Worshipping Darwin

Self-described “lapsed Presbyterian” and disbeliever Andrew Marr asks, “In this year of his double anniversary, are we in danger of turning Charles Darwin if not into God, at least into the founder of a secular religion?” It’s a question many creationists have posed satirically when observing the “Year of Darwin” mania (since it’s his 200th birthday this year).

Marr states, “There’s no doubt that Darwinism, and indeed scientific truth generally, can supply people like me with some of the nourishment religion offers,” though the nourishment he references seems to be only the “feel-good” aspect of religion. He also discusses visiting cathedral-like natural history museums while filming the documentary Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Marr continues:

Darwinism has its bishops and its schisms. There are Darwin cartoon books for children, not dissimilar in tone to blandly uplifting Sunday School booklets. More significant, though, is that Darwinism, like a religion, offers both a method and a message. . . . There may have been no Darwinist Eden but there is certainly a Hell waiting for a species that makes the worst choices.

“There’s no doubt that Darwinism ... can supply people like me with some of the nourishment religion offers.”

Marr’s final conclusion is that Darwinism is superior to religion because it does not “divide mankind into the saved and the ignorant damned . . . there is no us and them.” Yet it seems we have seen exactly the opposite more and more each year as anti-Darwinists are vilified and ostracized. Even committed Darwinists can be excommunicated if they fail to fall in line (see the September 20 News to Note from last year). The behavior of the Darwinian clergy suggests anything but “a deep modesty about conclusions and lifelong readiness to be proved wrong,” as Marr alleges. While Darwinism as a worldview has some uniqueness (as do all worldviews), we nevertheless emphasize that evolution is religion!