For months, the great event has been throwing its dark forewarning shadows upon us, now it has become reality: the Year of Darwin. We celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), who discovered the principle of evolution.
However, many people do not feel like celebrating – at least not when thinking of Darwin. Half the population of the US alone believe in the concept of creationism, rather than the concept of evolution. Following the story of Creation as told in the Bible, they think that the earth originated 6,000 years ago and every single species was created in the manner best suited for its environment by the will of God. Bible-adhering creationists see Darwin as the anti-Christ and call for a holy war against the theory of evolution. Incidentally, 13 per cent of the Germans, too, believe that the world and homo sapiens were created in six days.
A few years ago, the “Discovery Institute in Seattle” published a secret paper that says that “thinkers like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud represent humans as animals or machines. Allegedly, their behaviour is determined only by biology, chemistry and the environment… What we want is nothing less than bring down materialism. It denies moral standards.”
Creationists are conservative apologists of the Christian theory of creation. There is nothing more threatening to their survival than the Darwinian teachings about the evolution of the species. Therefore, they take great pains to fight against this theory. Since they cannot back their arguments with genealogy, they cite miracles. They confuse the rationality of their adherents using pseudo-scientific terms like “Irreducible Complexity” and “Intelligent Design” (ID).
This is what they call scientifically legitimized creationism based on convincing people that an “intelligent designer” created all life according to his plan. Naturally, when they talk designer, they mean no other than God himself. ID is immune against all evaluation and verification, neither can it be falsified. Financially, the ID movement is in excellent condition, since it is supported by the Templeton foundation which, incidentally, also finances quite a few research projects at German universities. The Templeton foundation has openly declared that it wants to contribute towards a larger expansion of creationist concepts at German universities.
As early as 1860, a lady gave voice to her fear of Darwin: “My dear, let us hope that it is not true”, is what she said about Darwinian theories to one of her lady friends, “but if it is true, let us pray that it will not become general knowledge!”
But what is so bad about a natural explanation for the evolution of life and the species? What is bad about people considering themselves atheists? Why would anybody want to fight a concept that explains social behaviour biologically and in a way that enables all humans to evaluate it? A concept that declares the existence of morals with their usefulness for the survival of the species? And how can it be wrong to declare that humans are animals or machines if, after all, a majority of them love their dog, their cat, or their car more than their neighbours?
The creationist arguments are an excuse. None of the aforementioned criticism is reprehensible, quite apart from the question whether or not it is all true. The arguments of the campaign against the theory of evolution are a distraction. They distract from human megalomania, because the natural explanations are the most offensive anthropological disappointment for humans. With Darwin, homo sapiens ceased to be the crown of creation. Humans can no longer count on being like God. Rather, they are like animals, even if Darwinism does not make humans and animals equals.
Insignificant man may be able to camouflage his own animal-like nature through flagellation with terms like “locust capitalism”, but still he is more deeply rooted in his animal’s skin than he likes to admit. Nothing is more insufferable for humans than being reminded of their biological animal ancestry. We want to be born from Deity alone. This is human megalomania Darwinism reminds us of. The creationist ideologists pacify humans and let them continue to exist in their megalomania. The parties concerned express their gratitude by adapting and throwing their critical rationality over board.
But pious creationists underestimate the explanatory value of Darwin’s theory. After all, their stubborn insistence that illusions and the belief in miracles are real does not contradict the theory of natural selection. Rather, it is one of its main components. “Adaptation through regression” is what Darwin calls the phenomenon where unused biological functions regress to an earlier state. Evolution is a conservative matter. If you do not use the potential for critical scientific thought, said potential will regress to the state where you still believed in miracles. Then something Darwin had not yet perceived will happen. We can call it “regression through adaptation”.
Scientific programs like those of the creationists force people to adapt to concepts as propagated by institutions like the Templeton foundation. Critical voices are suppressed and pseudo-scientific concepts are supported. Wherever you go, you can witness scholars of the humanities demonstrating how this adaptation works. The theologian and professor for philosophy Ludger Honnefeld in Bonn is more and more afraid that tendencies explaining the world and its revolutionary development as a whole will arise as a kind of super theory. Which is why, so he declared a few weeks ago in Würzburg at a general meeting of the Görres society – another Christian foundation -, theology must remain present at universities. In other words, he says that science must be saved by religion and theology from becoming a mere quasi religion. Otherwise science will despair when confronted with the restrictions and deficits inherent in rational thinking and eventually give up on the project of enlightenment through rationalism. It is theology that forces the scientist, so Honnefeld, “to legitimate himself before critical rational questions and prevents him from misinterpreting himself as an all-encompassing ‘God’s eye view’.” This is how the devil is exorcized by Beelzebub.
But nobody contradicts Honnefelder, because he is an expert at using institutional power. If you want to be made professor at a chair for philosophy or theology in Germany, you must not contradict ideologists like Honnefelder. Being dominated and controlled exclusively by scholars of the humanities, the institutes survive by putting adaptive pressure on their students. It is their job to camouflage that certain scientific discoveries have made absurdities out of what used to be taken for granted. Tensions between scientific theories are corrupted in order to make an adherence to obsolete dogmas possible.
The Year of Darwin will provide us with numerous opportunities for studying the methods of adaptation by regression to a phase of pre-scientific positions – all of which will be sold as redemption from evil.
KJG
(translated by Evelyn Gemkow)
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