the evolution of life could have been steered onto totally different tracks.

To many people, this view appears somewhat illogical. It is not only religious people who do not experience themselves and the world as the outcome of chance. Lack of meaning, purpose and direction, the “characteristics” of chance, do not seem sufficient for a positive development. Every engineer knows that. Thus, there are many who search for the cause, the meaning and the purpose of the whole. But those are further questions, which arise from the human consciousness, the answers to which lie outside the possibilities of science.1

The controversy over the theory of evolution persists

The vast majority of scientists today accept the modified theory of evolution as the only logical explanation for the evolution of life in the course of natural history. These evolutionists are accused by their opponents of clinging to their materialistic hypothesis in spite of the many inconsistencies inherent in it, because the theory of evolution tries to manage without any “supernatural” influences or a Creator God. Therefore scientists are often accused of being atheists.

The critics of the selection theory are in part to be found in the camp of fundamentalist creationists, who hold onto a literal interpretation of the Bible. They do not believe in a development of life according to natural laws, but to individual creative acts by God. Whether Jew, Christian or Muslim, whoever takes his scriptures literally will believe in direct divine intervention in natural events. Creationists are being accused by scientists of theological blindness.

Representatives of the “Intelligent Design (ID)-Theory”, including prominent scientists, found much evidence in nature that living organisms need with well considered “structures”, which could not have arisen purely by chance.

An “organising intelligence” – one might think of nature beings here – must therefore be directing and promoting evolution. The ID-theory, however, is so far neither provable nor refutable and therefore not recognised as a scientific theory in the strict sense of the word. The sometimes heated debates between evolutionists, creationists and representatives of the ID-theory continue.

Future of  Darwinism

Charles Darwin died on 19th April 1882 at the age of 73. He is regarded as one of the most important scientists. What part of his work will stand the test of time?

The history of development, the evolution of living things from simple to complex, will remain an integral part of our knowledge. Only the mechanisms which have brought about the ascent of organic life are in dispute: is it, after all, “blind chance” or a higher principle?

Our present-day scientific world view is not conceivable without Darwin. But the sciences continue to develop, and evolutionary biology will change, as do our ideas about natural history.

It is therefore uncertain whether at the end of the 21st century a concept of evolution will be taught that is still fundamentally based on Darwin.

The Darwinist teaching of evolution may one day be as outdated as is the universe of Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100-160 AD), who taught a geocentric planetary system in which the earth occupied the centre of the universe.

But Darwin’s theory will certainly remain a part of Western cultural history.

In my opinion, people in coming centuries will still see in this great Englishman a scientist who delivered new facts and provided important thought-provoking ideas. And the name Darwin will also in future be mentioned with the same respect as that of Aristotle is today, whose physics has long since been refuted.