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Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith
Charles Darwin has been at the center of white-hot public debate for more than a century. In Living With Darwin , Philip Kitcher stokes the flames swirling around Darwin's theory, sifting through the scientific evidence for evolution, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design, and revealing why evolution has been the object of such vehement attack. Kitcher first provides valuable perspective on the present controversy, describing the many puzzles that blocked evolution's acceptance in the early years, and explaining how scientific research eventually found the answers to these conundrums. Interestingly, Kitcher shows that many of these early questions have been resurrected in recent years by proponents of Intelligent Design. In fact, Darwin himself considered the issue of intelligent design, and amassed a mountain of evidence that effectively refuted the idea. Kitcher argues that the problem with Intelligent Design isn't that it's "not science," as many critics say, but that it's
"dead science," raising questions long resolved by scientists. But Kitcher points out that it is also important to recognize the cost of Darwin's success--the price of "life with Darwin." Darwinism has a profound effect on our understanding of our place in the universe, on our religious beliefs and aspirations. It is in truth the focal point of a larger clash between religious faith and modern science. Unless we can resolve this larger issue, the war over evolution will go on.
"dead science," raising questions long resolved by scientists. But Kitcher points out that it is also important to recognize the cost of Darwin's success--the price of "life with Darwin." Darwinism has a profound effect on our understanding of our place in the universe, on our religious beliefs and aspirations. It is in truth the focal point of a larger clash between religious faith and modern science. Unless we can resolve this larger issue, the war over evolution will go on.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published December 8, 2006
13 people are currently reading
188 people want to read
About the author
Philip Kitcher
44 books39 followersPhilip Kitcher is John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He was the first recipient of the American Philosophical Association's Prometheus Prize for his work to expand the frontiers of science and philosophy.
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June 30, 2021
oops I wrote an essay during the summer again
I read this book for a program on science and culture I'm doing this summer. The program advocates Intelligent Design (ID), and this book argues against it, but I really appreciate that we had to read it. I'm suspicious of any organization that shuts down the opposing view.
First, a clarification of terms: “Evolution” can mean three things: 1) change over time; 2) universal common descent; 3) the creative power of unguided natural selection acting on random mutations as the chief mechanism of change. (Thanks to the program I'm in for breaking that down.) Intelligent Design is compatible with the first two (although it doesn’t have to be); it only takes issue with the last. When I talk about “evolutionary Darwinism,” I'm referring to the third idea (methodological naturalism).
Kitcher’s respectful tone pleasantly surprised me. In fact, he seems genuinely concerned for the religious people who have, he claims, been led astray to believe that ID offers a solution to their science-versus-faith dilemma. Further, instead of scorning religious concerns and values, he acknowledges that they are deeply meaningful convictions and that usually devout people’s scientific decisions stem not from willful illogic but intellectually rigorous wrestling with different interpretations of both their faith and scientific data. I wasn't expecting this from a staunch Darwinism defender, and I appreciated his (usually) balanced and compassionate perspective.
On the scientific side of things, I found some of his arguments interesting. I need to research more the current Darwinian theories of how mutations are passed from one species to the next. Kitcher’s rebuttal of how IDers portray the problem—the argument that without one of the intermediate steps the structure could not function—confused me, which means more research on my end. However, his other arguments were less convincing philosophically. Here are two examples:
One of Kitcher’s primary issues with ID seems to be “junk” DNA and the presence of structures of related species in an organism that doesn't “need” them (ie, it don't express them in the way older species do). Why would an intelligent designer do that, Kitcher asks? It's inefficient and cluttered. If there really was a great designer, it would create differently. He repeats this argument often and yet there are multiple problems with it.
For one thing, as one of the lecturers in my program says, poor design does not equal no design. As much as I dislike the design of phones where the charging and earbud port is the same, it doesn't mean there is no design. Clearly there is a design.
Of course, poor design can lead to theological issues for those who believe the designer is a perfect God but a) that's not a scientific question and b) this leads to the second problem with the “junk” DNA argument: Is there such a thing as junk DNA at all? Yes, there are genetic sequences and structures whose function we don't understand—yet. We continue to discover purposes to things we previously wrote off as “vestigial.” Case in point: the appendix, or the long stretches nucleotide sequences before a protein-specific gene that at first appeared pointless but are actually essential for expressing that gene.
Thirdly, how do we know there is a better way to do something? We can speculate that a genome might look more elegant or efficient if it has less “junk” DNA but, to my point above, there may be a reason that we will one day discern. That is not a “God of the gaps” argument; rather, it should propel scientific inquiry so we can uncover the function of these confusing structures instead of writing them off as unfortunate but inevitable byproducts of the evolutionary process. Considered this way, is it really evolutionary Darwinism that makes predictions and offers a path forward for scientific investigation, or is it ID?
One more rebuttal: Kitcher points to Adam Smith's “invisible hand” of the free market as an example of something that seems designed but isn't really. At first, the idea was compelling to me. However, I realized that for the “invisible hand” to work, there have to be numerous designed structures in place—banks, insurance agencies, investment companies, harbors, stores, currency, credit cards, and more. All of those structures are clearly designed by intelligent agents. There may not be a master planner who coordinates every component, no sole composer, but the market is full of intelligent minds infusing information into it. Without those intelligent agents, there would be no market. No one person runs everything but the combined intelligence and information each possesses create the “invisible hand” phenomenon. So the free market demonstrates that stuff that looks designed is just that—designed.
However, what fascinated me most about this book wasn’t the science. It was the last chapter where Kitcher asks the fundamental question: Is evolutionary Darwinism incompatible with religious belief? Since he has laid out his arguments for why evolutionary Darwinism is the only valid science, relegating ID to a “dead science” (although still a science, a distinction most ardent Darwinians do not make), his question reduces to: Is science incompatible with religious belief?
Ah yes, the question of our time.
This is where I detected most of Kitcher’s sympathy toward devout believers, and I appreciated his thoughtfulness as he discusses this question. In the end, he argues that no, science and religion cannot coexist. The metaphysics of a supernatural being simply cannot meld with Darwin’s purely naturalistic account of the world. I agree with him here. I appreciate his honesty—no dancing around the impossible dilemma.
He toys with the idea of “spiritual religion,” evicting literal belief in religious myths and the supernatural, retaining only the principles for living a good life. He quickly dismisses that, acknowledging that there is little difference between such a “faith” and the secular humanism he ascribes to. This too is admirably honest. Such a faith is no faith.
Kitcher’s conclusion, then, is that we must mimic the benefits of religion—community, hope, morality—in a purely secular setting. We must find a way to create the meaningful, loving, purposeful family many faiths offer through other societal mechanisms. Not only is God dead, religion is dead. Or it should be.
This is where I'm left shaking my head. Where is he getting the idea that community or hope or morals are good things to have? Where is he getting the idea that there are, his words, “human needs” that religion provides? If everything is material and pointless (literally, teleogically), why should we care about the emotional, qualitative desires of the species who happened to win the evolutionary lottery? Without a God, how can we say what is good at all? Morality, fellowship, consolation—these are meaningless in a purely natural world.
I think Kitcher is being honest that we need these things as humans, but he's being dishonest in imagining they can exist without some transcendent source. In fact, secular humanism in general seems dishonest. Real belief in evolutionary Darwinism, if followed to its logical conclusion, looks more like Nazism, a brutal survival of the fittest.
Kitcher wants to bury religion because he insists that a good designer would not permit such suffering in his creation. Why would a creator allow so many creatures to live, suffer, and die before arriving at humans, the pinnacle of his creation? Kitcher repeats the word “cruelty” to describe the evolutionary process and cannot square it with a designer, certainly not a good one. This is where he thinks ID leads congregations of the faithful astray. To truly be science, ID cannot say the designer is God. But IDers, he claims, are winking at people, never explicitly stating but always intending to mean that this “intelligent agent” can be God. But the designer can’t be God, not if he’s loving and powerful.
And there it is—the problem of evil. It is the perennial problem: good God, broken world. Why? How? I can’t answer that here. I will say one thing, though. We cannot have the conceptions of suffering and cruelty being negative and bad unless we have a conception of the good. And where do we get any framework for good and bad from a purely material world? Only a transcendent source can provide morals.
Of course, that brings us back to the main problem, that if there is good and that good is the basis for everything, how can there be bad? That is a hard, important question. It's a question we need to wrestle with, not avoid by saying there is no fundamental source of right and wrong—and then continuing to use moral language and label certain actions or situations as good or bad.
I'm not sure how far the theology of the Fall helps us reckon with the suffering and death in nature; I need to study that. But again, that's not the point of this discussion. The point is that in a book arguing for the obsolescence of religion, it uses ideas and language that can only exist within some kind of religious framework. Kitcher proves the opposite of his point—that we need religion to think and talk and live as humans.
There's a lot more to be said about all of these issues but this is a book review, not an essay or another book, however close to that I may be getting to that wordcount. Overall, highly recommended for religious people who want to understand how the “other side” thinks. It's the most sympathetic and least condescending—and maybe most compelling—discussion you're likely to find.
I read this book for a program on science and culture I'm doing this summer. The program advocates Intelligent Design (ID), and this book argues against it, but I really appreciate that we had to read it. I'm suspicious of any organization that shuts down the opposing view.
First, a clarification of terms: “Evolution” can mean three things: 1) change over time; 2) universal common descent; 3) the creative power of unguided natural selection acting on random mutations as the chief mechanism of change. (Thanks to the program I'm in for breaking that down.) Intelligent Design is compatible with the first two (although it doesn’t have to be); it only takes issue with the last. When I talk about “evolutionary Darwinism,” I'm referring to the third idea (methodological naturalism).
Kitcher’s respectful tone pleasantly surprised me. In fact, he seems genuinely concerned for the religious people who have, he claims, been led astray to believe that ID offers a solution to their science-versus-faith dilemma. Further, instead of scorning religious concerns and values, he acknowledges that they are deeply meaningful convictions and that usually devout people’s scientific decisions stem not from willful illogic but intellectually rigorous wrestling with different interpretations of both their faith and scientific data. I wasn't expecting this from a staunch Darwinism defender, and I appreciated his (usually) balanced and compassionate perspective.
On the scientific side of things, I found some of his arguments interesting. I need to research more the current Darwinian theories of how mutations are passed from one species to the next. Kitcher’s rebuttal of how IDers portray the problem—the argument that without one of the intermediate steps the structure could not function—confused me, which means more research on my end. However, his other arguments were less convincing philosophically. Here are two examples:
One of Kitcher’s primary issues with ID seems to be “junk” DNA and the presence of structures of related species in an organism that doesn't “need” them (ie, it don't express them in the way older species do). Why would an intelligent designer do that, Kitcher asks? It's inefficient and cluttered. If there really was a great designer, it would create differently. He repeats this argument often and yet there are multiple problems with it.
For one thing, as one of the lecturers in my program says, poor design does not equal no design. As much as I dislike the design of phones where the charging and earbud port is the same, it doesn't mean there is no design. Clearly there is a design.
Of course, poor design can lead to theological issues for those who believe the designer is a perfect God but a) that's not a scientific question and b) this leads to the second problem with the “junk” DNA argument: Is there such a thing as junk DNA at all? Yes, there are genetic sequences and structures whose function we don't understand—yet. We continue to discover purposes to things we previously wrote off as “vestigial.” Case in point: the appendix, or the long stretches nucleotide sequences before a protein-specific gene that at first appeared pointless but are actually essential for expressing that gene.
Thirdly, how do we know there is a better way to do something? We can speculate that a genome might look more elegant or efficient if it has less “junk” DNA but, to my point above, there may be a reason that we will one day discern. That is not a “God of the gaps” argument; rather, it should propel scientific inquiry so we can uncover the function of these confusing structures instead of writing them off as unfortunate but inevitable byproducts of the evolutionary process. Considered this way, is it really evolutionary Darwinism that makes predictions and offers a path forward for scientific investigation, or is it ID?
One more rebuttal: Kitcher points to Adam Smith's “invisible hand” of the free market as an example of something that seems designed but isn't really. At first, the idea was compelling to me. However, I realized that for the “invisible hand” to work, there have to be numerous designed structures in place—banks, insurance agencies, investment companies, harbors, stores, currency, credit cards, and more. All of those structures are clearly designed by intelligent agents. There may not be a master planner who coordinates every component, no sole composer, but the market is full of intelligent minds infusing information into it. Without those intelligent agents, there would be no market. No one person runs everything but the combined intelligence and information each possesses create the “invisible hand” phenomenon. So the free market demonstrates that stuff that looks designed is just that—designed.
However, what fascinated me most about this book wasn’t the science. It was the last chapter where Kitcher asks the fundamental question: Is evolutionary Darwinism incompatible with religious belief? Since he has laid out his arguments for why evolutionary Darwinism is the only valid science, relegating ID to a “dead science” (although still a science, a distinction most ardent Darwinians do not make), his question reduces to: Is science incompatible with religious belief?
Ah yes, the question of our time.
This is where I detected most of Kitcher’s sympathy toward devout believers, and I appreciated his thoughtfulness as he discusses this question. In the end, he argues that no, science and religion cannot coexist. The metaphysics of a supernatural being simply cannot meld with Darwin’s purely naturalistic account of the world. I agree with him here. I appreciate his honesty—no dancing around the impossible dilemma.
He toys with the idea of “spiritual religion,” evicting literal belief in religious myths and the supernatural, retaining only the principles for living a good life. He quickly dismisses that, acknowledging that there is little difference between such a “faith” and the secular humanism he ascribes to. This too is admirably honest. Such a faith is no faith.
Kitcher’s conclusion, then, is that we must mimic the benefits of religion—community, hope, morality—in a purely secular setting. We must find a way to create the meaningful, loving, purposeful family many faiths offer through other societal mechanisms. Not only is God dead, religion is dead. Or it should be.
This is where I'm left shaking my head. Where is he getting the idea that community or hope or morals are good things to have? Where is he getting the idea that there are, his words, “human needs” that religion provides? If everything is material and pointless (literally, teleogically), why should we care about the emotional, qualitative desires of the species who happened to win the evolutionary lottery? Without a God, how can we say what is good at all? Morality, fellowship, consolation—these are meaningless in a purely natural world.
I think Kitcher is being honest that we need these things as humans, but he's being dishonest in imagining they can exist without some transcendent source. In fact, secular humanism in general seems dishonest. Real belief in evolutionary Darwinism, if followed to its logical conclusion, looks more like Nazism, a brutal survival of the fittest.
Kitcher wants to bury religion because he insists that a good designer would not permit such suffering in his creation. Why would a creator allow so many creatures to live, suffer, and die before arriving at humans, the pinnacle of his creation? Kitcher repeats the word “cruelty” to describe the evolutionary process and cannot square it with a designer, certainly not a good one. This is where he thinks ID leads congregations of the faithful astray. To truly be science, ID cannot say the designer is God. But IDers, he claims, are winking at people, never explicitly stating but always intending to mean that this “intelligent agent” can be God. But the designer can’t be God, not if he’s loving and powerful.
And there it is—the problem of evil. It is the perennial problem: good God, broken world. Why? How? I can’t answer that here. I will say one thing, though. We cannot have the conceptions of suffering and cruelty being negative and bad unless we have a conception of the good. And where do we get any framework for good and bad from a purely material world? Only a transcendent source can provide morals.
Of course, that brings us back to the main problem, that if there is good and that good is the basis for everything, how can there be bad? That is a hard, important question. It's a question we need to wrestle with, not avoid by saying there is no fundamental source of right and wrong—and then continuing to use moral language and label certain actions or situations as good or bad.
I'm not sure how far the theology of the Fall helps us reckon with the suffering and death in nature; I need to study that. But again, that's not the point of this discussion. The point is that in a book arguing for the obsolescence of religion, it uses ideas and language that can only exist within some kind of religious framework. Kitcher proves the opposite of his point—that we need religion to think and talk and live as humans.
There's a lot more to be said about all of these issues but this is a book review, not an essay or another book, however close to that I may be getting to that wordcount. Overall, highly recommended for religious people who want to understand how the “other side” thinks. It's the most sympathetic and least condescending—and maybe most compelling—discussion you're likely to find.
September 27, 2007
It's fairly evident that Kitcher is a philosopher; his writing style is sometimes a bit dense, but overall I found this book to be informative and interesting. The first chapters frame the history of opposition to Darwinism concisely. But the last two chapters are where this book really shine.
The second-to-last chapter goes through the writings of the champions of Intelligent Design (Behe, Dembski, etc.) and effectively exposes the emptiness of their arguments; no matter how cleverly constructed, they lack explanatory power. Rather than providing evidence for Intelligence, these sophisticated ID proponents are merely pointing out areas in which scientists (admittedly, too) need to do more work to understand the mechanisms in play. Great for people looking for an overview of ID arguments without having to slog through the voluminous (and frustrating) literature.
The last chapter is even more interesting. It argues religion and Darwinism can coexist, providing supernaturalism and literal reading of religious doctrines are dropped in favor of what he calls "cosmopolitan spirituality." Interesting, hopeful, and comforting for those who find themselves defending science against accusations of moral vacuity and godlessness.
The second-to-last chapter goes through the writings of the champions of Intelligent Design (Behe, Dembski, etc.) and effectively exposes the emptiness of their arguments; no matter how cleverly constructed, they lack explanatory power. Rather than providing evidence for Intelligence, these sophisticated ID proponents are merely pointing out areas in which scientists (admittedly, too) need to do more work to understand the mechanisms in play. Great for people looking for an overview of ID arguments without having to slog through the voluminous (and frustrating) literature.
The last chapter is even more interesting. It argues religion and Darwinism can coexist, providing supernaturalism and literal reading of religious doctrines are dropped in favor of what he calls "cosmopolitan spirituality." Interesting, hopeful, and comforting for those who find themselves defending science against accusations of moral vacuity and godlessness.
October 16, 2024
THE PHILOSOPHER “TAKES UP THE CUDGELS AGAIN” IN DEFENSE OF DARWINISM
Philip Stuart Kitcher (born 1947) is a British philosophy professor, who teaches at Columbia University; he has also written Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism, Science in a Democratic Society, The Ethical Project, The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, etc.
[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 192-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 2007 book, “Abusing Science was quickly written and quickly published. It joined other defenses… and I like to think that our combined efforts did something to provide the American public with a more adequate account of the credentials of evolutionary theory and the shortcomings of ‘creation science.’ During the early 1980s… I returned to the fray, engaging in public debates… By the late 1980s, it appeared that the [creationist] movement had run out of steam… [But] A decade later, there were rumblings of a new form of opposition to Darwin, ‘intelligent design theory.’ … Friends began to suggest… that I might take up the cudgels again…
"I wanted to write a rather different book… Not only did I want to respond to the fallacious arguments of … intelligent design, but I also hoped to make clear the structure of the powerful case for Darwinian evolutionary theory… I also aimed to respond to … thoughtful people …. and to point to the deeper issues that underlie this recurrent conflict.” (Pg. x-xi)
In the first chapter, he asks, “The question has two parts: First, how can the allegedly massive evidence in favor of Darwin’s central claims be overlooked?... Why is it that this particular piece of science provokes such passions… The second issue, then, revolves around the implications of Darwinism. How does it affect our understanding of ourselves, our place in the universe, our religious beliefs and aspirations?” (Pg. 4-5)
He critiques the notion that the geological fossil record was made by the Flood: “deeper deposits contain the remains of types of fish that no longer exist, as well as fossils of sharks. By contrast, fossil whales, dolphins, seals, and porpoises are found only near the top of the rock column… we might expect larger birds, with greater capacity for staying aloft and defeating rivals, to be the last ones to go… The fossil record of the birds shows none of the order flood geology leads us to expect, and, when we turn to the plants, there is further discomfort. Why do we find ferns in relatively ancient strata? Why are they joined first by the conifers and only later by deciduous trees and flowering plants?... Why are these kinds of fossils always found at deeper levels than those? Appreciation of the regularities… only exacerbates the difficulties for saving Genesis creationism.” (Pg. 32-34)
He rejects Intelligent Design: “[it] simply assumes that Intelligence is directed in various ways… without making explicit any precise principle about the direction or extent of the powers… there’s no basis whatsoever for supposing that Intelligence would create new organisms with the features of those already around---or for determining which features would be preserved… there’s no real engagement with the mass of Darwinian evidence for common descent.” (Pg. 63-64)
He criticizes Michael Behe [author of 'Darwin's Black Box' and 'The Edge of Evolution']: “Just because, in the absence of systematic molecular studies of bacteria with and without flagella, we can’t currently give a satisfactory scenario for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum under natural selection, why should we conclude that further research couldn’t disclose how that evolution occurred?” (Pg. 88)
He adds, “all the parade of examples really shows is that there are some interesting problems for molecularly minded evolutionists to work on, problems they might hope to solve in the light of increased understanding from comparative studies of the genetics and development of a wide variety of organisms.” (Pg. 90)
Later, he asserts, “Neither in Behe’s writings, nor in those of any other intelligent design-er, is there the slightest indication of how intelligence performs the magic that poor, limited, natural selection cannot… there are just two basic possibilities. The first option is that intelligence arranges the environment so that the intermediates… are protected against elimination under natural selection… The second option is that Intelligence provides for coordinated mutations to arise… Or we can mix elements of both options and suppose that Intelligence introduces mutations in clumps… and arranges positive environments for the intermediates. Of course, any story along these lines raises serious doubts. Just how does the coordination of the genetic changes or the modification of the environment work?” (Pg. 103-104)
He suggests, “even when the chance of a particular event turns out to be extremely small, it is important to resist the idea that that event could not have occurred… Our galaxy has roughly 200 billion stars, and the total number of galaxies, each with similar numbers of stars is---literally—astronomical. Some fraction of these stars has planets that are potentially suitable for sustaining life. Each such planet could be conceived as ‘buying a ticket’ in an enormous lottery, with the prize… consisting in the emergence of life. For any of those planets, the probability of gaining that prize is extremely small, but if there are enough of them, one will win. That lucky planet may have been ours.” (Pg. 95-96)
He observes, “One of David Hume’s great insights was to ask... Why did the Creator produce life by such lengthy and roundabout means?... Why has he permitted defects and junk to persist throughout his creation? ... Religious people reply that we cannot question---we are unable to understand the power and the purposes of God. This is a simple avowal of the point I have been making. If Intelligence is … taken as a surrogate for God, we are unable to understand Its aims and capacities. No principles about its direction or about its powers can be stated.” (Pg. 113)
He argues, “If the suffering of the child, or of the holocaust victim, is genuinely outweighed by some greater good, received in an afterlife, we ought to ask if that suffering is necessary for that good to be received. If it is, then others who have been denied the suffering will turn out to have been shortchanged. They will not have experienced something that is necessary for the attainment of the greater good. Because such acute suffering is needed for salvation in the afterlife, those who do not suffer similarly cannot be saved. If, however, salvation is possible without the suffering, then the agonies were unatoned for. They weren’t needed for the glorious reward… we need to know… just why the divine plan demands the existence of some who can only attain heaven through extreme suffering.” (Pg. 128)
He adds, “If the providentialist is to turn back Hume’s challenge… then it must be because there are antecedent grounds for supposing that the providential Creator exists… Troubling questions now arise. Why should anyone think there must be a providential Creator behind the apparent evils of the world, a God whose purposes we cannot fathom? On what do providentialists rely when they maintain that there must be some unknown order behind the messiness of life?” (Pg. 130-131)
Perhaps surprisingly, he states, “this is not a war against all religion. For there are others kinds of religion, ‘spiritual religions,’ as I shall call them, that don’t require the literal truth of any doctrines about supernatural beings.” (Pg. 133) He continues, “Spiritual Christians abandon all the standard stories about the life of Jesus. They give up the extraordinary birth, the miracles, the literal resurrection. What survive are the teachings, the precepts and parables, and the eventual journey to Jerusalem and the culminating moment of the Crucifixion. That… is seen… as a symbolic presentation of the importance of compassion and of love without limits. Spiritual Christians place the value of the stories of the scriptures not in their literal truth but in their deliverances for self-understanding, for improving ourselves and for shaping our attitudes and actions toward others.” (Pg. 152-153)
He concludes, “For a secular humanist, like me, spiritual religion faces the challenges of providing more content that the exhortations to… compassion and social justice that humanists enthusiastically endorse, without simultaneously resorting to supernaturalism.” (Pg. 154)
While it would be inadvisable to hold one’s breath waiting for “Spiritual Christians” to endorse Kitcher’s perspective on religion, this is a very readable defense of evolution and a critique of creationism and Intelligent Design, that will be of considerable interest to those studying this area.
Philip Stuart Kitcher (born 1947) is a British philosophy professor, who teaches at Columbia University; he has also written Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism, Science in a Democratic Society, The Ethical Project, The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, etc.
[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 192-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 2007 book, “Abusing Science was quickly written and quickly published. It joined other defenses… and I like to think that our combined efforts did something to provide the American public with a more adequate account of the credentials of evolutionary theory and the shortcomings of ‘creation science.’ During the early 1980s… I returned to the fray, engaging in public debates… By the late 1980s, it appeared that the [creationist] movement had run out of steam… [But] A decade later, there were rumblings of a new form of opposition to Darwin, ‘intelligent design theory.’ … Friends began to suggest… that I might take up the cudgels again…
"I wanted to write a rather different book… Not only did I want to respond to the fallacious arguments of … intelligent design, but I also hoped to make clear the structure of the powerful case for Darwinian evolutionary theory… I also aimed to respond to … thoughtful people …. and to point to the deeper issues that underlie this recurrent conflict.” (Pg. x-xi)
In the first chapter, he asks, “The question has two parts: First, how can the allegedly massive evidence in favor of Darwin’s central claims be overlooked?... Why is it that this particular piece of science provokes such passions… The second issue, then, revolves around the implications of Darwinism. How does it affect our understanding of ourselves, our place in the universe, our religious beliefs and aspirations?” (Pg. 4-5)
He critiques the notion that the geological fossil record was made by the Flood: “deeper deposits contain the remains of types of fish that no longer exist, as well as fossils of sharks. By contrast, fossil whales, dolphins, seals, and porpoises are found only near the top of the rock column… we might expect larger birds, with greater capacity for staying aloft and defeating rivals, to be the last ones to go… The fossil record of the birds shows none of the order flood geology leads us to expect, and, when we turn to the plants, there is further discomfort. Why do we find ferns in relatively ancient strata? Why are they joined first by the conifers and only later by deciduous trees and flowering plants?... Why are these kinds of fossils always found at deeper levels than those? Appreciation of the regularities… only exacerbates the difficulties for saving Genesis creationism.” (Pg. 32-34)
He rejects Intelligent Design: “[it] simply assumes that Intelligence is directed in various ways… without making explicit any precise principle about the direction or extent of the powers… there’s no basis whatsoever for supposing that Intelligence would create new organisms with the features of those already around---or for determining which features would be preserved… there’s no real engagement with the mass of Darwinian evidence for common descent.” (Pg. 63-64)
He criticizes Michael Behe [author of 'Darwin's Black Box' and 'The Edge of Evolution']: “Just because, in the absence of systematic molecular studies of bacteria with and without flagella, we can’t currently give a satisfactory scenario for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum under natural selection, why should we conclude that further research couldn’t disclose how that evolution occurred?” (Pg. 88)
He adds, “all the parade of examples really shows is that there are some interesting problems for molecularly minded evolutionists to work on, problems they might hope to solve in the light of increased understanding from comparative studies of the genetics and development of a wide variety of organisms.” (Pg. 90)
Later, he asserts, “Neither in Behe’s writings, nor in those of any other intelligent design-er, is there the slightest indication of how intelligence performs the magic that poor, limited, natural selection cannot… there are just two basic possibilities. The first option is that intelligence arranges the environment so that the intermediates… are protected against elimination under natural selection… The second option is that Intelligence provides for coordinated mutations to arise… Or we can mix elements of both options and suppose that Intelligence introduces mutations in clumps… and arranges positive environments for the intermediates. Of course, any story along these lines raises serious doubts. Just how does the coordination of the genetic changes or the modification of the environment work?” (Pg. 103-104)
He suggests, “even when the chance of a particular event turns out to be extremely small, it is important to resist the idea that that event could not have occurred… Our galaxy has roughly 200 billion stars, and the total number of galaxies, each with similar numbers of stars is---literally—astronomical. Some fraction of these stars has planets that are potentially suitable for sustaining life. Each such planet could be conceived as ‘buying a ticket’ in an enormous lottery, with the prize… consisting in the emergence of life. For any of those planets, the probability of gaining that prize is extremely small, but if there are enough of them, one will win. That lucky planet may have been ours.” (Pg. 95-96)
He observes, “One of David Hume’s great insights was to ask... Why did the Creator produce life by such lengthy and roundabout means?... Why has he permitted defects and junk to persist throughout his creation? ... Religious people reply that we cannot question---we are unable to understand the power and the purposes of God. This is a simple avowal of the point I have been making. If Intelligence is … taken as a surrogate for God, we are unable to understand Its aims and capacities. No principles about its direction or about its powers can be stated.” (Pg. 113)
He argues, “If the suffering of the child, or of the holocaust victim, is genuinely outweighed by some greater good, received in an afterlife, we ought to ask if that suffering is necessary for that good to be received. If it is, then others who have been denied the suffering will turn out to have been shortchanged. They will not have experienced something that is necessary for the attainment of the greater good. Because such acute suffering is needed for salvation in the afterlife, those who do not suffer similarly cannot be saved. If, however, salvation is possible without the suffering, then the agonies were unatoned for. They weren’t needed for the glorious reward… we need to know… just why the divine plan demands the existence of some who can only attain heaven through extreme suffering.” (Pg. 128)
He adds, “If the providentialist is to turn back Hume’s challenge… then it must be because there are antecedent grounds for supposing that the providential Creator exists… Troubling questions now arise. Why should anyone think there must be a providential Creator behind the apparent evils of the world, a God whose purposes we cannot fathom? On what do providentialists rely when they maintain that there must be some unknown order behind the messiness of life?” (Pg. 130-131)
Perhaps surprisingly, he states, “this is not a war against all religion. For there are others kinds of religion, ‘spiritual religions,’ as I shall call them, that don’t require the literal truth of any doctrines about supernatural beings.” (Pg. 133) He continues, “Spiritual Christians abandon all the standard stories about the life of Jesus. They give up the extraordinary birth, the miracles, the literal resurrection. What survive are the teachings, the precepts and parables, and the eventual journey to Jerusalem and the culminating moment of the Crucifixion. That… is seen… as a symbolic presentation of the importance of compassion and of love without limits. Spiritual Christians place the value of the stories of the scriptures not in their literal truth but in their deliverances for self-understanding, for improving ourselves and for shaping our attitudes and actions toward others.” (Pg. 152-153)
He concludes, “For a secular humanist, like me, spiritual religion faces the challenges of providing more content that the exhortations to… compassion and social justice that humanists enthusiastically endorse, without simultaneously resorting to supernaturalism.” (Pg. 154)
While it would be inadvisable to hold one’s breath waiting for “Spiritual Christians” to endorse Kitcher’s perspective on religion, this is a very readable defense of evolution and a critique of creationism and Intelligent Design, that will be of considerable interest to those studying this area.
June 25, 2022
I always wondered why Americans are more religious than Europeans. This book had a great explanation; lack of social supports in the US has helped the church remain a strong institution in many American towns.
Where there's no free museums, health care, mental health support, art galleries or other social institutions; the church remains the to go place for families and individuals to bond and seek social and emotional support.
Where there's no free museums, health care, mental health support, art galleries or other social institutions; the church remains the to go place for families and individuals to bond and seek social and emotional support.
June 5, 2015
Interesting description of Darwin's evolution and the attacks on it by creationists and intelligent design believers. The author is more respectful to evolution's attackers than I would be, while thoroughly beating back the attacks. Rather densely written, it is an enjoyable read.
March 23, 2017
Philosopher Philip Kitcher's excellent little book Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith seeks to answer two clusters of questions surrounding the opposition to Darwinism found in the Intelligent Design (ID) and Creationist movements. First, how is it possible to argue against Darwin, given scientific consensus? What are the strategies employed by critics of Darwin and how do those strategies fare? Second, why does Darwinism provoke such antipathy and recoil in the first place?
He lays the groundwork in chapter 1. One typical way to deal with ID challenges (especially in "teach the controversy" settings) is to dismiss it as unscientific and therefore unfit for discussion in scientific settings (such as a science classroom). One reason frequently given for this status claim (or lack of status claim, if you will) is that ID is untestable, and testability is a necessary condition for a theory being scientific. Not so fast, says Kitcher. The assertion that a theory is untestable is difficult to make stick (or difficult to make stick only to ID), since many scientific theories began as hypotheses that could not be directly tested, but only became testable through the addition of auxiliary hypotheses. Who is to say these auxiliary hypotheses may not be forthcoming for ID? In addition, ID is clearly related to the sciences historically through natural philosophy. Instead of classifying ID as unscientific, Kitcher argues ID should be considered "dead science." It's a model that's been tried and found explanatorily wanting.
Kitcher turns to the arguments of Darwin's critics. Those who wish to find some role for the supernatural within (or at least consistent with) a scientific understanding of the world have used three main strains of argument to do so. Kitcher notes that each strain of argumentation has been less ambitious than its predecessors. Chapter 2 takes on Genesis creationism, or biblical literalism. He reviews a few attempts in pre-Darwinian natural philosophy to find a coherent scientific explanation for the account of nature presented in Genesis. Thomas Burnet, for example, wrestled with finding mechanical explanations for scientific puzzles surrounding the account of the flood as presented in the Bible. But as geology developed as a discipline it became increasingly apparent that things like sedimentation rates and the ordering of the fossil record were nothing like we should expect if Genesis were literally true. By the 1830s even devout scientists like Adam Sedgwick had given up the idea that the Bible is a reliable book of scientific instruction. Contemporary forms of biblical literalism persist (Ken Ham's merry band, for example), but they lack the ability to provide a scientifically coherent account of their own. Instead, they attempt to gain plausibility as an "alternative" by focusing on the unsolved puzzles of science, which are relatively few when compared to the mountains of evidence that have been assembled.
In chapter 3 Kitcher addresses the second strain of Darwin criticism by supernaturalists, which Kitcher calls "novelty creationism." While conceding that the earth is much older than a Genesis based account of geological history would suggest, novelty creationism claims we can still defend the notion that species (all or some, or maybe just one really special one) is the product of special creation rather than the material processes of variation and natural selection. Kitcher recites the litany of reasons that special creation has no legitimate place in modern science: junk DNA, homology of structures (like limbs) despite the different uses to which organisms put those structures, geographical distribution, similarity of the chromosomal structures of apes and men, etc. As with biblical creationists, the only line of defense of their preferred theory is to attempt to point out the as yet incomplete features of our knowledge. No full theory of novelty creation can be assembled because it simply doesn't appropriately account for the facts of nature as we now know them to be.
In the fourth chapter Kitcher turns to the most recent and least ambitious attempt at finding a place for supernatural intervention within a scientific account of the world, ID. ID proponents can accept the findings of geology in determining the age of the earth and the principle of common descent in explaining all the facts of nature that novelty creation could not. ID makes the much more limited claim that there are some biological structures or processes that simply cannot have been assembled over the course of thousands of generations, and therefore must be the product of some intelligence. But there are clearly problems with this approach.
Kitcher analyzes one paradigm case that ID has championed as demonstrating the inadequacy of gradual selection: the bacterial flagellum. The argument that ID proponents like Michael Behe have put forward is that in order for a bacterial flagellum to work, it must possess all the component parts at once: what good is half a bacterial flagellum? The claim is that the flagellum thus must have appeared whole, all at once. Kitcher rightly points out that unless ID wants to revert back to novelty creation, it has to account for the descent of bacteria with flagella from those without. Which means the intelligence must have used the standard genetic materials available in precursors without flagella to make a flagella. But ID has identified no mechanism by which to explain how the intelligence designing the bacterial flagellum does so in one step rather than gradually, and therefore has not provided its own account of the features it claims that standard evolutionary biology cannot provide.
But even more to the point, if the intelligence is fiddling with genetic materials, then what's the explanation for its failure to eliminate genetic disorders? Kitcher is applying the problem of evil to genetic structures and questioning (in good Humean fashion) what the character of the designed might tell us about the designer. If you think natural selection operating on Mendelian gene distributions is responsible for the appearance of design, then you should expect that there will be some genetic abnormalities. But what about the intelligence posited by ID? How can we account for his bungling the genome to give rise to sickle-cell anemia when he's supposedly adept enough at genetic manipulation to produce a flagellum in one fell swoop?
Kitcher's final chapter outlines the logical consequences of the failures of the variety of creationisms to provide a coherent addendum to a scientific worldview. For Kitcher the implications are clear: the sort of world described by science is vastly different than the one described by supernaturalism, and we have no good reasons to adopt supernaturalism. These implications explain the periodic hostility of religious systems to Darwinian evolution. The facts uncovered by evolution do not sit comfortably with a vision of the world as created by a divine being whose primary characteristic (or at least one important characteristic) is love for his creation. Traditional religion, relying on providential intervention in the world, becomes no longer tenable. One might expect a Richard Dawkins-style dismissal of religion here, but Kitcher does not go that route. Instead, he recommends that religion move toward something he calls "spiritual religion."
What form does this spiritual religion take? In the case Christianity, Kitcher envisions a religion in which
Kitcher goes on to discuss the importance the church plays in the lives of religious people--churches are places where people go to meet friends, to celebrate joyous occasions, to find comfort in times of sorrow. All of this is true, and Kitcher is right when he talks about how the recommendations of Dawkins or Jerry Coyne for the faithful simply to abandon their religious communities seem a little tin eared. There are a variety of social and psychological factors not necessarily directly dependent on the content of the doctrines that make people value those communities.
Recognizing all this, I really have only one criticism of Kitcher's proposal. But it's a big one. Almost no one will find that version of Christianity palatable. Secularists won't need it; religious people will by and large dismiss it as worthless. While he is right to point out that the social and psychological aspects of religion are important to people, his proposal fails to account for the fact that people are seeking a genuine, true account of the way the world is. There is no noble lie which Christians will willingly tell themselves to maintain the auxiliary aspects of Christian life (unwillingly may be another story). Take the resurrection, which Kitcher seems to think people will be willing to give up. In Christian theology the resurrection is not a "take it or leave it" kind of proposition. It forms the core of Christian beliefs. If Jesus never existed or never rose from the dead, then none of the rest of it makes any sense. If Jesus' death doesn't culminate in atonement (which the resurrection is considered crucial to) then why is it symbolic of compassion or love? What sense does it make to talk this way?
Despite my quibble with where Kitcher ends up in his discussion of Darwinism, design, and religion, the book is really excellent. It's clearly and concisely written and contains enough detail to support his points but without bogging it down in trivia. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and science.
He lays the groundwork in chapter 1. One typical way to deal with ID challenges (especially in "teach the controversy" settings) is to dismiss it as unscientific and therefore unfit for discussion in scientific settings (such as a science classroom). One reason frequently given for this status claim (or lack of status claim, if you will) is that ID is untestable, and testability is a necessary condition for a theory being scientific. Not so fast, says Kitcher. The assertion that a theory is untestable is difficult to make stick (or difficult to make stick only to ID), since many scientific theories began as hypotheses that could not be directly tested, but only became testable through the addition of auxiliary hypotheses. Who is to say these auxiliary hypotheses may not be forthcoming for ID? In addition, ID is clearly related to the sciences historically through natural philosophy. Instead of classifying ID as unscientific, Kitcher argues ID should be considered "dead science." It's a model that's been tried and found explanatorily wanting.
Kitcher turns to the arguments of Darwin's critics. Those who wish to find some role for the supernatural within (or at least consistent with) a scientific understanding of the world have used three main strains of argument to do so. Kitcher notes that each strain of argumentation has been less ambitious than its predecessors. Chapter 2 takes on Genesis creationism, or biblical literalism. He reviews a few attempts in pre-Darwinian natural philosophy to find a coherent scientific explanation for the account of nature presented in Genesis. Thomas Burnet, for example, wrestled with finding mechanical explanations for scientific puzzles surrounding the account of the flood as presented in the Bible. But as geology developed as a discipline it became increasingly apparent that things like sedimentation rates and the ordering of the fossil record were nothing like we should expect if Genesis were literally true. By the 1830s even devout scientists like Adam Sedgwick had given up the idea that the Bible is a reliable book of scientific instruction. Contemporary forms of biblical literalism persist (Ken Ham's merry band, for example), but they lack the ability to provide a scientifically coherent account of their own. Instead, they attempt to gain plausibility as an "alternative" by focusing on the unsolved puzzles of science, which are relatively few when compared to the mountains of evidence that have been assembled.
In chapter 3 Kitcher addresses the second strain of Darwin criticism by supernaturalists, which Kitcher calls "novelty creationism." While conceding that the earth is much older than a Genesis based account of geological history would suggest, novelty creationism claims we can still defend the notion that species (all or some, or maybe just one really special one) is the product of special creation rather than the material processes of variation and natural selection. Kitcher recites the litany of reasons that special creation has no legitimate place in modern science: junk DNA, homology of structures (like limbs) despite the different uses to which organisms put those structures, geographical distribution, similarity of the chromosomal structures of apes and men, etc. As with biblical creationists, the only line of defense of their preferred theory is to attempt to point out the as yet incomplete features of our knowledge. No full theory of novelty creation can be assembled because it simply doesn't appropriately account for the facts of nature as we now know them to be.
In the fourth chapter Kitcher turns to the most recent and least ambitious attempt at finding a place for supernatural intervention within a scientific account of the world, ID. ID proponents can accept the findings of geology in determining the age of the earth and the principle of common descent in explaining all the facts of nature that novelty creation could not. ID makes the much more limited claim that there are some biological structures or processes that simply cannot have been assembled over the course of thousands of generations, and therefore must be the product of some intelligence. But there are clearly problems with this approach.
Kitcher analyzes one paradigm case that ID has championed as demonstrating the inadequacy of gradual selection: the bacterial flagellum. The argument that ID proponents like Michael Behe have put forward is that in order for a bacterial flagellum to work, it must possess all the component parts at once: what good is half a bacterial flagellum? The claim is that the flagellum thus must have appeared whole, all at once. Kitcher rightly points out that unless ID wants to revert back to novelty creation, it has to account for the descent of bacteria with flagella from those without. Which means the intelligence must have used the standard genetic materials available in precursors without flagella to make a flagella. But ID has identified no mechanism by which to explain how the intelligence designing the bacterial flagellum does so in one step rather than gradually, and therefore has not provided its own account of the features it claims that standard evolutionary biology cannot provide.
But even more to the point, if the intelligence is fiddling with genetic materials, then what's the explanation for its failure to eliminate genetic disorders? Kitcher is applying the problem of evil to genetic structures and questioning (in good Humean fashion) what the character of the designed might tell us about the designer. If you think natural selection operating on Mendelian gene distributions is responsible for the appearance of design, then you should expect that there will be some genetic abnormalities. But what about the intelligence posited by ID? How can we account for his bungling the genome to give rise to sickle-cell anemia when he's supposedly adept enough at genetic manipulation to produce a flagellum in one fell swoop?
Kitcher's final chapter outlines the logical consequences of the failures of the variety of creationisms to provide a coherent addendum to a scientific worldview. For Kitcher the implications are clear: the sort of world described by science is vastly different than the one described by supernaturalism, and we have no good reasons to adopt supernaturalism. These implications explain the periodic hostility of religious systems to Darwinian evolution. The facts uncovered by evolution do not sit comfortably with a vision of the world as created by a divine being whose primary characteristic (or at least one important characteristic) is love for his creation. Traditional religion, relying on providential intervention in the world, becomes no longer tenable. One might expect a Richard Dawkins-style dismissal of religion here, but Kitcher does not go that route. Instead, he recommends that religion move toward something he calls "spiritual religion."
What form does this spiritual religion take? In the case Christianity, Kitcher envisions a religion in which
[s]piritual Christians abandon almost all the standard stories about the life of Jesus. They give up on the extraordinary birth, the miracles, the literal resurrection. What survive are the teachings, the precepts, and the parables, and the eventual journey to Jerusalem and the culminating moment of the Crucifixion. That moment of suffering and sacrifice is seen, not as the prelude to some triumphant return and the promise of eternal salvation--all that, to repeat, is literally false--but as a symbolic presentation of the importance of compassion and of love without limits (p.152).
Kitcher goes on to discuss the importance the church plays in the lives of religious people--churches are places where people go to meet friends, to celebrate joyous occasions, to find comfort in times of sorrow. All of this is true, and Kitcher is right when he talks about how the recommendations of Dawkins or Jerry Coyne for the faithful simply to abandon their religious communities seem a little tin eared. There are a variety of social and psychological factors not necessarily directly dependent on the content of the doctrines that make people value those communities.
Recognizing all this, I really have only one criticism of Kitcher's proposal. But it's a big one. Almost no one will find that version of Christianity palatable. Secularists won't need it; religious people will by and large dismiss it as worthless. While he is right to point out that the social and psychological aspects of religion are important to people, his proposal fails to account for the fact that people are seeking a genuine, true account of the way the world is. There is no noble lie which Christians will willingly tell themselves to maintain the auxiliary aspects of Christian life (unwillingly may be another story). Take the resurrection, which Kitcher seems to think people will be willing to give up. In Christian theology the resurrection is not a "take it or leave it" kind of proposition. It forms the core of Christian beliefs. If Jesus never existed or never rose from the dead, then none of the rest of it makes any sense. If Jesus' death doesn't culminate in atonement (which the resurrection is considered crucial to) then why is it symbolic of compassion or love? What sense does it make to talk this way?
Despite my quibble with where Kitcher ends up in his discussion of Darwinism, design, and religion, the book is really excellent. It's clearly and concisely written and contains enough detail to support his points but without bogging it down in trivia. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and science.
October 20, 2016
Great overview of evolutionary theory and intelligent design, noting the difficulties that exist in the former and the lack of answers provided by the latter. Rather than assailing ID for being anti-science, Kitcher does a great job of breaking it down into its separate arguments and instead detailing how this is not a new idea but whitewashed old ones that have been discarded by scientists who held them in the past. ID is not so much anti-science as "dead science." The remainder of the book is a pretty straight forward critical look at the rationale of why ID is assumed to be so important and why Darwin is considered so evil. The result is a humanistic rendering of an argument that too often leaves our humanity behind.
July 6, 2019
Disappointing in that he mischaracterizes and oversimplifies the idea of intelligent design. It’s also outdated: his chief argument against ID is the (apparent) presence of junk DNA — which we now know to be a myth.
February 18, 2018
A lot of whining. Nice counters to arguments for creationism/intelligent design.
May 9, 2021
Takes awhile to read and think about - more philosophy than about Darwin
July 8, 2025
ap bio lite
beginner work
beginner work
February 12, 2012
Kitcher writes beautifully, bringing a potentially confusing and complex topic to those of us with a functioning brain that sadly remembers little of school biology classes.
He calls it an essay but for me it was a combination of two lecture-like viewpoints (and if he speaks as interestingly as this, I'd love to attend his lectures).
The first part of the book examines intelligent design as a scientific alternative to evolution. In this he's very honest about where he stands on the debate and is also very balanced and fair in how he approaches his topic, pointing out that it is ill-advised and simply wrong to refer to intelligent design as a pseudo-science or non-science. His approach is to look at it as a "dead" or obsolete scientific viewpoint and sets himself the task of showing why it is NOT still capable of being proven correct
His focus is therefore on why ID should or should not be in the science classroom, as opposed to being taught in a class on comparative religion for example. This means literal biblical creationism gets a fairly quick dismissal as there is simply too much geological and biological evidence that the Genesis creation story is a myth. In looking at more modern ID theories he therefore respects them as scientific theories and expects in return that the "intelligent design-ers" should not need to fall back on a mystical, magical explanation of events and developments.
This first part of the work is excellent - he succeeds in showing that gaps in the knowledge of the evolutionary process can not and should not be the sole justification for the intelligent design theory. If ID itself relies only on improbability or on the inexplicable parts of life on earth but then can not explain why and how things are done (or not done) by the designer then it fails and fails badly.
The latter part of his essay is far more provocative and I suspect he enjoyed this part enormously. He explains that evolutionary science can not co-exist comfortably with a "providentialist" religious belief in a supreme being who has kind of benevolent master plan for the world and for humanity. His approach here is interesting in that he sets out to challenge not just the creation myth but the whole bible.
He makes a strong and convincing case but the use of science, social anthropology and biblical / historical research to challenge religious belief inevitably comes up against the problem that it does not and can not explain why many people in many different religions believe they have seen, heard or spoken with their God. He toys with the rather insulting idea that such revelations chiefly happen to those with tortured or troubled minds. (I read some words of Martin Luther King immediately afterwards and found it hard to see Kitcher's point). However, he then admits this may be a fallacy when he states that we can not condemn out of hand the possibility of the genuine existence of things outside our own current scientific knowledge. In the same way that the absence of scientific explanations of evolutionary puzzles is not adequate proof of the intelligent design theory, the absence of scientific proof that revelatory religious experiences are genuine is not sufficient reason to believe they are bogus
Overall, I agree with him that intelligent design belongs outside the science classroom. I also agree with him that a literal reading of any religious text is unwise. However, does he give me (as an agnostic rather than a secular humanist like Kitcher) proof beyond a reasonable doubt that religions are nothing more than tribal myths designed to meet transitory social needs? Maybe not...
He calls it an essay but for me it was a combination of two lecture-like viewpoints (and if he speaks as interestingly as this, I'd love to attend his lectures).
The first part of the book examines intelligent design as a scientific alternative to evolution. In this he's very honest about where he stands on the debate and is also very balanced and fair in how he approaches his topic, pointing out that it is ill-advised and simply wrong to refer to intelligent design as a pseudo-science or non-science. His approach is to look at it as a "dead" or obsolete scientific viewpoint and sets himself the task of showing why it is NOT still capable of being proven correct
His focus is therefore on why ID should or should not be in the science classroom, as opposed to being taught in a class on comparative religion for example. This means literal biblical creationism gets a fairly quick dismissal as there is simply too much geological and biological evidence that the Genesis creation story is a myth. In looking at more modern ID theories he therefore respects them as scientific theories and expects in return that the "intelligent design-ers" should not need to fall back on a mystical, magical explanation of events and developments.
This first part of the work is excellent - he succeeds in showing that gaps in the knowledge of the evolutionary process can not and should not be the sole justification for the intelligent design theory. If ID itself relies only on improbability or on the inexplicable parts of life on earth but then can not explain why and how things are done (or not done) by the designer then it fails and fails badly.
The latter part of his essay is far more provocative and I suspect he enjoyed this part enormously. He explains that evolutionary science can not co-exist comfortably with a "providentialist" religious belief in a supreme being who has kind of benevolent master plan for the world and for humanity. His approach here is interesting in that he sets out to challenge not just the creation myth but the whole bible.
He makes a strong and convincing case but the use of science, social anthropology and biblical / historical research to challenge religious belief inevitably comes up against the problem that it does not and can not explain why many people in many different religions believe they have seen, heard or spoken with their God. He toys with the rather insulting idea that such revelations chiefly happen to those with tortured or troubled minds. (I read some words of Martin Luther King immediately afterwards and found it hard to see Kitcher's point). However, he then admits this may be a fallacy when he states that we can not condemn out of hand the possibility of the genuine existence of things outside our own current scientific knowledge. In the same way that the absence of scientific explanations of evolutionary puzzles is not adequate proof of the intelligent design theory, the absence of scientific proof that revelatory religious experiences are genuine is not sufficient reason to believe they are bogus
Overall, I agree with him that intelligent design belongs outside the science classroom. I also agree with him that a literal reading of any religious text is unwise. However, does he give me (as an agnostic rather than a secular humanist like Kitcher) proof beyond a reasonable doubt that religions are nothing more than tribal myths designed to meet transitory social needs? Maybe not...
September 26, 2015
Charles Darwin is a figure that dominates modern life. He’s a figure who polarizes our culture, even if we haven’t the slightest idea what he taught. To some he is a hero of science and saint to those who hold reason in highest regard, but to others he is the devil incarnate and the epitome of atheism’s dangers. Philip Kitcher’s new book, Living with Darwin, is a readable and challenging treatise that will prove disconcerting to just about everyone involved in the current debates, including those of us who seek to build bridges between evolution and faith.
Philip Kitcher is a philosopher – John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University – and a writer of numerous books dealing with science and religion. He is both sympathetic to religious claims and a partisan for reason. He is a Darwinist at heart, even a secularist, and yet he understands why religion holds such importance in the most modern of cultures.
The book raises the question of why Darwin is such a controversial personage. Why is evolution seen as such a threat? Yes, he was buried with honors in Westminster Abbey in the shadow of Newton’s own monument, but what of the Darwin who holds center stage today and has become such a reviled figure.
Continue reading at my blog: http://www.bobcornwall.com/2007/02/li...
Philip Kitcher is a philosopher – John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University – and a writer of numerous books dealing with science and religion. He is both sympathetic to religious claims and a partisan for reason. He is a Darwinist at heart, even a secularist, and yet he understands why religion holds such importance in the most modern of cultures.
The book raises the question of why Darwin is such a controversial personage. Why is evolution seen as such a threat? Yes, he was buried with honors in Westminster Abbey in the shadow of Newton’s own monument, but what of the Darwin who holds center stage today and has become such a reviled figure.
Continue reading at my blog: http://www.bobcornwall.com/2007/02/li...
November 23, 2016
Kitcher je filozof, a špeciálne filozof vedy, a v tejto knihe sa zaoberá problémom kreacionizmu a dôvodom, prečo tu jestvuje potreba veriacich popierať Darwina. Problém kreacionizmu nie je, že je to nie-veda, ale že je to mŕtva veda, veda vyvrátená. V prvých dvoch tretinách v skratke, hutne, precízne zhŕňa ako a prečo sú kreacionistické teórie dávno vyvrátené. To samo o sebe by bolo záslužné a hodné pozornosti. V poslednej kapitole, sa ale zamýšľa aj nad príčinami neutíchajúcej snahy veriacich odsúvať Darwina do úzadia. Darwin je v centre zápasu o chápanie nášho miesta vo vesmíre a konfliktu medzi náboženským a vedeckým ponímaním sveta. Teória evolúcie nabúrava ideu boha stvoriteľa a zjavenej pravdy v posvätných náboženských textoch. Prijatím Darwina musí veriaci prijať aj ideu osvietenstva a ustúpiť leda k akémusi neforemnému spiritualizmu. Z toho v Spišskej Kapitule radosť mať nemôžu.
Táto kniha si zaslúži preklad do slovenčiny. Je napísaná citlivým jazykom, ktorý žiadneho veriaceho neurazí. Navyše je to užitočná protilátka pre akékoľvek nezmysly, ktoré snáď môžu mladí konzervatívci en bloc preberať z USA, keď cicajú z webov neokonzervatívne múdra.
Táto kniha si zaslúži preklad do slovenčiny. Je napísaná citlivým jazykom, ktorý žiadneho veriaceho neurazí. Navyše je to užitočná protilátka pre akékoľvek nezmysly, ktoré snáď môžu mladí konzervatívci en bloc preberať z USA, keď cicajú z webov neokonzervatívne múdra.
April 19, 2020
On one hand, I think Living With Darwin's message is important. It largely goes over the history of creationism's opposition to evolution, debunking the half-baked 'science' of intelligent design and exposing it as a front for sneaking religious doctrine into schools. This book also concludes that in order for Christianity to survive in the modern world, it needs to drop literal readings of the Bible in favor of more spiritual and metaphorical ones, with continued emphasis on compassion and community.
On the other hand, Living With Darwin sort of feels like it's preaching to the choir. The kinds of people who are likely reading this book and others like it are people already fairly familiar with these kinds of ideas and worldviews. While I could never put these ideas so eloquently as Philip Kitcher, I agree with what he's saying. Unfortunately, the people for whom this book is intended, people who are religious or spiritual but possibly open to new ideas, likely won't be reading this, and will instead be reading the Bible. So who is this book really intended for?
On the other hand, Living With Darwin sort of feels like it's preaching to the choir. The kinds of people who are likely reading this book and others like it are people already fairly familiar with these kinds of ideas and worldviews. While I could never put these ideas so eloquently as Philip Kitcher, I agree with what he's saying. Unfortunately, the people for whom this book is intended, people who are religious or spiritual but possibly open to new ideas, likely won't be reading this, and will instead be reading the Bible. So who is this book really intended for?
January 25, 2009
This book, capably written by a Columbia University philosopher, is a timely antidote to the efforts of churchmen to insert Intelligent Design into the public school curriculum.
Advocates of the latest iteration of anti-Darwinism, Intelligent Design (in a clever double entendre the author calls its advocates "resurrection men"), have no positive doctrines and thus provide no explanations. They have not advanced, when you examine their claims, beyond novelty creationism and that was delared dead generations ago.
This book's last chapter, "A Mess of Pottage," is a sympathetic (the author was a disappointment to his own pious mother) consideration of the crisis of faith that believers encounter, why many of them rightly resist the implications of natural selection. And you don't find that very often in a Darwinist.
Advocates of the latest iteration of anti-Darwinism, Intelligent Design (in a clever double entendre the author calls its advocates "resurrection men"), have no positive doctrines and thus provide no explanations. They have not advanced, when you examine their claims, beyond novelty creationism and that was delared dead generations ago.
This book's last chapter, "A Mess of Pottage," is a sympathetic (the author was a disappointment to his own pious mother) consideration of the crisis of faith that believers encounter, why many of them rightly resist the implications of natural selection. And you don't find that very often in a Darwinist.
December 30, 2011
I read Kitcher's Abusing Science in an undergraduate seminar on the philosophy of science at Baylor. In that book, Kitcher completely dismantles Creation Science by exposing the dubious elements of Creationist arguments against Evolutionary theory. In Living with Darwin, Kitcher takes up the examination of more recent criticism of Evolution by proponents of Intelligent Design. It doesn't turn out good for them either, on Kitcher's view. He shows how much of ID is re-branded Creationism by delving into both the relevant science and the relevant philosophical issues. The book will be of interest to those concerned with science education and the "debate" over Evolution.
October 14, 2007
For me, this book stands out from among a crowd of popular titles questioning the value of religion. It isn't merely confrontational; it is constructive. If the implications of evolution puts it at odds with conventional religious belief (and the author argues strongly that it does--no "non-overlapping magisteria" here), how can we remain intellectually honest while meeting deeply felt spiritual needs? This short book doesn't provide a full answer, but it does raise many interesting questions. I think this would be a great science selection for a book club.
January 7, 2008
A well agrued critique of Intelligent Design that presents the I.D. theories fairly and even handedly, without falling into hysterics. The systematic dismantling of those ideas follows as the outline of Darwin's major works emerges, clarified and explained.
An important book for anyone who is interested in the ideas behind the debate of Creationism V. Evolution.
An important book for anyone who is interested in the ideas behind the debate of Creationism V. Evolution.
April 21, 2012
Although Kitcher makes some interesting points, his snarky tone makes it hard to read his diatribe against faith. It's less about living with Darwin and more about bashing Christians and Christianity.
June 2, 2010
An excellent, highly readable, balanced and well-tempered refutation of creationism and intelligent design.
Read
July 25, 2011Actually, we were only had to read about half of this book for class and I ended up reading more than what was assigned.
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