Book Review: Saving Darwin by Karl W. Giberson

This is a very brief review of . The author does great work in laying out the history of the trials concerning teaching evolution in schools and attempts by Creation Science advocates to gain equal time. I agree that Creation Science should remain outside of the classroom in as much as science has conclusively proven that the universe is billions of years old as opposed to six thousand years old, and that the formation of the earth and everything in it took millions of years instead of 6 days. Attempting to interpret the Genesis account in a strict, historical, literalistic manner and then exposing these ideas to children is misguided. That the six day theory advanced by Creation Science is the Christian view, or the only interpretation of Genesis is equally erroneous. 

The author maintains Darwinism at all costs. So much so that he is willing to even accept a strong sense of the often philosophical concomitant of naturalism. The author claims to be a Christian yet thinks that revelation has been misread in that he rejects any involvement by God in the development of existence, that Adam and Eve were not historical people, nor that they were originally endowed with preternatural gifts, such as freedom from suffering and physical death. He also rejects the notion that death, suffering, and the like, only came through sin. I am certain that Adam and Eve were historical people since it is necessary for the theology of Paul, not only in understanding the effects of original sin, but also for understanding Christ as the “second Adam”. That death existed prior to Adam and Eve there can be no doubt since the dinosaurs certainly went extinct 65 million years ago in the K-T extinction at the end of the Cretaceous era. One of the things that we can know for sure from the Genesis account is that we are more than mere dust of the Earth, but that God breathed life into us. That the first couple was endowed with preternatural gifts seems to be a core concept in the Christian understanding of this primeval setting, that they were free from physical death. Despite what one may think of this idea, we certainly have no empirical evidence for this since even Adam and Eve experienced physical death and that the earth was just as yielding to man as it is now. I am personally open to examining the possibilities in this regard.

Despite his misguided attempt to reshape Christian theology to fit the Darwinian paradigm, the idea that death and suffering did not exist until the sin of Adam is not a Christian doctrine. However, it is imperative that Adam and Eve remain as historical figures, as well as that “ancient serpent” which is Satan. Christianity maintains that at some point in the natural development of man the first pair was endowed with preternatural gifts. This is certainly important to understand how sin affected human nature. Giberson, however, speaks of sin as nothing more than that selfishness that drives survival, a product of evolutionary development. And perhaps for him the goal of Christianity is to recognize how the natural processes that formed us over time have shaped our desire to survive, pass on our genes, and to be first in a competitive environment, must now be overcome. There is very little Christian thought left in Giberson's worldview which is dominated by a strict Darwinian paradigm. With that said, it is rather interesting to think about and I am certainly indebted to him for pushing my thinking in this regard. For instance, if there was a selfish evolutionary drive as is understood by Darwinist, and if God's endowment of preternatural gifts lifted man's reason above his biological proclivities in order to live above this process, the effect of original sin could be seen as the removal of these preternatural gifts which subjects man to that natural process once again. And so perhaps Giberson is correct in correlating this biological proclivity with what Catholic theology refers to as concupiscence.

He criticizes Intelligent Design by arguing that historically any time people have provided supernatural explanations in the gaps of scientific certainty we eventually found naturalistic explanations. For example, angels are not the cause of planetary movement. He concludes from these historical examples that there are no gaps to place God in terms of a cause in a set of naturalistic causes. Giberson is correct to recognize that God is certainly not just one among many causes within the natural realm. However, it would be incorrect to assume that God never effects anything beyond perhaps fine-tuning the Big Bang event. God holds existence itself in being and preserves its continuance. Certainly God is much more than a mere naturalistic cause. Along these lines Giberson does not spend much time attempting to convince his readers of evolution as much as he attempts to lead his readers away from Intelligent Design. Other than his idea that there is no God of the gaps, he rejects Intelligent Design because of what appears to him as bad design, or design of an insidious nature. He gives examples such as the human knee, that our spines are mechanically configured to walk on all fours, that choking is the result of our air pathway protected by a mere flap, and that our vision is based on upside down images. Likewise, he gives examples of insidious design where predators are finely tuned killers, of how cats play with mice before they eat them, or how a particular wasp lays its eggs inside a caterpillar and as the eggs hatch the baby wasps begin to consume the internal organs of the caterpillar in an order that keeps it alive for as long as possible. He thinks that he is doing God a great service by not contributing these types of “designs” to Him, as if God had designed them precisely through special creation as Giberson now observes them. Whatever we may think concerning “poor design” or “design of an insidious nature”, it is rather difficult to judge because what occurs in nature is not really a moral element, it is non-moral, or amoral, so it can't be judged purely from some moral construct which we apply to our own will.

Perhaps Giberson's largest complaint is against the idea that the sudden appearance of a species is the sole result of direct divine involvement. From his perspective, to apply a supernatural explanation in this regard is contrary to what science attempts to do, which is to discover naturalistic explanations. While I agree with Giberson that we should not apply assumed supernatural causes to areas of scientific uncertainly, nor will I apply naturalistic assumes to gaps in our understanding of how God may or may not be interacting with the world.

Consider the Cambrian Explosion, the so called biological Big Bang, where we see sudden appearance of species, of various body types, in the fossil record which are not found in pre-Cambrian layers of the geologic column. Consider also the fact that the assumed mass of transitional intermediaries is incredibly missing. Consider also that the norm in the fossil record is stasis, meaning that there is little to no change within a species for millions of years. I certainly can not simply assume a Darwinian perspective is an adequate explanation to the fossil record and then read into these gaps Darwinian rationalizations, any more than Giberson thinks that we ought never to read a supposed supernatural cause into areas of scientific uncertainty. The point is we all read into gaps by attempting to provide the best explanation possible. Giberson does not spend any time on explaining his adherence to a strict Darwinian perspective viewing the development of life gradually through thousands upon thousands of transitional intermediaries, descent with modifications. If Darwin's view of natural and sexual selection was the primary means of biological development then we really don't find in the fossil record what we would expect to see there. 

Giberson does attempt to address myths about who Darwin was by showing Darwin as a man born in an age of “Intelligent Design”, then called natural philosophy, and that he set out understanding the world in this manner but then was disturbed by his findings, and that at some level he regretted the loss of his faith. Views like this are propagated by proponents of the “warfare myth”, the idea that faith and reason are at war with each other and that science drives us away from superstitious belief in God leading to a crisis in faith. This view is problematic because it can be shown that Darwin himself set out to prove evolution through natural means alone and that his grandfather was famous for his view of evolution and wrote a book on the subject which Darwin read. Darwin himself saw the difficulty that the fossil record proved for his theory. Besides, Darwin was not the first one to propose the idea. Concepts of evolution existed since Greek philosophy, particularly the ancient writings of Lucretius, whose writings were rediscovered in the early Renaissance.

Giberson's Saving Darwin is a decent read for the history of trials and of Creation Science, but a filter is strongly advised throughout the rest, if not omitted altogether.