When Darwinism is debated the focus is usually on proving it is not empirically verified, that there are alternative more credible explanations, that Darwinism is itself a leap of faith. What is not examined is the impact upon our ethos and understanding of ourselves as human beings. We are being told we are beasts not the imago Dei and Darwinism, that-which-must-not-be-questioned, is weaponised to diminish the value of the human being and in recent history to justify inhumane political policies and systems. Social Darwinism has caused much suffering and cruelty.
We could of course take the position that if Darwinism is the ontological reality of life then it is only our Christian bias that leads us to place special value on human life, to care for the weak, to oppose greed and seeking power over others. This indeed was at the root of much Nineteenth Century thinking, from Herbert Spencer’s classical liberalism (it was he, not Darwin who coined the term survival of the fittest) and Nietzschean worship of power. Darwin’s theories led to dark schemes about eugenics and plans to exterminate the poor and weak. We are most aware of Nazi eugenics, but the liberal establishment in the West did not only advocate the economic Darwinism of capitalism, but contemplated biological intervention to enhance the Darwinist processes of eliminating the weak. Darwin’s theory not only damaged the Church but also led to cruel and inhumane theories and the latter development was a corollary of the other, not an unrelated consequence.
Instead of the Beatitudes the West became obsessed with ideas about the strong and the powerful and suppressing so-called biological defects. The war against Nazism meant these theories in the West had to go underground, but from the promotion of abortion for “defective” babies to euthanasia for the elderly and infirm, our elites have continued, now using the language of compassion and rights to justify elimination of those considered weak in Darwinian terms.
Well is Darwinism true and is any sort of Christian ethos a sentimental opposition to truth as power and strength? In a sense Darwinism is real in that it describes our postlapsarian existence. Cast out of Eden we are limited by time and space and this gives rise to an individualist struggle of every individual against the other for his own survival over limited resources out of fear of death. Hobbes was right, but only right because of the Fall, to describe the State of Nature as “nasty, brutish and short”. But within our social contract we still see the strong and powerful oppress the weak, showing politics is never the solution to the Fall. Greek theologian and much-respected academic, Christos Yannaras has written much about the sin of individualism and how this post-lapsarian struggle for survival, essentially nature as Darwin described it, is a deeply unnatural state that must be overcome, not by politics, but through the spiritual journey of theosis. As Saint Seraphim of Sarov put it: “acquire the Holy Spirit and a thousand souls around you will be saved.”
How does theosis then overcome Darwinian survival? Yannaras writes in the Variations in the Song if Songs:
“To share our soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance) really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defence, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking or being.”
We can then have use for Darwin and his description of how Nature and biology work as understanding what Man’s Fall means in terms of its cosmic consequences and how Darwinian survival of the fittest is not some beautiful explanation, but what we must seek to overcome through prayer and participating in the mysteries of the Church, thereby living not in individualistic competition but in relationship. That will lead to a renewal through Christ of life.
If we do truly repent and turn to Christ we will no longer live according to the laws of Darwinian fallen nature. Instead we will live in self-emptying relationship. We will overcome Original Sin, or what Dawkins calls the selfish gene.
For the biologists, the scientifically-minded, the question though should be answered: Is Darwin describing fact or is he wrong? Surely he described the fallen world as he saw it in its fallen state. It is a theory not fully demonstrated empirically. It appeals to the Western mind as it applies Ockham’s razor and avoids extra levels of explanation. The appeal of the reductive does not mean it is true. Specifically though, is Man made imago Dei or is he bestial, a mere animal, a primate? Well Genesis tells us we were made from dust and that could conceivably include a bestial stage in the process of being made into the imago Dei. Really it is not something to be preoccupied by; rather we should focus on understanding the Truth that we are made in the mage of God, we are fallen and Christ has opened the way back or to an even higher state than Edenic innocence. Questions about how we were formed by God are not on the same level as understanding the meaning of being created in the image of God.
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