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Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science
At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and politicians giddily predicted that science—especially Darwinian biology—would supply solutions to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to poverty to sexual maladjustment.Instead, politics and culture were dehumanized as scientific experts began treating human beings as little more than animals or machines. In criminal justice, these experts denied the existence of free will and proposed replacing punishment with invasive “cures” such as the lobotomy. In welfare, they proposed eliminating the poor by sterilizing those deemed biologically unfit. In business, they urged the selection of workers based on racist theories of human evolution and the development of advertising methods to more effectively manipulate consumer behavior. In sex education, they advocated creating a new sexual morality based on “normal mammalian behavior” without regard to longstanding ethical and religious imperatives.Based on extensive research with primary sources and archival materials, John G. West’s captivating Darwin Day in America tells the story of how American public policy has been corrupted by scientistic ideology. Marshaling fascinating anecdotes and damning quotations, West’s narrative explores the far-reaching consequences for society when scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between human beings and the rest of nature. It also exposes the disastrous results that ensue when experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong. West concludes with a powerful plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts.
847 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 6, 2007
21 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
John G. West
23 books11 followersAlso publishes as John G. West Jr..
Dr. John West is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, where he is Associate Director of Discovery's Center for Science & Culture and Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs. His current research examines the impact of Darwinian science on public policy and culture during the past century. His other areas of expertise include constitutional law, American government and institutions, and religion and politics.
Dr. West was previously an Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University where he chaired the Political Science department, and he has taught political science and history courses at California State University, San Bernardino and Azusa Pacific University. From 1986-1989, Dr. West served as Managing Editor of Public Research, Syndicated, which distributed essays on public affairs to more than 700 daily and weekly newspapers.
Dr. West has written or edited numerous books. He also has contributed articles to a wide range of scholarly and popular outlets, including National Review Online, FoxNews.com, The Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, Wake Forest Law Review, Policy Review, The Washington Times, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Detroit News, and The San Diego Union.
Dr. West holds a Ph.D in Government from Claremont Graduate University and a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington. He is a recipient of several academic fellowships, including a Haynes Foundation Dissertation Grant, an Earhart Foundation Fellowship, a Richard Weaver Fellowship, and a Chevron Journalism/Economics Scholarship. Dr. West is a member of the American Political Science Association, Pi Sigma Alpha (the national political science honor society), and Phi Beta Kappa.
Dr. John West is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, where he is Associate Director of Discovery's Center for Science & Culture and Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs. His current research examines the impact of Darwinian science on public policy and culture during the past century. His other areas of expertise include constitutional law, American government and institutions, and religion and politics.
Dr. West was previously an Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University where he chaired the Political Science department, and he has taught political science and history courses at California State University, San Bernardino and Azusa Pacific University. From 1986-1989, Dr. West served as Managing Editor of Public Research, Syndicated, which distributed essays on public affairs to more than 700 daily and weekly newspapers.
Dr. West has written or edited numerous books. He also has contributed articles to a wide range of scholarly and popular outlets, including National Review Online, FoxNews.com, The Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, Wake Forest Law Review, Policy Review, The Washington Times, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Detroit News, and The San Diego Union.
Dr. West holds a Ph.D in Government from Claremont Graduate University and a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington. He is a recipient of several academic fellowships, including a Haynes Foundation Dissertation Grant, an Earhart Foundation Fellowship, a Richard Weaver Fellowship, and a Chevron Journalism/Economics Scholarship. Dr. West is a member of the American Political Science Association, Pi Sigma Alpha (the national political science honor society), and Phi Beta Kappa.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 8, 2010
Eye-opening study on the sociological ramifications of Darwinism.
July 26, 2022
Having read and reviewed the old version of this book, this updated version comes with a chapter on the rise of “totalitarian science,” which sounds like an oxymoron in a Trumpian age of very much anti-science totalitarians. And in the age of Covid, with the Darwinian evolution of its many variants to boot. It also has an afterword, “Scientism in the Age of Obama.” Before even page one, I felt comfortable knowing that the politicization of science would more closely conform to the normal perversions we’re used to in America. And we get all the relevant buzzwords to reinforce that: dismissals of “elites,” “experts,” and lots of “they”; “they told us,” “they said,” “they urged.” We find “they” often come from the social “sciences,” which are not science, much of it anti-science or pseudo-science.
While I previously focused on the trees, this reread of Darwin Day made the forest clear. The author, John G. West, claims not to be anti-science, as does one of his partners in arms, the UCLA feminist theorist Sandra Harding who labels science the product of “Eurocentric, white male, patriarchy.” But like her, West wants science to be something else. Harding wants to expel men and create a completely different “feminist science”; West wants to expel reason and inject God. Neither result can be science: a description of nature as it is and responsible for all the devices on earth that work just as science designed them to work. That Thales in the 6th century B.C. would conceive of a source of knowledge about nature that allowed only natural causes, not supernatural, and that this source, built on reason, not revelation, would become peerless in its effectiveness and utility are West’s and—without the revelation—Harding’s central grievance. That science gives credit to the laws of nature, not God, galls West, not Harding.
As this book and Merchants of Doubt about science-denial for profit (e.g., fossil fuels) and Higher Superstition about anti-science of our postmodernist Left in the humanities at university all make clear, science is under siege in America where it once won WWII, put men on the moon, and defeated smallpox. Science is, however, safe in China. Way to go, John.
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Those hoping to save science in the free world should read this
Science in America is under assault from the Fundamentalist Right and Fundamentalist Left. In the case of John West’s Darwin Day In America, Creationists on the Right are getting better at what they do. West’s book may be diced in any number of ways, but this reader sees it as five-pronged. 1) establish Darwin’s theory as ultimately immoral, 2) claim immorality of scientists practicing materialistic, non-directed science (i.e., not directed by God), 3) breed doubt about evolution and science in general, 4) portray the “truth” of Creationism as underdog against massive institutional odds, 5) offer the solution of Intelligent Design with instructions on “teach-the-controversy” approach (because they have no evidence against evolution). Ground the reader; inspire them; call for action.
First, it’s important to recognize who writes this book. West is a Creationist for the Discovery Institute—promoters of teaching religion in science class. However, this alone does not make what West claims as incorrect. A careful reading finds West is right about some matters, wrong about others. Mixing them in the manner of talk radio makes the wrong appear right. He’s close to spot on when it comes to materialistic perspectives humans have applied to themselves in the modern era, attempting something like what Romanticism did in response to Enlightenment. West elaborates this in his sections on Crime And Punishment and the obvious oddities of Alfred Kinsey’s sexual perspectives. The black eye delivered science by eugenics straddling the last two centuries is noted throughout the book, over and over, to make sure we didn’t miss it the 100th time. Recall, Sparta killed what they considered weak infants 2300 years before Darwin. Neither Darwin nor his followers invented the concept as West tells it—nor does this moral issue refute the scientific fact of evolution. A sizable fraction of that which West is right about is not so much an indictment of science as it is of scientific illiteracy. As a political “scientist” (which is not a science) he parades a significant amount of his.
As a religious Conservative, West is unaware of how like Postmodernist liberals he is in his opposition to science. While West and team target science as a source of moral evil, Postmodernists target science secondarily as a source of power for the moral evils of Western Civilization. And yet, after all the agendas, science is about describing nature as it is, not how we want it to be. Sociology, psychology, cultural studies, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Critical Analysis (of evolution) are not science though they pretend to be. Both sides want the cachet of modern science as their defender, but to do so, they must transform it into something else, as both Creationists (in high schools) and Postmoderns (in university humanities departments) have done to varying degrees of success. In the end, though, neither side is able to refute science, so on the Creationist side, West is forced—as Creationists must always be—to satisfy themselves with fabricating controversy, which becomes real in the public mind with their marketing and media machine. West’s book goes far in furthering that project.
Under the first prong of “Darwin’s evil,” the tactic of taking remarks out of context is employed. “We are nothing but a big fruit fly;” “We’re more like worms than we ever imagined;” “The worm represents a very simple human.” Are we to believe those quoted actually mean this? Does West? The Bible says we are like worms (Micah 7:17), foxes (Job 13:4), wolves (Ezekiel 22.27). Do these literally mean that? Perhaps West should assign guilt to the Bible as it far precedes Darwin in materialist thinking. On the other hand, if genome findings show “we share 99% of our genes with mice and we even have genes that could make a tail,” it’s West who then says we are mice, not Jane Rogers who published the mouse genome. And what are we to do with such data? Classify it because it might make some people squeamish? West blames Darwin for perversions in his name long after his death, much as Jesus gets associated with the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, and witch burning. In West’s book, Darwin is blamed even for the hideous sham of modern art!
For his second prong of West’s assault, he quotes Neal Gillespie, noting that scientists have used materialistic models of causality, rejecting supernatural and theological factors. Yes! The very core of science—only explainable causes that provide testable predictions are allowed. West notes that evolution is “purposeless and non-directed” (like fusion, oxidation, or the spontaneous emission of photons), and that this materialistic perspective makes science immoral. Instead of the strength it is, this is a cold and heartless fact to West. Since faith cannot be submitted to the rigors of science, what does West expect science to do? Should there be Christian science in America, Hindu science in India, Buddhist science in Nepal?
Brewing doubt, West spends most of his calories on the tactic of elucidating real or invented inconsistencies in evolution, just as there remain shortcomings in Newtonian theory of mechanics, Einstein’s theory of Relativity, and theory of quantum mechanics. Yet these “theories” work well enough to create GPS, semiconductors and every machine humankind ever built. Are these accurate models of nature or not? No scientific theory is born fully grown. For West and the postmodernist Left, this is an indictment of science, “proving” how flawed something that begins incomplete must be. Given the myriad disagreements about the nature and life of Jesus resulting in the many denominations in existence today, would West and his Creationists comrades then assert that Jesus did not exist? Or that he did live, but his teachings were incorrect? Outside Discovery Institute / Michael Behe’s offering that the intelligent designer may be a space alien, West never once provides a scientific argument opposing evolution. No testable model, no measurements, no data on anything. And for good reason. Creationists know full well that such an approach glazes the eyes of our TV/Internet generation. Better to market their message with slick campaigns and sound bite logic.
Finally, we get to Intelligent Design (ID), where we find West is not without humor as he tries to convince us ID goes all the back to Greece and Rome. In other words, “We didn’t just make this up to circumvent Supreme Court decisions.” While West claims complex systems in nature are “best explained as products of an intelligent cause,” can he test that? He might as well say complex systems are best explained by Scientology’s King Xenu, but can he test it? This has all been done before when in the 16th-century natural theology created a “God of the gaps”—a term created by theologians as something to avoid. For everything as yet not understood, God was assigned responsibility. The problem being that God—by man’s doing—was forced to retreat from each knowledge gap eventually filled by science. That there remain systems too complex for us to yet fully understand proves one thing, that our knowledge remains incomplete. Hardly does it prove there is an intelligent force behind nature.
No matter how much West slanders Darwin, evolution has been found to be a fact of nature in everything from astronomy to zoology, remaining one of the great achievements in human discovery. But the future of science in America remains as uncertain as it was for the Islamic Empire when it turned away from rational thought for zealotry and fundamentalism, condemning itself to the dustbin of history. In an era when China embraces science as America retreats, West and his Creationist comrades, in unexpected concert with their enemies, the Fundamentalist Left, threaten to wreck those great hopes of our Founders with Enlightenment science in their bones. As Hayek said of freedom, so too for science in the modern era, it must be fought for and won, over and over again in the same place.
While I previously focused on the trees, this reread of Darwin Day made the forest clear. The author, John G. West, claims not to be anti-science, as does one of his partners in arms, the UCLA feminist theorist Sandra Harding who labels science the product of “Eurocentric, white male, patriarchy.” But like her, West wants science to be something else. Harding wants to expel men and create a completely different “feminist science”; West wants to expel reason and inject God. Neither result can be science: a description of nature as it is and responsible for all the devices on earth that work just as science designed them to work. That Thales in the 6th century B.C. would conceive of a source of knowledge about nature that allowed only natural causes, not supernatural, and that this source, built on reason, not revelation, would become peerless in its effectiveness and utility are West’s and—without the revelation—Harding’s central grievance. That science gives credit to the laws of nature, not God, galls West, not Harding.
As this book and Merchants of Doubt about science-denial for profit (e.g., fossil fuels) and Higher Superstition about anti-science of our postmodernist Left in the humanities at university all make clear, science is under siege in America where it once won WWII, put men on the moon, and defeated smallpox. Science is, however, safe in China. Way to go, John.
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Those hoping to save science in the free world should read this
Science in America is under assault from the Fundamentalist Right and Fundamentalist Left. In the case of John West’s Darwin Day In America, Creationists on the Right are getting better at what they do. West’s book may be diced in any number of ways, but this reader sees it as five-pronged. 1) establish Darwin’s theory as ultimately immoral, 2) claim immorality of scientists practicing materialistic, non-directed science (i.e., not directed by God), 3) breed doubt about evolution and science in general, 4) portray the “truth” of Creationism as underdog against massive institutional odds, 5) offer the solution of Intelligent Design with instructions on “teach-the-controversy” approach (because they have no evidence against evolution). Ground the reader; inspire them; call for action.
First, it’s important to recognize who writes this book. West is a Creationist for the Discovery Institute—promoters of teaching religion in science class. However, this alone does not make what West claims as incorrect. A careful reading finds West is right about some matters, wrong about others. Mixing them in the manner of talk radio makes the wrong appear right. He’s close to spot on when it comes to materialistic perspectives humans have applied to themselves in the modern era, attempting something like what Romanticism did in response to Enlightenment. West elaborates this in his sections on Crime And Punishment and the obvious oddities of Alfred Kinsey’s sexual perspectives. The black eye delivered science by eugenics straddling the last two centuries is noted throughout the book, over and over, to make sure we didn’t miss it the 100th time. Recall, Sparta killed what they considered weak infants 2300 years before Darwin. Neither Darwin nor his followers invented the concept as West tells it—nor does this moral issue refute the scientific fact of evolution. A sizable fraction of that which West is right about is not so much an indictment of science as it is of scientific illiteracy. As a political “scientist” (which is not a science) he parades a significant amount of his.
As a religious Conservative, West is unaware of how like Postmodernist liberals he is in his opposition to science. While West and team target science as a source of moral evil, Postmodernists target science secondarily as a source of power for the moral evils of Western Civilization. And yet, after all the agendas, science is about describing nature as it is, not how we want it to be. Sociology, psychology, cultural studies, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Critical Analysis (of evolution) are not science though they pretend to be. Both sides want the cachet of modern science as their defender, but to do so, they must transform it into something else, as both Creationists (in high schools) and Postmoderns (in university humanities departments) have done to varying degrees of success. In the end, though, neither side is able to refute science, so on the Creationist side, West is forced—as Creationists must always be—to satisfy themselves with fabricating controversy, which becomes real in the public mind with their marketing and media machine. West’s book goes far in furthering that project.
Under the first prong of “Darwin’s evil,” the tactic of taking remarks out of context is employed. “We are nothing but a big fruit fly;” “We’re more like worms than we ever imagined;” “The worm represents a very simple human.” Are we to believe those quoted actually mean this? Does West? The Bible says we are like worms (Micah 7:17), foxes (Job 13:4), wolves (Ezekiel 22.27). Do these literally mean that? Perhaps West should assign guilt to the Bible as it far precedes Darwin in materialist thinking. On the other hand, if genome findings show “we share 99% of our genes with mice and we even have genes that could make a tail,” it’s West who then says we are mice, not Jane Rogers who published the mouse genome. And what are we to do with such data? Classify it because it might make some people squeamish? West blames Darwin for perversions in his name long after his death, much as Jesus gets associated with the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, and witch burning. In West’s book, Darwin is blamed even for the hideous sham of modern art!
For his second prong of West’s assault, he quotes Neal Gillespie, noting that scientists have used materialistic models of causality, rejecting supernatural and theological factors. Yes! The very core of science—only explainable causes that provide testable predictions are allowed. West notes that evolution is “purposeless and non-directed” (like fusion, oxidation, or the spontaneous emission of photons), and that this materialistic perspective makes science immoral. Instead of the strength it is, this is a cold and heartless fact to West. Since faith cannot be submitted to the rigors of science, what does West expect science to do? Should there be Christian science in America, Hindu science in India, Buddhist science in Nepal?
Brewing doubt, West spends most of his calories on the tactic of elucidating real or invented inconsistencies in evolution, just as there remain shortcomings in Newtonian theory of mechanics, Einstein’s theory of Relativity, and theory of quantum mechanics. Yet these “theories” work well enough to create GPS, semiconductors and every machine humankind ever built. Are these accurate models of nature or not? No scientific theory is born fully grown. For West and the postmodernist Left, this is an indictment of science, “proving” how flawed something that begins incomplete must be. Given the myriad disagreements about the nature and life of Jesus resulting in the many denominations in existence today, would West and his Creationists comrades then assert that Jesus did not exist? Or that he did live, but his teachings were incorrect? Outside Discovery Institute / Michael Behe’s offering that the intelligent designer may be a space alien, West never once provides a scientific argument opposing evolution. No testable model, no measurements, no data on anything. And for good reason. Creationists know full well that such an approach glazes the eyes of our TV/Internet generation. Better to market their message with slick campaigns and sound bite logic.
Finally, we get to Intelligent Design (ID), where we find West is not without humor as he tries to convince us ID goes all the back to Greece and Rome. In other words, “We didn’t just make this up to circumvent Supreme Court decisions.” While West claims complex systems in nature are “best explained as products of an intelligent cause,” can he test that? He might as well say complex systems are best explained by Scientology’s King Xenu, but can he test it? This has all been done before when in the 16th-century natural theology created a “God of the gaps”—a term created by theologians as something to avoid. For everything as yet not understood, God was assigned responsibility. The problem being that God—by man’s doing—was forced to retreat from each knowledge gap eventually filled by science. That there remain systems too complex for us to yet fully understand proves one thing, that our knowledge remains incomplete. Hardly does it prove there is an intelligent force behind nature.
No matter how much West slanders Darwin, evolution has been found to be a fact of nature in everything from astronomy to zoology, remaining one of the great achievements in human discovery. But the future of science in America remains as uncertain as it was for the Islamic Empire when it turned away from rational thought for zealotry and fundamentalism, condemning itself to the dustbin of history. In an era when China embraces science as America retreats, West and his Creationist comrades, in unexpected concert with their enemies, the Fundamentalist Left, threaten to wreck those great hopes of our Founders with Enlightenment science in their bones. As Hayek said of freedom, so too for science in the modern era, it must be fought for and won, over and over again in the same place.
May 14, 2009
This book explores how scientific materialism, justified by belief in Darwinian evolution, has dehumanized our politics and our culture. This book is valuable in bringing to light just how all pervasive the idea has become that we are just a higher form of animal life, that we have no soul, no will, that we are totally in thrall to our genes and to bursts of electrical energy in our brains (there being no such thing as mind). All this would be horrifying enough if true, but West's book reveals how very shaky the foundations of Darwin's theory are.
April 11, 2015
Convincing argument that scientific materialism has dehumanized our culture. But even if you don’t accept the premise, it’s still a good historical account of Darwinism, the eugenics movement and the overall clash of science and religion in the modern age.
December 8, 2024
This is a wonderful book. It explains how science, using the theory of evolution, has dehumanized our politics and culture. The book provides excellent examples and includes footnotes for those who want more. I think the book is a must-read for every Christian.
October 8, 2020
An interesting commentary on the social and cultural effects of the spread of Darwinism throughout the social fabric of America.
July 18, 2022
Well written for the most part. The section on architecture was not persuasive.
May 12, 2009
Deals with the logical outworkings of scientific materialism in the culture, including its reach into the areas of criminal justice, medicine, sex, even architecture.
The information on eugenics is startling.
I expected this to be another book in the line of those pointing out the weaknesses of Darwinian science, but it was so much more (despite the title, it's not a science text at all).
I'm impressed with West and will be seeking out more of his work.
The information on eugenics is startling.
I expected this to be another book in the line of those pointing out the weaknesses of Darwinian science, but it was so much more (despite the title, it's not a science text at all).
I'm impressed with West and will be seeking out more of his work.
March 3, 2008
A great book for those wondering how Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution have affected our culture.
November 4, 2008
I am reading this as part of my research for a radio program on the implications of one's view of origins.
February 1, 2009
The early sections on the eugenics movement in the US are outstanding. Very interesting how the consensus of experts can be so messed up.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews