Mathias’s Reviews > Created from Animals: Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford Paperbacks) by Rachels, James (1999) Paperback > Status Update

When the world is interpreted non-teleologically—when God is no longer necessary to explain things—then theology is diminished.

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The history of religion in the age of science is the story of religion's steady retreat from a central place in our way of understanding the world to a place that is vanishingly small.

Some theistic interpretations of evolutionary processes are so open-ended as to guarantee compatibility with all possible evidence. If this were true then God had created a situation in which his own involvement is so totally hidden as to give the appearance of operating without any guiding hand at all. He has created a situation in which it's reasonable to believe that he's not involved in natural selection at all.

Does Darwinism undermine traditional morality, the idea that humans are exceptionally valuable because of human dignity (reason, language)?

Darwinism undermining traditional morality does not entail claiming that traditional morality is false.

Rather, it provides evidence to doubt the reasons for the belief in human dignity and therefore traditional morality. Darwinism takes away the support

As Darwin clearly recognized, we are not entitled-not on evolutionary grounds, at any rate—to regard our own adaptive behaviour as 'better' or 'higher than that of the cockroach, who, after all, is adapted equally well to life in its own environmental niche.

Darwin tried to avoid such terms as 'higher' and 'lower' when referring to stages of development–a distinctive feature of his theory was its denial that evolutionary change is associated with any purpose or 'direction'. There is no advancement and no regression; there is only change.

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and I think truer consider him created from animals.